Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 45 — Thursday, December 14, 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 Chief Electoral Officer		1077
	H. Neufeld
	N. Western
	L. Johnson

Office of the Representative for Children and Youth		1086
	A. Seckel
	M. Turpel-Lafond

Committee Report to the House		1092

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


Witnesses:	Linda Johnson (Elections B.C.) Harry Neufeld (Chief Electoral Officer) Allan Seckel (Deputy Attorney General) Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Representative for Children and Youth) Nola Western (Elections B.C.)

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to welcome everybody to what I would expect to be our last meeting of this year.

Today we have two of the independent statutory officers of the Legislative Assembly presenting to us. We will begin with our first presenter. Joining us, we have Harry Neufeld, who is our Chief Electoral Officer. As well, joining Harry are Linda Johnson and Nola Western. I believe I have that correct.

I'd like to welcome you to our committee. With that, Harry, I know that you have put forward your presentation. The members have received it and gone through it. So at this time I will turn it over to you for the presentation to be brought before us here today.

H. Neufeld: Good afternoon, committee members. First, I'd like to provide a very brief introduction of my two colleagues. On my left, your right, is Linda Johnson, who holds the position of Deputy Chief Electoral Officer. Linda was recently the recipient of a long-service award, marking 25 years with the B.C. public service. Most of these years were with Elections B.C., and we consider her the living, breathing corporate memory of our organization.

On my right, your left, is Nola Western, a chartered accountant who holds the position of director of electoral finance and corporate administration. Nola's responsibilities cover all aspects of administering the province's political financing rules as well as managing the internal financial operations at Elections B.C. She's a former member of the Auditor General's staff, and she's been working in this area at Elections B.C. for the last ten years.

On my behalf, both Linda and Nola have had to carry additional management responsibilities over the last year, while I have been acting in the dual role as an electoral boundaries commissioner as well as the Chief Electoral Officer.

The boundaries work has taken me away from the Elections office for a significant amount of my time, and it appears that this arrangement will be continued until the boundary commission's work is completed, mid-February 2008.

The three of us are pleased to meet with you today to discuss Elections B.C.'s budget requirements for the coming fiscal year and to provide you with some projections for future years. As with our previous presentations to this committee, the format I propose to follow is, first, I'll provide some introductory remarks to set the context for our budget proposal. You should have in front of you a printed version of the Elections B.C. 2007-2010 budget proposal document, which was distributed to you late last week, I believe.

For your reference, we have also provided a written copy of our most recent annual report and service plan, tabled with the Legislature in June and September of this year. After my remarks, Nola will walk you through the financial figures contained in our proposal, providing background and a more detailed explanation of the numbers. Then Linda will review in greater depth some of the significant shifts we're proposing for Elections B.C.'s budget priorities, and I will conclude with a summary of my office's fiscal requirements.

Following my final summary, Linda, Nola and I will be pleased to answer any questions committee members may have. We should have approximately 45 minutes available for that discussion. I trust this format is acceptable to the Chair.

H. Neufeld: Thank you. When we met with this committee last year, Elections B.C. was challenged with a number of commitments that had been made in the throne speech of September 12, 2005. My office was anticipating a significant amount of work and expenditure required to start preparing for a provincewide enumeration and a dual-system boundary redistribution — all being done in the same time frame as conducting a referendum on electoral reform that was to be done in tandem with local government elections, which were scheduled to be held on November 15, 2008.

In addition, there was a requirement to prepare for two different kinds of provincial general elections: one under the current single-member plurality system and another under the Citizens Assembly–designed, multi-member, single transferable vote system. The general election of May 2009 was to be conducted under the electoral system that voters chose during the referendum. That all changed on April 27th of this year when the Premier announced a shift in the timing of the referendum on electoral reform, which will now be held in conjunction with the May 12, 2009, provincial general election.

We are grateful that government reconsidered the timing of the referendum because we believe the new time frame represents much better value for taxpayers. For example, as a result of the Premier's announcement, my management team reworked our current-year activity plan and determined that we are in a position to return 61 percent of the event-related funding provided to us for this fiscal year.

We have advised Treasury Board that $1.8 million of this year's allocated budget will not be spent. Committee members should take this as an indication of my office's commitment to fiscal responsibility and sound financial management. We have brought this approach to a series of budget challenges we have faced in recent fiscal years.

To put our budget proposal in context and for the benefit of new committee members, I'd like to briefly provide a budget taxonomy and an overview on Elections B.C.'s recent budget history. What we'll be presenting today are actually our proposals for three different budget types: an annual operating budget, an

annual capital budget and next year's portion of a multi-year, event-related budget.

Our annual operating budget is distinct from our annual capital budget, but the two are tightly linked due to government accounting rules. These rules require capital projects and capital assets to be paid back from future-year operating budgets. Therefore, if we decided to build a new component in a computer system to support event operations, we would first need to obtain sufficient capital funds to finance the construction and implementation of such a system. But then we would need to pay back a yearly 20-percent depreciation value out of the following five years' annual operating budgets.

Accounting rules prevent us from associating the capital costs of such systems to a particular event. The reasoning is that we would use such a system for multiple future events. To put these budget components in perspective, for next year we are proposing an annual operating budget of $7.3 million and an annual capital budget of $1.3 million. However, $945,700, or 13 percent, of next year's proposed operating budget will be associated with amortization of capital projects and assets.

Our annual operating budget is also distinct from our event-related budget. Elections B.C. would not exist were it not for electoral events such as elections, by-elections, referenda, enumerations, recalls, initiatives and boundary redistributions. However, the actual cost of conducting these events is accounted for per individual event, and the cost and conduct of each event is reported on separately from ongoing operating costs. This is a statutory requirement.

You may remember seeing several such reports — I've brought a few of them with me — that were tabled in the past year reporting on the targeted numeration, the general election and the referendum on electoral reform of 2005. The total cost of these three events, covering several fiscal years, was $27.4 million. The general election costs were 22.9 percent of this total, which calculates out to $8.05 per registered voter. Committee members may be interested to know that this cost was exactly one cent more per registered voter than in the previous election. For the 2001 general election, the cost was $8.04 per voter.

Our budget request to cover costs directly associated with preparing for pending electoral events in the next fiscal year totals $1.64 million. Event-related budgets will increase each year leading up to the May 2009 election and referendum and then may or may not diminish substantially, depending on the result of that referendum.

The event-related costs we budget for are only one year in advance and cover only scheduled events. Should on-demand events occur, such as by-elections or recall petitions, the protocol that has been agreed to is that I write to the Chair of this committee as soon as an event is underway and advise on the additional costs my office expects to incur. If the committee wishes to review that budget request, a special meeting is held to discuss the details.

That's the taxonomy — three types of budgets: ongoing operating, capital and event-related. Now on to our recent budget history.

Since the fall of 2001 the primary focus of Elections B.C.'s interactions with this committee has been on my office's ongoing operating budget: the core cost for keeping the electoral administration machinery operating for the province and for making sure the infrastructure, information, materials and skills are in place to conduct electoral events, whether they are scheduled or on demand.

Starting in fiscal year 2002-2003, my office began dealing with significant reductions to our annual operating budget made at the request of this committee. Three years of budget cuts saw us arrive at a new base budget of $6.5 million annually, which was 35 percent less than the Elections B.C. annual operating budget at the start of this decade.

For the past three fiscal years my office has maintained the same base budget of $6.5 million for annual operations. To achieve the reduced annual expenditures, we closed all of our regional offices, extensively reorganized our headquarters' structure and operations and scrutinized every aspect of our day-to-day business, looking for opportunities to gain efficiencies and reduce costs. We did our part, and I'm proud of our success in meeting the fiscal challenge that this committee originally presented to my office in November of 2001.

In terms of its ongoing operating costs, Elections B.C. has now been dealing with smaller budgets for five years and a flatline budget for the past three years. Meanwhile, costs beyond our control have continued to climb, and some capital cost projects can no longer be delayed.

Since 2001 accumulated inflation has reached almost 9 percent. The government's negotiated salary increases for public servants must now be factored into our budgets. Without adjustments to our base budget to reflect these impacts, Elections B.C. is constrained in meeting its obligations and providing the service levels expected by the public, political parties, the media and elected MLAs.

