Finance and Government Services - Issue No. 22

2001 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 37th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES
MINUTES AND HANSARD

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES



CONTENTS

		Page

Office of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate		717
	L. MacFadden	717
	I. Mass	724
	L. Anderson	725
Office of the Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner		730
	H.A.D. Oliver	730
	P. Bray	733
Statutory Officers Draft Report		735

Chair:	* Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L)
Deputy Chair:	Tony Bhullar (Surrey-Newton L)
Members:	* Harry Bloy (Burquitlam L) * Jeff Bray (Victoria–Beacon Hill L) * Ida Chong (Oak Bay–Gordon Head L) * Brian Kerr (Malahat–Juan de Fuca L) * Kevin Krueger (Kamloops–North Thompson L) * Lorne Mayencourt (Vancouver-Burrard L) * Barry Penner (Chilliwack-Kent L) Ralph Sultan (West Vancouver–Capilano L) Joy MacPhail (Vancouver-Hastings NDP) * denotes member present


Witnesses:	Lynell Anderson (Office of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate) Peter Bray (Legislative Comptroller) Laverne MacFadden (Acting Child, Youth and Family Advocate) Ian Mass (Deputy Child, Youth and Family Advocate) H.A.D. Oliver (Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner)

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Okay, it is now ten after 12. I'd like to start off by apologizing for our late start. If it is acceptable to the other members of the committee and yourselves, I think we can begin. Other members will be joining us. With that, if that's acceptable.... All right.

We'd like to start off by welcoming you to our committee. My name is Blair Lekstrom. I am the MLA for Peace River South and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We're here today to hear from you on the annual reports, performance plans, budgets and business plans for your office. It is a new venture for us as government and a new venue for yourselves to present your plans and budgets to a legislative committee of the Legislature. We're looking forward to it. We began yesterday hearing from the statutory officers.

We will continue today and finalize our hearings on Monday, following which we will draft a report as a committee, which will be submitted to the Clerk, at which time it becomes a public document.

With that, and without taking up too much more time, I would like to have the other members of the committee introduce themselves, and then we will carry on.

K. Krueger: Kevin Krueger, Kamloops–North Thompson. Pleased to have you with us. Thanks for coming.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you. With that, Laverne, I'll turn the floor over to you, and we can begin the process.

L. MacFadden: Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to come and speak to you. I hope that this will be a constructive and useful process for reviewing our office's service plan and budgetary requirements.

With me today are two senior staff in the office: Lynell Anderson, who is our manager of finance and support services, and Ian Mass, who is the deputy child, youth and family advocate in the office. My thought is to go through our presentation to you, and then if you have questions, hopefully between the three of us, we will be able to answer you.

On your desks in front of you is a package, and I apologize that we couldn't get it to you earlier for you to look at. I'll just refer to the items that are in it. On the top is the service plan, which we'll go through in some detail. Following that is a brochure called Advocacy, and it's a key piece of material that we use in terms of communicating to various individuals — children, youth, families, communities — about advocacy. Behind that is an update that we produce generally semi-annually on the work of the office, and this was for the fall of this year; the last annual report for the year 2000, which was presented to the Legislature in March of this year; and a copy of the Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act. We felt that those are some of the important backdrop documents, and hopefully they'll give you some sense of what the office is all about and the legislative basis on which we proceed to do our work.

L. MacFadden: The table of contents essentially covers off what is in the plan. Following a brief summary there is part 1, which deals with the office overview. We have a section on trends and issues, and the third section has to do with our budget submission.

Moving on through that, I think the summary comments are meant to position for you some of the understandings that we work from. Initially, what we speak to is that the child, youth and family advocate is an independent voice for children and youth. By reporting to the Legislative Assembly about services for children and youth, the advocate provides a unique public service that isn't duplicated either inside or outside of government.

Secondly, the legislative mandate outlines three core activities, and I'll speak to those in more detail later on. These are individual advocacy services, local advocacy development and systemic advocacy.

Our office opened in 1995, and since then, to give you a sense of volume, we've received over 13,000 calls from or about children and youth and their families who need services from the provincial government. We've promoted advocacy for children and youth in communities throughout the province. We are based in Vancouver. Our office is in Vancouver, but we are a provincial office, so we provide services throughout the province. We have worked to raise public awareness about the issues that these children and youth and their families have brought forward to the attention of the office.

Finally, our office requires the approved resources to continue to carry out the core activities that are set out in this service plan. We believe that we have utilized and will continue to utilize public funds efficiently and effectively in carrying out our legislated mandate.

First of all, in terms of framing what our plan is and therefore what our budgetary needs would be, we've begun by describing our mandate. At the top of page 4 we've got a quote from a report that is called Making Changes: A Place to Start, which was presented to the

Legislature in 1992. That report was the culmination of work by a panel that was appointed by the Legislature to examine child welfare issues. It was a significant informing document towards the current child welfare legislation that we have in B.C. The previous act was repealed, and a new act was brought into place that governs child welfare services today.

This definition is one that we have taken and have used as a guide to the work we do in our office. We view advocacy as "the act of speaking in support of human concerns or needs. Where people have their own voice, advocacy means making sure they are heard; where they have difficulty in speaking, it means providing help; where they have no voice, it means speaking for them." You'll see, perhaps, how we have elucidated on that and illuminated those values that are in that definition through the work and on the legislative framework we have.

Our office was established for British Columbia in May 1995 — we're six and a half years old — as an independent office of the Legislature — statutory officer. The office functions within the legal framework established in the Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act, which is in your packages.

That act was unanimously passed by the Legislative Assembly and proclaimed by the Lieutenant-Governor on August 25, 1995. The appointment of B.C.'s first child, youth and family advocate, Joyce Preston, was unanimously approved by the assembly on the recommendation of an all-party special committee, and the act sets out the authority, powers and functions of the advocate.

The impetus for an advocate for children and youth came from many sources, including the report I alluded to earlier, Making Changes: A Place to Start, wherein they did recommend that there be an advocate for children and youth and legislation to support this role. Justice Gove, in his report on the Gove inquiry into child protection regarding the death of a child named Matthew Vaudreuil, reinforced the importance of this independent office and made recommendations around some potential expansion and so on. He reinforced the importance of the office.

Why was the office established? It was to promote the interests of the child in the provision of government services. The independence is an essential component in ensuring openness and accountability in a way that's transparent and protects the public interest. The Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act provides authority for the advocate to carry out work in respect of specific acts, services or programs. Those currently include the Child, Family and Community Service Act, which is the primary act within the Ministry of Children and Family Development; the Adoption Act; drug and alcohol programs for children and youth; the Children Who Witness Abuse component of Stopping the Violence initiative; and child care programs. In essence, that lays out the background of how the office came into being and, in very summary form, why we exist and so forth.

The last section of this page makes reference to the importance of noting the context in which this submission is being made to you. Following retirement of the former advocate, the Child, Youth and Family Advocacy Act was amended to allow for the appointment of an acting advocate for a period of up to two years. The Attorney General and the Minister of Children and Family Development subsequently requested a coordinated review of services that are provided to children and their families by public agencies, whether by government directly or through special offices. The office of the child, youth and family advocate is included in this review, which is currently in process. Decisions flowing from this review may have a direct impact on the mandate, plans, priorities and resources outlined in the service plan.

On the next page we'll go through mission, vision, and so on, in terms of how they direct the work of the office. The mission of our office is to serve the Legislative Assembly and the people of British Columbia through the promotion and provision of three core functions which I alluded to earlier. Individual advocacy services. That means providing direct advocacy assistance to children, youth and their families who are having problems with regard to essential social services and ensuring that they have access to appropriate complaint and review processes. That is a summary of two clauses in the legislation regarding our function. A footnote on this page gives you the specific wording of the one clause regarding individual advocacy services.

The second part concerns local advocacy development, which is working with communities throughout British Columbia to promote and support local advocacy. The third is concerned with systemic advocacy, which is advising government and communities about the availability, effectiveness, responsiveness and relevance of designated government services to children, youth and their families and working to address needed changes to legislation, policies, procedures and services. I'll speak more to how we actually do that in a few moments.

Our vision is one of promoting healthy children and youth by having government incorporate the principles of advocacy into the provision of social services. As we strive to achieve that vision, we're guided by a set of values which we have called here the principles of advocacy. I must say that the work we do in our office — more so perhaps than any other work I have done in the many years I have worked in this area — is very much grounded in a value base. It's a constant challenge, always, to look at the values that permeate throughout the work we do — for everybody that's involved in the services to children and families.

The principles of advocacy that guide the work are initially: ensuring that processes are child-centred and basing actions and decisions on the views, voice and needs of the child or youth; supporting capacity of children and youth to participate in processes that are about them by including them and providing support, information and education; recognizing that self-advocacy is the most effective kind of advocacy; and

consistently supporting people to be their own best advocates, ensuring that everyone shares responsibility for creating and nurturing an effective advocacy process and recognizing the different roles that individuals play.

When I'm talking about an advocacy process, essentially what we refer to is the provision of services that incorporate the four factors that are described in the brochure you have, which reflects that rights are owned, not earned. These are rights around safety and provision of food and shelter and that kind of thing; that information is an essential quality; that voice is absolutely essential so that people's views are heard; and that all those who should be involved in the process regarding the decision-making and the delivery of services are included so that the very best decision gets made and those views are taken into account.

Another principle we have is that this isn't about always getting what you want but rather making sure that your voice is heard by the people who should be listening. Often — most times — those are the people who are making the decisions.

It also incorporates a very strong belief in building capacity in individuals, in communities and in service systems; in recognizing that advocacy is about respect and promoting respect for all participants; that this is a mutually respectful process that we strive to achieve. It's about helping people find solutions. It's not about finding blame, looking for the bad guy, but looking for a positive solution, acknowledging that this is a process and not a one-time event; that this isn't something that is just done magically at one time and then is over, but that it's an ongoing process — it's part of human interaction, in fact — and assisting those who are most marginalized and have the least access to support, information and power. Those are the principles and the background in terms of how we do our work.

Then a little bit more about our core activities is on the next page. As I've said, the act and the office mission statement describe the three core activities, which are individual work, local advocacy development and systemic. When the office was opened, we began from ground zero. In fact, we had the act, and there was nothing. This has been created over the last six and a half years.

There was analysis around various approaches to fulfilling these core-mandated functions by the former advocate. Her analysis has involved an ongoing process of assessing advocacy needs throughout the province and considering the most effective use of limited resources. This process has led to the adoption of the operational approaches, which we'll talk about in a few minutes, that are described under each of the following core activities. We've established a set of objectives, strategies and outputs for each of those activities.

While each core activity is described separately in this service plan, it's important to note that there are strong linkages between all three. They don't stand by themselves. They are interactive.

The following diagram was put here to try to demonstrate that the individual work we do — the work that we do with individuals who phone us — has a relationship to how we work around developing local advocacy capacity, and that has to do with communities and also with government. Throughout all of that, the information that we hear and that we contribute to promotes systemic advocacy. And as systemic issues are addressed, those have an effect on the individuals and the community. So this is a dynamic process that this diagram is intended for, all towards the goal of improving services for children and families.

With respect to the individual advocacy services, the core activity is providing direct advocacy assistance to children, youth and their families who are having problems with regard to essential social services and ensuring that they have access to appropriate complaint and review processes. We would hope that all would go well all the time, but in fact it doesn't. It is important in terms of fairness and equitable treatment that there be access to complaint and review processes, and we have a role in that specifically with regard to the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

The operational approach that we have taken is to provide advocacy services for these children, youth and families in a timely and respectful way, with the intention of giving them or those close to them, whom they might identify as being able to help them, the skills to solve problems themselves. The alternative approach of providing advocacy services by taking over the problem — being the advocate at all times — fails to foster independence or to build individual capacity. That's the rationale of how we have chosen to operationalize this. Tied in with that is the fact that we have remained a small core office in Vancouver rather than creating subadvocate offices around the province and another bureaucracy.

The objectives in this particular core activity are to provide prompt responses to calls to the office, to increase the caller's knowledge of government processes of child and youth rights and of advocacy, and to increase the caller's capacity to use effective advocacy — these four principles — in interactions with the service providers and the decision-makers that they are speaking to in their pursuit of social services.

How do we do that? We have a number of strategies. One is to provide callers with information on government processes, on child and youth rights and on advocacy processes. We provide mentoring support and help individuals who phone us to identify natural advocates who could help them, go to a meeting with them, provide the support, and so on, to help them deal with a system that is somehow presenting a barrier to them.

We promote child-centred practice by designated community services. We provide advocacy for children and youth through direct contact, so we will then on occasion, if that's the wish of the caller and it seems to be appropriate, directly contact. On occasion we'll initiate complaint processes on behalf of a child or youth, participate in alternative dispute resolution processes or assist young people with a formal appeal. Throughout that we collect information on issues affecting children

One of the developmental things we did in our office was to create a fairly sophisticated and interactive database mechanism whereby we are able to track the information through a range of categories and barriers, demographics, and so on, around the problems that children and youth are presenting to our staff. Out of that we are able to then be evidence-based about what we speak about in terms of the issues that those children have told us.

The outputs in terms of those strategies are to respond to calls within 72 hours. That is in terms of adults, and with youth 24 hours is the outside time limit for providing the appropriate services. We mail packages of information to individuals. We have a vast range of materials that we can mail to them. As I mentioned, we database, track, summarize and report on the strategies that were utilized within the office to assist individuals to move forward and solve their problems and hopefully have some sense of control in their lives. That's the individual service core activity. The second core activity is local advocacy development. That means working with communities throughout British Columbia to promote and support local advocacy.

The operational approach with this core activity is training and supporting communities to enhance their capacity to provide locally based advocacy services. The alternative approach — I made reference to this earlier — of opening regional advocacy offices and providing services through government employees would create dependence on outside problem-solvers and another level of bureaucracy, so we have chosen not to do that.

Our objectives with respect to this core activity are to ensure that communities are knowledgable about and understanding of issues affecting children and youth, that communities have capacity to promote both individual and systemic advocacy about child and youth issues and that the communities — and these are either geographic communities or perhaps communities of service providers — incorporate the principles of advocacy into their work.

Our strategies to achieve those objectives are to initiate structured meetings with young people, service providers and community members. There is a considerable amount of travel involved with some of the staff in our office, particularly the advocate and the deputies, in terms of having the presence of our office throughout the province for children, youth and their families and meeting with various people in a whole range.... We've been to virtually every part of B.C. in the last six years under this particular strategy.

We provide individual and systemic advocacy training. Very shortly after we opened, when we met with people, they told us that they wanted some help in terms of understanding advocacy and how to work better together in their communities. We have developed a training package that we offer in a particular community or town. We ask someone to organize it locally, and then one or two of us from the office will come and present that to them with the goal of achieving some commonalities of language and understanding how to work.

We support local community advocacy initiatives. We provide information about and facilitate discussions on issues affecting children and youth.

The outputs in terms of us looking at how we are doing on those strategies and objectives are: the meetings held and the numbers of people that attended, the locations visited, the breadth of our presence throughout the province, the individual advocacy training programs provided and the systemic advocacy training programs provided. This is a newly developed initiative that we commenced, again, upon request from community organizations throughout the province. We did a pilot program through the fall of last year and the spring of this year. It's pretty much ready to offer now.

We distribute information, and again, as with the individual advocacy, we also do the database tracking. We are able to track, by community, where we have gone and to keep records around the issues that were raised in those community visits.

The third core activity, systemic advocacy, is advising government and communities about the availability, effectiveness, responsiveness and relevance of designated services to children, youth and their families and also working to address needed changes in legislation, policies, systems and services. This is directly related to one of the core functions in the act.

We've approached this, having analyzed and responded to systemic issues that are brought to the advocate's attention, both through individual requests for service and generally by citizens from across the province.

An alternative approach of working solely on issues at an individual level fails to bring about the broad changes required to ensure that all children, youth and families have their needs met; providing advice, information, education and leadership to the general public, community agencies and government about the contribution they can make to the lives of all children and youth. The alternative approach of focusing only on the adequacy of government services would not enhance individual and community capacity to assist in raising healthy and able children and youth.

So we take two approaches in terms of operationalizing this core activity, with the objectives of providing information on effectiveness of government services, of promoting public and government awareness of children's rights and issues of concern to children and youth and of promoting improved government policy, practice, legislation and resources. The strategies are to provide public education about children's rights and issues affecting them, to support communities in groups and their efforts to advocate on behalf of children and youth, to summarize and analyze information from callers and community meetings, and to identify, analyze and monitor systemic issues.

The outputs that we will be judging these strategies against are listed below. We speak to community

groups, provincial government staff and officials, and local governments. Our partnerships and coalitions are developed. We distribute our brochure and related advocacy material. We have a website, which we consider a significant part in terms of communication and which we want to keep maintained with relevant and timely information. We record and analyze information on systemic issues. Caller and community meeting information is recorded and analyzed. And we provide an annual report to the Legislature about services, which is in many respects a culmination of all these foregoing activities and outputs that we have just listed.

The next page has an organizational chart for the office. I think it's pretty straightforward. It basically shows the advocate. It shows 16 FTEs. Two deputy advocates report to the advocate, as well as an executive coordinator. A manager of client services does the work. Three officers — two advocacy officers and an intake officer — respond to the individual calls to our office.

Also, on the right-hand side of the page we have a youth advocate and a regional youth coordinator. Those youth who are working in our office do so as a result of arrangements that we have made with two organizations very focused on youth. One is the B.C. Federation of Youth in Care Networks, which is an organization of local youth-in-care networks of children who are in care or from care, up to the age of 24. That's a very vibrant organization in B.C. with respect to the youth in care. The other regional youth coordinator is, as a result of our liaison with Save the Children Canada, a young woman who is working with us — with a small amount of funding from our office and a significant amount from Health Canada — to promote the rights of children and youth in schools and elsewhere. The Save the Children youth worker is one of six across the country. This is a new venture, so there are young people like our young person working in other offices attached to advocates' offices in other provinces in Canada.

On the left-hand side at the top is the manager of aboriginal advocacy services. I'll speak to that in a moment in terms of that being a new initiative in our office. As well, there's a manager in finance and support services, who is Lynell, and our manager of research and information. That position, along with the research officer and co-op student, is significant in terms of supporting our core activities on all three counts. We can speak to that later if you wish in terms of systemic issues, the database and website maintenance, annual production and so on.

Just a brief note on the next page on resource utilization. In order to fulfil the legislated mandate in each of the core activities, we've chosen the operational approach as described in the preceding pages and set about acquiring the necessary resources. As I mentioned, we're six and a half years old. We started at a very base level, and as we've evolved and developed the iteration from the act, we've sought the resources and as a result have the 2001-02 approved, annualized budget of $1.66 million and the 16 FTEs that I referred to on the previous page of the org chart.

This relatively small budget reflects the serious consideration given to the effective use of limited public funds. This consideration is exemplified in our approach of building capacity and training rather than providing individual services across the province. It also means that the advocate chose a small staff team supplemented with the flexibility of contracts for additional expertise as required and, furthermore, our office contracts with the Ministry of Management Services for transaction processing and other administrative support services in the areas of finance, facilities, human resources and information technology services. To date, this option has been more efficient than setting up our own in-house expertise in these very diverse areas. Our office is also participating in a joint project with the other independent statutory officers to study the feasibility of a broad range of shared services.

The next page has a resource matrix which indicates how the staffing is related to each of the core areas. It also summarizes the main categories of expenditures in the office, approximately 89 percent of which are spent on costs related to staffing and occupancy.

The chart. Part 1 deals with the staffing resources or FTEs in terms of the core activity. It's called a core activity resource matrix. Down the left-hand side are the five listings of staff groupings; across are the core activities. There's an allocation within each line. For instance, individual advocacy shows 3.3 of the client services staff are involved in direct individual advocacy, supported by three-quarters of a position in research and information. As noted below, the research and information staff maintain the database I made reference to, the computerized program, as well as related policies and procedures. They develop training materials for use in communities, maintain the website, do systemic research and help toward preparation of the annual report.

There is a 0.5 position within the finance and support services section. That's reflected in note 2. The finance and support services staff screen calls to the office through our receptionist — approximately 3,000 per year that are from or about children and youth. They participate in the preparation of office reports, letters and other advocacy materials. This matrix shows how these functions are utilized in our office from an FTE perspective.

Part 2 is a very brief descriptor of the financial resources and how they break down. Staffing and advisory is 75 percent of the overall budget. Occupancy is 14 percent. Community and systemic work is 11 percent. There are notes below to explain what those lines refer to. That's the end of part 1.

Part 2 of the report deals with trends and issues. The individuals who phone our office.... The first paragraph gives you some picture of the breadth of individuals who call our office. It's an extremely broad range. They've contacted us about problems with government services and, in particular, about difficulties in getting those needed services.

Since we opened in '95 we've received over 13,000 requests for advocacy services. That's a significant number of children that we have heard about or from. There's a small table there that shows the number of requests we've received over the four-year period and also gives you the numbers for the first six months of this year. We receive calls from or about children all over British Columbia. Half of these young people are living in government care. They no longer live with their families. They're living in foster homes, group homes or possibly on their own if they're older adolescents. Most of the young people that we hear about are under 19, the age of majority in B.C. We do hear from some young people in the 19-to-24-year age group, which our mandate does extend to. The majority of those have been in care previously, and they're experiencing difficulties receiving services as they transition to adulthood.

Our office prioritizes child and youth calls, which make up almost 20 percent of the calls, and by that I mean direct calls from children and youth. Approximately 20 percent of our calls are directly from young people themselves. We try to speak directly to them when they phone, and if the staff are on another call, they have their calls returned that day or absolutely no later than the next day.

When young people contact our office seeking help or when adults call us on behalf of a young person, we also respond as quickly as possible. We find that most callers need information on advocacy, on available services and on rights of children in care: "How does the system work? Who can I talk to? I'm not very happy with what's happened; how can I have that addressed? How can I seek some redress in terms of something that's really upsetting me?" When the problem relates to issues outside of the mandate, we redirect callers to the appropriate agency. But if it's within our mandate, as I listed before, then we try to assist them and give them the information they need.

For those who require further assistance, particularly with children and youth in government care, the staff who provide individual work in our office do provide advocacy mentoring and support. When a young person is unable to move forward and be his own advocate, to speak for himself, and there's no natural advocate present — and by that I mean a social worker, a child care worker, an auntie, an uncle, a foster parent and so on — that can help them, then our staff will speak directly with their social worker or other service providers to explain the youth's perspective.

We may also be involved in complaints on behalf of a child or youth, and we do participate in alternate dispute processes or assist a young person in making a formal appeal. There are informal and formal processes that they can access.

While our goal is to return calls within 72 hours, there was a lack of resources and an increased volume of calls that meant we weren't consistently achieving that objective. Our participation in a joint evaluation process of the project confirmed that. As a result, we've taken the following steps. We reviewed and streamlined the intake process, we clarified steps to more appropriately direct callers who were outside of our mandate, and we obtained additional resources for one position. That is the intake worker who does the brief service and is able to deal with ten or 12 calls a day and, by and large, assist those people to move forward with that information in a very timely way so that things can move forward. Only those that need more extensive service are then carried by the advocacy officers.

Since those steps were completed — we did that in July of 2001 — we've consistently achieved our objective regarding timeliness of response. We'll continue to review and revise our services as necessary, with external monitoring, and will be mindful of the need to watch that.

The second area is local advocacy development. As I referred to earlier, the former advocate and deputies have travelled extensively throughout B.C. both for training purposes — to offer a training package — and for meeting with community, individuals, agencies, children and youth, service providers, government service providers, management teams and so on, listening to regional concerns and discussing the work of the advocate's office.

To give you a sense of this year, in the spring the community work included travelling to the capital region over here, to meetings up at Port Hardy and Port McNeill at the north end of Vancouver Island, to Smithers and to aboriginal communities surrounding Terrace and Hazelton.

With the retirement of the former advocate, along with the office review process, we've had a resulting effect of less community travel over the summer and fall of this year. We plan to make extensive community visits in 2002 and return to our objective: that is, to visit a Ministry of Children and Family Development region every two years. So we would want to visit five regions in the year 2002. That would be for an extensive visit. By that, I mean we'd tend to go for a week and spend time. We wouldn't be living in that community, but we would have a sense of what it's like to live in Terrace, Dawson Creek or Nelson and deal with all of the issues that people in those communities are facing, not living in the lower mainland and close to a lot of services.

We've also had preliminary discussions with the executive directors of aboriginal child and family service agencies. As those agencies assume responsibility for child welfare, one of the requirements they have is to develop a protocol with the advocate's office to describe how the advocacy services will be provided to the children they serve. Those children, by and large, now are within government, within the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

We did seek funding for those positions. We saw this as a very critical development that needed to proceed. Those funds were reconfirmed in August. We have been somewhat delayed in moving forward on that because the funding was not reconfirmed until then. The development of the program, the job descrip-

Our community grants and contributions enable us to participate in local advocacy development projects and opportunities. I've already referenced this. We have a youth advocate sponsored by our office in conjunction with the Federation of B.C. Youth in Care Networks. We're also working with Save the Children Canada on a rights education and advocacy project.

The plan will be to hold 60 workshops related to the Save the Children workshop in 2002. That would involve approximately 600 youth. In addition, we've supported the Kamloops Advocacy Council and groups in other communities to train government and non-government service providers in child and youth advocacy. We'll continue doing that.

Again, I've referred to our training package. We continue to offer our one-day advocacy training package on individual advocacy in communities. The goal of this is to assist service providers, and these are both inside and outside government. The ideal is that we will have government staff there as well as community agency staff and others — police and health and hospital staff and so on — attend this. Through participating in that day, they develop a common definition of advocacy and a strategy within their community around facilitating development of natural or peer advocates. We would intend to provide approximately 20 of these workshops with about 400 participants in the year 2002.

As noted before, many communities have requested systemic advocacy training, and the reason for this is that they want to make policy and procedural practices and legislation work better for children and youth. As a result of those requests, we have developed a training session and would hope to deliver that in five communities through 2002.

In terms of systemic advocacy, this focuses on needed changes to legislation, to systems or policies or to programs and services. Systemic advocacy addresses the root causes of problems and is an attempt to raise public awareness and to change attitudes. The advocate has spoken to and learned from community groups, provincial government staff and officials and local governments across the province in efforts to raise public awareness about child and youth issues.

It's important to note that systemic advocacy isn't a solitary activity. People and organizations in this process come together to plan and try to implement some form of it.

The advocate's office participates in a number of systemic advocacy coalitions. I've listed some of them here; they're not the only ones. As I referred to earlier, there's the B.C. Federation of Youth in Care Networks; there's the First Call coalition of British Columbia and the Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates. There are advocates offices in close to all provinces in Canada, and there is a council of those advocates that's on a national scale, which our office belongs to.

The work of the advocate's office with respect to systemic advocacy is grounded in the voices and views of the children and youth that we hear from and also the service providers both inside and outside of government that we meet as we go throughout the province.

Our work with individuals, with groups and with communities culminates in the annual production of the advocate's report. You have a copy of the last one, which was called Get On With It: Make Services for Children and Youth a Priority. The advocate had written to all of the Members of the Legislative Assembly encouraging them to ensure the availability of services for children and youth. She reported on those responses in the annual report, which did feature a plan for improved services to children and youth by the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The six key points are listed here in terms of what that plan entailed: stable leadership, needs-based budgeting, community-based services, a stable and experienced workforce, an early development fund and support for comprehensive aboriginal services.

A couple of other examples of the systemic advocacy that is done by the office are noted as well. In the summer we met with the new Minister of Children and Family Development as well as the Minister of State for Early Childhood Development and the deputy minister. In the fall of this year our office responded to requests for input on two key processes in this province: the MCFD core review process and the budget 2002 consultation.

I just want to say that a new government does bring new opportunities for systemic change in the provision of services for children and youth. Over the planning period our office will continue to provide information and advice to government and communities regarding the service delivery system and how those designated services are provided to children and youth.

Those are the first two sections of the report. The third has to do with our budget submission. At the outset you'll see that we base our resource estimates on our legislative mandate in core activities, as I've gone through with you: the operational approaches, the trends and issues, and on effective and efficient use of funds. Those are the principles that we bring to this.

In recent years this analysis led our office to identify a need to work proactively with aboriginal groups to support the development of community-based and culturally appropriate advocacy services. This need has been identified by several groups and organizations, including government. The advocate further determined the need for an intake officer to work in individual advocacy services.

As a result, a detailed 2001-02 budget submission was prepared seeking additional resources to implement that work. The submission was confirmed in May 2001 and subsequently reconfirmed in August 2001. With that approval, the baseline budget for the office of $1.355 million and 12 FTEs, which is in the blue book, was increased by an annualized amount of $301,113

Following on that page, page 16, is the current and future estimated annual resource requirements. The first column shows the 2001-02 approved budget, annualized, of $1.656 million. The second column is the forecast of expenditure for this year. You'll see that it's somewhat less; it's depressed. That is due to the fact that we've not been able to move forward on the aboriginal advocacy program but hope to be doing so very quickly. There has been a lag in the planning and then recruitment into that program.

The third column is our budget forward to 2002-03 through 2004-05, and on the next page there is a note with respect to that column. The main priority right now and over the next three years is to implement the new aboriginal advocacy services program with annualized, approved, baseline funding in place. It's not anticipated that there would be substantial new resource requirements over that planning period. The budget submission reflects stability of operations.

However, as a caveat, if new initiatives or priorities are commenced that impact on our core functions, our activities or our operations, the resource implications would be assessed and brought forward at that time. Possible new initiatives at this point could include a role for the advocate in the provision of secure care. Now, that legislation is in abeyance, but if that were to come forward — or a new kind of legislation that had a role for the office — that could be a factor as well as the need for youth justice advocacy services. The capital budget primarily reflects estimated minor expenditures on computer programs, as defined on the lower line.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Laverne, thank you very much. I think you've presented a very comprehensive overview of your office and what was asked under this. I appreciate it very much. You've certainly given me and the other members of the committee a greater understanding. What I think we'd like to do now is probably have some questions. I'll begin that process. Likewise, if you have any for us, I would encourage you to ask those as well. I will begin with Kevin.

K. Krueger: Thanks for your outline of your progress. On page 13 you mentioned that child and youth calls make up almost 20 percent of the calls to your office. What percentage do the people aged 19 to 24 make up?

I. Mass: We don't have that right at hand. The 19-to-24s are mainly children who have been in care of the ministry and are looking for specific services. It's quite small — let me put it that way. Just in the last while we've had a rise in that because of budget restrictions for those programs. They're called services for post-majority youth. They're generally educational funding to help those young people kind of move into post-secondary institutions. That's been constricted by the Ministry of Children and Family Development. In fact, we've had significantly more calls about that over the last three months. When I say significantly, we've probably had about 25 calls within a six-week period just about that program.

L. MacFadden: We'll be reporting out on that. On page 29 of this annual report that you have, we do delineate 19 to 24 years over the years '97, '98, '99 and 2000. That shows 4 percent for the first two years and 3 percent of the total number of calls.

K. Krueger: There's a general perception in my constituency — and many others I've heard about — that the structure of our government has made it all too easy for teens or adolescents who don't want to live under the rules of the household to kick over the traces, get out of the home, get locked into government services and essentially learn how to work the system, which can really carry on for the rest of their lives. I'm concerned that this age group occupies much of your resources at all, and 3 or 4 percent doesn't sound like a lot.

I think about Matthew Vaudreuil and children like that all the time. I think every child needs a champion if parents aren't there to do it. That's how I envisioned your office when the office was conceived. You'll make sure every child has a champion. Nobody can be 60 times in the health care system in a five-year lifespan and end up getting murdered like Matthew did. We've got you folks acting as the children's champion.

That's something I'll continue to be very interested in: how much of your time and how much of your resources are being occupied by that age group. I left home when I'd just turned 17 years old. I had a great home, so I had a good start in life. Granted, people who don't have that are going to take longer. We just came through Remembrance Day, and most of the Canadians buried overseas were in that age bracket and younger. I think we need to teach people independence. Those are just some of my thoughts around that group.

I was pleased to hear about your training of advocates around the province and so on. This is the first time through some of this material. I didn't notice a budget figure as to how much you actually spent on training and going out and equipping people to be advocates. Do you roughly know what that is, or is it reported here somewhere?

L. MacFadden: Lynell could perhaps help you with that in the STOBs. The cost in general terms is the travel cost for our staff and the photocopying cost of materials we provide. We find that most of the groups we provide training to are operating on a shoestring. They're agencies that are providing social services on a contractual basis. They don't have a lot of room, either, in their budgets. So we say we'll come. There's no charge; it's our work time that's doing it. There's the travel cost to get to the community and possibly stay one night over — depending on travel arrangements — and the preparation of the materials. We could probably

L. Anderson: I can't, exactly. We could certainly try to follow up on that. The thing is that the training is linked in with other visits that we do in the community and so on. But we could certainly follow up and do an estimate on that.

K. Krueger: I don't want to take a lot of your time. It just seemed to me that that is one particularly worthwhile function of what you're doing, and I was wondering what percentage of the resources are devoted to it.

I was really pleased to see, and I want to congratulate you for, your use of the Ministry of Management Services for HR, technical and finance and your comment that it's more efficient to do that and that it's worked well for you with several of the other officers of the Legislature. I've been surprised to see that they actually have people devoted to finance and human resources in such small employee groups. I'm glad, too, that the officers are looking into collaborating on those kinds of services. Maybe they'll all end up using the Ministry of Management Services, but good for you.

I was concerned, looking at the organizational chart, that there seemed to be so many managers and admin people out of the precious few that you have. Sixteen FTEs for this job aren't very many. I don't quibble with the position of deputies. If it was the advocate and 15 deputies, it would look better to me than to have managers of this and managers of that when you only have 16 people. A unit of 16, in my mind, only calls for a part-time manager, and everybody should be out working as advocates.

When you look at the budget that we have here, it's close to $166,000 per FTE, it seems to me. That's a very rough calculation, but on the face of it we look top-heavy with management and administration and not enough people actually focused on talking to kids and talking to the people who should be and are trying to be the champions of kids. How do you respond to that?

L. MacFadden: Your point is well taken. One of the initiatives or plans that we have.... There's a manager of research and information and a manager of finance and support services. When the opportunity arises, we're intending to move the manager of research and information into a direct-line research position and collapse the oversight responsibilities into one position, combining manager of research and information, and finance and support services. That's there on the direct side.

That work is really, really important. While it's not directly speaking to the children, it's supportive of the work that the advocate officers do in relation to the children and in terms of the work that we do in the communities to build capacity in communities. In fact, it's not real easy to do that without the infrastructure and the support in order to make that efficient and effective. That's one thing that we would hope to do.

The other comment, and then I'll let others speak, is that the manager of client services — he's the supervisor of the three — also does direct individual work. He has oversight responsibility in terms of supervising the three staff and being responsible for the program and how it's delivered out of our office and mentoring the staff and ensuring that there is consistency amongst them in terms of how they do their work.

He also takes cases himself that are more complicated and has a critical role in relationship to, specifically, the minister for children and families and relating to his counterparts, in terms of dealing with the effectiveness around the complaints process and the service delivery issues. He also does contribute to the public speaking and raising the awareness of the office and talking to, especially, new social workers, aboriginal social workers, ministry social workers and classes at community colleges, where you've got young folks who are just starting their careers, and talking to them about this value-based kind of work and how to promote that so that good outcomes happen for children and youth. That's one of my responses.

L. Anderson: Maybe just to add to and reinforce that, perhaps sometimes the titles may not be as explanatory as we would like. For example, just to reinforce.... The manager of research and information is actually directly involved in the policy and systemic advocacy support for the advocate. It reflects a senior analyst role in the organization.

I. Mass: I'm the deputy advocate, and the wonderful thing about my job is that in fact I manage to do most things within the organization. For example, I was the advocate in the Draayers case. Those are the children that were removed from their home in Surrey. I was the advocate for the children. I made sure their views were heard and considered throughout that whole process. I got to work with kids.

I trained 20 people in Kamloops to deliver our individual advocacy training. We managed to train over 700 service providers not just in Kamloops but up to Clearwater, over to Salmon Arm, Merritt, Ashcroft and Cache Creek. Essentially, trying to do that.... Then I advised the advocate because I organize a lot of her trips for her. When we go to Dawson Creek or Chetwynd or Tumbler Ridge, I'm the one who's doing the outreach to the community organizations to organize the meetings and then advising her on things we hear and things like that. In fact, you're right: it looks like a traditional org chart, and as the deputy, I just do the hoity-toity stuff. But in fact, it's very grass-roots. We have to do that because we're a small organization, and in fact we enjoy doing that because it keeps us grounded with kids, and we get to see the minister and tell him what kids actually say about the services.

K. Krueger: That's great. I wouldn't have any problem with 15 deputies if that's what they were doing.

Just one more issue, then, Mr. Chair, if you'll indulge me with a two-part question. I'll give them both to you at once. It seems to me that there is substantial overlap between what the ombudsman sees his office is charged with doing and your responsibilities, insofar as he's dealing with children and youth issues. I wondered if you would comment on that overlap. Also — and this is not an indication of any government policy direction, just something that occurs to me at first blush as sensible — what would you think of melding the two offices?

I'll start. We see ourselves as being on the side of the child. We don't take a best-interest position about what should happen with a child, but we are very concerned about the interests of that child. In so doing, our position — if there is a dispute and a conflict between adults who are around that child and looking for the services — is that we look at the process of the services as well: the rights, the information, the voice and the inclusion of people. We're very concerned about how that process unfolds. It's qualitative in terms of the work that we do in relationship to children. I don't want to presume to speak for the ombudsman. There was a need to sort that out when our office opened because of their kids team, and then the gap of advocacy for children.... They had, to a degree, filled it. My understanding is that they look at the administrative fairness and at how a decision gets made relative to stated policies and procedures and legislative frameworks, and less....

L. MacFadden: In terms of the qualitative work that we have set about to do.... To me there would be some difficulties melding the two offices, because there would be a compromise. There's a conflict in terms of being on the side of the child and yet at the same time being able to just motor through in a neutral kind of way, hearing from all points of view and then looking at it from a strictly legalistic or policy framework.

B. Penner: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Ms. MacFadden, for your presentation today. In a somewhat previous lifetime or somewhat different circumstance I also was a youth advocate and represented young people who got in trouble with the law. While challenging, there were also moments when it was very rewarding, particularly when you were able to connect a young person with something or a service or a person that would help them to get out of their present difficulties and on to a better future.

I guess my summation of all of that is that there's really no substitute for someone of relatively decent character for young people to turn to or to have on a consistent basis in their life. The comments I've seen in your reports about social workers passing young people off one after another is very consistent with my experience working with young people. I can attest to how demoralizing it is for young people to be passed around like a football.

Anyway, to get to my questions, I note that in one of the handouts you provided us with there's a mention that the provincial government is conducting a "coordinated review of services that are provided to children and their families by public agencies." I wonder if you can tell us what the status of that report or review is. I note that it was anticipated that a draft report would be prepared by October 26, 2001, and that a final report was hoped to be completed by tomorrow, November 23. Can you tell us where that's at?

L. MacFadden: I can. There were some delays in those. Those dates were in the original terms of reference, which we were given a copy of and which were provided to the reviewer. We have the draft report now. There's a capacity to provide a response by tomorrow. I'm hesitant to say another date, but I believe it's in very early December that the report is going to the core services review committee.

B. Penner: Okay. Are you familiar with the situation in other provinces and whether they have an office similar to yours?

L. MacFadden: Yes, I am. There are offices — I'll say offices; there are some differences — in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, with a very significant interest in developing offices in Newfoundland and the Northwest Territories and very recently in Nunavut.

The offices have some variation in terms of their mandate and are reflective to some degree of their province's population base and that kind of thing. There are independent offices like ours in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In Quebec the advocacy work is done out of the Human Rights Commission. The advocate in Ontario is not independent in the sense that we are. Nova Scotia is also an independent office.

They vary in size. They vary to some degree in mandate. As I mentioned earlier, there is a Canadian Council of Provincial Child and Youth Advocates across the country. There is also an ongoing initiative within the federal government that is being pursued by Senator Landon Pearson to have what is at this point called a children's commissioner. The provincial advocate's offices have provincial jurisdiction, and in some instances there are issues that are federal in nature but none of us has authority to move. The council has identified those issues. Senator Landon Pearson is an active participant with the council and is very active in suggesting that the federal government have a commissioner. Immigration is an example of a federal jurisdiction. As well, there are

significant issues with aboriginal children — significant — that permeate the federal-provincial interrelationships, both policies and funding. A children's commissioner would perhaps be able to address that.

B. Penner: I note your budget submission and budget forecast for the current fiscal year. While it looks like you'll be under budget, as you've indicated, in terms of salaries and benefits because of the delay in hiring or securing the full-time advocate, I note that under non-salary expenses, it appears you're projecting to be about 10 percent over the budgeted amount. If you take a look down near the bottom, total non-salary expenses were budgeted at $519,500 but are now forecast at $571,881, about a 10 percent increase. I'm wondering if you can explain why that part of the budget got out of hand.

L. Anderson: I can start that. There are two primary reasons. First of all, for example, a maternity leave came up in our FTE status. We placed that temporarily with some outside agencies, so some FTE dollars became contract dollars down below. That shows in the office and business expenses that are about $10,000 higher than the original budget.

The other area is under transfers — the grants and contributions. That reflects that some opportunities came up to do more work in communities than we had originally anticipated. Laverne spoke to some of that in the presentation already. For example, the Save the Children Canada opportunity came up, and we determined to take advantage of that.

B. Penner: Okay. Thank you. My last question is just a clarification and perhaps a comment on the organizational chart. On the chart the position of deputy advocate is indicated twice, but I take it there is only one deputy advocate.

L. MacFadden: There are two. I'm one of them, and I'm acting as the advocate right now. There have been two deputy advocates since, I guess, September of '95, when both of us came to the office to work as deputies. When Joyce Preston retired, there was a need to have an acting advocate. My position is here on the org chart because it's my home position, but we've had two deputy advocates throughout.

B. Penner: Is it your proposal to maintain that structure — two deputy advocates — once a full-time advocate is appointed?

L. MacFadden: Yes. The short answer is yes. I would anticipate that a new advocate will want to look at things, see how the work is done, assess it and make some decisions. But things can change through attrition, retirement and people leaving the office. That always provides an opportunity to look at it and decide if this is really an opportunity where we can make some changes.

Just to add to that, there have certainly been some petitions made to the family advocate from the aboriginal community. I'm wondering about having an aboriginal deputy advocate. The short answer is yes, at this stage, but as opportunities arise, that could always be looked at.

B. Penner: My comment, if I may, on the organizational chart is similar to my colleague Mr. Krueger's. We were counting up the number of people in management or executive positions, in addition to the two deputy advocates plus the lead advocate. We came up with five or six people in what are identified as management positions out of a total of 16 FTEs.

I salute your comment about combining the manager of research information and manager of finance and support services. I had circled those two, before you even mentioned that, as two positions that looked to me, at least at face value, like they should be combined. That's my comment on the organizational chart. Thank you.

H. Bloy: Thank you very much for your presentation. I was really pleased to hear about the training in the local communities where you're much closer than a phone call away. I think they really want to talk to individuals or be able to relate to the area.

I had a couple of questions. Looking at the budget, you have professional services. I was just curious as to what those professional services were.

L. MacFadden: I could speak to it, but Lynell is the budget expert. Is that all right with you? You might as well have the accurate information.

L. Anderson: The professional services is a group that encompasses all our outside advisory services. As we said earlier, there are needs that we have from time to time, which we have not sought staffing for, but that we acquire the contract of expertise for as required. In that category is our outside legal counsel, some recruitment assistants and HR advisory, the year-end review of our database and our work to develop our evaluation planning. As well, we sometimes contract for some specific review work around child and youth issues or help with specific systemic issues. That's what's in that pot.

H. Bloy: Okay. So this is not providing any counselling or any professional service directly for a child?

H. Bloy: Some of these things you talked about earlier, working with Human Resources and Minister Santori's Ministry of Management Services to do it....

They're charging you? It's all an accounting function that's going back and forth?

L. Anderson: We get a range of services from the Ministry of Management Services. There's a minimal cost for it, and the cost is shown primarily under information systems. We get the technology cost there. In addition to this, we do get transaction processing services from the Ministry of Management Services, but we also need some expertise, such as legal and so on, that is not appropriately available.

H. Bloy: That's fine. I just wanted to know, because when you call it professional services.... I'm thinking more of therapists and counsellors that you want to provide for.

H. Bloy: Could you give me one example of what you would do? Pick a 16-year-old child. What would be their problem, and how would they get a hold of you?

L. MacFadden: I'll start, and Ian has oversight responsibility on the client services side. How would they get a hold of us? We disseminate our brochures very, very broadly. We're in the telephone book. If the child is in care, there is a requirement on the part of social workers — or even if not in care but receiving services — that they inform young people about the availability of our office and how to reach us. We have a 1-800 number, so it's toll free, and we have a TTY. So if there are communication issues in that sense, we are accessible in that way.

They may know about us because their social worker tells them about us. Frequently, a youth worker or Reconnect worker will say: "You know, there's this office, and you can phone them, if you would like." Foster parents often advise young people to phone us if they're having difficulties with the system and the foster parent is feeling.... Sometimes people who work around a young person feel that it may be a little risky for them to press on behalf of that child or that youth, because of their contractual relationship or their employee relationship inside. This is where the conflict can arise. Our office can provide that neutrality and can take the child's views forward or at least do the clarification with no risk. Where else might you...?

H. Bloy: I'm just curious about an example of why they would use your service.

I. Mass: I guess using Mr. Krueger's example of young people not wanting to live at home. Let's say they have gone to a ministry office and have gotten an answer, but they wanted a different answer, rightly or wrongly. That person may contact our office and say: "I think the social worker made the wrong call here. There were a number of issues that were going on in my home, and I'd like some help. I don't know if the social worker listened and really understood what I said or made the wrong decision."

It's really important that we don't take a position. We don't investigate whether the young person should be in foster care or on B.C. Benefits or in independent living or back home. What we try to do is help the young person make a credible case for what they believe is in their best interests. We'll help that young person do that.

L. MacFadden: If the decision is not something they want, as we said — you don't always get what you want — you've had due process. You've had the ability to speak your piece, to be heard and to be seriously taken into account. Then there's a good explanation as to how that decision was made.

I. Mass: Just as equally, we would want the social worker to consider the parents' viewpoint and anybody else's who is important in that child's life. We're not looking at just that the kid's voice gets heard but that they all get heard. Equally, the young person's voice gets heard within that. Then it's a professional judgment by a social worker or a supervisor on what's really in the best interest of this young person.

L. MacFadden: With a 16-year-old or even a younger child — we hear from them, a large number of children in care — their calls to us, either from them or from someone who knows them, frequently have to do with changing foster homes, with being moved from one home to another.

Often the caller will say, without any explanation as to why and with no advance notice and no visiting: "Can you imagine sleeping in your bed one night and then going to live with strangers the next day?" That's very, very difficult. We will get calls like that. Now, sometimes that isn't exactly what's going on, but an important part has to do with the clarification and getting the information, and getting people talking and communicating on these critical issues concerning the lives of these children.

I have a couple of questions. On page 8 you've got on your local advocacy development a number of outputs that you're measuring, which are meetings held, numbers attending, locations visited. You don't have any outcomes. I'm just wondering how you measure your outcomes, or is your success measured on your outputs?

L. MacFadden: Could I say that we're in a developmental phase on that? We have looked at various evaluation processes to look at the effectiveness, like whether the outcome of this and how effective.... What changes? What happened? What's better because of what we did? We had a plan to go further, and there

was, dare I say, a freeze, and we couldn't proceed with that work in the years past.

We have, earlier on, prior to all of this, engaged in developing a logic model — it suddenly lost me — around our work that was some basis to this. We did that over the summer. That's the next stage that we need to do: to very seriously look at an evaluation process.

B. Kerr: That would be the same thing in the systemic advocacy. The systemic advocacy probably should be a lot easier. Is there attitudinal change within ministries? Are ministries changing their programs because of your recommendations? Have you got any way to measure that or any way to follow up to see that it's been done?

L. MacFadden: Again, we're at a very preliminary stage in doing that. Absolutely — that's the next developmental stage. Yeah.

B. Kerr: I'm looking at this — the rights thing here. I have a concern over this one when we're talking about children — absolutely, I agree with this 100 percent — being safe from all types of abuse, being taken care of and having enough food. We're not talking about youths over 19 or youths over 16. This is for children? Let me know that, because eventually they have to learn how to take care of themselves.

L. MacFadden: Well, it does apply in B.C. to children up to 19 — that's the legal of majority — but not over 19.

L. MacFadden: Absolutely not. No, 19 to 24 — they're adults. This is only for 18 and under. That has to do with our age of majority.

B. Kerr: One final one. This is probably a little heavy. Every other ministry that reports to the Treasury Board and to Ministry of Finance in the budget process has been asked to model with 20 percent cuts to 50 percent cuts. Have you done any modelling with that as to how you would revise your organization if you had to take some cuts?

L. MacFadden: To be very honest, we haven't. I'm fully aware of the broad government environment and fiscal environment, but without the specific request to statutory offices to do that, our office didn't. We'll say that. Should we be asked to do that?

L. MacFadden: Yes. I would just say that it would have a significant effect on the programs. That was part of our reason for doing that matrix and showing how the staff are allocated. Notwithstanding your concerns about the management there, the functions they do are integral to the functioning of the office. It would be very, very difficult.

J. Bray: Thank you for your presentation. With respect to the act, the act prescribes that you are responsible for services both in the CF and CS Act and also in other designated acts that may provide service. I notice in a couple of annual reports — although there's been a lot of media focus — your recommendations have to a large extent focused on the Ministry for Children and Families and the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Do you deal with a lot of issues that might affect the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Human Resources, Ministry of Health and some of these other acts and program-designated services that may affect youth? Just in what I see, it's primarily the CIC caseload. Could you comment on that?

L. MacFadden: Yes, and children with special needs who live with their families — or generally requiring service.

The way that our authority is derived is that this is the act, and then, through the House, certain acts or services get designated to be within our authority. At the moment it's the Child, Family and Community Service Act and the Adoption Act and then some other programs like Children Who Witness Violence and the child care program, and alcohol and drug services. I mentioned them earlier.

We don't have authority to work in education or even income assistance. I didn't say this, but a great deal of our work is relationship-based. We come at this work from a proactive and positive and relationship-based perspective, not calling staff up and blaming. When we hear someone's story, it's very real to that person, but it's a perspective and so on.

We do hear from youth, the 16-to-19-year-olds who are not at home, are not deemed to be in need of protection and into a foster home, are needing support and are having difficulty with Human Resources and getting income assistance. We may call on their behalf, given the age of the youth. Technically, we don't have authority on that.

We have no authority beyond it. That's why our reports have focused on that. There certainly was a strong recommendation from Justice Gove that over time the authority and therefore the resources would need to be expanded. The one thing we don't do in the MCFD is youth justice. Advocates in other provinces do. It's a huge need, but we don't have the resources.

J. Bray: Just one follow-up question, if I may. The other aspect, of course, is children in care. It's a multi-layered and complex problem. Again, I notice that the recommendations that come out of the office are primarily directed at the ministry. Is it fair to say that service providers, the Foster Parents Federation...? There are other players that may need to look at the way they deliver services to better improve those services for

children and youth. Do you see your role as highlighting those as well, even though at the non-bureaucratic end some of the stumbling blocks may be there as well? For instance, I had a meeting this morning with Community Living, and one of the problems they have is that they're dealing with multiple collective bargaining agreements that hamper their ability to actually get the service. Do you see your role as also pointing out ways to improve the system from the non-government side?

L. MacFadden: Absolutely. I think they are part of the fabric of services. They're non-government but are funded by government. They're part of the overall services that are provided through MCFD, Ministry of Children and Family Development. We certainly do. Yes.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Laverne, I believe that concludes the questions members have. Possibly, I'll just throw one in. Is there a breakdown of any regions of our province that utilize the services of your office more than others? Do we have any idea? If so, could you just comment on that?

L. MacFadden: Well, as it happens, on the third page in the handout there's reference by region of who called us. It lists the ten regions. That bottom chart is by percentage: children and youth or families service providers, and then others who don't happen to fall into those categories. That gives you some description in the broad sense. That was up to June 30. We have quite a wizardry computer system, and we were able to do something up to yesterday — again with the different regions. We can also do it by city.

One of the things that communities are really interested in when we — both the management teams and MCFD offices as well as the service providers — go and visit is that we can tell them how many calls we got from Dawson Creek. We can do it sort of over the years.

L. MacFadden: It's interesting to them, and they like to see how it looks relative to other years, relative to other communities inside their region or other regions. It can be an indicator. Are these calls a good thing? It isn't a bad thing that the calls are coming. That's the other thing we say. It means that people do understand the service, know it's accessible and that they have the right to it and that maybe this is a good job that's being done around town. We can provide that. This chart here shows you the rough breakdown.

Laverne, I would like to thank you for coming and making your presentation today along with Ian and Lynell. I believe it has given a very informative overview to our committee. Through our deliberations, we will be putting our report together in the near future. Again, I would certainly like to thank you at this time for coming and putting forward what your office does.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We will take a five-minute recess and reconvene at 2 p.m.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We will reconvene our meeting. I will begin with some introductions.

My name is Blair Lekstrom. I am the MLA for Peace River South and Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We are here today to hear from Mr. Oliver, one of the seven statutory officers from whom we are hearing submissions to the committee, so that we can draft our report with recommendations concerning the presentations that we receive.

Just prior to beginning, Mr. Oliver, I'd like to ask the other members of the committee to introduce themselves, and then I will turn the floor over to yourself for your presentation. We'll begin with Harry.

K. Krueger: I hardly feel like we need to introduce ourselves. Mr. Oliver knows more about me than my wife does. [Laughter.]

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right, thank you. I'm not quite sure how to take that, Kevin. [Laughter.]

With that, Mr. Oliver, I will turn the floor over to yourself, and we will begin the proceeding.

H.A.D. Oliver: I am here, Mr. Chairman, with the support of Betsi Curdie of my office and of Mr. Bray, the legislative comptroller, who needs no introduction but who controls me.

I don't quite know how to set about this. You have, in the material we've supplied, an operational overview of what it is my office does. I don't know that I particularly want to read this. I know that there's a great tendency these days, at all sorts of functions, for the speaker to file a copy of his speech and then read it. I've always thought that rather offensive to the audi-

ence, as though one were to assume that the B.C. educational system is such as to make that necessary, but I will read it if you want me to.

There is nobody here who doesn't have a pretty fair idea of what it is (a) that I'm supposed to do and (b) what it is I really do. We are the smallest, cheapest, most inoffensive and most modest office in government. Some of the older members may remember a cartoon in the New Yorker, showing two barefooted Franciscan friars walking along. One is saying to the other: "No, brother, I am more modest than you." That is really what we model ourselves on.

My duties are laid down by statute in the Members' Conflict of Interest Act,. I spend probably the majority of my time doing things which aren't laid down in the statute at all. That is: to act, as far as I can, as guide, philosopher and friend to any member who thinks that my assistance might be of some help. I know that what I'm supposed to be doing is investigations and inquiries and so on.

I try to avoid inquiries like the plague because they are extremely costly. Fortunately, since this office started, we've only had two — each involving the Premier of the day. It's a little difficult, when a complaint is made involving a Premier, to avoid pulling out all the stops and laying on a full-scale inquiry. A full-scale inquiry means outside counsel, court reporters and sometimes investigators. I always try to remember that I've been a taxpayer for much longer than I've been a conflict-of-interest commissioner and that, ultimately, these moneys come out of my pocket. Contrary to popular belief, the government does not have a money tree at the foot of its garden, and I spend every dollar as though it were my own — as indeed it is, if you look at it properly.

You will be aware of the fact that our office is a very simple one. We are accommodated in the old stables. There's a very distinguished precedent for that, and there we are. We have no fancy furnishings, no expensive wallpaper, no leather-covered upholstery and a dirty old carpet on the floor. We are aware of the fact that ours is an office which is visited by members of the public, by the electors of this province. I don't regard it as desirable to dazzle them with the splendour of my surroundings. They are fully aware of the fact that the money we spend is money which they have earned and have trustingly turned over to the government, and I want them to see how modestly government can operate.

My office consists of myself. I'm a half-time officer — at least that is the theory. I'm paid on a half-time basis. In fact, the hours I put in go rather beyond that, but this is not a complaint. Perhaps it's just that I'm a slow worker. I have a staff of about one and a half. We have part-time staff, and that works out very well. Betsi Curdie here arrived a little time ago to strengthen our operation. The advantage of that is that it reduces the number of occasions I have to resort to outside counsel. We now do some of the investigation and research in-house, which previously had to be sent out at the exorbitant legal rates that members of the legal profession are said to charge for their services. Although, there again I have normally managed to negotiate a rate which I regarded as adequate and that counsel who were retained regarded as very mean. But I told them about the great privilege of being retained to represent the Legislature.

Budgeting for a demand-driven operation like mine is something that is extremely difficult. This is a little like being the fire chief of some small municipality, where the chief runs the fire department and drives the truck. As long as there is no fire, it's a relatively cheap department to run. But the moment a conflagration breaks out, the chief has to round up such of his firefighters as he can lay hold of. If there aren't any fires, there's no problem. In my department it's much the same. If there is no fire, I can sit there quietly writing opinions and doing things like that. When the bell rings, I have to get down that greasy pole as fast as I can with such assistance as I may require.

As long as members of the House conduct themselves with that propriety with which I know that all members have always tried to conduct themselves, no problem. As long as — and this is less of a problem now than it has been in the past — members don't use the office of conflict-of-interest commissioner as a stick to beat people on the other side of the House over the head with for party political purposes, all right. As long as members of the responsible media — and I think especially of certain publications that I'm not going to name — don't say to themselves, "There's nothing much going on; let's make some conflict-of-interest allegations," and you read them in some little column somewhere in some little newspaper somewhere.... Some of them lead to complaints to the commissioner, and some are just left hanging like a little black cloud over the head of the member with nothing further being done — and I know that there are those here who know of what I speak — no problem.

As long as we can coast quietly along doing opinions as they are requested, we can manage very well. It's when suddenly there are serious complaints — either serious because of the degree of interest which it is alleged has been brought to bear or serious because of the public relations aspect of the matter — that's when we get into additional work, into additional expense. There is absolutely no way of forecasting this. You have got before you the budget figures of my department for the past ten years, I think, or thereabouts. You will see that some years we come in under budget and well under budget, and other years we come in over budget. I don't like that, and you as members of the Finance Committee don't like it, because a department which operates on an unpredictable expense basis is anathema to Finance committees. That's as it should be.

All I can tell you is that we do our best. When we have to go over budget, we try to keep it to a minimum. I'm always delighted when we come in under budget, because we think it sets a good example to other government departments. Of course, we're not really a government department at all. I'm very con-

scious of the fact that I am the only statutory officer who is an officer not of the Legislature, which is the Lieutenant-Governor by and with the advice of the Legislative Assembly; I'm an officer of the Legislative Assembly. That's where my duty lies. That's where my loyalty lies.

You will see that we have a number of projects to which we make reference, none of which are likely to involve any substantial expense. We're setting up a website. There are those who say that we should have done that years ago, but I'm afraid I'm a Luddite. I don't go in for this sort of newfangled stuff until I think we really need it. I'm advised that we should have it, and so it's being done.

We're trying to put out a handbook for members. Now, there are those members who've been members for a zillion years and who know infinitely more about the practical aspects of conflict-of-interest problems facing members than I will ever learn. But there are others — and quite a lot of others — who I think might find it helpful to have a handbook which gives certain general advice and guidance. I believe we can do something there at no great cost, which will be welcomed by members of the House.

Storage and destruction of files. As I understand it, there's no sort of statutory provision which enables us to get rid of old files — that's to say, especially of those confidential disclosure forms which you all file every year. We've been operating now for ten or 11 years. You cannot imagine the mountains of confidential disclosure forms — and you remember how thick they are — which have been accumulated. We don't need them; nobody's ever going to need them. But there they are, and we don't know what to do with them. It's going to cost some money, but not a great deal, to do something with them. We're going to need a little funding to destroy some of them. The cost of destroying them will be offset by the disappearance of the necessity which will shortly be upon us of asking for additional space to store all these mountains of — no, it's not a parliamentary word — paper.

We want to progress a little with the method of tracking the statistics involved in running our office. We want to modify some of the forms we do use. On-line filing has been suggested. You will see in my operational overview what is contained. I am not an enthusiast of on-line filing for the following reason: I am paranoid, if you will, about issues of confidentiality. The way we run our department involves the encouragement — and, I think, successfully so — of all members of the House to come and talk to the commissioner about any sorts of problems they have or can see developing in the future.

I am and have for some years been the repository of the most intimate family secrets and personal confidential information that you can imagine. If I had such personal secrets and went to share them with some Jack-in-office, be he an officer of the Legislative Assembly or not, I think I'd be rather worried until I got to know him well and got to believe that I might safely do that.

Now, I cannot tell you how cautious I am about engaging in any sort of process which might result in those secrets becoming known. We've all heard about leaky condos. It's my belief that the handsome building in which we meet today is an extremely leaky building and leaks in the most unexpected quarters. I am determined that the old stables where I function should not properly be so described. Anything we are told remains absolutely confidential. I'm quite satisfied that I have nothing to worry about as far as my staff is concerned.

My service background was in military intelligence. At that time I became extremely conscious of the importance of the utmost confidentiality. I've carried that out throughout my life in my legal practice, on the bench and in this job. Things like on-line filing frighten me. The use of cell phones frightens me. We've had holders of high political office in this province who believed that cell phone conversations were confidential. They don't hold high political office anymore.

As far as our budget figures are concerned, they are before you. You will see that generally speaking, they've come in pretty close to estimate. The years when we've gone substantially over budget are years when we were paying counsel fees, court reporters' fees, and so on, in connection with a recent inquiry that I won't refer to any further, because the associate chief justice thinks that they should remain confidential for the time being. You know what case I'm talking about.

Basically, you'll see that we run what is a pretty cheap operation. I see from the material I've been supplied with that there is interest in reorganizing the departments and functions of some of the statutory officers. That may be very appropriate for certain substantial offices. I operate more or less out of my hat. We have virtually no administrative expenses. I'm deeply obliged to Mr. Bray and his staff for doing our bit of accounting for us, writing out the three salary cheques every month and the cheque which, under our wise British Columbia system, is moved from the right pocket to the left pocket by paying BCBC for accommodation. You will see that our rent could scarcely be any lower. It's only by moving to the Y that we could possibly pay less.

I'm going to leave that in case any of you may have questions on any particular items. Really, if any of our very limited administrative functions were to be handled by someone else, I could see two results: a decrease in efficiency and an increase of costs. I see no possible benefits which would flow either to the Legislature or to my office from such a change. I can quite understand that departments with a large staff are an entirely different consideration.

There's one further thing, of course, that bothers me, and it's this: I would be most reluctant to have any outsider — anyone from outside my department — having the opportunity of coming in and poking around our files with the very best of intentions. They might see things there which ought not to be seen by anybody except myself. I don't claim to be in any way

infallible, particularly privileged or anything like that, but the secret information I am given for the purposes of the strange job I perform would not be given to me if I couldn't assure members of the absolute confidentiality of that information.

Not for a moment do I suggest that other people in the administration coming and poking around would do so for the purposes of broadcasting what they see. But, hey, some of the information we get would really be very interesting cocktail party conversation. If you're out having a drink and mention is made of so-and-so, you might say: "Ah, it's very interesting that you should say that. There's a little matter pending in the conflict-of-interest commissioner's office."

These are the concerns I have. Call me paranoid if you will. I think a little paranoia can be very healthy in this job, because the secrets I seek to protect are not my secrets. They're your secrets. I am very conscious of the fact that I am in effect, apart from the Clerk of the House and the Sergeant-at-Arms, the only person who is a servant of the Legislative Assembly. You tell me things which you might not wish to tell your wives — wife, that should be. [Laughter.] We keep reading about people with four wives at the moment. That's a luxury most of us can't afford.

Probably, Mr. Chairman, I have said as much as I want to say. You may wish to ask me a few questions, and I shall try and answer them.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Mr. Oliver. Your presentation was certainly very much appreciated by this committee. I will open it up for questions at this time, if there are any, from members of our committee.

K. Krueger: Thank you, Mr. Oliver. Looking at the base salaries budget, it's really the only budget that substantially increases from last year. Does that reflect the part-time research administrator that you spoke of?

H.A.D. Oliver: Yes, that is basically right. I think it will be offset to a considerable extent by the reduction in the professional services category. I can do with a really competent staffer like Ms. Curdie to work at a fraction of what it would cost me to have it done by a member of the legal profession or a member of their staff.

K. Krueger: Does the base salaries budget comprise all of your staff, and the legislative salaries and indemnities reflect your own meagre compensation?

H.A.D. Oliver: The reason the legislative salary — that's me — has gone up is because, by statute, my salary is based on that of the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court. The Legislature, in its inscrutable wisdom, has just given the Provincial Court judges a substantial increase after the usual three-year review. I speak with feeling, as a longtime chairman years ago of the Provincial Court judges salary committee. By increasing the provincial judges' salaries, you're also increasing those of the statutory officers. You will see that the annual increase for this year and the next two years in legislative salaries represents the increase that the House has voted for the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court.

K. Krueger: Thank you. The employee benefits column is part of the base salaries unit, but that is a particularly significant jump. What was the change in employee benefits?

P. Bray: PSERC found out this year that they had never been charging a percentage on Mr. Oliver's salary, nor for that matter were they charging on any of the Clerks in the Legislature either. Yet they should have. It's a flat rate of 20.52 percent. You just put it into the spreadsheet and — bingo — out comes the number.

K. Krueger: Just one more deficit for the present government to clean up, obviously. Thank you.

I. Chong: Mr. Oliver, first if I may ask you some general questions before I ask you any of the financial questions. The Members' Conflict of Interest Act, as defined, covers Members of the Legislative Assembly — that is, the 79 members, which includes the Speaker. It does not extend to any other employees. Is that correct?

H.A.D. Oliver: Nobody, except the legislative counsel and the Members of the Legislative Assembly. My distinguished predecessor, Ted Hughes, recommended in three annual reports the inclusion of certain other categories of people. After examining that for a considerable period of time, the Parliamentary Reform Committee voted that this was not a good idea, so none of those have officially been given to me.

I am consulted on an ongoing and unofficial basis by senior bureaucrats, directors of Crown corporations, municipal mayors and elected officials, but that is purely non-jurisdictional, if you will. I help them if I can and if I have the time, but they are not within my bailiwick. All I can do with them is discuss the problem to try and give them perhaps another perspective on the problem. The decision must be theirs. I do not render any official opinions as far as they're concerned.

I. Chong: I do understand that they're not included, and that's the thrust and spirit of my question — whether you feel that perhaps they should be considering that. As you say, it had been a recommendation by your predecessor. Even though that committee of years gone by had decided against it, do you feel that matter is something that you as current commissioner believe needs to be reviewed and undertaken again? In other words, are you intending to bring forward an amendment to your act which would extend the scope of the duties of your office, which then would extend to an increase in your budget? That's where I'm coming from, just so you know.

H.A.D. Oliver: These were recommendations made by my predecessor. I felt loyalty-bound not to oppose them. I was never an enthusiastic proponent of a great extension of the duties of my office; I am not an empire builder. If such duties were to be included, they could be carried out. It would mean that the commissioner's job would be a full-time job, in my view.

About two years ago I went to the state of Oregon — where the executive director of their conflict-of-interest commission works in the only state in which the conflict-of-interest commission covers municipalities — to see whether there would be an enormous amount of additional work. I was surprised to find that in his view, there would not be. I travelled to Seattle and spent a couple of days with the municipal ethics director, and I now know much more about municipal ethics problems than I did.

I think that if there were any desire to proceed in that direction, there'd be something to say for the situation where the clerk of the municipality would give routine ethics advice to the elected members of council, where the conflicts commissioner would, perhaps once a year, run a seminar for officers of that sort — that is to say, the local ethics advisers — and where any formal inquiries, if they should arise, would be conducted under the auspices of the conflict-of-interest commissioner.

So you can see that I'm part of the way with my predecessor, but I'm not an empire builder. I don't want to see this burgeoning into yet another bureaucracy. But by the sort of compromise I've suggested, I think that the desired object — if it's desired; it's certainly not desired by the Union of B.C. Municipalities — could be achieved at relatively low cost.

I. Chong: Thank you. On the matter of the storage of records, one of your projects listed here is storage and destruction of files. I was looking through the act, and I don't see anything within the act that provides any guidance, other than in section 10, on a filing of a conflict-of-interest matter which requires you to keep records.

In the standard records that you receive from the members who file their reports, which I guess is the subject of your project here — you'd like to consider destruction of files — have you given consideration to the number of years that those records that can be destroyed need to be archived? I recognize that it's only ten years. At the same time, what kind of capacity would you need for those to be archived? Would it be internal in your office, some sort of microfiche, or would you want outside storage and the kinds of costs associated with it? And what kinds of records would you require? Would those of members of the executive council be treated differently than those of private members?

H.A.D. Oliver: I would say this. Having regard to the fact that your confidential disclosure statements are available only to the conflict-of-interest commissioner, I can see no purpose in retaining them for any length of time, because anybody who, five years from now, might want to look at them would, in my view, not be entitled to look at them. Why should we, at great public expense, store yet more paper and fell yet more trees to form an impressive collection of records which nobody is allowed to look at? I certainly think that these things should be retained for a fixed period of time, and after that they should be pulped. I can really think of not a single occasion — unless you can — where I have had to look at confidential filings made more than four years ago at the most. There was, I think, one of those. We've got about 11 years of this stuff.

You've filled these forms in. You look at them when you first get them. You say: "My God, what is all this? Why do they want all this?" You sit there, putting "no, no, not applicable" and so on. I must say that since the recent change in the makeup of the House, I'm getting fewer "noes" and "not applicables" than I did before, but far be it from me to try and discern why that might be.

Really, if I thought.... I'm one of these people who throw nothing away, you know. My own files go on forever. I sometimes wonder why, but I store those at my own expense. This is taxpayers' money I'm spending, and why should it be kept? Who wants to see it? I can think of people in the media who might be very interested at looking at these things, but they're not entitled to see them.

I. Chong: If you were to propose an amendment to your act to therefore guide you in the storage and destruction of records, we will see that in due course. Those who would have to change the legislation will do so.

The other question I have relates to section 20, "Special assignments." In your act, you said: "At the request of the Lieutenant Governor in Council or the Legislative Assembly, the commissioner may undertake special assignments that he or she considers appropriate." I'm looking at your budget. I don't see too much deviation there, so I'm presuming that over the course of the next year or so that we have in terms of a budget, you don't anticipate special projects. I'm curious what you would deem to be a special project and whether those things would be projects that you would also seek outside professional services for. You don't feel you need to budget for that item?

H.A.D. Oliver: I can split my answer into two halves, if I may. The only special assignment, if you will, during my years of office has been an inquiry into the conduct of the Hon. Glen Clark. That started off as an investigation made at his request. I, at that time, pointed out that I thought it was a serious matter in which I would have to be able to compel the attendance of witnesses. Where I conduct an investigation at the request of a member, I do not have that power. I can say to somebody: "Can I talk to you about so-and-so?" They can say: "Go to hell." I didn't think that would be a very fruitful way of proceeding. It was I who suggested at that time that that should be converted into a request from cabinet.

What I do get are fairly regular requests, usually through the cabinet secretary, for opinions, either for-

mal or informal, on a whole variety of matters. Those we normally deal with as run-of-the-mill matters. They are not likely to involve any additional expense. My staff are there. I'm there, supposedly on a half-time basis. If requests come in, if my time allows, we deal with them right away. If my time doesn't allow, we then take a look and see what else we've got in the hopper at the moment. If necessary we'll pull something out and push in the cabinet request in its place, and someone else can wait an extra week.

B. Kerr: Since we're looking at numbers, and I like looking at numbers, I guess we now have a new name for Menzies Street. It will now be called Menzies Mews.

For office furniture and equipment, you mentioned that you've got no desire now to upgrade your office furniture equipment or computer equipment. Other organizations are coming in saying they are upgrading their computers. You've got nothing in the budget for that.

H.A.D. Oliver: No. As far as office furniture goes, when I was appointed, I found that the acting commissioner, who came in between Mr. Hughes and myself, had ordered in a bunch of new furniture from Heritage furniture. I went down to Heritage furniture and cancelled the order. I talked to the legislative furniture man and went down to the stores, and we found an old chair, and I had it cleaned at the expense of my office. That was our major investment in new furniture.

The other thing that we've had since then was last year. My administrative assistants were trying to work the computer from some ancient secretarial desk. The keyboard was somewhere up here. I leaned on Peter Bray here to support a project to have our general office updated a little. That's where the $9,000-odd went. I thought that was rather expensive, but I'm told I'm living in the past.

I'm so sorry. I'm told by one of our ladies that one of the little plastic clips for the things by which she listens to the tapes needs replacing. I anticipate an expenditure of perhaps 75 cents, plus PST but not GST, because it's a provincial government order.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. Well, once again, I would like to thank you, Mr. Oliver, for coming. I would like to thank Ms. Curdie and Mr. Bray for taking time out of their schedules to attend as well. Certainly, I would like to thank you for your presentation. We will go through the information that you have filed with us, and if there are any further questions, I'm sure that we know where to find you. We can get a hold of you and ask those questions.

In closing, I think it's safe to say that your presentation has been well received by this committee.

For the committee, I will ask Craig to clarify a question we had yesterday on the filing of the report, regarding the information contained in it. We have had clarification on that, and I will ask Craig at this time to go over that clarification.

C. James: Just to update the members on the reporting mechanism for this committee, after consulting with my colleagues and also discussing the matter with the Chair, hearing....

B. Kerr: Excuse me, I believe that those questions were in camera. I'm just wondering whether the answers should be in camera also.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I believe we went in camera because we were unsure. I believe the answer is certainly something that should be on public record, and we will proceed — but very good point. Thank you for bringing that forward.

I. Chong: Would we rise and report what the question was, and we'll put that on the table, so that we know the answer in response to it? We need clarification. Is that what we need to do procedurally?

C. James: In relation to questions about the reporting mechanism for this committee on the subject of reviewing statutory officers and budget and making recommendations on the same to the Legislative Assembly, I've consulted with my colleagues and discussed this matter at some length — also, with the Chair of the committee. We're all in agreement that the appropriate way for this committee to proceed is to prepare its report containing whatever recommendations it wants to make relating to the operational plans, performance plans, annual reports and other information that statutory officers have brought to this committee, along with any recommendations to the House relating to the respective statutory officers' budgets, and table that in the normal fashion. In other words, this being a period of adjournment, this report would be deposited with the Clerk of the House, assuming the House is not sitting, in the same manner as the committee's report on the pre-budget consultation process. I guess, in short, what I'm saying is that the process would be the same as it was for the pre-budget consultation report.

Recommendations regarding budgets will be included in our report and submitted with the Clerk's office and certainly put forward at that time.

Committee Staff:	Josie Schofield (Committee Research Analyst) Audrey Chan (Assistant Researcher)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES