Finance and Government Services -- Issue No. 1 -- Wednesday, September 21, 2005 (HTML)

2005 Legislative Session: First Session, 38th 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

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair		1

Subcommittee on Administration		1

Work of the Committee		2

Chair:	* Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L)
Deputy Chair:	* Maurine Karagianis (Esquimalt-Metchosin NDP)
Members:	* Harry Bloy (Burquitlam L) * Dave S. Hayer (Surrey-Tynehead L) * Gordon Hogg (Surrey–White Rock L) * Richard T. Lee (Burnaby North L) * John Yap (Richmond-Steveston L) * Leonard Krog (Nanaimo NDP) * Jenny Wai Ching Kwan (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP) * Nicholas Simons (Powell River–Sunshine Coast NDP) * denotes member present

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk Assistant and Committee Clerk): Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for the 38th parliament. As this is the first meeting and there has not yet been a Chair elected to serve this committee, I would like to open the floor to nominations for that position.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Okay. We have a nomination from Mr. Hogg for Mr. Lekstrom.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Okay. Are there any further nominations? I'll put the question three times. Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Seeing no further nominations, the question is the election of Mr. Lekstrom as Chair of this committee.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, good morning. Thank you, everyone, for the honour of allowing me to chair this meeting and this committee. It is an important committee, and we have a great deal of work to do. Our time frame is somewhat limited.

We have been asked to speak with British Columbians through various means: touring the province with public meetings and accepting written submissions, both by paper and through e-mail and the Internet. We have to conclude and report back to the Legislative Assembly by the 15th of November, so our schedule will be somewhat tight.

It is certainly an enjoyable job. I've had the opportunity to chair this committee twice previously over the last four years. It is quite amazing, the opportunity we have to tour the province and hear from British Columbians. I'm certainly looking forward to that.

What we will do is the next item on our agenda: to elect a Deputy Chair. At this time I will call for nominations for Deputy Chair of the committee.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. We have a nomination. I will call a second time. Any further nominations for the position of Deputy Chair? A third and final time.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): What we'll be doing today…. It's going to be a brief meeting to try and organize what we've got to do in the very immediate future. What I would like to do, though, because the committee's work has to begin immediately, is put together a subcommittee of our committee to deal with such administrative things as the press release that will go out, making sure we can get bookings done for the tour, and so on.

I have spoken with the members of this committee. I have spoken with Mr. Yap, as well, who has agreed to sit on a subcommittee with me. I would look, if there's a member that would be interested from your side of the House….

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): I would be interested in sitting on that committee.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Would that be acceptable? I'll open it up for discussions. It is not to make decisions on behalf of the committee as far as the content of the report but, certainly, on the administrative functions that we want to get going. Could I have a motion to that effect, then?

G. Hogg: The administrative functions. You're referring to terms of reference or touring, or are you talking about how many meetings there are going to be and where they are going to be? Is that the type of thing?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We're going to have some discussion this morning on that. It's really about, if we come to agreement, putting out a press release that we could review at the subcommittee versus calling the committee back. They will get copies of it indicating where we'll be going after our discussion this morning, how people in British Columbia can submit to the committee — some pretty basic things — travel arrangements and so on that can be run by this….

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Copies of the newspaper advertisements that have to go out previous to us attending, and so on.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): At this point I would just like to go over the work of the committee. Everybody has received the terms of reference. They're very broad. They allow us to do a great deal of work.

There are two real issues that we will be dealing with. The public consultation paper has been put out by the Minister of Finance that we try and hear from British Columbians on — get their ideas and answers to some of the questions on the back on how to make our province a better place.

The second function of our committee is to review the statutory officers — their annual reports, their service plans, and so on. I have had some preliminary discussions on this and worried about the time frame. It will be virtually impossible to have the full Finance Committee report completed as well as a full review of all the statutory officers.

Our first focus will be on the report itself and the tour. We will then reconvene here in Victoria to meet with each individual statutory officer and go through their plans, and that report will be submitted at a later date than November 15. I think it is safe to say that our hands will be full in accomplishing the first report by the 15th. If that's acceptable, we will coordinate that through the office and carry on that way.

This committee will tour, and again, we have history. We've seen as many as 16 to 18 communities visited, I believe, through the time frame. I don't believe we will have that time frame allotted to us this year in order to complete our work. There are some key areas that I believe have to be attended to. Again, I am going to throw this out for discussion. Vancouver, Victoria and Prince George traditionally have been places that we have always gone. It allows that. I would like to get to the northwest and the northeast part of our province. I would like to get to the Kootenays and the interior as well. We have looked at some places.

Over the years we've tried to…. I'll give you an example in the northeast. Whether it is Fort St. John or Dawson Creek, we've staggered that back and forth, and it's worked quite well up there. Although you may have to come from Fort Nelson down to Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Chetwynd or Tumbler Ridge, it's worked.

It would be my intent to try and come with a schedule and begin touring as early as the seventh of October. That, then, is the beginning of the long weekend, I believe. Monday is the Thanksgiving holiday. I would like to do our tour on our break weeks so that we can be here to do the business in the Legislature. It's very difficult to get away.

The following week, beginning on Tuesday the 11th, we have the 11th, 12th and 13th available to us. The 14th would be left open so that people could do their constituency work. I think that's vitally important when we're here. Again, we would have another day, the 28th, that we could fit in.

Traditionally, what we have done…. Some of the areas that I have jotted down in looking at the last two or three tours are Vancouver, Victoria, Prince George. Kamloops and Kelowna. Traditionally, we've gone to both of those areas. Some would be half-days, beginning, we'll say, with nine a.m. till one p.m. for a meeting. Following that, I'm sure we will have a charter so that we can commute. Then a three-until-eight or a four-until-nine type of scenario so that we can get to two locations in one day.

Vancouver and Victoria have traditionally been full-day meetings, just basically because of the population. So Kamloops, Kelowna.

Again, looking at this, Smithers in the northwest…. If you look at the Terrace–Prince Rupert issue, it looks as though Smithers will fit in there. Again, I'm open for discussion. The northwest is something where they're going to come from both sides, so I'm trying to find a location that people can get to.

In the northeast Dawson Creek is the location if we rotate between the two major centres up there.

In the Kootenays, again, I'm open for discussion. It looks as though Cranbrook has been a hub of discussion over the years for this committee. I'm somewhat hesitant to assume, but I believe it's probably for travel reasons, for people to be able to access that from around the area.

With that list, have I missed anything? We've left opportunity because I think these will fill up fairly quickly. I think people in British Columbia are interested. My work on this committee has been overwhelmingly positive in the sense that people come out to express their views.

There may be a need for a second one, particularly in the lower mainland. If that is the case, Surrey, which is the fastest-growing area in all of Canada…. We would like to keep that — probably not book it in right off the bat but see what takes place for Vancouver and see if that starts to fill up. Then we would be able to put a second one in the lower mainland, located out in Surrey, outside the lower mainland.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): I actually think the outline that you've given us so far sounds excellent. It sounds like we are going to reach the broadest sort of representation of the province. I would like us to possibly consider a meeting in the North Island as well. I think that is a particularly interesting area for some feedback at this point in time due to the number of changes that have gone on in those communities. I think they do probably have some keen interest in having some input to this committee.

I also appreciate the fact that…. I see that originally, in the proposed timetable, we were talking about ending the tour on the 21st of October. I see here that you've now added through to October 28. I would like to see us give the absolute maximum amount of time

that we possibly can in order to still compile a report, but I would like to see us maximize the amount of time we are out there in the public accessing information from our voters — okay?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. If it would be acceptable, we'll certainly be working with Kate to look at the North Island to accommodate that and try to get that in. Again, the subcommittee — we can communicate with the committee on that as well.

What I think I'm hearing is that what we've talked about with Vancouver, Victoria, Prince George, Dawson Creek, Cranbrook, Smithers, Kamloops and Kelowna is acceptable, and we will try and get a position in the North Island to accommodate a public hearing there — okay?

With that, then, what we'll do as a subcommittee is work with Kate in the office to come up with travel arrangements, plans, dates and times. Prior to any public release, we will communicate with the full committee as far as the dates and times go so that you can make sure that they accommodate your schedule as well. Again, there will be issues that I'm sure we're going to have to all give up in order to attend these meetings, but we'll get it done.

Everybody has the terms of references, as I indicated. Are there any questions on the terms of references as they've been presented to us? Okay.

I'm going to ask Kate right now to just give an overview of the process we're going to use through the public consultation as well as written submissions. We do have a website, and so on. At this time, Kate, I will pass the microphone to you.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): As Mr. Lekstrom outlined, the committee traditionally has a number of consultation tools that it uses to consult with British Columbians. Public hearings are probably the more time-consuming of that approach in terms of the time requirement for all of the members to travel to the various locations. We are also ready in our office to launch, through your committee website, an on-line questionnaire based on the budget consultation paper that was released last week by the Minister of Finance. That will enable British Columbians who want to send in an electronic submission a sort of simplified, streamlined method of getting that information to the committee.

British Columbians can also submit written submissions, and those can be sent by fax or mail or e-mail through the website, which doesn't necessarily conform to the questionnaire style, but it allows British Columbians to send in either a brief or a report based on their views of fiscal priorities.

Both of those consultation means can be launched relatively soon. We'll be working with the subcommittee to finalize any kind of wording that we want to use in terms of a call for written submissions or the on-line website. Essentially, those will probably start prior to the public hearings being launched on October 7.

The other organizational meeting, which is noted on the preliminary travel or meeting schedule that was handed out earlier, is a proposed date of Wednesday, October 5, for this committee to meet with the Minister of Finance. Traditionally, the minister will come and present this report formally to the committee and be available to you all for questions on an agreed-to date. Although we haven't been in discussions yet with the minister's office about this particular date, we anticipate that we'll be approaching them very soon, pursuant to the direction from the subcommittee.

The role of our office, essentially, is to provide you with administrative research and procedural support throughout your time on the committee. Craig James will be serving as the Clerk to the committee, in conjunction with the second part of your mandate dealing with the statutory officers. He also wanted me to note, for your information this morning, that one important component of that work this fall will be the recommendation of an auditor to audit the Office of the Auditor General. Auditing the auditor is a topic that has come up in the Public Accounts Committee and in this committee in recent years, so that office will be coming to meet with you as the fall progresses.

The other aspect of your work, as Blair mentioned, will be the review of the service plans and budgets of the statutory officers, and that report is typically, I think, presented to the House or made public around December 15 — so about a month after this report wraps up.

We will be making all media releases, placing newspaper advertisements and taking care of all travel and logistical coordination for you. So if you have any questions about travel schedules or itineraries or meetings, please don't hesitate to give our office a call at any time.

I'd also like to introduce to you Jonathan Fershau, who will be the lead researcher for this committee. I thought, if it's all right, he could just say a couple of words about what he anticipates his role will be.

J. Fershau: This is my third year working for the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. I've done everything from drafting parts of the report, doing submission summaries, as well as travelling with the committee last year.

My role is to provide as much…. Primarily, it's to do the writing and submission summaries of every submission that we receive through the consultation process, as well as drafting the final report of the committee based on the members' suggestions.

Our goal, in terms of submission summaries, is that after every public hearing…. You've scheduled approximately a week of public hearings in October. By the next week we will turn around the oral submissions of all the people who submitted to the hearing, and we'll provide you with the submission summary of those meetings. We also do submission summaries of

all written material that we receive, and we also have a look at any submissions we receive using the on-line forum.

To date I've already developed, using the government's questionnaire, a way of actually analyzing the data that's going to be collected on line from the consultation process. The questionnaire itself poses some problems in terms of actually putting the numbers together, so I've come up with a way that we can present that information graphically, looking at regions of the province and at individual member's ridings. Once we look at the subcommittee and their website is approved, I will be able to show you your individual constituency, what priorities they were looking and a regional perspective as well.

In terms of writing the report, while the October 28 deadline may pose a little bit of a challenge in terms of writing the report — it is quite a lengthy report from last year — it's definitely doable. That won't be a problem.

Hopefully, in the first week in November we'll have a committee meeting where I get to hear what your major ideas are and what you heard from the public consultation process. That meeting is vitally important because it sets the framework for the report, and I need to know at that meeting what you heard and what you would like in the report in terms of recommendations and material covered.

My other responsibilities are to assist the committee in drafting press releases, advertising text and perhaps radio advertisements as well. I will not be, I don't think, travelling with the committee this year. I believe that someone else in our office will be travelling, but I am working behind the scenes to ensure that this process is a success. Thank you.

Are there any questions regarding what we've heard from either Kate or Jonathan on the process?

D. Hayer: When are these questions going to be on the website — the full questions, I guess?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We will actually, as a subcommittee, probably meet either later today or tomorrow morning briefly, just to make sure we have a time frame on that. We'd like to get them on as quickly as possible. There is, I believe, a website up now. It's very important we get some information so that when the public goes on there, they aren't somewhat discouraged to see nothing there. So we're going to do it probably within the next 24 hours, I would hope.

Kate Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): Just one further detail to follow. We've changed the URL for the Finance Committee website. It still has the traditional Finance Committee address, but we've simplified it so it's also mirrored at a site called www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

On that website, as of this morning, there is simply just a PDF version of this document. Once the subcommittee meets and gives us approval to proceed, we can actually load a live on-line questionnaire and some other background information.

J. Kwan: Is it the case that this document is also on the Ministry of Finance website?

J. Kwan: I just wanted to double-check that. I would assume that's the case. Historically, the practice is such that the minister always comes up with some sort of document as such, and that's posted on part of the website for the Finance Committee.

My question then is: would there be an opportunity for the subcommittee to contemplate other items that one might want to put up on the website? And will the subcommittee be engaging in that discussion?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I think, certainly, that anything can be brought before the subcommittee. It's going to be very important that we communicate with the body of the committee as well. I think that's fair.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): I actually just have a question with regard to something that Jonathan said. Obviously, all of the information that's gathered is going to be compiled and, I guess, edited for the purposes of reporting.

Is the committee going to have a chance to look at any of the anecdotal submissions that come in via the website? Will we have an opportunity, if we are curious, to go and see what some of that anecdotal information looks like?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Most certainly. We have full access to every submission put before this committee, whether it be at a public consultation or a written submission received by a different means. There is an overview put together and a synopsis of it, for the simple fact that there may be a thousand or there may be 3,000. It would be difficult, if they're all 20 or 30 pages, to get through them all. All documents submitted to this committee are the full responsibility of this committee, and you have full access.

R. Lee: I think that last year we had this document in other languages. Will that happen this year?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I will have to check on that. I believe there was an indication that there were going to be some put in other languages, but I will defer to Kate on this.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Apparently, last year there was some other supplementary material that was in other languages, not the paper itself. Again, I will work on that and bring that back to the subcommittee. That's a good idea.

J. Kwan: Is it the practice of the committee to invite particular organizations, for example, to come and make submissions? Or is it just through advertising that people are notified about the work of the committee, and therefore they would come and make their presentations?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I think both have happened in the past, and I will go back a couple of years when I was involved. I believe there are interested parties and organizations that traditionally will come each and every time to make that submission.

Again, Kate, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I think what we do is send out a notice to some of the parties that have traditionally presented each time.

Kate Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): In fact, we were discussing that yesterday as a potential option for the committee to consider this year because of the shortened time frame. Traditionally, the main practice has always been that just a call for participation goes out. Then people will contact our office either to schedule a public hearing time slot or to contact the committee with written submissions or on-line input.

We haven't typically sought out particular groups. But that is an avenue that you can consider this year because of the short time lines.

J. Kwan: Thank you for that answer. That's something I think the committee can look at and then perhaps come back with a recommendation for us to move forward on.

The other piece I'm wondering about is around the advertising — perhaps the committee can look at that as well — and that's to ensure there is advertising in different languages in the different main papers.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Just following through on that as well — on advertising. As soon as we have a concluded itinerary, we'll get it to everybody. If anybody has ideas…. I know that many times in the rural areas, we have the daily newspapers and have the weekly, but there are smaller ones for some of the smaller areas that we sometimes overlook. Once the schedule is put out, please don't hesitate to contact me to let us know that there are other opportunities for us to advertise.

Another issue I wanted to touch on briefly is the time line of the proposed budget consultation process paper. We have put a deadline of October 21 for input for the written submissions and so on. I don't believe that by the time we get this out…. It will probably be tomorrow when things start to roll out with the Web. That doesn't even give a full month. I'd like to change that at least to the 23rd. It gives us greater than one month.

I'd actually considered the 28th originally, but following that week there's usually a week to consolidate the information and so on. I'm not sure that would give us enough time as a committee to review all of the input prior to writing a report. That's going to take some time as well.

One other thing I will raise is that in the budget consultation paper — and you may have questions raised on this — question one, at the top, speaks to increased revenue in '08-09 "are available for tax reductions." I think some people may anticipate that when they come to speak to us or put written submissions in, they're dealing with the '08-09 budget. Although that's the end of the three-year plan, this committee is dealing directly with next year's budget. There can be people that will discuss the out years as well, but our primary focus is to listen to British Columbians, get their ideas and report back on the possibilities for next year's budget.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): What Kate was talking about is that over the last number of years, during their tour, rather than just go in, host a meeting and leave, the committee has done some site visits of areas. As good as that is, I just don't think time permits us to do that this year. If we are questioned on that, it is not an issue of us not wanting to do it…. I think it's valuable, but again, time is of the essence here for this committee.

G. Hogg: I haven't gone through the terms of reference as quickly and as thoroughly as I probably should have. Given that the way questions are written frames to some degree the type of response one can expect to get, are we asked to respond specifically to this framework, and then more broadly as well? As we go out to public hearings and ask for submissions, are we asking for submissions specifically around these three questions that are put forward, and then general comments? Or are we just saying…?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Very good question. I should have addressed that. It's my intent as the Chair that the focus will be on the prebudget consultation paper. That

is the intent of the committee, although there will be a broadening of the scope from these three questions.

When they look at this and either put their written submissions in or come before the committee, people will, hopefully, address these. But I'm sure that, as Chair, I'm not prepared to cut somebody off if they have other issues that they're going to bring forward that relate to the financial well-being of the province and their ideas. The key focus has always been that this committee's work is based on the prebudget consultation paper.

G. Hogg: So it's based on this and the three questions that arise from that.

G. Hogg: If I can understand it, then, our vision or our mission or our task is to get responses to those three questions and then more generally. Is that fair?

N. Simons: Just a general question. Has it been the practice of this committee to use a questionnaire to solicit input, or has there ever been a time when qualitative responses were more important than this measurable thing?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Again, I'll just go back to my experience. We have had questions, but I'm not sure if there have been ones put out…. Kate, I'll look to you on your expertise on this history. I believe it's a starting point to get people thinking on some key issues and then allow them to expand. But, Kate, is there…?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): That has been discussed in the past five years. As you probably know, the committee has been doing an annual consultation every year since the year 2000. However, although that would be an option available to the committee, the committee has never actually undertaken the initiative to produce its own questionnaire.

The terms of reference describe the tasks given to the committee by the House. The committee is always free to interpret the terms of reference as narrowly or as broadly as the committee wishes, but typically, the committee has decided in recent years to use the budget consultation paper as the model to focus the public's input into this process.

N. Simons: If that's the case, then I think it's important that we know how Jonathan is going to be compiling this data. I would suggest, having done some work in research methods, that somebody responding with yes or no or ranking one to five and then compiling that with equal weight to submissions from oral presentations throughout the province, it might be unbalanced.

J. Fershau: One of the things with this consultation format is that with the materials we receive from the online submission, there's no way to verify whether or not it's statistically relevant or within a margin of error, or to calculate anything like that. This particular format does raise a couple of problems in terms of presenting the information, because your rankings will generally favour priorities two and three versus…. You'll have a lot of people that'll identify priority one and priority five, but the consensus will be that priorities two and three or numbers two and three will come out as being ahead. That's a bit of a challenge in terms of presenting the information.

What I've developed for question one…. With on-line submissions, too, this is probably where we'll primarily be generating the information. For question one, our on-line form requires anyone who's responding to that question to rank all five priorities. They can't just rank one or two priorities. They have to rank all five.

We then throw that into a Microsoft Access database that will run a report based on constituencies so that we'll be able to tell from each constituency how the priorities ranked. You can then aggregate that information to a regional breakdown, and I've developed a regional table. From there, we can extract that up to a provincial level as well. Again they're not statistically significant, but they do show graphically where the priorities may lie.

For question two, respondents will be asked to…. If they answer yes, then they can't answer no or check off anything down below. If they answer no, we can then rank the three priorities down below.

For question three, it's very simple. They choose one, and that's it. They also fill in comments, and we'll have a look at the comments as well.

N. Simons: Thank you, Jonathan. I'm just wondering if the summary of responses in the final report will indicate that, in fact, it's possible this is not statistically significant. Maybe have a disclaimer, such as the call-in phone shows have, to say: "This is not scientific. This does not potentially indicate the true measure of British Columbians." I'm just concerned because I think this committee should really be focusing on input from people who are….

N. Simons: Yeah. I just have a bit of a problem. I think the committee members would agree that it's very difficult to formulate a questionnaire without indicating bias. I'm not suggesting that this is biased, but every question has a certain lean to it.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): On that issue, Nicholas, probably the best discussion we'll have is during the

drafting of the report. I guess my experience with this committee has been that although there have been questions that have been answered before, people are pretty straightforward and will include a great deal in their submissions, as well, versus a yes or a no. There is the opportunity under question four — that's the other comments — which I think will be a huge part of the body of the responses to this questionnaire.

J. Kwan: Both Gordon Hogg and Nicholas have touched on some of the points I want to raise. Given your response so far, Mr. Chair, it is good to hear and good to understand that you actually take a very liberal interpretation of the mandate of this committee in regard to the terms of reference — no pun intended. I mean your broad and open approach to the terms of reference.

I think that as identified by both sides of the House, the questionnaire is such that it could prompt a particular response or particular leanings to certain responses. As the Chair, you had identified that, in fact, the first question really doesn't focus the discussion in the way in which we need with the upcoming budget. We really need to focus that discussion in some ways.

I would actually ask the subcommittee to examine, perhaps, additional questions or additional options that one could forward, whether it be through the website or other means, to facilitate and help open up the dialogue around the very important issues of budgeting for British Columbia. I know that in the past with the committee's work, there has been all sorts of information that has come in. Given that there is an open-ended piece within this, it is within the scope of the mandate to really just open it up to allow for broader interpretation and input around this.

H. Bloy: I think that once you go to the public meetings…. You really get the direction that the public is going in when you start to hear the presentations. Even though they're asked to respond to the three questions, most of the public hearing will not respond directly to the questions but will give their specific organizational view. You'll see an overlap, and you may see a difference — like, the on-line poll may be very different from what the public presentations were at those meetings.

D. Hayer: My experience last year was — when we had Joy MacPhail on the Finance Committee, and she signed off on the report, actually — that many people ignored the question altogether. They provided their own submissions, and we said: "That's fine." Sometimes we used to go ask them: "Do you have any comments about the questions that were asked in the report?" Sometimes they said yes, and sometimes they said no.

Also, it's difficult to say sometimes when you have, say, some organizations such as the chambers of commerce…. When they are speaking, does that count as one submission, or is it counted as…. Maybe they have 10,000 businesses or 1,000 businesses. Are they representing on behalf of very large numbers, and how many employees do they have? I think that at the end of the day, you try to use some common sense and try to look at the whole of the information, then come back to report what you think people are really trying to say — what they presented either when we were there or through the e-mails or letters or other ways.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I think what we can do as a subcommittee — and understanding, Jenny, what you put forward…. Coming with a questionnaire or some further questions will be difficult, I think, in the sense of discussion, of debate of a committee going through that. I think what we can do, and we'll discuss this as a subcommittee, is make sure that within our webpage and our discussion that is on there — the information — we indicate that there's a clear, focused question four, as well, if you're able to deal with the first three, which are pretty basic — with a checkmark to do that. And encourage people to put forward their comments on the broad range of finances in British Columbia, which I think question four allows them to do. We can focus on that and make sure people are aware of that.

J. Kwan: I just wanted to clarify. It wasn't my intent to suggest the committee would actually come forward with another survey — by no means at all. But rather, even the broad questions to ask British Columbians what their priorities are, for example…. Really, I'm not so worried about the people who actually come to make a presentation. I've been through the road show, as well, and people will say what they will say, and they normally have a broader view than the prescribed view.

What I am concerned about is that on the website, where there's no opportunity for dialogue, for clarification or any such thing, people might think all they're allowed to do is restrict their responses on these three questions. I think that if the response is as such, then it's not going to really assist in a big way the work of the committee. I want the public to understand that they can go beyond the scope of these three questions, and to help them frame their thoughts around this, we may actually want to add a couple of questions that promote and allow for that kind of thinking. That's the direction I want to go. By no means am I talking about constructing some sort of survey.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. I think we can accommodate that and bring something back to the subcommittee. When I look at question four, which says "other comments and suggestions regarding your priorities for Budget '06," it's very broad in its scope. I think we can frame, in our introductory comments, that that is a key issue for this committee's consideration, as well, versus just the three that we were talking about earlier. If we can bring that back to the subcommittee, we can accommodate this so we get the input from British Columbians.

J. Yap: I think this questionnaire is a good starting point. In summary, and understanding concerns raised by Jenny, I think people will give the input, give the feedback, because they're motivated to. If we do highlight — as you mentioned, Chair — that people can give us any feedback relating to the financial priorities, question four will cover it. We are allowing British Columbians to give us their ideas through a number of avenues, whether it's through the website, by sending us a letter — by telephone, I presume, as well. Is that available? That's not available — not telephone?

J. Yap: Okay. So e-mail, snail mail and coming to the public consultation. I think it's quite a wide range that's out there, and I have a feeling your estimate of maybe 3,000 responses may be low.

D. Hayer: This question four, which I consider a catch-all question, says "other comments and suggestions regarding your priorities for Budget '06." Will that question be part of the website too?

D. Hayer: So that catches everything, basically, that they might have missed on questions one, two and three — right?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): In our introductory comments, we will focus on it so that people are aware that will be a key issue.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): One other issue that we've completed — and I'm not sure what took place the last two years; in the first two years, I was a member of the committee…. During our public consultations, we will see all of the presenters come. There will be times booked. They will come. There will be many interested parties, from my experience, that will come and sit through. We have allowed in the past an open-mike session at the end — at least, in my involvement — and I would like to entertain that again.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Okay. I think it's valuable, because many people sometimes are uncomfortable putting their names forward to come and make a formal presentation, but they may sit through two or three hours and go: "You know, that's valuable. I've got something to add." If it's acceptable to the committee, we will format that again this….

I believe we have dealt with all of the business for the committee this morning. I'm going to open it up to committee members, if they have any questions or new business to be brought before the committee here this morning.

N. Simons: I just wanted to add, for the record, that the North Island suggestion was in part due to some comments I received from residents in my constituency, as it turns out, who are often bypassed because the roads don't go through there. North Island would give people in Powell River the opportunity to go over to Comox and up the Island, and I just wanted to make sure that was one of the reasons behind it.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We have scheduled our next full meeting for Wednesday, October 5, I believe, based on the availability of the Minister of Finance. Again, that meeting is for the Minister of Finance to come and address our committee as to the prebudget consultation paper she has put forward and to allow members of the committee to ask any questions of the minister herself.

We will get out to each member a formal sheet outlining the schedule as quickly as we can — and I anticipate that within the next couple of days — so that we can look at and adjust our schedules.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Again, I want to thank everybody very much. I think we will have a very enjoyable time. Certainly, it will be interesting to hear from British Columbians, and I look forward to it.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Committee Clerk): I'm sorry I didn't introduce our distinguished guest earlier in our meeting. As you know, Mr. Dhammika Dasanayake is the Deputy Secretary General of the Parliament of Sri Lanka. He has been visiting our Legislature this week, and we just want to welcome him to this meeting.

M. Karagianis (Deputy Chair): You mentioned you are going to try and put a subcommittee meeting together either today or tomorrow morning.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Yes, I will speak with Kate to get the material that we'll have to go over, and I will get you that information as quickly as possible.

I guess just a question to subcommittee members: is early morning better than following adjournment of session? Just to get an idea.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Okay. We'll accommodate that, and I think we can go through that business fairly quickly as well.

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Committee Staff:	Jonathan Fershau (Committee Research Analyst)

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