It is now time to address these pressures and to adjust the baseline operating budget for my office. Elections B.C. is requesting a modest increase to our base budget. The bulk of this is required to address the impacts of inflation and other external influences over which we have no control. However, it also reflects the need to slightly expand our core complement of staff.

Our workload continues to climb. There are 11 more political parties today than in 2002. Our voters list has increased by over 717,000 persons during that period. The use of temporary and contract staff to address resource shortfalls is becoming increasingly costly in terms of salary and related costs, time spent building the specialized skills we need and the loss of knowledge when these resources inevitably leave. Added to this is the difficulty in recruiting skilled personnel for short-term work.

With falling unemployment rates, Elections B.C. is competing with many other organizations to recruit and retain staff. Election administration is a specialized business with a significant learning curve. We need to

invest in core staff who will provide government with a solid return on that investment. We believe that establishing an adequate, knowledgable, skilled and stable core complement of staff is fiscally more responsible than temporary stopgap alternatives.

These staff will be even more critical as Elections B.C. shifts resources into two areas where we have public visibility and where we believe the risks are significant. The first is in public education. Electoral administrators across Canada are placing more emphasis on public education programs to combat declining voter participation, especially among youth, and to encourage greater understanding and engagement in all aspects of the democratic process.

Elections B.C. intends — through strategic partnerships with key players such as the Legislative Assembly, the Pacific centre for social innovation, and literacy and disability groups — to develop democracy education programs that will engage the public and challenge them not just to participate on election day but to embrace the full range of their democratic rights.

The second is in the area of financial disclosure. This is an area of significant risk to Elections B.C. We enjoy a very effective working relationship with the financial agents of political parties, constituency associations and candidates, and have been extremely successful in supporting the timely disclosure of political financing information. We had no delinquent filers regarding the 2005 election or the annual filings of party and constituency associations that needed to file at the end of March 2006.

Accurate, timely and accessible disclosure is crucial to maintaining public confidence in the way money interacts with the political process. Beyond ensuring timeliness of disclosure, we need to add resources so that the quality and accuracy of reporting and its accessibility for public scrutiny can be significantly improved. Identifying errors early allows us to work with financial agents, many of whom are volunteers, to ensure their compliance with reporting requirements. Elections B.C. intends to invest resources to improve our ability to identify systemic errors and intervene in a timely way. Without this investment, we face the risk that public confidence in political financing disclosure will be eroded.

I'll now turn things over to Nola, who will explain Elections B.C.'s budget and how it's structured. She will walk you through our budget proposal in some further detail.

N. Western: Good afternoon. As I'm sure you've heard from every office, we are unique. For Elections B.C., our uniqueness comes from the nature of our business and the long business cycle. While the other offices of the Legislature are primarily focused on investigations and reporting, that is a very small part of the work that Elections B.C. does.

Elections work is very operational and logistical. Although general elections in B.C. occur every four years, they are enormous undertakings. We must spend a considerable amount of time planning and preparing for them — likewise for other major events, such as enumerations, electoral district redistributions and referenda. We have to dedicate both financial and human resources to such events in the years leading up to them. Consequently, as in past years, our budget proposal is separated into funding for ongoing operations, capital asset acquisition and event-related funding.

Page 1 of the document is our statement of operations, and it presents historical financial information combining ongoing and event-related operations. It shows our budget and actual expenditures for fiscal year 2005-2006 and the actuals for 2004-2005. This statement includes funding and costs associated with electoral events such as the 2005 general election and the referendum on electoral reform. The statement of operations is shown by standard object of expenditure, or STOB.

You can see that for fiscal 2005-2006, which was the year of the election, we had a surplus of just over $3 million. Several factors resulted in our being able to achieve these savings, including our borrowing government computers before they were deployed to the ministries; prepurchasing of television advertising time at discounted rates, which we were able to do because of the fixed election date; and reducing the volume of mail sent during the targeted enumeration.

On page 2 you will find the meat of this budget proposal, the summary ongoing financial outlook. As in prior years, this document refers only to our ongoing budget, not budgets related to events. The first column shows the budget for the current year. Last December this committee recommended that our ongoing operating budget for '06-07 be $6.508 million. But like the budgets of the ministries and other offices, this budget was adjusted by Treasury Board early in the new year to accommodate an increase in the employee benefit rate. This rate is set by government annually, and last year it was set very late in the budget cycle. As a consequence, our voted appropriation was increased by $37,000.

This document shows the ongoing operating budget by core business area. Administrative costs that support all business areas are shown separately. These include salaries and benefits, amortization — or depreciation, if you will — building occupancy charges, office expenses and corporate information technology services. Notes on page 3 describe the nature of each of these costs and the business areas.

For 2007-2008 you'll notice that we are requesting an increase to the ongoing operating budget. This increase is only $777,700; it's less than 12 percent. It will be the first increase to our ongoing operating budget in five years. It accommodates the general wage increases negotiated by government that are scheduled for April 1, 2007. It also includes an increase to our amortization budget. That is due to new investment and capital assets, which I'll talk about in a moment. Building occu-

pancy charges, or rent, are due to increase, and this figure comes from ARES, the accommodation and real estate services group of the Ministry of Labour and Citizens' Services, which replaced BCBC.

Office expenses and telecommunications are expected to increase by about $6,000, and part of this is due to an increase to the rates of our service level agreement with the Public Service Agency. We have been able to decrease our corporate information system costs by updating the underlying infrastructure to the electoral information system, EIS. Our information systems include e-mail, Internet, intranet, network charges and maintenance of EIS.

District electoral officers, or DEOs, are paid a modest stipend of $50 per month between elections. Although in the past we've included these stipends in our ongoing operations, we are rethinking that strategy and have actually delayed appointing DEOs. The ability to delay appointing DEOs is one of the benefits of a fixed date.

The funds previously earmarked for DEO fees will be used to ensure event readiness. As you know, even with fixed dates for general elections, Elections B.C. has to be constantly ready to run by-elections, recalls and initiative petitions. Although we may not incur significant costs unless such an event does come to pass, we must spend some money in maintaining the state of readiness. These costs are modest, and they include forms, guides and software maintenance.

Address and boundary maintenance includes the work we do between electoral district redistributions to maintain the address register, the Digital Road Atlas and voting area boundaries. Since the Electoral Boundaries Commission is working now to define and recommend new electoral district boundaries, in 2007-2008 our geography staff will be concentrating on planning and preparation for implementing the new boundaries, so our ongoing operating costs will decrease slightly.

We have been able to realize some savings in ongoing voters list maintenance by re-platforming our electoral information system and thus reducing the amount paid to the workplace technology services group of Shared Services B.C.

Linda will speak about the need for us to continue improving the levels of compliance with the electoral financing provisions of the Election Act, and you will notice an increase in the level of recommended funding for political entity reporting. The additional funds will be used to ensure timely review of all financial reports filed by over 200 entities and supplementary audits and investigations.

We are also working on a systems development project that we told you about last year, which is an on-line searchable database of political contributions. In order for that database to be populated with the political contribution information filed by political parties and constituency associations, we will need to data-enter the information. So there are some funds aside for that.

With regard to the officer salary and benefits, the Election Act ties the Chief Electoral Officer's salary to that of the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court. The Legislative Assembly has approved an increase equal to the change in the consumer price index, effective April 1, 2007. We must continue our efforts in voter education, and Linda will speak more about our plans in that area. You can see the corresponding increase in the budget.

For the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 fiscal years, we've adjusted the salary amounts by the future wage increases announced by government. Amortization has been calculated based on our planned capital expenditures. Most other items have been increased by an inflation factor of about 2.5 percent. Our budget for staff or FTEs has increased from 39 to 44. Again, Linda will elaborate on our needs in that regard.

The capital assets budget is on page 4 of the package. In 2007-2008 we will start upgrade projects on our statement-of-votes system and our voting results system in preparation for the 2009 general election. We must also replace some of our office automation servers and migrate data to new servers for the integrated Digital Road Atlas, which will be replaced later this fiscal year.

Also, a new BAT processing system for processing voter data from external sources — such as ICBC, Vital Statistics, on-line voter registration and the federal national register of electors — will be developed. The current system has separate interfaces for each of these sources.

Our capital plans for 2008-2009 include replacing our current Windows operating system and, in preparation for enumeration of voters, enhancing the on-line voter registration system and the reporting database of the electoral information system. EIS was developed in 1998, and it is nearing the end of its useful life. In 2008-2009 we must invest in infrastructure to support the development and testing of a replacement.

On page 5 you will see two pie charts. The top one illustrates our proposed ongoing operating budget for 2007-2008, and the bottom one is for the current fiscal year. Although we are requesting a relatively minor increase, you can see that there is very little change in the allocation of funding between the two years.

Our ongoing operating budget by standard object — or STOB — is shown on page 6. These STOBs are common for all government offices and ministries, and they illustrate the types of expenses incurred rather than the business areas.

As in past years, please keep in mind that if you do review the budget by STOB, the salaries and benefits shown in that budget include temporary employees, whereas for the summary financial outlook on page 2, the salaries and benefits of most temporary employees are included in the relevant business area. So you won't be able to reconcile salaries and benefits between the two budgets.

Page 7 of the proposal has our event budget. This time last year we presented you with a budget request that included just over $2.9 million for the events announced in the Speech from the Throne of September 2005. As you know and have been reminded today, the Premier has since announced that the next referendum on electoral reform will happen during the May 2009 general election.

That changed our world. Although we are still preparing for such a referendum, the timing change has allowed us to avoid spending significant dollars planning and preparing for a possible STV election. As a result, we've been able to save over half of the current year's budget, and so we'll have a surplus at the end of this fiscal of $1.8 million.

For next fiscal year our funding needs for electoral events will also be less than they would have been if the timing of the referendum had not changed. You can see our planned expenditures for 2007-2008, and notes on page 8 provide more information about the nature of the planned expenditures.

L. Johnson: Good afternoon. It's always a pleasure to appear before this committee and tell you about the work that we do and our plans for the future. I'm going to begin where Nola left off, on page 7 of the document before you.

As stated, our current-year budget for event-related activities is just over $2.9 million. But when the referendum date was changed from November 2008 to May 2009, we immediately reviewed our plans and set aside all the activities and associated funding that was no longer necessary this year.

This included nearly all the moneys allocated to STV planning and research and most of the referendum planning moneys. Additionally, the enumeration plan could be scaled back to focus on activities in relation to the combined 2009 events, and our approach to redistribution planning was also modified.

As Nola mentioned, this has resulted in a significant current year surplus in event-related funding. I should note that surpluses in previous years have always been out of event-related funding, not out of our ongoing operating budget.

Next year our event-related funding request is quite modest, just over $1.6 million, as we continue to research, plan and prepare for some very significant events on the horizon. We have identified a requirement for about $30,000 next year to continue our research associated with STV. This funding will allow us to stay abreast of developments in STV jurisdictions, acquire copies of reports, conduct research and identify potential public policy issues in relation to implementation and administration of a STV system.

We've also identified a need for the princely sum of $2,500 for potential staff overtime in relation to supporting development of a legislative model for the 2009 referendum. Government has announced its intention to fund "yes" and "no" campaigns in that referendum, but there is not currently a model to do so, so there is a need for some work in that area.

We will continue our enumeration planning next year, and we'll also incur some preparatory costs as we reconcile our data with the federal voters list. We must also improve our duplicate-checking processes to ensure that list quality is enhanced and to gain maximum efficiency from external data sources. We anticipate costs of about $123,000 for this work in 2007-2008.

Our redistribution efforts will certainly heat up next year. The Electoral Boundaries Commission's preliminary report is due in August 2007. Based on their recommendations at that time, we will begin redistribution of our voting areas — almost 10,000 of them. Voting areas are subdivisions of electoral districts, and the Election Act establishes that a voting area can contain no more than 400 registered voters.

The intent of voting areas is to provide a means of ensuring accessibility of voters to voting places and of assisting in planning of an election, and they are obviously crucial elements in election administration. Many of them are currently overpopulated. A full redistribution of voting areas has not been conducted in over a decade, so this is long overdue.

The Boundaries Commission's final report is due in February 2008, leaving only a year pre-writ for its passage by the Legislative Assembly and implementation by Elections B.C. That's a very tight time frame. Not only are new boundaries implemented and the maps produced, but every residential address in B.C. must be reassigned to an electoral district and voting area and the voters associated with that address moved as well. Errors in electoral district assignments can have disastrous results, including a controverted election.

It's crucial that our system supporting this massive undertaking will be well tested and our data prepared and audited for any issues prior to implementation. This will require a team of highly trained specialist staff to assist us, and we've estimated costs of $760,000 in the 2007-2008 fiscal year for this work.

Our final item for event-related funding is planning and preparation for the 2009 general election. As Nola mentioned, these take years to plan and prepare for. During the coming year we will be recruiting district electoral officers, developing a training plan and accompanying materials, and making improvements based on the 2005 election experience.

We will also be maintaining some additional office space, as finding suitable space closer to the event in Victoria's very tight rental market poses a significant risk to the organization. The costs for the additional space have been fully allocated to the general election for 2007-2008 but are currently relieving pressures as a result of enumeration and redistribution preparatory work.

Our budget needs for next year for the general election are $724,000. This brings our total funding needs for event-related activities to $1.639 million for the coming year, which is actually less than the surplus we're returning this year.

I now ask you to turn to page 2 of the document, and that is the summary financial outlook that Nola described. I want to explain a couple of items in a little more detail. Nola took you through the reasons for each change in our ongoing costs. Obviously, the main driver behind these increases is the fact that we have lost considerable ground to inflation — approximately 9 percent since our budget was first reduced. We have had no increases in five years.

The other reason for changes to our ongoing costs is a shift in focus. We have excellent staff, and many of

them have been with us throughout the budget reductions and resulting reorganizations. I think there are four of us, and if you add us together, we have 100 years of electoral experience combined. We're specialists. We have a deep understanding of our business, and our staff have a very strong commitment to the organization. Although electoral administration isn't rocket science, it's a business of details that takes a long time to learn.

B.C. Stats surveys government employees annually on their level of satisfaction and engagement with their work. In the last survey, Elections B.C. staff reported at higher rates than employees of other statutory officers that their workload and work-related stress is unmanageable. Our staff exceeded the other offices' rates in these categories by 8 percent and 10 percent respectively. This is a very serious issue that we must address.

We want to add five staff to our full-time complement next year. In the past we've relied on temporary staff or contractors to fill in the gaps, but as Harry mentioned, that's a very costly alternative. It's poor for morale, and it doesn't provide a lasting benefit for the investment.

The positions we wish to establish are primarily specialist support roles in areas where there are considerable ongoing workload pressures on our current staff. By establishing these positions now, the staff will be fully trained and knowledgable before the next electoral events are underway, and work assignments can be distributed more equitably.

When we closed our regional offices a number of years ago, we eliminated four management positions. We subsequently merged the voter registration and electoral geography programs and eliminated another management position. However, that last position was one cut too many. The combined program responsible for geographic and voter data has some serious challenges in managing their workload, and the addition of a permanent operations manager is critical. We're currently trying out that role on a temporary basis, and it has been a great improvement for the staff in that area.

Elections B.C. is putting a greater emphasis on planning, and we have developed an in-house planning framework for use in identifying and tracking the incredible number of tasks that must be performed in relation to elections, referenda and other events, and our day-to-day work. We need another planning officer in the event planning and management program to ensure that their ongoing workload is manageable and that sufficient knowledgable resources are available to support event planning and delivery. I should point out that we go from our current 39 positions to over 30,000 in a general election, so infrastructure matters.

We are very dependent on custom software programs for voters list maintenance, results reporting, recall and initiative administration, and so on. These programs, of course, require regular upgrades and improvements, resulting in several IT projects each year. However, it is very costly to have our technology partner or other contracted resources coordinate these projects and work with our staff on testing and implementation. It would be much more efficient and cost-effective to have a knowledgable internal resource perform that role. Therefore, a project coordinator is required for the information technology program area to assist us in that area.

Administrative support at Elections B.C. is shared. We're very democratic. None of the managers, directors or even Harry and I have dedicated administrative support. We use a small pool to cover traditional administrative roles such as reception, records management and clerical support, but we also train our administrative support staff to provide backup and overflow support for things like desktop publishing, database updates and public inquiries.

We require one additional administrative support position as part of our regular complement. That will ensure that services are provided at the lowest possible cost and address some periodic workload issues in other program areas in addition to that.

The final area that requires an additional staff member is electoral finance. When the electoral finance provisions first came into effect a decade ago, a significant number of filing entities missed their first deadline for filing their reports. This was new to everybody, so we understand.

We have worked very hard with these groups and individuals over the years to ensure compliance with the filing deadlines, and we have been very, very successful. Less than 1 percent of filing entities now miss their filing deadlines, and in most of those cases, an extension is granted due to extraordinary circumstances, such as the death of a financial agent.

However, the quality of reporting is very poor, and over 90 percent of the reports we receive contain one or more errors that require correction. This is an area of significant risk, as the media has reported systemic errors in reports filed by political parties and candidates, and members of the public have expressed concern regarding Elections B.C.'s ability to identify such errors effectively and in a timely way.

As mentioned by Harry and Nola, we have begun work on a searchable database of finance reports, which will be of great assistance to the public and to Elections B.C. review staff. We also intend to hire more temporary reviewers prior to the filing deadlines, particularly on the annual finance reports, to ensure timely identification of errors. However, the addition of a permanent reviewer in this program area would facilitate the prompt resolution of issues and would position us to better meet the needs of filing entities and financial agents.

A recent internal survey of financial agents indicates a very high level of satisfaction with the services provided by Elections B.C. However, there is a clear need for more effective training and reporting materials to ensure that the intent of the act for complete and timely disclosure is met and that public confidence is maintained.

The other area of change in our focus is voter education. Our current year budget is $50,000, which is only enough to maintain our website, print and ship voter education kits to teachers of grades 5 and 11, and produce a small amount of general information in print

format. The school kits are very well received, but they do need updating, and they're not enough.

Voter participation in all aspects of democracy is essential to our society. We're currently reviewing best practices and effective innovations in public engagement, and we are exploring a partnership with the public education department of the Legislative Assembly. They have a different but complementary focus, and we believe the two organizations could work very effectively together on programs that meet both of our needs. However, we must bring something to the table.

To be effective, a public education program must be delivered through a variety of media and sustained over a long period of time. Just think how long it took to establish a recycling mindset in our communities and of the great benefits that are being reaped from those initial investments, but it takes time.

The Pacific centre for social innovation is not yet operational, and although voter participation will be one of its focuses, it will not be engaged in actual program or product delivery. As the election and referendum are only a couple of years away, we must begin now to engage voters in understanding how voting works, how democracy fits into their day-to-day lives and why participating is so important.

We are therefore asking for an increase to $150,000 for next year, to enable us to get working on this critical program. I will now turn things back to Harry for his closing remarks. Thank you.

H. Neufeld: As you've heard from Nola, Elections B.C. is asking for an increase to our ongoing operating budget. It's 11.88 percent. The bulk of this is to address inflation and salary increases, which have not been accounted for in previous budget allocations. This is the first request for an increase to Elections B.C.'s operating budget that we've made in five years. Given the rise in the cost of living over the years during which my office held to a reduced baseline, as well as other demands on our operating budget that are beyond our control, I believe that this increase is conservative and reflects our continued commitment to responsible fiscal management.

Further, as Linda outlined, investing in the human resources of my office is necessary to respond to an increasing workload and address areas of risk. It will allow us to build a long-term skilled core complement of staff at lower cost than using short-term, contracted and temporary personnel.

The two strategic priorities Elections B.C. intends to focus on are consistent with society's interests: increased public engagement with electoral democracy and transparent political financing disclosure.

To recap, I'd like to focus your attention on the bottom line of each of the three components of our budget request. I'd be grateful if this committee would recommend to the Legislature the following request of funding for my office: $7,322,700 for our 2007-2008 ongoing operating budget, as per page 2 of our proposal; $1,127,800 for Elections B.C.'s 2007-2008 capital budget, as detailed on page 4 of our proposal; and $1,639,000 in event-related funding for the next fiscal year, as appears on page 7. The total is $10,089,500 as the complete funding request from my office for fiscal year 2007-2008.

At this point I'd like to pass control of the microphone back to the Chair. With agreement, Mr. Lekstrom, we're happy to answer questions that members of the committee might have.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Harry, for your presentation — Nola and Linda — and for a very well presented document to our committee here this afternoon. I'm going to look to members of the committee should they have any questions.

B. Simpson: Thanks for the presentation. It seems like the risk level on the human resources side impacts you on a number of different points: the long-range planning and the kind of work you have to do, the ongoing work you've got — and then as you move towards the election.

One of the things I was curious about was around the district electoral officers. With new boundaries, there are going to be a lot of people there who are going to have to shift to a different boundary arrangement than what they've been used to. As well, we've experienced a number of close elections where there's a heightened level of anxiety both during the election and post-election — during the counting and so on.

This is just a curiosity. I know that in our riding, one of ours who normally comes back is retiring. I'm sure they're not all young spring chickens. I think lots of them do it post-retirement. What's the general age you've got there? Is that a risk — getting good district electoral officers, particularly looking at a boundary change for this next election, where it might be quite critical that you have good, experienced people there?

H. Neufeld: Maybe I'll start, and Linda, you can jump in, because you've been very involved with this.

I inherited pretty well the full slate of district electoral officers when I took office in November 2002. We had to, as a result of the budget reductions, change the arrangements of what the role would be for district electoral officers, because we simply didn't have the field infrastructure anymore to do what we used to do. That caused about a quarter of them to hand in their resignation. At that point, my office had to come up with a way of recruiting the kinds of people we needed to be able to train up to speed quickly to do the job for the election and referendum that were coming.

We invested in establishing kind of a profile of what kind of person makes a good district electoral officer. First of all, they have to be addicted to stress to a certain amount, and they have to have some good judgment. We used a human resources consultant, who came up with a structured method of doing a questionnaire, which we administered via website. Using some of our best examples of district electoral officers, we knew what kind of range we wanted in answering the questions. We selected new district electoral offi-

cers through a process of first shortlisting based on the profile, then doing the classical sort of interview process and then a final determination.

We did fairly well. We need to do better. We got competent people. We didn't get stars in every case. There were a few who were exemplary. We want to follow through with the same kind of approach but maybe ramp up the sophistication a little bit. I'd really like to see the average age of a district electoral officer drop below 70. You're right: the people who are retired are generally the ones who have time for this.

I think the ideal candidate is somebody who is a recent retiree, still has lots of energy and has a good background in administration and in making quick, solid judgments. A retired school principal who's 56 years old might be an ideal kind of candidate.

The Election Act is very beneficial from my perspective, in that six months after the election, all the district and electoral officers are finished their terms and I get to reappoint up to the next election. Given the situation with fixed election dates and a majority government, we didn't accelerate that. We're taking our time to build our approach, and we want to fill the positions.

We're going to have to be kind of tentative about this, because we don't know where the boundaries are going to land, ultimately. We will know after mid-August where the proposed boundaries, at least, are going to land. The idea is that by next fall we're actively in the process of recruiting the kinds of people to get trained up in the following year for the election of 2009.

L. Johnson: Only to say that I do believe that because of changes we've made to our recruiting practices and our training practices, the calibre of our district electoral officers has improved. At the last election we also implemented a comprehensive evaluation process, so they got feedback on all areas of performance, post-event.

They knew that their appointments would expire six months after the event. We were very candid with them that no one was guaranteed reappointment and that while their performance in the last election was certainly going to be taken into consideration, it wasn't the final consideration. It wasn't the final thing.

Most district electoral officers who are of advanced years have chosen not to put their name forward for reappointment. The job is becoming increasingly complex and demanding, and I think there is a recognition that the sort of person that Harry described, someone with lots of energy, a good local network and some really solid business-management skills, is who we're looking for.

One of the comments that you made was tightening the window for hiring. You don't need to have them run as much. You've got a fixed election date and so on. I think what struck me is that we're removing mandatory retirement dates. Most of those principals that retire at 56 go back in and do TOC and all kinds of other things — right? It's becoming a very tight job market, and those individuals become linchpins during that process.

Certainly, it struck me as a huge risk factor as our whole demographic evolves, as our labour situation evolves. If you start tightening the window or doing things to make it less appealing from a remuneration or duration of the work window and so on…. It's just a thought.

I think there's actually a lot of risk in what you're doing here, because it looks like a perpetual change management scenario on all fronts. You've got it in your IT area. You've got it in your base operating. You've got the whole works. As an ex–change management consultant, I'll give you my card on my way out, just in case I retire from this job.

The other area that you've got is on the education side. You mentioned youth. I've looked at some of the material on that in terms of getting youth to vote early, and if you can get them to vote early, then you establish the patterns. What about the other segments of our society that are growing as well? It's two areas: the aboriginal community — because it's a net-growth community — and also the immigrant and ethnic community. Establishing voter patterns in those two communities…. Is that targeted as part of the education campaign?

L. Johnson: It's hard to track voter participation on ethnic lines, because we don't have that data.

The single biggest indicator of your likelihood to vote is age, and you can just see the curve. The second indicator is level of education. The higher your education, to a point, the more likely you are to participate. More and more the research around voter participation is pointing to civic education, not only in the schools but beyond, and sort of raising awareness of what democracy means in your day-to-day life.

We have partnered with some ethnic organizations in the past — such as SUCCESS, which is based in Vancouver — to do public education programs. It's been quite successful. We brought in liaison officers in the last election to target specific ethnic groups, including aboriginal groups and youth, and those were also very successful.

I think for the long term our strategy will be to partner with organizations, social groups, special interest groups and so on that meet the needs locally of the immigrant populations, youth, aboriginal communities — to partner with them on delivering our message. Certainly, the use of liaison officers and the group SUCCESS has suggested that that's an effective approach.

J. Kwan: Ms. Johnson, you mentioned in your presentation that some of the filings with the requirements by financial agents tend to show errors and that it could potentially have significant ramifications for the various campaigns. In your years of experience have you seen any patterns around the areas where errors are made with the filings? Do you have any sugges-

tions, perhaps, to address those types of errors through changes or amendments to legislation so as to prevent or minimize those kinds of errors?

I know that that's a significant issue and concern in every campaign that I've participated in and been involved with — and on all sides, no matter what political party. It's also a big concern, as well, because many financial agents tend to be volunteers, and it's very onerous, very complicated — mind-boggling, to say the least.

I just wonder, from your experience, whether or not you've sort of been able to glean from these errors that are made throughout the various years and various campaigns some suggestions that could be made for improvements.

L. Johnson: Well, this is certainly Nola's area of expertise, but on the point of legislative amendments, we have recommended a number of amendments to electoral finance legislation in a report that was tabled with the House earlier this year. A couple of those amendments specifically would resolve some issues.

But the bigger issue is exactly what you've described: volunteers working with a complex process. That seems to be the single biggest issue that we run into — people just not grasping the rules. But I'll turn it to Nola, who's been working exclusively in this area for some time.

N. Western: When Linda says that 90 percent of them need some sort of amendment…. Some of those amendments are as minor as an adding mistake, or they've carried the wrong number, or they've transposed a number somewhere along the way.

One of the biggest problems that we see is transfers between the political party, its constituency associations and the candidates. All parties have issues with transfers. I think that the big challenge, again, is that they are unsophisticated financial agents. It's very complicated legislation, and it seems to be poor bookkeeping in many, many cases. It's just poor recordkeeping.

Our plan is to try to assist them with some recordkeeping skills and do some sort of recordkeeping guide. We have guides around how to fill in the forms, guides on what the rules are, but we don't have a bookkeeping guide to help them keep the records they need in order to fill out the forms. So that's in the works.

Also, we work one on one with financial agents. When we get a report in and we look at it and find something wrong, we phone the financial agents and try to work one on one with them. That's been very successful, but it's also very time-consuming on our part and the financial agents' part. They're on holiday, or they're at work and they need to go home and get the paper out. It can take several weeks before we actually get to sit down with the person and talk to them about these issues.

That's why we want to hire the people earlier, so that they can start to work on some of the reports before they've even been made public, before the March 31 deadline — get them done with. But I think the biggest issue is the bookkeeping issue.

R. Hawes: In looking through your proposal, you read off a number of positions and what they were going to do with the additional FTEs. I don't see that spelled out in your proposal, other than the dollar terms. I don't see individual descriptions of the FTEs you're looking for and the function that they're going to perform, like you described in the verbal part of your presentation. I would like to see that in writing, if I could, as we contemplate how we're going to handle this over the next few days.

L. Johnson: Certainly. We can provide you with the description of the role, what level we contemplate for the position and the financial impact on our budget. We can certainly provide that.

R. Hawes: The other part of it, though…. As you went through your verbal description, you talked about what needs you have that would be fulfilled by those positions. While it'll be, I guess, in Hansard, I would like to have seen that as part of your budget presentation.

R. Lee: You mentioned that some of those additional staff are actually replacing some of the staff on contract and, also, temporary staff. Do you have the full-time-equivalents of those staff right now?

H. Neufeld: If you went to full-time-equivalency, Elections B.C. varies from its base, which is currently 39 FTEs. Actually, we don't have 39 FTEs at the moment.

H. Neufeld: We fluctuate in terms of the equivalency. If you're saying, "How many people do you have working for you?" it very much depends on what projects are going on, whether you want to include the people who are on the staff of the technology company that we've contracted with.

At the height I'd say it's about 33,000 people in the period during a general election at the most busy day, which is general voting day. That includes all the staff that are working in all aspects. It could be as low as perhaps five additional FTEs at the very lowest period, which might be the week between Christmas and New Year's.

R. Lee: Just to clarify that. Say next year you don't have the five full-time employees. Then what's the anticipated contract work and, also, temporary staff work you would have?

H. Neufeld: It would depend to a large degree on what the budget was, but assuming that you didn't want to budget the FTEs and that therefore the money wasn't there, basically the things that we talked about in terms of our changed focus wouldn't get done. I guess that's the prerogative of this committee: to decide

whether or not what we propose is reasonable. But we can't afford to do things that we don't have money for, and we're saying that the things that we want to do are best done with full-time staff that we can add to our core complement and depend on year over year.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): If I could possibly ask a quick question here on something you just said. My understanding is that you run a complement of 39 FTEs right now. Did you just say that you have a complement of 37? Do we have two vacancies you're trying to fill? Nola actually had mentioned that.

H. Neufeld: We have one vacancy that we're trying to fill. We have two people that work part-time, and we have one FTE position that isn't…. We haven't got a position associated with it right now.

N. Western: The 39 is our FTE budget. We haven't got the money to fill all 39 positions.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I guess I may be just assuming something, but I'll clarify it with you. Your request for the five FTEs that you've put within your budget request…. Should that move ahead, then the use of temporaries would be significantly decreased and would be offset by your full-time-equivalents, I'm assuming.

L. Johnson: A number of the positions that we're asking for are currently not held by temporaries. They're just going begging because we don't have the money. The one that we are currently experimenting with, if you will, is the operations manager in our program area that deals with the voters list and electoral geography, because the program area was struggling too much. So we've used one of our temporary resources to fill that role.

I see no further questions from members of our committee. I do want to thank you all for coming before our committee — Harry, Nola and Linda — and for your presentation. It was very well done. On behalf of our committee and the people of British Columbia, I want to thank you and your staff for the work that you do on behalf of every British Columbian.

As it is Christmas, I do want to extend a very merry Christmas and a happy and safe new year to you all. If you would pass that on to your staff for us, we would appreciate that as well.

H. Neufeld: I'd be happy to pass that along, and the best wishes of the season to all of you as well.

Our next presentation will be brought to us from the Representative for Child and Youth, beginning shortly. Allan Seckel, Deputy Attorney General, will be making that presentation.

The committee will take a five-minute recess at this point and reconvene to hear that presentation.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Members, we will reconvene the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Moving on to our next presentation today, we have the presentation from the Representative for Children and Youth. Mr. Allan Seckel, who is the Deputy Attorney General, is presenting. Also joining us — and I want to welcome her not only to our committee but to British Columbia, on behalf of all British Columbians — is Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, our new Representative for Children and Youth. Welcome, Mary Ellen.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): It is our responsibility as a committee to have the statutory officers present to our committee, based on their budget and plan for the next fiscal year as well as the following two. We are then commissioned to report back to the Legislative Assembly with our recommendations and to do so, so that the Minister of Finance and the Members of the Legislative Assembly have the ability to review our document.

With that, Allan, I will not take up a great deal of time. I will turn it over to you, and we look forward to your presentation here this afternoon.

A. Seckel: I was intending to be brief and leave lots of room for any questions. Let me begin by explaining briefly why I'm here and how we went about trying to construct a budget for the first year of the new independent Office of the Representative for Children and Youth.

I'm here primarily because following the Hughes report…. You will recall that in the Hughes report, he recommended that there be a single transition manager for all of the issues that involve the transition from the office of children and youth regime to the Representative for Children and Youth regime. I was designated as the person who would be responsible for that transition.

In the course of doing that, assisted by two people who are sitting behind me — Wendi MacKay and Deborah Fayad — we were charged with the task of trying to create a budget for the first year of the office of the representative. The timing of that was such that we had to start doing this work prior to the appointment of the representative. So the timing of making a budget available for your consideration meant that this work had to be done before Ms. Turpel-Lafond was able to have much chance of input.

However, fortunately, we have had the opportunity to get at least some input from the new representative, but I want to caution that that's "some" input. What we're presenting to you is not quite a pro forma budget, but it's something that should very much be seen as a first year's budget. It's the best estimate of what is required for the first year. It may be that in the

first year, as we start to see what the office of the representative needs to be and what some of the new statutory functions are, we will find that the budget either is inadequate or is more than adequate and that there may need to be some adjustment in other years.

I'd very much like you to approach this with an open mind from the perspective of this being a best guess on the part of us to try to determine what a budget would be for a new office. Having said that, it's not merely a guess in the sense of taking numbers out of the air. I thought it would be useful to explain in a nutshell how we went about constructing this budget.

For the first part, we went and looked at the functions of the office of children and youth and the budget of that office. That office has been part of the Ministry of Attorney General, so we were quite familiar with the budget and its historical spending. We looked at that and looked at the functions and determined that the core of the functions of the representative was the functions of the office.

The representative's office has additional functions, but the core is the same. So we started by taking that core and saying that this is a starting point, and a reasonable starting point in terms of the expenditures that have actually occurred. What kind of money would be required to do those functions?

We then looked at the act and said: "What are some of the additional functions and some of the additional needs that this representative's office would have?" We then built and added to that budget. If I remember the numbers correctly, I think it turned out to be an additional ten FTEs that would be added to the office.

There's also embedded in the budget a sense of the need to regionalize some of the services, so the possibility of opening an office in the northern part of British Columbia is incorporated in this budget — in Prince George, in particular.

Without getting into the nuances or all of the details of how it was built…. There is an appendix that has some of the details. We have financial people here in terms of knowing some of the specific items that were used to build it. But in a nutshell, that's how we went about it. The 20-FTE process, our existing budget for the office of children and youth, added ten FTEs to try to replicate in our minds what would be required from a staffing perspective to be able to meet the functions of the new office, and then an additional amount to permit for offices in the region — in the northern region, in particular.

I'm not sure, in terms of detail, whether you want me to go through it in any more detail, but I thought that would be a useful place to start and that perhaps that would engender some questions that could be answered by either me or by Ms. Turpel-Lafond.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): The package was presented to us and forwarded. If you could go maybe just to some of the numbers in the budget. I think it's laid out quite well, but if you wanted to touch on those, you probably may clear up some questions before they even come.

A. Seckel: Okay. If you go to appendix A, which is page 9 of the submission — you might want to have that in front of you — that is a single spreadsheet that sets out all the information.

If you start at page 7 of the actual text, there are some…. The main building blocks of the budget are then set out in a more narrative form, starting in the middle of page 7, after "Resource Summary."

What you see is that, primarily, a large part of this budget…. The request totals, in the next fiscal year, $4.8 million. Of that $4.8 million, just over $3 million is salary and benefit costs for 30 FTEs, which includes a number of deputy representatives and all of the staffing that would be required for the type of work that is contemplated by the statutory mandate.

The statutory mandate is set out in the material as well. There is some supplementary material, which incorporates a copy of the text of the act as it was given royal assent in May.

There is then an amount for travel expenses. This would include travel within the province, but it would also include travel to conferences. My experience with the accounts of the office of children and youth is that there is a fairly robust and, I think, necessary attendance at conferences where people with offices similar to the representative meet and share best practices. Also, there are conferences that deal with best practices in relation to child welfare. Those components make up approximately $225,000.

Shared service costs. These are the costs — the infrastructure of government, including information technology, corporate accounting, etc…. That amounts to about $432,000.

Legal services, professional services, etc. There is a publication cost to make sure that the programs are well known. There are inevitably legal costs, as the representative will need independent legal advice on a variety of issues.

Building occupancy costs of about $306,000. Again, these would be included for the next year as one-time costs of creating a new regional office.

Then capital of $580,000. Again, this would include the capital to purchase things like systems, office furniture — sort of the miscellaneous capital that you would expect to create and maintain an office.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. Well, thank you. As you indicated, this is a new position, a new budget, and one that we're starting with.

Mary Ellen, just for your information, as the Select Standing Committee on Finance…. As you get into your new position and as the budget moves forward, if you have any requests, if something isn't working, if you find that it wasn't enough or there have been changes, as a committee, we are mandated to be here for you throughout the year as well. So you can always come back before our committee if something in the initial budget isn't working and we've overlooked something.

Certainly, I want to extend that to you as well, so that whatever the budget is at the end of the day with

the Legislative Assembly's approval, the ability for us to hear from you is there throughout the year and not just one time.

I wonder if I could just speak briefly to the budget, to the extent that I was involved in developing it.

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, the three core functions that have been set out for the representative in the legislation. They're outlined in the brief.

To advocate on behalf of children and youth. One of the things that I've done is looked a bit at the existing advocacy structure that's in place, the number of requests for assistance from the office for children and youth, as I go about setting up an independent office.

A very important part of Justice Hughes's report was that there be effective advocacy in all parts of the province. In order to move forward on that, I worked with Allan and the transition team to look at establishing an office in Prince George or having some type of a gateway-to-the-north office where we would have, perhaps, better coverage and more effective advocacy and a greater opportunity to receive complaints and concerns from children by ensuring that they are addressed within the office of the Representative for Children and Youth. Part of the idea of setting up an office in Prince George or somewhere like that speaks to this first function of advocacy in ensuring that more effective advocacy is undertaken by this office.

The second area is monitoring, auditing and reviewing the services and programs for children and youth provided under the various provincial statutes. That function will be carried out largely in Victoria, but we are looking at adding some additional capacity to what has been here in Victoria.

In particular, you'll see line items in the budget where there has been an increase for IT, for instance. That is to ensure that there is proper expertise to look at data-sharing, data-management standards across government. So the representative can look at the standards that are in place for the best interests and protection of children and ensure that there are integrated data systems. The capacity inside the independent office for IT is a significant part, and that's where you'll see a particular increase in the request over what has historically been there.

The third area is to review and investigate the critical injuries or deaths of children — in this regard, another area in which the office has to build capacity. The idea is of a multidisciplinary team or roster of individuals who will be available within the office of the representative to deal with children's critical injuries or deaths. The notion there is that that initiative will likely be based in Vancouver, because there are individuals who could be part of that roster there. There's an increase requested in that area.

I look forward to, as the office is established formally, building that capacity, making that an effective function, as per the Hughes report, and also looking at the extent to which I might be able to work with the chief coroner on developing a roster where we may share some of those individuals. But there will have to be a multidisciplinary team within my office. So that is another area where you will see line items that are new or different than what has been in place before.

Those are the three key functions that I will be undertaking under the legislation. That gives you some explanation of the additional expenditures that have been put forward. I have had a chance to work on the budget somewhat, but I'm very grateful for the fact that the committee is willing to perhaps hear from me if I need to come back into the year and make some further submissions to you. I'm not sure if I can answer very many questions, seeing as I've only been on the job and appointed for three weeks, but it's been very interesting.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Thank you very much, Mary Ellen. I will look to members of the committee if they have any questions regarding the presentation here today.

B. Simpson: Just a couple of brief ones. We're thrilled to have you here today.

With respect to the resources in Prince George, if you don't happen to find a physical place there, there's a beautiful community just south called Quesnel, where I….

M. Turpel-Lafond: You have no personal interest in that community, I'm sure.

B. Simpson: Do you have a sense, at this juncture, of what kind of presence that might be in terms of the resources and the kinds of bodies that would be there?

M. Turpel-Lafond: What I would be looking at is having a deputy representative appointed there, probably in charge of relations with the aboriginal community — all communities but particularly the aboriginal community — as part of this decentralization and creation of agencies.

There would be, perhaps, a deputy representative assigned to Prince George and probably four other full-time employees in the Prince George office who would be required to cover the north, and then perhaps some virtual office employees in other places in the north. The north is an area where there needs to be a significant effort made to reach out to communities and ensure that there is advocacy but also support for the capacity-building that's undergoing there in terms of delegated child and family service agencies.

B. Simpson: The other follow-up is with respect to the 30 FTEs. How many of those are going to be new folks? We've heard time and time again from all of the presentations about the issue of getting trained, quali-

M. Turpel-Lafond: The approach that I'm taking is one of…. Of course, there is an office there that will cease to exist once this entire act is proclaimed into force. It's been proclaimed in pieces. There are some people who are working there who have expertise and who will continue to be part of the team. There will be a recruitment effort. That is one of the reasons why you'll see a line item with respect to relocation and recruitment. There will be a need to recruit people.

However, I think within the province there are many very qualified people. It's just that there will be more senior people working in these offices in strategic areas. For instance, if you take the multidisciplinary team on child injuries and deaths, there may be a need to recruit, for instance, a pediatric epidemiologist. Now, that might not be someone full-time, but that would be a part-time position, perhaps in affiliation with a university. That is the type of senior position that would be required to do the proper analysis that's needed here.

R. Hawes: In the presentation there's quite…. I appreciate that this is a new budget and brings something together here. There is a lot of: "Oh, we may need this, and we may need that." I just want to make sure that the funding isn't able to move from one line item to another, really, without…. If there is money there that you don't need…. Just as Blair has said, "Come back to us if you need more," I would hope that if there is money there you don't need, we will see it returned at the end of the year rather than moved to different items.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Possibly I could answer that, even as the Chair. I think that is traditionally how it works, Randy, with all of our statutory officer budgets. Any remainder, if there is such, at the end of the year is returned to the Legislative Assembly versus being moved.

R. Hawes: Because this is a new venture and because there was an awful lot of, "Well, we may need this, and we may need that…." I get that that's the way that it has to be. If the funding that is provided is more than adequate to do it…. If the "may" turns out that, "Yeah, don't really need it," I would hope it doesn't get freely moved from one line item to another.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): I think we can all be assured and have full confidence that the money will be used in the best available way if there is a need. Certainly, I think that we as a committee approve the appropriation, not the line item expenditures.

Traditionally, the experience we have seen as a Legislative Assembly and the statutory officers in performing their duties, as was just indicated with our last Chief Electoral Officer…. Money that wasn't expended was brought back, and certainly, it will be covered that way.

R. Hawes: I'm not sure that you're giving me too much comfort in the question I was asking. There is money there for certain FTEs or for…. Occupancy expenses that aren't expended on occupancy expenses or tenant improvements…. I hope they don't move into something else — for example, 31 FTEs instead of 30 because there was some money left over, or something like that.

I would hope that we're kept apprised if there are significant changes to where the money was to be allocated within this budget.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Allan, I'll look to you. With the presentation we've seen, do you have any comments on Randy's question?

A. Seckel: My only comment would be: as someone responsible for a ministry budget, we're only responsible for the bottom line of the budget. We are allowed to expend the money. We're not limited to the line items in the expenditure of the money. However, we're expected to be reasonable and prudent with public funds, and if there are funds left over, not to just spend them for the sake of spending them.

Hopefully, that's responsive, but it's not, I know, consistent with the theory of the question.

R. Hawes: I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, as this was forwarded…. Where Blair said that if there's something that's unforeseen and you need to come back to us, I would hope that if it's going to create something that's going to be an ongoing expense that's built into the budget…. If you're under in one area but you're going to be significantly over in another and it's going to be an ongoing expense, I would hope that you would come back to us and say, "Because it has an impact on future years," so that we're not looking at something next year that has been started without our knowledge, really, and without any consideration by the committee.

I don't know if you know where I'm trying to go here. Because this is the first year, I would hope that we're kept pretty closely apprised of what's going to come in future years. I'm assuming that future years are going to change dramatically — what you project out for future years as you see what's going to happen this year — because you're not really that certain about this year yet.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Okay. Randy, I think what I'm going to do, having been involved with this committee for a number of years, is…. I think we are in a unique situation where we are approving a new budget for a new officer. I wouldn't expect — and I don't believe that it's within our mandate — that should they make changes from within to the budget, the appropriation that is allotted to this office, they would have to come back before this committee. We would hear at next year's presentation if there were significant changes where one line item was significantly less but, in order to perform the duties of the office, they had moved that money to another line item. That would be brought

before our committee for next year's budget preparation and the following two years out….

R. Hawes: Blair, I'm not at all comfortable with that. That is just very poor business practice, in my view. What's good business practice is that if you have money you are…. I'll just give you an example that's very hypothetical and likely wouldn't happen. For example, if any one of these operating expenditures was overestimated in the budget for this year and the extra money was taken to hire some more FTEs so that next year you came back asking for additional funds for more FTEs that weren't contemplated in this budget, I would have some difficulty with that. Sorry, I would.

R. Hawes: I believe that I am responsible, as you are responsible, for the taxpayers' money. And I believe all our civil servants know that too, and they're very, very diligent in the way they spend our funds. But at the same time, I don't want to look at this budget as a free hand to just go ahead and create new things that haven't been contemplated by the committee. It's that simple.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Okay. I think your concern probably should be brought before the Legislative Assembly, if you want a change in our terms of reference. That is not our job. It never has been in the six years that I've been involved here. I understand what you're saying, but I am, as the Chair of this committee, going to bring us back to what we've been asked to do by the Legislative Assembly of the province of British Columbia. I have the utmost faith in not only our new statutory officer but our existing ones that they operate in a manner that is prudent on behalf of the people of British Columbia.

R. Hawes: I'm not saying they aren't. But I am saying that this is a new venture. A lot of what's in this budget is, to some degree, speculative. We don't know, for example, what occupancy expenses are going to be. I don't think you've got an office picked out in Prince George yet, for example. There are an awful lot of things in this budget that are rather speculative.

If the costs that are estimated here are overstated and there is some surplus money, I wouldn't want to see that surplus money used to create an ongoing operating expense that's going to reflect in future budgets, because I don't think that we are committing to that today.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): No. What we are committing to is a new budget that will be prudently utilized by our new statutory officer of the province of British Columbia. We will review this budget, as I indicated to Mary Ellen earlier. If she needs to come back before this committee at any time because maybe the budget that will be approved by the Legislative Assembly does not meet the full needs, to meet the work that has to be done, we are open for that.

It is a unique situation, but certainly for the first year, if money is moved from one area to another to meet the demands of the job and to meet the needs of our children and youth in this province, it is not our job as a committee to dictate which line item and which money is moved from a line item. And I do want to point that out.

At this point I don't want to get into a full discussion from members of the committee on what we should or shouldn't do. I think I've laid it out quite clearly from our mandate that's presented by the Legislative Assembly to us.

We will go with that. Your concerns have been duly noted. But as the Chair, I will reflect that I have the utmost confidence that whatever budget is adopted will be utilized very prudently.

R. Hawes: Blair, I think you're just missing the point totally of what I am trying to say here.

Are there any other questions? I have Bob, Jenny and Bruce. Was it on this issue we've just gone through? If it is, I'd like to move forward. I don't think we're probably going to be too much more productive on this issue.

B. Simpson: Mine is on this issue, and I will bow to the Chair because I probably shouldn't go on record with what I want to say at this juncture.

J. Kwan: I did have a comment about that, but I am not going to make a comment because your direction to the committee is exactly right. I'm in concurrence with that.

I do want to ask a question, though, and also make a comment about the office and the budget that's before us.

First of all, I'd like to say, officially on record, congratulations to our new appointment, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Your office and the establishment of this office is much needed in the province of British Columbia. I certainly am delighted to see us moving forward.

With respect to the budget, we can certainly anticipate the difficulties which you're faced with in the situation. Having just come into the job and not even fully in your seat, so to speak, until the new year and, therefore, having to anticipate what your budget might look like and what necessary component pieces need to come into play is a difficult challenge.

Certainly, as the Chair has identified, the committee is willing and open to receiving more information from you at any point in time should you see that the situation, once you're into the position, evolves and changes need to be made.

I also just want to highlight one other piece in wondering about…. In Vancouver, for example, the office that you identify and the work that will likely be in conjunction with the coroner's office in reviewing deaths and injuries and so on…. In Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, which is the area that I come from, we have a very large off-reserve aboriginal community. We also have the distinction of having a postal code that is known to be the poorest neighbourhood in all of Canada.

As such, with the challenges in that neighbourhood, we have many families that are in crisis and, therefore, many children that are in crisis. I'm wondering, in terms of the setup of the office, if there is any anticipation of looking into access for services made available in Vancouver.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you for the kind welcome to British Columbia. I appreciate that very much.

With respect to the office in Vancouver, there are a couple of concerns with the office as I see it coming in. Again, I just wanted to note that to be the most fiscally prudent that I could be, I'm working off a budget that was a budget for a pre-existing office for the children and youth. So I'm taking a budget and building on it as opposed to scrapping it and starting with wild speculation. I'm trying to be quite prudent in this exercise.

In any event, your comments are very well taken because they address a matter of deep concern to me — that is, the location of the current office in Vancouver on West Hastings. It's on the ninth floor. You have to buzz to get to that office. It's not accessible. It is not a storefront-type of an operation.

The Office of the Representative for Children and Youth must have a visible presence in the community. Vancouver and the lower mainland is an area in which there are families — aboriginal, multicultural families and families of all backgrounds — that require access to the office. A remote location or a location that is not easily accessible is a concern to me.

I want that office to be more of a storefront operation. I want it to be more accessible. There will also be an advocacy component in that office. I'm only projecting having the multidisciplinary team there simply because of the type of resources that are available in Vancouver and the presence of the chief coroner in Vancouver and outside Vancouver.

Most certainly, my plan in the next two months would be to look at relocating that office into an area where it's easier to access for communities of need and of interest and to also look at a storefront operation for that office. So there will be a change there. I want to encourage people to use the office to do advocacy. If it's remote, if it's not seen to be accessible, it will not be used. I think that has been one of the concerns to date, so that is going to change.

Again, that does explain, in part, the capital costs to move the office space, to find a more appropriate space. I haven't completed that project yet, but I will be assigning people to that task to explore that very point. So I will be looking in Vancouver for appropriate and accessible storefront space.

Just to follow up, related to this matter. On the question around accessibility, is there any anticipation for language capacity in your office, for recognizing many people with language barriers accessing the office for support or advocacy?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Clearly, in staffing the office, my objective will be to have a diverse staff that reflects the diversity of British Columbia, including ensuring that in communities where there are vulnerable children in particular, if there are distinct languages, we have a capacity within the office to address this for advocacy, either through staff or through translation services. That will be significant — to ensure that it can be accessed.

There is some capacity in the former office. I will look at some of that and ensure that we can continue and expand it. That's a point very well taken.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to add my voice to what some of my colleagues have expressed. I do have confidence in the manner in which this initial budget has been put forward by the Deputy Attorney General and by the incoming representative. This particular position, as everyone is aware, is born of considerable political turmoil within the province.

The hopes and aspirations that many people placed in you in coming into this position and in the office, I think, are immense. We would be starting off with the wrong tone if some of the earlier comments were thought to be representative of the views of a unanimous vote of the Legislative Assembly. The commitment, at least of most members, that this office will be funded properly…. It's understood that you will be engaging in an ongoing analysis of your budgetary needs and that this committee will be kept advised, and so will the Legislative Assembly. I feel a little embarrassed that we might have started off with the wrong tone in this particular gathering here today.

I. Black: Let me resoundingly echo the welcome to you. I am a former Winnipegger, and I know all too well the excitement and anxiety of moving house and home, across the Rockies, and getting settled and whatnot in British Columbia. The days are not all like this; let me give you that assurance. In a few weeks you'll see beautiful sunshine and snow on the mountains.

That aside, I did have a question, actually, and it may be quite a simple one. I notice there's a line in it for legal services. I'm just curious. As you're establishing…. I'm new to the exposure of a Representative for Children and Youth being established within the province — or any statutory officer. What types of things would cost…?

Perhaps this is a question better pointed to Allan. I'm not sure. What types of issues would cost legal services in the establishment of a statutory office, and how would that money get spent?

A. Seckel: Let me just say in fairness, as well, that one of the reasons the base amount for the office of CYO is zero is because as part of the Ministry of Attorney General, it doesn't have to pay for its legal services.

A. Seckel: Now that it's an independent office…. I can say, just from historical use, the types of legal services that have been needed typically are privacy services — services where there was an inquiry going on — and the counsel to an inquiry, or counsel when some inquiry-like powers were being utilized. I'm sure that in the last two years, as the office for children and youth has gone through the events from the child deaths, the actual cost to the office for children and youth has been in excess of $100,000, if we were to total up the cost.

It tends to be that type of counsel work with respect to some of the inquiry work and privacy issues. Then, to the degree that more advocacy is required now, I could see additional legal costs incurred in that field.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): All right. Well, that concludes the questions that members have. Once again, Mary Ellen, on behalf of British Columbians we want to welcome you to your position and to our province, and we look forward to the work that you will do on behalf of our children and youth here.

Allan, as well, I want to thank you for the work you've done in the preparation of this budget and report for us. We look forward to the work in the year ahead.

A. Seckel: Can I just say that the credit mostly has to go to the two women behind me, who've done most of the work?

B. Lekstrom (Chair): Please extend our heartfelt thanks for the work of the staff involved in this. Just before closing, I want to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and safe new year, and, as I said, I look forward to working in the near future with you, Mary Ellen.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you very much. I wish you all the greetings of the season, as well, and I look forward to seeing you all much more often in the new year, when I've relocated with my four children and my husband, and when you gain six new citizens and at least, perhaps, two taxpayers. There you go. Help defray some of the costs of the budget.

The committee will take a five-minute recess, and we will reconvene to discuss the development of our report.

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

We have concluded the presentations from our statutory officers on their proposals put before our committee. At this point I would look for a motion to go in camera to discuss the development of the report and recommendations.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We are now back in public session. I would like to commend the members for the work they have done. We have put in a great deal of time and effort to conclude our deliberations, to hear from our statutory officers and to come forward with a report and some recommendations that I believe are going to be presented to the Legislative Assembly for their consideration with our recommendations.

With that, I would look for a motion at this time, in the public portion of our meeting.

I. Black: I would like to move that the committee adopt the report as amended and that the Chair deposit it with the Clerk of the House, pursuant to its terms of reference.

B. Lekstrom (Chair): We have a motion before the committee. Is there anyone wishing to speak to the motion? Seeing no one, I will call the question.

Before we do adjourn, I do again want to thank members of the committee. This has been a process that I think is valuable but one that certainly tests the availability of time for members — and patience as well. But we learn a great deal through this process.

As the Chair of the committee, I do want to thank you. You have at times challenged my ability as a Chair, but it has always been interesting.

I want to thank the public who participated. I want to thank our statutory officers, in the case of what we have just gone through.

With that, in closing, I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and safe new year. I would look for a motion to adjourn.

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	Chief Electoral Officer
	Harry Neufeld, Chief Electoral Officer Linda Johnson, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Nola Western, Director of Electoral Finance and Corporate Services

	Representative for Children and Youth
	Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, Representative for Children and Youth Allan Seckel, Deputy Attorney General

Committee Staff:	Josie Schofield (Committee Research Analyst)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES