Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 43 — Monday, December 4, 2006 (HTML)

2006 Legislative Session: Second 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

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner		1023
	D. Loukidelis
	L. Hubbard

Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner		1036
	D. Ryneveld

Office of the Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner		1043
	H. Oliver

Chair:	* Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L)
Deputy Chair:	* Bruce Ralston (Surrey-Whalley NDP)
Members:	* Iain Black (Port Moody–Westwood L) * Harry Bloy (Burquitlam L) * Randy Hawes (Maple Ridge–Mission L) Dave S. Hayer (Surrey-Tynehead L) * Richard T. Lee (Burnaby North L) * John Horgan (Malahat–Juan de Fuca NDP) Jenny Wai Ching Kwan (Vancouver–Mount Pleasant NDP) * Bob Simpson (Cariboo North NDP) * denotes member present

Committee Staff:	Josie Schofield (Committee Research Analyst)
	Simon Gray-Schleihauf (Committee Researcher)


Witnesses:	Lanny Hubbard (Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner; Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner) David Loukidelis (Information and Privacy Commissioner) H.A.D. Oliver (Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner) Dirk Ryneveld (Police Complaint Commissioner)

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I would like to call the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services to order. We are here today to begin the annual review of the statutory officers of British Columbia and their three-year rolling service plans, annual service plan reports and budget estimates.

I'd like to welcome both David Loukidelis, who is our Information and Privacy Commissioner, as well as Lanny Hubbard, who is the director of corporate services here with us this morning. Good morning, gentlemen.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Just before we begin and I turn it over, also joining us we have Josie and Simon, who will be working on our committee research to develop our reports, once we have completed all of the submissions. We then, as a committee, will submit a report based on the findings of our committee and the recommendations that we will put forward based on budgets and so on.

Without any further ado, I will turn the microphone over to you, David, if you'd like to begin with your presentation. I'd like to thank you for the paper that you put out to us. I think it was well thought out and well presented, and I look forward to hearing your presentation.

D. Loukidelis: Thank you, Chair. Good morning, members of the committee. As the Chair has indicated, I have with me today Lanny Hubbard, who's the director of corporate services in the Office of the Ombudsman and who provides my office with corporate services, corporate administration, human resources, IT support and all other office administrative support under a shared-services arrangement which has been in place for a number of years. Before beginning, I'd like to acknowledge Lanny's hard and excellent work and that of his colleagues in providing our office with efficient and very high-quality services to support our functions.

As we'll be seeing in a couple of moments, I am here today to ask the committee to recommend for approval an increase in the funding for our office, which is necessary to enable us to meet the service demands that continue to be placed on our office and also to meet the costs of certain increases that are beyond the control of our office.

I well recognize that members of this committee in very recent weeks have, through the consultations around the province, undoubtedly had considerable demands or requests for funding brought to your attention for a variety of functions, services and programs across the province. But before taking you through our budget proposal in summary fashion, before inviting questions from the committee, I would like to take a moment — understanding the outcome of the budget consultations you've just conducted — to impress upon you my very strongly held conviction that the work of our office is indeed at the heart of an accountable and responsible government at all levels in British Columbia.

On the one hand, under the public sector legislation that we're responsible for enforcing — and that is the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act — we cover in our functions over 2,000 public bodies at all levels in British Columbia ranging from local governments, school boards, colleges, universities, hospitals and on through to Crown corporations and provincial government ministries — a very broad swath of the public sector; indeed, the broadest in Canada — providing our services in independently investigating and adjudicating access-to-information appeals and privacy complaints. These functions are, as I say, at the core of an accountable system of government in Canada and have been so recognized time and again by the courts and by elected officials of all parties across the country.

In the private sector we provide very important services — perform indispensable functions, I would contend — in overseeing the privacy practices of some 380,000 private sector organizations in the province, provincially regulated non-profit organizations and for-profit organizations, the broad provincially regulated business sector; in ensuring that their practices respecting the collection, use and disclosure of the personal information of all citizens and consumers, again, in the private sector meet the internationally recognized fair information principles set out in the Personal Information Protection Act.

Our third area of business, which is about accountability and again transparency, is in functioning as a registrar of lobbyists under the Lobbyists Registration Act, which has been in force since 2002 and requires the registration of lobbyists and their activities in relation to provincial government organizations and ministries to ensure a measure of accountability through transparency for the activities of business sector lobbyists, in-house lobbyists, as they attempt to influence government policy or secure the passage of a bill.

Again, referring you to appendix 1 in our materials for further detail and a greater, more detailed description of the functions we perform, I would like to leave you with the observation, as I've done in previous such sessions, that the work done by our office is critical to ensuring accountability and transparency in government and in protecting privacy in the private sector in British Columbia.

With that introductory discussion, I would like to now take you through, in fairly summary fashion, an overview of the last year under each of these three core business areas for our office, beginning with the

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. In fiscal 2005-2006 — and that would be for the financial year ending March 31, 2006 — our office had 1,738 new formal files and had a further 3,694 requests for information or assistance.

More recently, moving to the calendar year basis and looking at the ten months ending October 31 of this year, we had 1,420 formal files. That included 778 formal appeals and complaints to our office about government decisions, about public body decisions respecting access-to-information requests or actions that might have an impact on citizens' privacy.

In addition to handling those files, including those 778 formal appeals and complaints, we conducted two major investigations and issued detailed public reports relating to well-publicized privacy breaches involving the sale of backup tapes and a large health authority in the lower mainland — the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority — in their loss of sensitive personal information of employees and clients of a confidential counselling service.

I might add that I believe these reports were of assistance both to the provincial government and to public bodies at all levels in British Columbia in helping them understand the risks to privacy through inappropriate data handling practices and were intended — and, I think, functioned — as supportive pieces of work by publicizing measures that public bodies can take to try and avoid these data losses and to mitigate the outcome if losses do occur.

In addition, we provided a detailed public report for consumption by local governments on what we termed surveillance bylaws, again, with recommendations for local governments on how to proceed in these areas. We conducted numerous consultations and provided informal advice to all levels of public body across the province.

In addition, beginning November 1 — the beginning of last month — we created a new process to deal with what are known as "deemed refusals," which are failures by public bodies to respond to access-to-information requests within the legislated time frames. It's a new expedited process that will take a much harder line, frankly, in ensuring that public bodies respond to access requests within the legislated time frames.

Then last, under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, we commented on proposed legislation, reviewed 25 tabled bills and commented publicly on several major tabled bills in terms of the implications for access to information and privacy rights of British Columbians.

Moving to the second core business area of the office, the Personal Information Protection Act and our functions in overseeing the legislation and compliance with it, in the first ten months of this year to October 31 we had 403 new Personal Information Protection Act files. These included 136 formal appeal and complaint files. Over the past year we co-hosted the first annual educational conference with our colleagues in Alberta to provide hands-on training over a two-day period for organizations, with particular emphasis on small and medium-sized enterprises so that they can better comply with this legislation, which has been enforced in British Columbia for just about three years — since January 1, 2004.

We consulted widely with a variety of stakeholders on employment privacy resources or materials to be published on our website and have, as a first stage, published FAQs on hiring practices and the collection of personal information for the purposes of making hiring decisions. We continue to consult for a wider range of FAQs with a broad range of stakeholders. We have updated a variety of our web-published resources to support organizations in compliance with this privacy legislation, including material to guide them on privacy breaches or data losses — as I have called them — and updated our guidance on the collection, use and disclosure of the social insurance number, and other privacy and security issues.

We're also participating in retail issues at point of sale for the retail sector through research and guidance in the form of web-published resources in conjunction with our Alberta colleagues and the Retail Council of Canada, which is the national representative organization for retailers across the country. We're involved in joint investigations with our federal colleagues — that would be the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — and our Alberta colleagues on a variety of national privacy complaints arising under the private sector legislation that exists in British Columbia, in Alberta and at the federal level.

Last, under the Lobbyists Registration Act, the third of our business areas, as at October 2006 there were 230 active registrants which included 98 consultant lobbyists — these are the paid consultants who are retained by organizations to lobby government — 77 senior officers of organizations that have in-house lobbyists and 55 in-house lobbyists.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): You are doing such a good job that you've set off bells in the buildings.

D. Loukidelis: Well, I didn't understand that I'd taken that long. I didn't notice that somebody had run out and pulled the fire alarm in desperation.

Continue, David. Sorry. It's a short jump out the window if we have to, so go ahead.

As at October 2006 we had 1,982 active lobby activities — in other words, 1,982 filings that indicated with

some level of detail precisely which lobbying activities were being undertaken at that moment.

At this time the Ministry of Attorney General, I might add — and this will become relevant in a few moments — maintains the website, which is the on-line registry for the lobbyists registry system. But as we'll see in a moment, it is proposed that this will change if funding being sought through this proposal is approved by the committee and the recommendation is made.

Continuing with the overview of the present state of affairs for the office, as at October the caseload for each portfolio officer — these are the individuals in our office who are responsible for essentially handling the formal appeals and complaints we receive, through investigation and mediation in the vast majority of cases — was an average of 58 files, which is an all-time high.

For your later reference you will see a graph at page 4 of the budget proposal that's before you, which shows you the trends since 2004. Despite added funding that exists, for example, for this fiscal year, you will see that this trend is on a sharp upward curve. As well, as at October of this year it took an average of 20 weeks for my office to close files. This is shown on a graph at page 5.

As at March 31, 2006, looking to the end of the last fiscal year, we had a backlog of 152 files. At this time last year I reported a backlog of 189 files for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2005. So we have, as at March 31, 2006, somewhat reduced the backlog to 152 files, but it bears emphasis that this is only the second backlog ever in the history of the office since it came into being in 1993. The 152 files that remained in the backlog at the end of the last fiscal year represent the workload of one and a half full-time portfolio officers in our office.

In view of the backlog and the very, very high and, I think, unsustainable caseloads on average for each portfolio officer as well as the length of time it is taking us to resolve matters, we have implemented temporary measures to tackle the backlog. We have assigned all ICBC cases to one portfolio officer, and we are at present underway with an initiative to try and deal with the oldest cases and close those off.

While I think that on a temporary basis what we have put in place will temporarily eliminate the backlog, I have no illusions, given the increased demands for our services, about our ability to continue to operate without a backlog of files. This is of serious concern to me in terms of the timeliness and quality of the service delivery that we provide to the public.

With that background, I would like to move now to an overview of the budget request that is before you. If you could turn to page 8 of the document, you might find it of assistance in understanding what I'm about to say.

You'll find there the resource summary for my office showing the amounts allocated for the present fiscal year, the 2006-2007 fiscal year, and the amounts being requested of the committee for 2007 through 2008 and for the two years following.

As you'll see from the resource summary, last year the committee recommended that our operating budget be set at $2.477 million and that a capital budget of $30,000 be allocated. As you will see from that same chart, for the fiscal year 2007-2008 we are seeking operational funding of $3.012 million and a capital budget of $60,000.

I should point out at this time that for the two years following that — that would be for 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 — for planning purposes we are not showing quite the same amount of funding on the operational side or on the capital side as is being requested for the next year. I'll explain that in a moment.

The key features of the funding proposal and the service consequences are set out at pages 8 through 10 of the budget proposal, and I will take you through some of those now. They're there for your later reference.

It is important to note — and I really need to emphasize this — that just about half of the increase in funding that is being sought today, some 45.6 percent, is not discretionary in the sense that it is not a result of decisions that I've made in terms of the request I'm making to you today to respond to service demands on the office. Of the amount being sought, $84,000 — or fully 17 percent of the increase being sought, that is — is for increases in salary and benefits stemming from governmentwide increases.

The committee, I should point out at this time, acknowledged in its report last year that there may be funding consequences for the office as a result of across-the-board provincial public sector wage increases. Indeed, the $84,000 that I've mentioned relates precisely to that.

A further $23,000, or 4.5 percent of the increase sought, is for rent increases on space assumed by us from the shared space that we had with the Office of the Ombudsman and Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner and the resulting increase in our share of budget for the space that we share. It is, in addition, representative of increases in property taxes and operating cost changes that are estimated to be coming about in the coming fiscal year and will be passed on to us.

Third, $100,000, or 19.6 percent of the increase that we have sought, is for operation of the lobbyists registration system, which it is proposed we would assume from the Ministry of Attorney General. So in a sense, I should underscore, it is not new money. It would be new money in the budget for my office, but there would be — one would assume — a commensurate decrease in the need for funding in the Ministry of Attorney General if we assume the funding having been recommended for us for operation of the lobbyists registration system beginning April 1, 2007.

Again, it's not quite a question of moving the shell from one location on the table to another, but the $100,000 that I mentioned to you just now is for operation of a system, the costs of which are already being incurred within the Ministry of Attorney General. It is, again, as a result of discussions in recent weeks proposing that we would take over operation of that system beginning April 1, 2007.

Fourth, of the funding increase being sought today, fully $50,000, or just under 10 percent, is one-off funding for two separate projects. Twenty-five thousand dollars

is a one-time request for this coming fiscal year only for capital funds to enable us to assume operation of the lobbyists registration system.

The other $25,000 is a one-time request for funding for a two-day seminar to be hosted in September 2007 along with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization. I've already been fortunate enough to receive funding of some $72,000 in U.S. dollars from APEC for the travel and accommodation costs for a number of speakers and delegates from Asia-Pacific economies at this two-day seminar. However, there is an additional need for us to be able to meet the local costs, room rental, and so on, of hosting this two-day seminar.

This seminar, I might mention now, fits well into the APEC workplan. But it also fits into initiatives within this province to, on the one hand, help promote British Columbia to the Asia-Pacific region and, more directly, to ensure that privacy laws across the Asia-Pacific region are harmonious as far as possible and do not unnecessarily represent barriers to trade through erecting inappropriate barriers to the flow of data in the ordinary course of commerce.

I do believe very strongly that this seminar will provide an opportunity to promote that work agenda, to ensure that British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act and data protection or privacy protection laws across the Asia-Pacific region work well together harmoniously and in fact enhance and do not inhibit trade.

To summarize, roughly half of the amount of funding increase that we are seeking today is caused by factors beyond our control or represents costs assumed from elsewhere in government or is one-time funding. The remaining part of the requested increase, or roughly half, would allow me to add two portfolio officers.

As an aside, you'll recall that I pointed out a few moments ago that the backlog that existed at the end of the last fiscal year represents the workload of approximately one and a half portfolio officers. Adding two portfolio officers would meet that demand and would help meet the demand that we anticipate will continue to increase, particularly under the Personal Information Protection Act as British Columbians become more familiar with this legislation and exercise, quite appropriately, their rights under that legislation.

The third position that is covered by the funding being requested today is for an adjudicator — someone that will be in a position to assist me and the assisting adjudicator in making formal decisions and issuing orders under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection Act, which in the latter case is an increasing workload. We've already started to see more and more formal inquiries occurring under the Personal Information Protection Act.

I should point out here as an aside that in the last year for which figures were available, Ontario — that is my colleague in Ontario, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario — had nine adjudicators who issued 201 orders. In British Columbia we have one adjudicator and me. We had a few portfolio officers do the odd adjudication last year, and we issued 51 orders and decisions. So if you say that there were 2.2 of us, we issued 51. Ontario had nine adjudicators and issued 201 orders.

On that note I would like to refer you, as I draw to a close, to appendix 3 at page 14 of the funding proposal before you. With the knowledge of my colleagues in Ontario and Alberta, I've provided you with some comparative figures in terms of workloads and funding for their offices as compared to the office here in British Columbia.

Ontario and Alberta, I might say, have legislation very similar to the legislation here in British Columbia. In Ontario they have a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act on which our legislation in B.C. was largely modelled. They have a Personal Health Information Protection Act, which covers health privacy in the public and private sectors. Alberta has both a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and a Personal Information Protection Act as well as a Health Information Act.

As you'll see from the comparison at appendix 3, beginning at page 14, in the most recent year for which comparative figures were available — and that is 2004-2005 — my office had 192 percent of the workload of my Alberta colleague's office but 52 percent of the budget for that office.

I will pause here to stress that neither the Alberta nor Ontario offices can by any description be said to be overfunded.

Similarly, if you look at the comparison between British Columbia and Ontario at page 15, for the most recent comparative year, which is on a calendar-year basis because that's how my Ontario colleague reports…. In calendar 2005 we actually had more files in terms of formal appeals and so on than Ontario. We had 103 percent of their file load but only 18 percent of their budget.

Two points to make about this. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia has always been lean. When I began this work in 1999, I came to an office that I think could reasonably be said to be a lean organization. My predecessor, David Flaherty, I very sincerely believe acted prudently in staffing the office and setting up the organization. We've always been leanly funded as well, and I think quite appropriately so.

We are, of course, in the last year or so beginning to come out of the significant restraint that we experienced in our office consistent with the public sector generally. Certainly, I'm very grateful for the increases in funding that we have received in the recent past to help us meet the demands for our services.

In view of the backlog of files and of the, I believe, undoubted ongoing increase in demands for our services and the importance of the work that my dedicated and hard-working colleagues do to ensure that access and privacy rights in the public sector are protected and meaningful — and in ensuring that private sector

organizations comply with the rules under the Personal Information Protection Act and ensuring that the lobbyist registration system functions well — the amount of funding increase sought today — again bearing in mind that almost half of it is due to factors beyond our control or due to a transfer of program functions — is, I would respectfully suggest, reasonable. I would ask the committee to make that recommendation.

Thank you, Chair and Members, for your attention. I notice the fire alarm hasn't gone off again, and we don't have any members who have chosen the hard way out. With that, I'd be happy to answer your questions.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, thank you very much, David, for your presentation here this morning. I will look to committee members to see if they have any questions.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): In 2004 there was a special committee struck to review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and it made a number of recommendations. I'm wondering if the budget submission that you're making here today contemplates the government acting upon the recommendations and the cost to implement fully the recommendations of that report.

D. Loukidelis: Thank you for the question. The report of the all-party special committee of May 2004 is not reflected in this funding request insofar as those amendments have not yet moved forward. With one exception and with a few that were implemented by policy changes, those recommendations have yet to be implemented. Even if they had been implemented, the nature of the recommendations was such that I would not anticipate any material impact on the resources that our office would require.

It was a question of fine-tuning the legislation, if you will. Some very important recommendations and some very necessary amendments were made, but nothing in terms of an expansion of the scope of the public bodies covered, for example, or the kinds of records covered, which would have a material impact on the budget for our office.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Just to summarize, then. If the government were to fully implement the recommendations, your view of the cost impact would be negligible.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): If I might continue. In December 2005, in your submission to this same committee a year ago, you said: "We are now very concerned about our ability to adequately discharge our statutory duty to provide this arm's-length expert advice and support to public bodies across British Columbia."

I think you've touched upon this, but I'm wondering whether you still share the same concern, particularly if the increases that you requested were not granted.

D. Loukidelis: We certainly did have a funding increase that is in place for the fiscal year that we're just coming towards the end of. But as I've indicated today, the ongoing existence of a backlog for only the second time in the history of the office — what I believe to be an unacceptably high average caseload for portfolio officers, with not only all of the implications in terms of delivery of service to the public but also implications for them, quite frankly, in terms of the work they're expected to do with the kind of quality and timeliness that they want — is serious.

I certainly would urge the committee to accept that the funding request before you today is a necessary one in order to allow us to respond to the public as we should and to ensure that their rights — the public interest in access to information and privacy protection — are in fact secured.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): At a recent conference in September 2006, some statistics were presented about the course of freedom-of-information requests. There appeared to be a rising number of requesters of information who were described as "discouraged," who didn't follow through to the end of the process.

I'm wondering: what would be your interpretation of that? One of the interpretations offered at the conference was that given the inability of your office — due to some of the budgetary constraints — to follow through with various ministries, people became discouraged and simply dropped their requests for information that they initially thought they wanted.

D. Loukidelis: Unlike the situation in Ontario, where there's a provision that requires public bodies to report statistics annually to the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, we don't have those kinds of statistics at our hands. So we can only go by the number of formal appeals that we receive each year. Beyond that, it would be impressionistic and not well informed on my part to make any comments along those lines.

It is fair to say, I think, that the number of formal appeals that we're getting is steady, but it is not increasing as it has been in previous years. There has been some up-and-down. The trend line in the number of formal appeals has generally been upward, but thus far in this fiscal year it's fair to say that it is steady. Now, as to what the cause of that is, I'm not sure. Whether it is people becoming discouraged and giving up or whether there are just fewer FOI requests for other reasons, I'm not really in a position to say.

I would certainly hope that people aren't becoming discouraged. Time and again we've seen both in British Columbia and across the country many, many examples of how access-to-information requests have

been indispensable in holding public bodies at all levels of government to account.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Go ahead, and then I have other questioners. I will probably go to those and then come back, and we'll work our way around.

I'm looking at page 8, and I just want to be clear for the transcript here on how many full-time-equivalents you have in your office to discharge all the statutory obligations you're obliged to do. Am I correct in saying that you have 19 now in total?

D. Loukidelis: Sorry. Excluding me. I beg your pardon. I stand corrected. There are 19 full-time employees, excluding me.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): And your request is for three further full-time staff?

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I note that this compares with the public affairs bureau, which has 216 staff. So that's about….

B. Lekstrom (Chair): If we're going to be focused on what we're here to do…. I think it's more than politics. We're an all-party committee, and we're required by statute to deal with the business of the budget and the plan. I'm going to encourage members to stay focused on that versus the political side of things here.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): That's often a type of illustration that's used by advocates of freedom of information to compare the relative weight that the government places upon putting out their version of information versus citizens requesting from the government what's actually taking place. I think it's an entirely appropriate comparison. I can appreciate the Chair may not wish to hear that, but I think it's an entirely appropriate comparison.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, Bruce, as the Chair — and it's my prerogative — I don't think it's appropriate, so we are going to move on. We're going to deal with the presentation that's before us. It's our job to listen to the presentation, to deliberate and to make a recommendation based on what we think the budget should be, and we will do that.

The '06-07 budget. Commissioner, you have $2½ million on the operating side and 30 on the capital. You mentioned there'd been an increase in the previous year, but I missed what that was. What was your '05-06 budget by comparison?

D. Loukidelis: I believe Mr. Hubbard will have the precise number at hand for you.

L. Hubbard: It was $2.211 million on the operating side and $30,000 on the capital.

I. Black: And do you have the FTE count for that same period? Right now it's 19 plus the commissioner.

L. Hubbard: Yes. I don't have that with me, but I believe we were awarded two FTEs last year, so it would have been 17 that fiscal year.

I. Black: That gives me a sense of history here in terms of the recent increases and what it kind of looks like from a trend-line standpoint.

A very quick question for you, Commissioner. You mentioned the wage increases. Just to make sure I'm clear on that, because your wording didn't give me the precise thing I was looking for…. Were those wage increases part of the contract settlements, or were they a reaction to contract settlements — i.e., you've taken it upon yourself to match those?

D. Loukidelis: To follow up on your last point, I should point out that when I became commissioner in 1999, there were 23 FTEs in the office. We got down to 15.

In terms of the wage settlements, it was as a result of my staff being excluded from the public service collective agreement with the provincial government, it was a result of the decision of government to implement the wage increase for excluded employees as well. It was not an initiative of my own but resulted in a negotiation and settlement with my own staff.

L. Hubbard: The staff of the office, other than the commissioner, are hired under the Public Service Act, so they're entitled to the wage increases that are awarded to the public service at large.

I. Black: Okay. The last question I had for you…. You do have a very impressive caseload. My question was more of an operational nature, which is: how do you prioritize these cases? Is it sequential — you know, first in, first out? As part of the answer, if you could touch on how you deal with various levels of urgency. Do you award certain requests that come in a little bit higher level of urgency because of the nature of it and the context involved, in your own judgment?

As part and parcel of that, do you assign different levels of resources to a given file than another? Or is it basically that there's a template you're able to use within your field of work to allow you to process them in a different way? Could you just expand on that for me?

D. Loukidelis: It is a good question. In an office of our size we tend to be…. Certainly we're collegial and relatively informal about things. Having said that, on the access-to-information side when an appeal comes in the door, it goes, essentially, into the queue — as you say: first in, first out — as far as possible.

Having said that, inevitably an access-to-information request that comes to us on appeal that involves, as is sometimes the case, 10,000 pages of records; a number of public bodies, let's say; government ministries; a variety of third parties, let's say, in the case of access to a contract that's been requested. That's inevitably going to sometimes require a team approach. There may be two portfolio officers working jointly or one primarily responsible but seeking support from another. That will take up more resources in the sense that it may result in other files that have been assigned to those portfolio officers slipping back somewhat.

We have found — and it's almost necessarily impressionistic — that in recent years we've been getting more of those so-called complex appeals — the number of pages involved, the number of public bodies or third parties involved and the difficulty of the issues. In part, it's a reflection of the maturing of the legislation. A lot of the easy issues have been adjudicated. A lot of the interpretive questions around particular exceptions to the right of access that are found in the act have long been settled. But we're finding that the nature of the records and some of those tougher interpretive issues are coming to the fore. I think part of what is happening is that there's a greater demand on our resources for dealing with those more complex requests.

Now, on the privacy side — in terms of whether it's first in, first out — there have been occasions when…. Let's say you have a privacy breach where a public body, sometimes a private sector organization, has inadvertently lost personal information of customers or employees — a laptop goes missing, that kind of thing. We're notified right away by the public body organization and we're asked to assist, if we can, in providing some guidance, some informal advice about what they should do to respond. Clearly, those are the kinds of cases where not everything is dropped in the alternative but where we do try to respond quickly and move that to the head of the queue so we can deal with the immediate crisis, if you will.

Sometimes there will be a public report. I mentioned earlier those detailed public reports that we published earlier this year. I worked on one of them myself. That came to the head of the queue in terms of my workload as well, because there was a need for timeliness — in part given the interest of the public but also public bodies in that particular case — to give some guidance, if we could, on what some of the best practices might be to avoid those kinds of situations in the future and how to respond to them when they do occur. No one pretends that we can ensure that there will be no such events in the future.

I. Black: One last one, if I may. You touched on something, and I just want you to expand on it if you could, please. Given the growing awareness that the public has with respect to privacy issues, the events of the last five years, some of them triggered by 9/11, the Patriot Act happening in the U.S. and also the awareness of people with respect to technology and the risks that mishandling of technology can provide, at what point out in the future…?

Let me back that up. Do you see a day coming where the requests coming in the door might be — I can't think of a better word — dismissed out of hand? It's like: "This is a trivial one. Come on, fellas. This is not reasonable." And if so, how do you make that judgment? How would you determine where that line draws?

You have, potentially, an unending appetite for information. I mean, you could have tens of thousands of people wake up tomorrow morning, and suddenly your caseload could be exponentially bigger than it is today. At what point is it frivolous, and how would you make that judgment if and when that time comes?

D. Loukidelis: You know, the bulk of our work, our mandate, our obligation is of course to respond to appeals on the access-to-information side or complaints — both public and private sector — of privacy breach. We haven't seen that day come yet. Certainly there are a lot of media stories, a lot of issues that come to our

attention that on the privacy side, I think it's fair to say, have varying levels of — I don't want to say reality about them — urgency, if you will.

When we have private sector organizations coming to us and saying, "Well, can you help us with resources on your website to address this problem or that problem?" we do our very best to try and prioritize and to ensure that — for example, in dealing with hiring practices and the FAQs that I mentioned — we do that work first. That was quite clearly something that was of immediate concern to small and medium-sized businesses in particular — and not to be too worried about, for example, questions of spam or phishing or other sort of technology-based risks to personal information because those are, on the one hand, things that are being dealt with by private industry or by other governments, and we have more immediate needs.

We don't have a strict set of criteria that we apply, but certainly we try and apply some judgment and discretion in allocating the resources we have to proactively helping businesses or the public sector with their privacy challenges or access-to-information challenges, thereby ensuring that we don't squander our resources.

I. Black: I just want to say that I'd like to work for these guys, if for no other reason than because they get the best acronyms in government. If you walk around going FIPPA and PIPA, that's just kind of cool.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): David, just before I go, I have a list of speakers — John, Bob and Richard. The issue of frivolous and vexatious. Within the act now — and I'm going by memory — you have the ability to deal with issues such as was just raised by Iain, do you not? To say that does not fit…. I'm going by memory, so could you…?

D. Loukidelis: You're quite right, Chair. Under both FIPPA and PIPA, we have the ability to entertain applications from public bodies or private sector organizations to allow them to ignore access-to-information requests if they're frivolous or vexatious or repetitious or systematic and would unreasonably interfere with their operations. We don't get a lot of those applications, frankly, but we do adjudicate those. Those fall into the kinds of functions that we perform.

The other thing that we do under the private sector privacy legislation is refer would-be complainants to other processes. I have that authority under the Personal Information Protection Act, PIPA, and we do that. For example, if someone comes in with a complaint about a workplace practice, if that individual is a member of a union and there is a grievance and arbitration process available, generally speaking — because our arbitrators have well-developed principles around privacy in the workplace, and because of their recognized expertise — we will more often than not refer the individual to that process rather than doubling up on the processes — amongst other things, not only risking resources but risking inconsistent approaches, which we would like to avoid, obviously.

Thank you very much for your presentation. I apologize for being a few moments late, but I came from Langford, and we need significant improvements in the roadway and infrastructure there so that I can get here in a timely way.

I have a number of questions, and I know the Chair will indulge me. I had sought you out — as you know, Commissioner — early on in my mandate as a newly elected MLA to seek some better understanding of your role and function. So it's unfortunate that I had to wait 18 months and do it in a committee room, but nonetheless I'm happy to have the opportunity to ask you a few questions now.

Just a clarification. I'm not sure if I understood you correctly. The $105,000 increase in the lobbyists registration line item — is that consistent on page 13 with the change in professional services? My question is: is it anticipated that you will contract out those services, and is it almost exclusively to manage the website?

D. Loukidelis: You're quite right. We've allocated — and Lanny Hubbard may have some details to add to that — the $100,000 to, I think, STOB 60, professional services. It is to operate the website, provide support and so on to the system. As I said earlier, that's our best estimate at this time of the added resources that would be needed to do that.

I should underscore, though, that in view of experience as we move forward, we would obviously come back to the committee at this time next year with that experience in hand and say: "Look, hypothetically, we didn't need that much, so we're only going to ask for, you know, $70,000 or what have you next year." It's really just our best estimate at this time. Quite frankly, we don't know with any degree of precision.

L. Hubbard: I might just expand on that a little bit. The discussions with the Ministry of Attorney General have only recently commenced, so there's a need to do some evaluation of what's necessary under the system to do some upgrading and actually get a handle on what it means. The plan at this point is to continue to host the system on the Ministry of Attorney General's computer systems until we're able to assess whether that could be migrated over to the internal systems that we operate on behalf of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. The main reason for that is they're running on a different operating system. Plus, there's an on-line payment system that's being developed in which there are a number of complexities that we really need to get a handle on.

The amount that's in the budget there is an estimate. We hope that it's conservative, but we won't know for sure until we get into it.

J. Horgan: The next line of questioning I'd like to pursue has to do with communications within your organization. Quite often, Commissioner, you'll appear

in the media responding to particular issues of public concern. I'm wondering: do you have in-house capacity to assist with that communication, or do you rely on the public affairs bureau? Or do you just pick up the phone when you see an issue and respond to it directly?

D. Loukidelis: I never…. I shouldn't say "never," but very, very rarely do we initiate media contact. In terms of the resources for communications of that kind, you're looking at him.

J. Horgan: Good. Just finally, the issue of fees as a deterrent to public access to information. Does your office monitor fee structures or fee directives from various ministries? Is there any way to monitor that? Do you have staff that are able to do that, or is it only on a complaint-by-complaint basis that you've become aware of exorbitant fees for access to information in various ministries?

D. Loukidelis: It's on a complaint-by-complaint basis that we become involved in fee issues, and through decisions, formal orders on request for fee waivers or complaints that a fee that was levied was excessive, which I have the authority to review and reverse or reduce in part, we try and provide guidance to public bodies.

Earlier this year — to give you one example just by way of showing you how it is a reactive role at this point — I ordered a particular provincial government ministry to cut its fee in half because it had been late in responding to an access-to-information request, the substance of which I upheld, though. I upheld the decision to deny access, but because it was late, I ordered some $4,500, I believe it was, refunded.

B. Simpson: Thanks for the presentation today. As you project forward here, have you noticed…? I know this will be the second time in a fixed election cycle. But do you notice any kind of upswing or trend as you get closer to an election cycle where people are going after information prior to going to the polls?

D. Loukidelis: I don't have precise numbers, but again, impressionistically, I think it's fair to say that in the months running up to an election — and as I said a few minutes ago, I've been in this role since 1999 — there's a slight uptick in activity on our end in terms of the appeals that we get. But of course, we get the appeals some time after the actual access request was made.

With respect to human resources in the kinds of caseloads that your officers have…. Today we're getting into a tighter and tighter human-resource market. It's just harder to get and retain people. Are you beginning to experience any retention issues? Do you have recruitment issues that you foresee in the future or currently?

D. Loukidelis: To date we have not had retention issues. Certainly, the salary structure that applies within our office is a more modest one than, for example, my Alberta or Ontario colleagues are able to offer. That's just the nature of the beast. So far we have not experienced retention problems. We have had turnover in the ordinary course, through retirements.

I might say that as we move forward, looking down the road towards the end of my term as commissioner, I think that the demographics within our office will present some challenges, perhaps. I have to start thinking about renewal and looking at the age structure in my office. I apologize to my colleagues if they think that I'm making any statements about how old they are, but the reality is that I have to start looking at those issues as we move forward. Whether or not that's going to be a challenge down the road is an open question, but it is certainly a real one.

In the issue of presenting a budget, the question is always: have you done all of the work that you can on efficiencies? Certainly, permeating your presentation, I'm getting the suggestion that you've done that work, but I would like an explicit statement. Have you done the necessary work around efficiencies? Are there other efficiencies in the system that you can obtain?

D. Loukidelis: I sincerely and firmly believe that we, consistent with the history of the office since its inception, operate with appropriate efficiencies. We have a lean operation. Towards the start of my first term as commissioner, we got together with other offices of the Legislature and implemented a shared-services and shared-space arrangement and realized considerable efficiencies, it has to be said, by doing that. I think the public was well served by that, if I may say.

As I go about my work day to day, and certainly when it comes to preparing for appearances such as this, I do my best to ensure that we're operating efficiently. I can tell you that there is no fat in the budget that we have today or that we're seeking a recommendation for, for next year.

B. Simpson: With respect to the budget, you're showing recoveries on STOBs 88, 89 and 90. Could you just explain what those are? And I've got a corollary question to that.

L. Hubbard: Okay, those are recoveries. The difference between the STOBs has to do with whether it's internal to the consolidated revenue fund, whether it's internal to the province or external to the province. Those amounts really just reflect amounts that might be recovered to the office through such things as registration, sale of documents — those types of things. They are small amounts that represent typical amounts from year to year, but they're not precise in terms of every year they'll happen exactly at that amount.

B. Simpson: With respect to the work that the office does, there's a fair bit of work done on behalf of the private sector, as I understand it, and with the lobbyists also. Is there the opportunity for deriving income from that work, and if so, is there a trap in that, if the office becomes part of the fee structure that other FOI requests have? And is there any way of generating income through the FOI-request process — whether it's fees charged for direct requests, or direct service where you put your own fee on top of that?

D. Loukidelis: There would, in my view, be no opportunity for the raising of revenue to an extent that would be meaningful when you consider what it would take to collect that revenue.

To give an example, in Ontario the fee for appealing an access-to-information decision to the commissioner there is $25. We get about a thousand appeals a year. So the gross revenue, never mind the expenses of collection, is, even within the terms of our budget, relatively insignificant.

I don't see any other opportunities there to collect revenue that would have anything approaching a material impact on our budget needs. In fact, this is, as I've indicated, a service that is at the core of accountability and transparency for the broad public sector, and indeed the private sector, when it comes to privacy practices as they affect consumers and others. I would strongly suggest that the present situation should continue to prevail — that is, that we don't seek fees, that we don't try and fund ourselves in that sense.

B. Simpson: My final question. Your appendix 1 has some strong language about the mandate of freedom of information. The comments from the Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Dagg case really speak to the heart of what I hear you saying in your presentation, and I'll just quote it for the public record: "The overarching purpose of access-to-information legislation, then, is to facilitate democracy."

You're doing another presentation here today, I think, in an appeal for the maintenance of our democratic process by giving people access to information. Is it your concern that if this committee does not hear that that we are, over time, threatening the very foundation of our democracy by not giving people timely access to your services?

D. Loukidelis: I believe that a well-functioning oversight body that has the authority to review decisions made, whether by provincial government ministries or local governments, on access to information and indeed on the privacy-protection side, is indispensable to the accountability and transparency that, again, are at the core of an accountable, democratic system.

The funding for such an office, in terms of the timeliness and quality of its services, is critical. The budget request today, I would respectfully suggest to the committee, is one that would help us function in those ways — that is, with the timeliness and the quality that the public has a right to expect.

As we move forward, we don't know what the demands for our services will be in terms of whether I'm back here in three years' time with a different request. But certainly at the present time, looking forward as far as we can, what I've presented to you today I believe is necessary to allow us to ensure that we provide that level of service that ensures those rights.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. I just wanted to see what the three public bodies are that get the most requests for information.

D. Loukidelis: I can give you some sense of which of the public bodies are sort of the top three in terms of complaints. Before I do that, however, I should underscore the obvious, which is that the size of those public bodies and the nature of the services they provide to the public have a very great deal to do with the number of complaints they get.

So when I say, for example, that the Insurance Corp. of B.C. is near the top of the list, if not at the top of the list…. Of course, it's a large corporation. It insures, for basic insurance, all motorists in the province and receives many, many requests every year from lawyers acting for individuals who've been involved in motor vehicle collisions and who are making claims from ICBC. It is a large portion of the requests that ICBC gets. Again, the nature of the business and the size of the corporation has a lot to do with ICBC being at the top of the list, if you will, as it is.

I'm just looking at our annual report for 2005-2006. Similarly, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, a large organization encompassing, as you know, a broad variety of program areas, and the Vancouver police department and the Ministry of Attorney General are all up there, if you will.

Again, it's not a reflection of how well or how poorly they're doing, necessarily. It's arguably — well, not arguably, in my view — very materially a lot to do with how big they are and the kinds of services they provide. But those are the four organizations that appear in our annual report as being engaged with our office more frequently than others.

R. Lee: Are there any suggestions you can make to those bodies so that they can reduce the public's requests for information?

D. Loukidelis: Certainly, one of the positions I've been advocating for many years and that our office has been advocating for longer than I've been around — one of the positions that is, indeed, reflected in the recommendations of the special committee that reported on its review of the Freedom of Information and

Protection of Privacy Act — was to encourage or find ways to require more routine disclosure of information without access request — to ensure that the information that is of interest, in the public interest, is routinely released, proactively released without FOI request.

The recommendation made by the committee was for routine disclosure schemes along the lines of what they have in the United Kingdom, which are mandatory, which have to be implemented by public agencies there to ensure that information is made routinely available.

Not all information, of course, can be made routinely available. Personal information that might involve an invasion of privacy if disclosed is not going to be amenable to that kind of approach, but there is a great deal of information in the hands of the public sector that can be made available without access-to-information requests at lower cost and in a more timely fashion to better promote access to information and, thereby, transparency and accountability.

R. Lee: My next question is: when you compare the cases in Alberta and Ontario, is there any difference in the nature of the cases?

D. Loukidelis: The legislation in the three provinces is very similar, as I mentioned earlier. The British Columbia legislation was modelled on the Ontario legislation, and the Alberta legislation, in turn, was modelled very closely on the British Columbia legislation. It came somewhat later.

I would suggest that the kinds of requests that are made are very similar amongst the provinces. We cover a broader public sector here than they do in Ontario, for example, or in Alberta. Ontario did not cover universities or colleges until very recently, and it did not cover the health sector, the hospital sector, until quite recently. We've had different experiences, I think, up until recently in that sense, so there would be a difference owing to that difference in coverage.

R. Lee: My last question. You mentioned that some of the cases are dismissed. There's a certain ratio, after going through the adjudicative process. What's the percentage of that?

D. Loukidelis: I haven't done a recent tally. About 18 months ago I looked at my own record as an adjudicator, and as I recall, I believe I upheld the public body decision in roughly 67 percent of the cases and then partially upheld in a further 17 percent, roughly.

This is not to say that appeals from public body access-to-information decisions are necessarily doomed, by any means. I think it's fair to say, though, that the mediation process in which we engage — and we do settle 88 to 90 percent of all appeals through mediation in our office — is of a kind where the individual or the organization that has made the access-to-information request, is, essentially, all of the time able to dictate whether or not the matter goes to a formal appeal. Their assessment of the likelihood of success in that self-selecting group may not be as realistic as it could be. Put it that way.

D. Loukidelis: Compared to other provinces…. I don't have the figures for that. I would be surprised if it's much different, however. That's not to say that public bodies are particularly pleased with the outcome either.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I want to return to the issue of fees, just so that I'm clear. The ministry that information is being requested of can choose to set a fee that in its view would reflect the time — the staff time, in particular — to fulfil a certain request. From what I understand, your office can intervene if there's a dispute about the reasonableness or not of that fee.

Your office doesn't receive any revenue from the setting of that fee by a ministry or other government body. Is that right?

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Your point on the suggestion of creating a revenue stream for yourself is that if one were to do that, it might very well compromise the independence of your office, which is integral to the kind of work that you do.

D. Loukidelis: Yes. I would share that concern and also have the concern that adding another fee would more effectively deter the exercise of access and privacy rights than anything else.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I had a couple of questions about the lobbyists registration process. From your budget there are one and a half staff-time-equivalents working on those responsibilities. Am I right in that conclusion?

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Aside from simply processing the applications for registration, what capacity or ongoing work do you do in ensuring compliance with the act or in investigating those who may be engaging in the activity of lobbying but who are not properly registered? Is that work reflected in that allocation of staff time?

D. Loukidelis: The allocation of staff time is purely administrative. It involves our registrar of inquiries, the director of the office and our administrative support

staff, simply in operating the registration system, assisting members of the public with inquiries, navigating the system — for example, renewals of registration, that sort of thing. It does not involve an active investigative component.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): If that budget doesn't involve that, who engages in that work, if anyone?

D. Loukidelis: If we were to receive a complaint that someone was not registered who should be…. We do get, from time to time, contact from a member of the public, for example, who says: "I believe that individual X is lobbying but is not shown as being registered in the system." We'll contact that individual or that organization and say: "Are you lobbying? If you are, you must be registered and you have to register now." We will look into complaints in that sense.

If we had a formal complaint that someone was not registered who should be and they did not register when they were told to, that is just something that I would handle or that the office would handle out of that existing FTE complement.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Is there any ongoing statutory obligation, in your view, for government bodies who are lobbied by someone who's not registered to report that fact to you?

D. Loukidelis: I would certainly hope, whether it's a government body or an individual who is being lobbied, that they would bring it to our attention if somebody is doing the lobbying who is not, in fact, registered. Whether that could be a feature of the legislation in terms of making it mandatory to report is another question. The system will only work effectively, I think, if these things are brought to our attention so that we can make sure that people are registered when and as they should be.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Does the act contemplate an investigation culminating in a prosecution if that's necessary?

D. Loukidelis: At the end of the day, that's a tool that's available. It's not one that's been used to date, since the legislation came into force just over four years ago. But that is an approach that could be taken, yes.

R. Hawes: Commissioner, my question — and I apologize if it's been asked already — has to do with the lobbyists registry. Your briefing says that you are going to take over hosting the system, subject to funding. I'm just wondering: in your budget presentation, is that funding already reflected, or is this additional funding that you need from the AG's office? And if so, how much? What is it going to cost to take over that system?

D. Loukidelis: The amount sought — the $100,000 — is our best estimate at this time, given the fact that discussions with Ministry of Attorney General staff have only been underway for the last few weeks, of what it would cost for us, beginning April 1, 2007, to assume responsibility for all aspects of operation of the system, other than the physical hosting of the system within the IT resources of the Ministry of Attorney General.

It is new funding only in the sense that it is new to our budget and, again, reflects our best estimate for this coming year, at any rate — subject to revision in light of actual experience, and in the future would be needed to assume the costs now existing within the Ministry of Attorney General and internalize them within our funding.

R. Hawes: Okay, so in your appendix 2, on your line 60, "Professional services," the $100,000 increase is completely for the lobbyists registry.

R. Hawes: Would you know what it's costing the AG's ministry right now? And if this is transferred over to you, is there…? Well, I guess you wouldn't know if there is a subsequent decrease in funding in the AG's budget.

D. Loukidelis: That is correct. I alluded to this in my introductory overview. That's something, of course, between the ministry and Treasury Board. Again, it's our best estimate.

Clearly, as I've indicated earlier, we will do our very best to make this work efficiently. In terms of the $100,000, if the committee makes that recommendation, I can assure you that if there is any left over that we don't need, I'm not going to be taking that and spending it on other stuff. You know, it's very much intended as our good-faith assessment of what's needed and what would be needed for that function, for that particular line item.

I'm not aware of what it is that the Ministry of Attorney General at present spends on that function. Lanny Hubbard may have something to add to that.

L. Hubbard: Just to elaborate, the only obvious piece that the ministry has indicated is about $20,000. The problem is that all of their functions on providing help desk support, network analysis — all that type of stuff — are just buried within their larger information management operating. We asked them that question in order to assist us with the budgeting, and there was no way that they could break that out.

Also, that amount didn't include what we perceive as being necessary: a business analysis right at the beginning to find out what needs to be done to improve the functionality of the system. I'm advised that it's found to be somewhat kludgy by people trying to use it, so there's a need to actually do some enhancements on it.

I think that in terms of maintaining it just as it is now, $100,000 is more than what is necessary. But to make it work the way it should is why we've put in $100,000.

J. Horgan: I'd like to go back more to my earlier question around how you interact with the media. As you are aware, you pop up occasionally on topical issues. I think that's appropriate. It gives the public some comfort that the commissioner is observing, and it does not require a prod if there's an issue of public concern. That's a positive thing.

One of the issues you may not have noticed last week…. Of course, openness was more about highways and access was more about electricity over the past ten days. Last week there was an issue of public concern raised, and that was of issues being flagged as sensitive when requests are made of various public agencies. I know that the B.C. Information and Privacy Association just recently completed a report and highlighted that aspect.

Other than a direct complaint to your office, how is it that the public can have some comfort that individuals or groups are not being flagged as they try to access information and are perhaps potentially delayed because of political sensitivities?

Those issues that are slowing down. As you said, on one of the applications you waived the fee or reduced the fee because of a delay. Is there any way we can have some comfort that you can be proactive? Or is it all complaint-driven in terms of this sensitivity issue?

D. Loukidelis: Thank you for the question. It's a very good question. The nature of these offices, to a large degree — regardless of funding, quite frankly — is to be reactive. We function as an independent enforcement agency. We do, though, have an explicit statutory mandate, in many respects, to be proactive in terms of providing support and assistance to public bodies or organizations, and education and research on issues affecting access and privacy, for example. We do try to do that.

I firmly believe, as I've said to the committee before, that that proactive work is cost-effective work. If we can promote better practice, good practice, in terms of compliance with the privacy requirements, for example, around the security of personal information, the obligations of public bodies to protect personal information…. If we can be proactive in providing support to public bodies in terms of routine disclosure of information where possible so that they can do it in a more cost-effective and, in their case, proactive fashion, then that's all to the good in terms of promoting the purposes of the legislation but doing so in a cost-effective manner.

That's where the rubber hits the road in terms of the funding for the office because, quite clearly — and we have experienced this over the years — if you have cases coming in the door, you've got to respond to those. That means, of course, that you're trying to do the other proactive work off the side of your desk.

The issue of sensitivity ratings. That is a file that we have open and have had open for some time. I hope in the coming months we'll come to some satisfactory resolution in terms of ensuring that the legislation is honoured both in letter and spirit.

J. Horgan: And of course, that resolution would be public rather than confidential, I'm assuming.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Well, our time is quickly coming to an end. I do want to take the opportunity to ask a couple of questions myself.

The issue of the sensitivity ratings is one that I know the previous committee that reviewed the legislation has addressed. I believe it's now headed to a complexity rating versus the sensitivity. That is the direction that we certainly, from that committee's understanding, felt was appropriate. I think this is something that since the beginning of time was dealt with under a sensitivity issue, but complexity, I think, better reflects where it should be rated on those applications.

A couple of quick questions from me. The delays from public bodies that relate in work being brought to your office, Commissioner — refusals to divulge information…. I know it goes back to the fee issue and the issue of the ability to fine a public body or impose penalty, as you indicated before, where you've done that. It seems to me that on occasion issues that have been requested for information are not disclosed to the person requesting it for reasons beyond my understanding when I've looked at a number of different issues that we see.

Your feeling on that — the ability to go to a public body, whether it be a local government, whether it be a ministry, and say, "You know, this is the fourth time we've had to deal with that" — or 40th time, for the sake of it…. When we talk penalties and the independence of your office, consideration to say, for the sake of discussion: "That's now a $20,000 penalty to your organization," or $5,000 or whatever would be reasonable.

The legislation, you're quite right, does not at present give us the ability to impose administrative penalties of the kind you've described. In fact, when it comes to offences, it's an offence to obstruct us in our investigations, but that's about it on the access-to-information side. We have the order-making power, again. We can correct and, perhaps, through publicity — and our orders are routinely made public — encourage, if you will, public bodies to correct their practices.

It's certainly something that I think would bear some consideration. I would not be surprised if there's enormous resistance within the public sector to that. But when you have chronic problems of that kind, short of using publicity — and that is, of course, often a very blunt tool, actually — it is difficult to get that compliance on

an ongoing, systemic basis as opposed to time and again saying to the public body: "Look, again you're late; again you're late; again you're late."

I think you have to also work with public bodies, quite frankly, to ensure that they get the resources in place they need to respond in an appropriate manner. Go to the deputy minister of the ministry involved and say: "You need to allocate more funding from within your envelope, from within the money given to you, to your access-to-information resources."

We've managed to do that successfully with a number of ministries over the last six years or so that have experienced backlogs, and by just directly going to the deputy minister and saying, "You've got to deal with this," managed to persuade the deputy minister to allocate the resources, and the backlog goes away.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I have two further quick questions, and then we'll wrap up. The issue of the request for increased staffing with two portfolio officers and one additional adjudicator. Certainly, you've laid out very well what you think you can accomplish. A question from that: if your office was to receive two of the three personnel, give me just a brief view from your perspective as to what impact that would have on the office as far as dealing with the caseload and so on, versus the three requested.

D. Loukidelis: If that were to happen, I would find myself in a position, obviously, of having to choose between two portfolio officers or one portfolio officer and an adjudicator.

For discussion purposes, if we went with the latter option, we would certainly be able to issue orders, formal written decisions, on a much more timely basis than is at present the case. I think that's important. It is part of the concern around delay — how long it takes to get these orders written — because of the adage that access delayed is access denied. But it would leave the portfolio officers with a caseload that is not quite where I would want it to be. It would be an improvement on the situation, but clearly not an ideal solution from our perspective at this time.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): One final question, and I personally fully support the report that was put forward on the review of the legislation with some issues in there that were put forward as recommendations. Routine disclosure was touched on earlier in the discussion here, which I think is a tremendous idea. With full implementation of routine disclosure, if it were to move forward, I would think that would have a significant impact on your office and the budget. Rather than having increasing demands, it would lower the demands on your office.

D. Loukidelis: I agree that it would have an impact on the demand for service from our office. I have to keep in mind, though, that roughly 70-some percent — I think the most recent figure was 74 percent — of the access-to-information appeals we get are from individuals who have made requests for their own personal information. If you were to move toward a more routine disclosure system to allow individuals to get access to their own personal information without access requests, quite clearly, certainly in the medium term, it's reasonable to suppose there would be a reduction in demands for service from our office.

That obviously would present a future committee with the opportunity to review the need for resources at that time.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): David and Lanny, I do want to thank you for coming before the committee this morning. I want to thank the members for their questions, and again I want to thank you for the format in which you presented your submission. I think it was very well done. As usual, David, I want to pass on our thanks to you and your staff for the work you do on behalf of the people of British Columbia.

D. Loukidelis: Thank you very much, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for your attention today. If you have any follow-up questions or requests for information, I'd be happy to answer those questions for the committee. I always continue to be accessible, apart from this process, to members from both sides of the House.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): The committee will take a five-minute recess and reconvene with our next statutory officer. We stand recessed.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Okay, at this time we will reconvene the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

We are moving on to our next presentation this morning from our statutory officers. Our next presentation is from our Police Complaint Commissioner. Joining us is Dirk Ryneveld, who is our Police Complaint Commissioner, as well as Lanny Hubbard, who is multi-tasking this morning.

D. Ryneveld: Good morning, Mr. Chair and hon. Members. Thank you again for the opportunity of coming before you today to present our anticipated needs for the next fiscal period. I say that as only a transitional kind of statement, because as may be obvious from my budget submission this year, I'm coming to you today based on more or less a status quo budget in anticipation that the long-awaited report from Josiah Wood will have a significant impact on our requirements if, as I would hope, he has been persuaded by my White

Paper and my Green Paper and my clamouring for the last three years for legislative reform.

Then, of course, regardless of when Mr. — I was going to say Mr. Justice Wood, as he then was — Josiah Wood's report comes out, it's up to these hon. members and the rest of your colleagues to see whether it finds favour in your sights to determine whether or not the recommendations actually become legislation.

So I'm looking down the road. Again, being the optimist that I am, I'm hoping that some of those things will come to fruition during some part of the next fiscal year. And, if that's the case, I'll have to come back to you and give you my assessment as to what those changes, if any, will mean in terms of a budgetary impact.

Actually, in terms of where I am today, I can say to you that my conclusion, at page 4 of my budget submission, was that I am simply requesting that the present funding level for last year be maintained with only minimal increases to reflect anticipated increased cost for core services. Those anticipated increased costs for core services are ones that Mr. Hubbard, who now has a new sign identifying him as Police Complaint Commissioner's Office in our multi-shared-service, co-location model that seems to work well for everybody…. Mr. Hubbard has indicated that we can probably maintain what we're doing now with only a modest increase for things we don't have any control over.

Without changing any floor space or anything else, it's going to cost $6,000 more — anticipated for, for example, building requirements. There are other things such as salaries, which apparently get a bit of a boost over time, over which I have no control, which also impacts. Those things are all set out for you.

As I say, like last year and the year before that — and I have Mr. Hubbard's word for it — if we continue on our present spending track, being as conservative as we are, I should come in again slightly under budget. Now, you say: "If you're coming in slightly under budget, then why should we be giving you a little bit more?"

The answer to that is that one of our commission council, Mr. Urban, is still on secondment to Kosovo where he is prosecuting. We have managed to save that salary, but I've had to budget for it, of course, because I didn't know when he was coming back. I do anticipate that he'll be coming back in May or June of next year, which means that I need to budget the entire amount for next year because, as you know, our budget would start in April.

The other thing is we've had some cost-saving measures implemented, just being very careful with our spending. I don't know if there's anything in particular that I could do really that would assist you, other than to say that some of the moneys that we have asked for last year, I'm asking to be maintained.

One of those is in the area of our mediation program. These moneys that have specific dollar values to them: if we don't spend them for those particular areas, we don't spend them in other areas. For example, $50,000 for a mediation pilot project is what we thought we needed. It's a little slow going to get police officers to agree to meet with complainants. Apparently, that's not the most popular thing to do.

Part of this has been an education process, and we need a few of these to be successful before the word starts to spread. That's another area where we haven't spent the money that we've asked for, but we're hopeful that we will be able to get more mediations. Therefore, I don't want to reduce my funding. You have my assurance that if it's not spent, it'll be returned to general revenue.

We also asked for some money to host the CACOLE conference and for me to spearhead the development of the international network of oversight of policing. That is coming to fruition, I'm happy to report. We hosted the CACOLE, which is the Canadian Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. We hosted that conference in Vancouver in October of this year. We had over a 160 representatives, which is about double the previous kind of turnout we had. We had representatives from over 20 different countries in attendance. It was probably the most successful conference that we've had.

International countries are looking to us for leadership in this field. Although the United States has a lot more oversight bodies, they have different models and different mixes, and with few exceptions, they are not as well developed, shall we say, in their oversight models as we are in Canada.

As you know, in Canada we have about 12 or 13 different oversight bodies, none of which is the same. Everybody has different models. Part of the reason for us to get together is to develop best practices to try to see what models work the best and how we deliver a best service to the public.

It's also the only system whereby I can have training for our staff. There are no courses out there for oversight of law enforcement. They don't teach that at university. There are no programs I can send my staff to. So by having this conference and getting speakers from around the world, it's about the only training I can provide for my staff as well.

I would recommend to you that it's a very worthwhile thing for us to continue to be actively involved in this international organization that I'm spearheading and, also, to maintain our high profile in CACOLE. I've been the president of CACOLE for two years, and I'm now past president, as the liaison for the international group. I've asked for an additional $15,000, which is about the same amount, I believe, as we had in total for last year. It'll just be that the left pocket may be a little heavier than the right pocket but no more money.

I could go on, but I suspect that with a budget of this nature you might be more interested, perhaps, in asking me some questions rather than have me talk about the things that we're so proud of that we've managed to do over the last year.

My annual report. I believe copies of that have been distributed. It gives us some of the information that's now almost a year old, of course. I can let you know that we did a count. As of Friday we have 477 complaints

on record, which means this has been the busiest year of all, if you look at them.

We still have December stats to go, so I expect that we're going to be over 500 this year, which is the greatest increase we've had. Why that is I don't know. It may well be that our outreach and gaining credibility with the public means that people are prepared to come to us and trust us with their problems rather than just to think: "Ah, what's the use?"

Many of these may also be self-reporting by the police, whereas before it was that if we didn't find out about it, it wasn't reported to us. Now there's been a change of attitude, and they're coming to us, giving us heads-up even before things develop. I'm quite optimistic about some of the changes we have been able to bring over the last year.

I think there's a collective reason why those things are going up. It's not necessarily because police behaviour has become any worse. It's just that the reporting of it, I think, is becoming more and more…. Well, we're being made aware of it.

I'm going to open it up to questions, unless you want me to address a particular topic.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Certainly, we'll move to questions. Dirk, I want to thank you for your presentation and what you've brought here. As you indicated earlier, I think, as is the mandate of our committee, should there be movement from Mr. Wood's work, you will be back before our committee, which we are asked to do. I think you've raised a valuable point there.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Perhaps just for those of us who are vaguely aware of Joe Wood's inquiry and what's going on, could you just give us some more detail? When was the direction initiated? How long has it been ongoing? What's the approximate scope of it? And what are you expecting in the way of recommendations from this, since it obviously directly impacts on your budget?

D. Ryneveld: Thank you for that question. Depending on whose view you take in terms of what initiated it…. My view was that I have been, almost since the day I took office on February 13, 2003…. The first time I did a budget presentation to you, I believe I mentioned that the statute that I'm working with was practically unworkable. Those were the first hints about what I thought about the existing legislation.

That should not come as news, because of course, your colleagues had, back in 2002, undertaken a review process for amendments to the statute, which was created on July 1, 1998. It was built right into the initial part 9 of the Police Act that it would be reviewed after four years. A committee of this House, a special select committee, sat down and took all kinds of advice and evidence from various individuals and stakeholders in the process and prepared a report that was, I believe, finalized in August of 2002. Then, because there had been a vacancy during the course of that process, I was sworn in, in February of 2003. By November I was saying that we needed new legislation.

Further things happened in that we had some difficulties with a particular police force not cooperating with an external investigation that I had ordered, as a result of which I issued my initial report — we call it the Pivot report — and called for specific changes in the legislation and asked the Solicitor General to see that an audit was conducted. I asked that a retired judge be the one who conducted that audit. The Solicitor General, I believe, indicated that that had been in the works in any event, and they then appointed Josiah Wood, I believe in August of 2005, with the hope that he would have it done within the year.

He undertook a huge task of auditing various police forces. They've gone through sending out questionnaires to the public, to the police respondent officers. It became a very wide, broad-based scope of inquiry.

Frankly, in my opinion, a better individual to conduct that inquiry could not have been selected. He's absolutely, in my view, someone who has tremendous credibility with the bench, the bar and the public. I look forward to his recommendations, even though I don't know what they're going to be. He keeps his own counsel, and I'm sure that his report will go to the Solicitor General.

During the course of that inquiry, we have opened our files to him. We swore him to a confidentiality agreement, but we felt that it was important that our office also be open and transparent and accountable. Rather than just focus on what the police are doing or not doing or what the public are doing or not, we basically invited his report to also look at what we're doing and whether what we're doing is appropriate. Although that wasn't part of his initial mandate, we certainly cooperated fully and gave him access to all of our files in order to get as comprehensive a report as possible.

That report was initially expected, I believe, within the year, which should have been in August. Because of the complexity of the nature of the work that he's doing and getting stakeholders' opinions back, that took some time. I was told that we can expect the report any day. I would be surprised if we didn't get it by the end of this week.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): In your requests for legislative change, which I gather you initiated some years ago now, what progress, if any, has been made upon satisfying those requests and finding your way onto the legislative agenda?

D. Ryneveld: I was having some difficulty finding the impetus to get it on the legislative agenda until the Solicitor General ordered this report to be prepared by Josiah Wood. It makes sense to me that we get it on as soon as possible.

There will, of course, have to be further stakeholders meetings after the report comes down. The Legislature

will have to consider it. The drafting people will have to get busy. I'm a realist. I had hoped that it would be on the spring legislative….

D. Ryneveld: I was hoping for spring 2007. The process cannot really afford to wait much longer. I'm a realist, however. We're now in December. It may not get on the legislative agenda until September. I don't have any control over that. All I can do is be the eternal optimist and hope that the House will deem it to be of sufficient priority to put it on.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Well, we'd have to have a fall session in that case, so I don't know whether we'll get there or not.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Once again, Bruce, we're going to try and stay focused here.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Realistically, then, your expectation would be that at least a year is required to digest results of what Mr. Wood reports?

D. Ryneveld: The optimist in me says that since I have done a great deal of the consultation process leading up to my White Paper…. We have met with the police unions, police chiefs. We've met with all the various agencies and published what we thought should be some of the improvements.

We then took all of their input and put out what we call the Green Paper. Why would we call it a Green Paper? Well, it was one way to differentiate it from a White Paper. What it did was integrated the comments from the other stakeholders. I commented as to whether or not they modified my views or whether I was still persuaded that although they had valid points, nevertheless my initial points in the White Paper should be maintained.

A lot of the stakeholder work has already been done by us. Then Josiah Wood went through this last year and a bit doing exactly the same thing. He met with just about every group imaginable who would have input into this.

Why am I telling you this? Because I believe that once the report comes out, the amount of after-report consultation should be reduced considerably, because there won't be any news other than…. Unless there are some surprises in Mr. Wood's report, I would hope that we can get onto the legislative agenda very, very quickly. I'm still hopeful for the spring session, but then again, I am an optimist. But I'm also a realist.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): One more question, if I may. In general terms, how do you view the comparison that's sometimes made between the efficacy, or not, of the RCMP complaints procedure and the complaints procedure that you administer for the municipal police forces?

D. Ryneveld: Well, I'm not sure it's politic for me to compare our process with other processes, but I can tell you that I believe in the process that we have adopted in this province. A lot of people do not believe in that process. A lot of people think that we should have what they have in Great Britain, Ireland, Northern Ireland or Portugal, whereby the police are not allowed to investigate the police. Ontario tried that with the SIU model, etc.

This is my view, and this is what I've been saying. The police can effectively investigate themselves, provided — and this is a very strong "provided" — that the oversight body has enough authority and enough tools with which to have effective oversight. If you were not to accept that particular viewpoint, then in effect you would be creating yet another police force — a police force of civilians who investigate the police. If my office were to do the investigations ourselves, we would need powers of seizure, and we would need certain policing powers.

Now I believe that we should have the power of investigations in our back pocket, to be used on those rare occasions where we cannot have the police investigate the regular complaints. It would be used minimally, but it would be good to have that as a fail-safe mechanism. There are one or two or three a year where, I would say, we would use our own staff.

To answer your question directly, the RCMP program isn't perfect either, and my new counterpart Paul Kennedy is advocating for a change to his legislation, which I understand is 17 years without amendment. He has looked at our White Paper. If you go to his website, you will see that Mr. Kennedy is advocating changes to his legislation along the same lines as we've been advocating, which include compellability of members to have to account for what they do. I can't take the time to go into what we're advocating, but I do notice a lot of similarities between what he wants and what we've been recommending for the last few years.

One of the problems with the RCMP system is that when the chair of the CPC makes a recommendation, it goes to the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa. The commissioner can act on it, or he can choose not to act on it. If the commissioner of the RCMP says no, that's the end of the matter. In other words, the oversight body only has the power of recommendation, and that's it.

At least if I disagree with a discipline authority like a chief of police, even under our present limited system, I have one tool. That is, I can call a public hearing, which means an adjudicator who is a retired judge can be the tiebreaker. So there is at least that other step.

One of the things I've been advocating for change in our legislation is that I need more than just an elephant gun, because not all cases where we disagree require a public hearing. Those are huge, expensive processes. We need some other tools in our arsenal in order to effect oversight, without just saying: "Okay. My only other opportunity is to call a public hearing." We use those in rare occasions because we're to call them in the public interest. In the public interest, of course, we can't be confined by cost.

To call public hearings for matters that are on the minor side would be an inappropriate expenditure of court time and the taxpayers' dollars, so we use them only in those cases where we think they are absolutely necessary. That does leave you with the problem, however, that if that's the only tool you have, in other cases where you wish you could make some changes, you have to hold your nose and sign off on them. That is just not a proper way.

I need more tools. If I haven't got this message out, I've taken this opportunity to say: "I need more tools. Help, please."

B. Simpson: I guess we're in a bit of a dilemma in the sense that you've asked for status quo until such time as this report comes forward, so I guess we're more exploring what some of those possibilities might be. I beg your indulgence while I explore a couple of things.

You indicated that you don't believe that the rate of complaints is necessarily increasing, that it may be public confidence in the commissioner's office and so on. But I know from talking to police officers in the field, both within the RCMP and within the municipal forces, that there is a growing concern about the disproportionately large number of younger officers who have to go out into the field and the loss of mentorship. I know the RCMP in our area, for example, are bringing back retired officers to put them in the station simply so that they're available to talk people through.

The concern is, with a lot of that youth and the vigour and so on, that they haven't quite learned to de-escalate a situation. For whatever reason, they tend to escalate it up. Is it your sense or…? Is there an opportunity through the commissioner's office to look at that as a broad-based issue?

I know it's out there, but it seems like nobody's able to kind of wrap their arms around what the implications are — how to offset that, implications for training. Is that a function of the commissioner's office to look at that as a generic issue that may need to be addressed?

D. Ryneveld: Well, I think there's sufficient anecdotal evidence out there both with respect to the RCMP — who, by the way, are looking for thousands of new recruits across Canada…. It's very difficult for municipal police officers to recruit for municipal and the RCMP to recruit enough members to fill all the vacancies they have. I also understand that about a year, maybe it's two years ago now — time flies when you're having fun — there was a pension issue that senior officers who had intended to stay longer had to retire by November or take a huge hit on their pensions. A lot of the senior guys left.

To answer your question, I believe there's sufficient anecdotal evidence out there to show that the ranks are being filled with more junior, inexperienced officers. And just like in every business, if you lose your experience, you may gain it in energy. But that energy sometimes also translates into more dealings with the public. You show me an active officer who's out there dealing with people, and you're going to attract complaints — some of them legitimate, but many of them simply because you're in a confrontational situation.

The number of complaints does not necessarily mean that you have worse conduct, but I think it is safe to say that with training and experience, officers might deal with matters in a less confrontational manner than when they first come out of training. I mean, it's so in every profession.

If you ask whether the age grouping of our officers out in the field and the lack of senior field trainers is a problem — yes. Do I think it accounts for an increase in our stats? I don't know. I suspect that probably it would account for some of the increase, yes. The good thing is, of course, in two or three or four years those junior officers who came in will have started to get more training, and hopefully that will decrease the amount of unnecessary conflict resulting in complaints.

B. Simpson: I have another couple of issues here. Is it a function of your office to be able to look at those things in a more proactive way, or is it purely a complaints-driven process?

It strikes me that this is a particular circumstance. As you've indicated, it's more anecdotal than having hard data to work from. But being able to make comment on that with respect to resources, to training, to mentorship may prevent a whack of complaints coming in around this very issue. So does the office have the capacity to look at things in a more proactive way?

D. Ryneveld: My present resourcing does not permit me to do that. In that respect, you're right. If I were to come to you and ask for more money so I could get a research officer to look at those kinds of issues…. And that's not the only area that we might be able to do something in the interim.

But I have to be careful that…. We are a complaint-driven system. I can't operate outside the scope of my mandate. My mandate is to handle complaints in the police. The Solicitor General is in charge of policing. The Solicitor General, through Mr. Begg — he's got various titles, but you probably all know who he is — looks at those kinds of things like staffing and resources.

A lot of this may well be resolved if the police forces themselves receive more budget to get more officers. That is not within my purview. It's not my mandate. If the legislation made it part of my mandate, I would probably ask for research officers to see what recommendations we might get from the complaint side to share with the Solicitor General, to work cooperatively. Even though I'm an independent officer and he's a minister, I do believe there are things that we could do that might assist the Solicitor General in addressing some of these concerns that impact on us and impact on the public.

Frankly, you'll see we have a pretty lean office. When you consider I only have two analysts in the Vancouver office and two analysts in the Victoria office…. Plus I

have Mr. Brown, who is sitting here, as my deputy, who is partly media spokesman, partly administrative person, partly analyst. We all wear hats. In a lean operation that's exactly what you do. You're multi-tasking.

Could we benefit from another person? Could that allow us to maybe look at some trends or stats rather than just deal with the files as they come in the door? Perhaps. But I guess I have been thinking that we should wait until Joe Wood's report so we know exactly what we need. But if it's going to take another year…. Yeah. It's a priority, isn't it? It's a weighing of priorities. How important is that, or do we leave that to the Solicitor General? I haven't turned my mind to that.

B. Simpson: With the indulgence of the Chair, with respect to the work that Josiah Wood is doing, we've got another trend going on, and that is the trend towards private security and registered private security. I know we have two competing interests even in Quesnel where lots of events now…. In order to get municipal approval for the event, there's a requirement that you give a guarantee of private security — not through the RCMP anymore. I know that gated villages and so on are moving in that trend of private security.

The other thing that we've got now, of course, are transit cops that have been given some additional powers and some additional armament to walk around with respect to transit. Then the alternate justice system, where the police are directly involved in some kind of avoidance of the court system and moving to alternate justice.

Will the work that Mr. Wood is doing…? Or has your office considered a scope expansion to begin to look at those other ways of policing that we seem to be moving into without a lot of forethought as to what the implications of that are?

D. Ryneveld: Again, an excellent question. I can tell you that the GVTAPS, which is the Greater Vancouver Transit Authority police service, is already part of our mandate. They're already under our jurisdiction, as of January, I believe, of last year. They're now a police force, basically, that falls under us.

There are a number of others, like private security guards. Many of them also have interactions with the public. They are not under our jurisdiction.

We've recently had — and it's in my report — conversation with the conservation and environment people. There are 144 of them, or something like that, in something like 40 or 60 locations across the province. There are active discussions about making them part of being responsible to our office as well — that we have jurisdiction — because they have powers of arrest; they carry guns; they do a number of things. They interact with the public like police officers. It makes sense. So those numbers would increase our mandate.

To answer your question about Josiah Wood's report, I understand that he — at our request, as well — has been looking at the definition of what kind of officers…. There are so many different labels — you know, special constables and all kinds of things. Look at those labels to see who would fall under the definition of being the kind of officer that would be subject to part 9 of the Police Act.

Part of the problem, of course, is the labelling of part 9 of the Police Act. We shouldn't be — and I'll make this pitch again — part of the Police Act under the Solicitor General's ministry. Just like many of my colleagues, we should have a separate statute, the Police Complaint Commissioner's act, like the Ombudsman Act or the Privacy Commissioner's act.

Part of the difficulty I've had, of course, is that because we're part 9 of the Police Act, which is under the Solicitor General's mandate, I can't bring forward my own legislative agenda. I can't go straight to the Attorney General and say: "This is what I would like. Would you please put it on the list." It's got to be when the Solicitor General thinks it's appropriate, because he's got part 8 and all those other parts to worry about.

If we're starting to add other groups to it, my philosophical argument is set out at great length in my White Paper as to why we should have a separate statute. But really, when it comes right down to it, I'm more interested in making sure that the effective amendments are contained in some piece of legislation, regardless of what you call it.

That's the other point I'm trying to make. If we're going to include all of these other kinds of agencies under our office's mandate, they might not fit very neatly under the Police Act in any event. Maybe that's a good reason why…. It adds further credence to my call for a separate piece of legislation.

R. Lee: I have a couple of questions. You mentioned the success of the enrichment program and promotion of diversity. I also understand that you mentioned in the report that 13 different languages have been used to translate form 1 and the brochure. How is that information getting distributed to the communities?

D. Ryneveld: Again, a good question. We took some of the money you gave me last year in order to get the translations of the form 1 complaint form and the brochure saying how our office operates — how things get done. They're on our website. Of course, not all of these people have access to computers to look at our website, so we've gone out into the community.

Mr. Brown, in particular, I think, has met with various agencies, including a group called MOSAIC. We've had a session here in Victoria where we had six different ethnic groups with their individual translators all in the same room and getting translation about our presentation. We put on PowerPoint presentations.

We're also working with the RCMP, actually, right now in order to find how we can collectively serve the public better. I won't say it's through one-stop shopping, because we have separate legislation, but to take the mystery out of: "Oh, you've come to the wrong place. Too bad." We're putting their address on our brochures. We're working with them to get our address on theirs.

It depends on what side of the street you're on whether or not there's an RCMP officer dealing with you or a municipal police officer.

For example, we had a radio show where one of our investigative analysts and one of the RCMP oversight body got together on the Vietnamese radio and had a talk show, basically, on the way that various offices operate and how you can make a complaint. We're starting now to get some responses to that outreach in the language that we've published the document in, so that's creating a little bit of an: "Uh-oh, now we have to be able to read that." So we're now scrambling to figure out how we deal with the complaint that's come in. Eventually, we may have to deal with everything in English, but at least it allows for them to remove the mystique and prevent that barrier to making initial contact. Once we have contact, we can arrange for interpreters or translators or whatever to follow up.

But again, gentlemen, as you can appreciate, it costs money when you have to go outside of your own in-house expertise for translation. That's why I needed that. I think I asked for $50,000 last year — did I not? I haven't spent anywhere near that, but if we're going to go ahead, I'm going to need it in the next budget in case I do need it.

R. Lee: Another question, Mr. Ryneveld. Congratulations on the success of CACOLE. I was part of one of the receptions….

R. Lee: I notice that there are a lot of delegates from the European countries but not many actually from the Asia-Pacific countries. Do we have statistics on those delegates — where they are from and also in the future? Because we are part of Asia-Pacific.

We notice that also the legal systems are different. Legislation is different for some of the countries. Are there any plans to expand the scope of the delegates from Asia-Pacific countries?

D. Ryneveld: Yes, the lack of attendance from Asia-Pacific countries was not due to lack of effort on my part to communicate with them and to get them to come. I must tell you that in Hong Kong they have an independent agency who wanted to come, but they had a conflict in timing and they couldn't come.

The Chinese, mainland China. We have had many sessions with them, sending their academics, their chiefs of police. Various individuals in the justice system have come over to meet with us, with Mr. Brown and I, both in Victoria and in Vancouver. They're at the inquiry stage, sort of like: "Why do you need oversight of police, and if so, how do you do it?" They're not yet at the stage where they are participants in the process. But they certainly send delegations here to come and meet with us and with the RCMP. We've been doing a lot of sort of outreach in that respect. But they're not quite where we are in terms of…. They don't have an oversight body yet, but we're actively promoting that.

The other thing that came out of the CACOLE conference is that Chile — not exactly known for, shall we say, democratic principles — is also interested in creating something. They've been in contact with us to see how we can help them set something up.

We are being looked at, I think, by a lot of countries as an agency that can assist them in setting up their own democratic oversight of police systems. Part of the problem is that they need to do a lot of work in getting their police forces in shape first. There's some basic work that needs to be done before you can start looking at oversight.

We are also working with the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, which is headed by Mr. Justice Lance Finch of the British Columbia Court of Appeal. They are also working with China, and they're working with some of the other countries. I've been asked to be on their committee. We're liaising with them to see how we can help foster justice.

I look at oversight of policing as a component of the justice system. I hope I've answered your question.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Dirk, I want to thank you for coming before our committee today. A lot of the discussion today was somewhat outside of what you've put forward. We're certainly discussing a report that hopefully is coming forward soon. At that time, depending on the timing, the recommendations and the actions to be taken, I know you probably will be back before our committee to deal with some of that.

Our committee will give due consideration to the presentation you've put before us. We will consider that as it presently exists and, again, will most likely be meeting with you in the future should recommendations be brought forward.

It's my understanding that Mr. Wood's work may actually have…. I'm guessing that through his work on this recommendation, he's dealing with one of the key issues you're talking about, which is an independent statute to amend the 1998 legislation, I believe, that encompasses your work today.

D. Ryneveld: Thank you, Mr. Chair and hon. Members. I'm very grateful for the opportunity. I look upon this not just as an opportunity to tell you what funding I need, but as I've mentioned to you before, I'm very passionate about this area of work. I just love to have an audience so that I can share some of my views about what I hope to accomplish and where we are.

I've got to tell you that if anybody ever offers you a job with the word "complaint" in its title…. It's not quite as much fun, because not everybody is really all that eager about what you're doing. Here's my opportunity, and I thank you again. I appreciate your interest in the work of our office.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): The committee will take a five-minute recess. We will reconvene with our next statutory officer — Mr. Oliver, our Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner. We stand recessed for five minutes.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): At this time we will reconvene the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. I would like to welcome Mr. Oliver, who is our Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner in British Columbia. Good morning, Mr. Oliver, and welcome to the committee.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I will turn the microphone over to you for a few words and then open it up, if members of the committee have any questions of your presentation.

H. Oliver: I'm going to be very brief, as I always try to be. As you know, unlike the Police Complaint Commissioner, I do not welcome an audience. I'm not talking about this committee. I've tried for the past nine years to operate my office in such a way that you don't read my name or the names of MLAs with problems in the media. If you do read them, I've fouled up somewhere along the line. That does not mean, of course, that I'm not delighted, as always, to have the opportunity of appearing before this committee.

Once again, Mr. Chairman, my small department is well within budget. I have consulted my crystal ball, which leads me to believe that we should come in comfortably under budget at the end of the fiscal year, as we always try to do. But I claim no infallibility for my crystal ball, and it could well cloud over between now and the fiscal year's end. Experience has shown that in political life, especially federal political life, a whiff of scandal may suddenly appear and galvanize the conflicts commissioner into investigative action. If that happens, of course, that blows the top off our budget estimates.

In the past year we have had no formal inquiries to conduct, a few investigations, but as usual, the emphasis of my office has been on the practice of political preventive medicine. As long as we can continue along those lines — and I'm delighted to say that with the strong support of the leaders of both political parties and all members of the House, the system does seem to be working — we will be able to continue running my small operation at minimal cost. It commonly is not the prime object of my office, but it is certainly one object.

I always remind myself that I've been a taxpayer much longer than I've been a conflicts commissioner. It's very easy, I think, in public life to persuade yourself that throwing money at various problems is going to solve them. As far as I'm concerned, what I try to do is stop the problems from arising in the first place.

Once again, members of all parties have come to me with all sorts of problems or with a question of whether something was a problem at all. We've dealt with these things on that basis. That is an effective and cost-effective way of dealing with things.

I've been told by a member of my staff how much under budget we hope to be this year. I have the strict injunction from her not to communicate that to this committee in case the crystal ball clouds over. I was going to say that I hope to be able to continue along these lines in the future, but by the end of the coming year you will probably have a successor. I will have been here for ten years. That seems to me long enough, and it may seem to you too long.

I may or may not appear before you once again, but I think that my tenure of office is drawing peacefully to its close. It would be a good thing, I think, for new blood to come into this or any other office. However, all I'm here to tell you is that we are in good shape financially. We don't want any more money. When I suggested a year or two ago that we might even ask for a small reduction of our budget, I got furious telephone calls from two deputy ministers wanting to know what the hell I was doing.

There it is, Mr. Chairman. I shall be happy to deal with any questions members may have.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you so much, Mr. Oliver, for your presentation. As always, we love to hear from you when you come before this committee.

I will look to members of the committee, if they do have any questions. The request will be, as I believe was indicated in the previous year's report…. The annual budget would be $321,000, for the members' information.

B. Simpson: Just one question with respect to the need to have the contingency capabilities there in the event that there is some larger investigation that needs to be undertaken. I'll reveal my own ignorance. I'm not sure how that would work. You've got your normative budget, and you go through the year on that, but in the event that something did happen, how is that budget covered off? Do you carry a shortfall and then have it covered at the end of the year? Or do you come forward and ask for explicit funding for that investigation?

H. Oliver: Really, the only time it has happened was with the Glen Clark inquiry, which was a substantial, major inquiry, not because the alleged contravention was that enormous but because we were dealing with the Premier of the province. There, I just let it be known that we were going to need more money and that we would try and do it as economically as we could.

I think you have to face the fact that a formal inquiry is going to cost anywhere from $200,000 up. That's one of the reasons why I try to avoid them like the plague. It's a question of expense. Normally, what we do if informal consultation can't settle the matter is that we then embark on an investigation. That we can normally handle within our budget.

For instance, we have, I think, $12,000 for professional fees in our budget. I've used none of that. Basically, I

act as my own legal adviser in many of these situations and find it unnecessary to turn to people with possibly less experience than myself to be advised on that.

But I may well get the sort of situation where a complex legal opinion is required and where I don't have the time to do that or, to put it differently, where my time availability would be so limited that the opinion would take too long and the thing couldn't be dealt with promptly, as it should be. Alternatively, I may get the sort of situation where an accountant's expert advice is required, and I've never been any good at money at all, so I would have to get advice there.

These are not matters which arise on a daily basis. As I say, the day-to-day legal problems I can take care of, generally, without outside assistance. It's only when you get into the formal inquiry thing — with court reporters and counsel on both sides and witnesses appearing under subpoena and the need to travel to other parts of the province — that we then throw up our hands and say: "It can't be done within the budget." The members of this committee are well aware of that, and I have been assured in the past that if the need arises, the money will be found.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Just before I go to our next speaker, Bob…. As well, following through on what Mr. Oliver said — for our committee, as for Mr. Oliver or any other statutory officer of the Legislature — upon conclusion of the budgets and the recommendations, should they encounter anything out of the ordinary, they have the ability to come before our committee again to request additional funds for unforeseen issues that weren't there in the original presentation.

J. Horgan: I thank the commissioner for his presentation. I just wanted to ensure that if there is any reduction in budget, it wouldn't be in the cookie budget, because that's certainly the highlight of any visits I've had to your office. I would just appeal to you to maintain the same level of funding for the cookies and sweets that go with the tea and coffee.

H. Oliver: May I say that the funding for the cookie budget comes entirely out of my own pocket, as do such extravagances as our annual Christmas staff lunch. These are things paid for by the commissioner. I can't see any reason why the long-suffering taxpayers of this province should be stuck with feeding my staff.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Mr. Oliver, I see no further questions from members of our committee. I do want to take a moment, though, to thank you for the work you do on behalf of not only ourselves as elected officials but all British Columbians in your mandate to represent issues that are brought before you. I want to thank you on behalf of our committee, on behalf of all the elected members of this House today and over the last ten years, should you not be here to present before us next year.

It's always my hope that you will be, but should things change, as you indicated they may, I want to make sure you understand how grateful we truly are for the work you have done on our behalf. I wish you all the very best and a very merry Christmas and a happy and safe new year.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Members, we have reached the point in our agenda today for discussion on preliminary deliberations regarding the presentations we have heard here today. It would be my intent that we move in camera for those deliberations. I would look for a motion to that effect.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Just to report, we had discussion on the presentations this morning and the development of our future recommendations and report. We discussed the three presenters here today, and we'll be moving forward on that.

Our committee does meet again on the 11th of December to hear from the Merit Commissioner, the Ombudsman and the Auditor General. Following that, we will have further deliberations on the development of our report.

I want to thank the members of the committee for their work to date. Certainly, a great deal has gone into the development of our Finance Committee report that has been done. We are now in the process of reviewing our statutory officers' presentations. It will be my intent as Chair and the intent of this committee to have a report deposited prior to Christmas for public consideration as well.

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REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES