Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 67 — Thursday, November 29, 2007 (HTML)

2007 Legislative Session: Third 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		1665
	H. Neufeld
	N. Western
	L. Johnson

Office of the Representative for Children and Youth		1677
	M. Turpel-Lafond
	T. McNally-Dawes
	C. Heavener

Chair:	* Bill Bennett (East Kootenay 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

Other MLAs:	Blair Lekstrom (Peace River South L) Doug Routley (Cowichan-Ladysmith NDP) Nicholas Simons (Powell River–Sunshine Coast NDP)
Clerk:	Craig James

Committee Staff:	Josie Schofield (Committee Research Analyst)
	Jeremy Wood (Committee Researcher)


Witnesses:	John Greschner (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth) Cory Heavener (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth) Linda Johnson (Elections B.C.) Tanis McNally-Dawes (Office of the Representative for Children and Youth) Harry Neufeld (Chief Electoral Officer) Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Representative for Children and Youth) Nola Western (Elections B.C.)

How is everyone feeling this morning? Is everyone feeling chipper this morning and enthusiastic and ready to get to the task at hand? Great.

Mr. Neufeld, welcome to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. It's my first year to chair the committee, but I know that you've been here many, many times before. Perhaps I could get you to introduce the ladies on either side of you.

I will first briefly introduce my colleagues who are with me here today. On my left, and your right, is Linda Johnson, who holds the position of Deputy Chief Electoral Officer. She has been with Elections B.C. since 1982 and has held her current position since 1991.

On my right, your left, is Nola Western, who is a chartered accountant and holds the position of director of electoral finance and corporate administration. Nola's responsibilities cover all aspects of administering our province's political financing rules as well as managing the internal financial, administrative and human resource operations at Elections B.C. She was a member of the Auditor General's staff prior to joining Elections B.C. 11 years ago.

On my request, both Linda and Nola have been carrying additional management responsibilities over the past year while I've been acting in a dual role as an electoral boundaries commissioner as well as the Chief Electoral Officer. I am, of course, appearing here only as the Chief Electoral Officer.

The boundaries work has taken me away from the Elections office a significant amount of time, and this arrangement is expected to continue into next year.

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 provide you with some projections for the following two years. As has been my practice in previous presentations to this committee, the format I propose to follow is this. 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. 2008-09 to 2010-11 budget proposal document, which was distributed to you a week ago in both electronic and printed formats.

B. Bennett (Chair): Mr. Neufeld, can I just clarify — is the electronic version that we got early on identical to the printed version?

H. Neufeld: The printed versions that you have are the most recent service plan and annual reports, and our budget proposal is not published in a format with a cover and so on.

After my opening remarks, Nola will walk you through the financial figures contained in pages 1 to 6 of our budget proposal and provide background information to give you a more detailed explanation of the numbers.

Then Linda will review our electoral event funding requirements, which appear on pages 7 and 8 of our budget proposal and will explain to you what's included in those anticipated expenses for the next fiscal year.

I will follow up with a closing summary, and then Linda, Nola and I will be pleased to answer any questions that committee members may have.

We should have approximately 35 to 45 minutes available for that discussion. I trust this format is acceptable to the Chair.

H. Neufeld: To put our budget proposal in context, and for the benefit of any new committee members, I'd like to briefly describe our budget components. 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 electoral events 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 via an accounting mechanism called amortization.

Therefore, if we should decide to build a new component in a computer system to support an aspect of our event operations, we first need to obtain sufficient capital funds to finance the construction and implementation of such a system. Then we would need to pay back a yearly 20-percent amortization 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 electoral event. The reasoning is that we would use such a system for multiple future events, and indeed, that's what we try to do.

To put these budget components in perspective, for next year we're proposing an annual operating budget of $7.66 million and an annual capital budget of $304,000. However, more than three times that amount — $928,000, and fully 12 percent of next year's proposed operating budget — will be associated with the amortization of capital projects and assets acquired in previous years.

Our annual operating budget is also distinct from our event-related budget. We frequently remind ourselves that Elections B.C. would not exist were it not for electoral events such as general 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 to the Legislature separately from ongoing operating costs. This is a statutory requirement.

Our budget request to cover costs directly associated with four electoral events in the next fiscal year totals $11.16 million. These events are the electoral boundary redistribution, an enumeration of voters, the 39th provincial general election and a referendum on electoral reform. Event-related budgets will need to increase again next year, as fiscal 2009-2010 will include the actual conduct of the next scheduled election and referendum.

General voting day for those two electoral events is Tuesday, May 12, 2009, but my office will continue to be heavily involved with post-event activities until the end of that fiscal year. Thereafter, event-related costs may or may not diminish substantially, depending on the result of the referendum on electoral reform.

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

That's the breakdown — three types of budgets: on-going operating, capital and event-related. I'll now turn things over to Nola, who will explain in further detail Elections B.C.'s proposed ongoing operating and capital budgets and how they are structured. She'll be walking you through the first six pages of our budget proposal, and it'll be helpful for you to have it open for reference purposes.

N. Western: Good morning. I'm going to briefly walk you through this budget proposal document that you have before you. As Harry said, we talk about a budget, but in fact we have three types of budgets that this committee has recommended in prior years: the ongoing operating budget, the capital budget and the event budget.

On page 1 of the budget proposal is the statement of operations, which is historical and shows our total operating budget for the most recent fiscal year, 2006-2007, and the total operating expenditures for that year and the preceding one, 2005-2006. Please note that this statement is by standard object of expenditure, or STOB, and that it includes both the ongoing and the event-related funding and expenditures.

The 2005-2006 fiscal year was the year of the last general election, and you can see that is reflected in the high level of costs incurred that year. Last fiscal year our total ongoing and event operating budget was $9.558 million, which was comprised of the $6.508 million recommended by this committee; an increase made by Treasury Board of $37,000 to cover a change in the employee benefits chargeback rate; an increase of $73,000 made at the end of the fiscal year, which was our share of the governmentwide negotiating framework to cover the negotiated salary increases; and an event-related budget of $2.94 million, which was the result of the September 2005 throne speech, which had announced that a second referendum on electoral reform would be held in conjunction with the 2008 municipal elections.

When we appeared before you this time last year, we told you that, as a result of the timing change for the second referendum on electoral reform, we would be able to realize a surplus. You can see that we did, in fact, do so.

The ongoing operating budget request is detailed on page 2 of the budget proposal. This summary ongoing financial outlook includes our ongoing operating budget for the current fiscal year, as recommended by this committee and passed by the House, and our ongoing budget requests for the following three fiscal years.

These budgets are in the same format as prior years, with salaries and benefits, amortization, rent, office expenses and information technology expenses that support all the business areas shown separately from our core business lines. Notes on the following page give you some details of the nature of these expenses.

For 2008-2009 we are requesting the same level of funding as this committee recommended in their report last December. Some of the dollar amounts for the individual line items have changed a little, as is to be expected as plans evolve and costs change over time. But the bottom line is the same.

The salary and benefits increase from 2007-2008 to 2008-2009 is the result of the scheduled salary increases as announced by government and a change in the classification of our new manager of corporate communications.

We've assumed no change to the employee benefits chargeback rate, since the B.C. Public Service Agency and Treasury Board staff have not yet established that rate for 2008-09.

Building occupancy charges are the rent that we pay for our offices and our warehouse. The warehouse is necessary to store, stock, pack and ship election materials and supplies, and it's located in the Rock Bay area of Victoria. Accommodation and real estate services, or ARES, has advised us of the increases for the rent and their additional service charges for the next few fiscal years.

Office expenses and telecommunications will increase to accommodate the government's new Pacific leaders scholarship program, and we do expect several of our staff to take advantage of that opportunity.

An annual political party information session, which we instituted this year, was very well received.

New charges from the B.C. Public Service Agency to cover their recruitment and retention programs for the public service….

Also, this year I've more correctly included some charges from workplace technology services to do with

our voice service lines to office expenses rather than corporate information systems, which simply results in a reallocation of the expense from one line to another.

Event readiness is necessary to ensure that Elections B.C. is at all times ready to conduct by-elections, recall petitions and initiative petitions. Although we might not incur any significant costs unless such an event does occur, we have to be ready for it, and we have to spend some money in maintaining that state of readiness. The costs are modest, and they include forms, guides and software maintenance.

Our ongoing costs for address and boundary maintenance will be slightly lower next year as we concentrate on implementing new electoral district boundaries and voting area boundaries — certainly voting area boundaries.

This year we did replace our integrated digital road atlas servers, which is an expense that we won't incur next year.

Voters list maintenance, however, will increase significantly. Many municipalities use our voters list and provide us with updates and new registrations after their elections, so we will have that data to process after the fall 2008 municipal elections.

We're also scheduled to conduct a voters list quality study. Workplace technology services has a new charge for hosting our servers, and we have to replace some of our new servers.

Political entity reporting includes the registration of political parties and constituency associations and the review of their annual financial reports. In British Columbia we currently have 41 registered political parties and 164 constituency associations. The costs for political entity will actually decrease a little next year, as the cost for the data entry for our political contributions system will be less.

The Election Act ties the Chief Electoral Officer's salary to that of the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court. The Judges Compensation Commission recommends an increase to the salary of the Chief Judge, and so we have budgeted for that increase in officer salary and benefits.

As I noted, the bottom line of $7.659 million is what this committee recommended last year that Elections B.C. receive for 2008-2009. For '09-10 and '10-11 we've budgeted for the known scheduled salary increases for public servants and added a small inflation factor of 2 to 2.5 percent for some items.

In '09-10, though, we must replace our office personal computers, their operating systems and the MS Office software. These costs used to be capital in nature, but the decreasing price of computers and software has meant that many items no longer meet the capital assets threshold established by the office of the comptroller general, so they have to be charged against our ongoing operating budget. This has a large impact on our ongoing operating budget for '09-10, and over $700,000 of that budget is due to that replacement and the related training.

Furthermore, in '09-10 we'll need to update and test our recall and initiative verification system to accommodate the new electoral districts. This represents a cost of $300,000 budgeted to event readiness.

Again, in '09-10 we've budgeted for work involving the alignment of our road network and associated base geography data with the integrated land management bureau's digital road atlas 2 and the national geographic database.

The numbers for 2010-2011 should be considered soft at this time. It's still almost three years away, and we don't know the outcome of the referendum on electoral reform, which would have an enormous impact on our work.

Our full-time equivalent or FTE budget represents the number of permanent employees, and at this time we do not anticipate that budget needing any changes.

Page 4 of the budget proposal has our capital budget. Elections B.C. continues to defer as much capital investment as we can, both to minimize the impact of amortization on the ongoing operating budget and to manage the risk of introducing new systems leading up to the election year.

Last year we anticipated that we would have to replace our personal computers, the Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office software during '08-09. We've been able to delay that replacement to '09-10, after the election. Also, as I've mentioned, most of the costs involved no longer meet the capital thresholds, so they're included in our ongoing operating budget for that year.

Our electoral information system, or EIS, will see us through the next general election. But immediately after that in '09-10 we will have to start developing its replacement, and you can see the start of that investment in that year. That work will continue into '10-11, hence the large increase in capital then.

On page 5 of the package there's a pie chart which illustrates the relative allocation of ongoing operating expenses by type. There's no significant change to the chart from last year. Our ongoing operating expenses remain very stable.

Our ongoing operating expenses by standard object, or STOB, is shown on page 6. These STOBs are common for all government offices and ministries, and they illustrate the type of the expenses incurred rather than the actual business or work for which the funds are allocated.

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 on the summary of financial outlook, salaries and benefits of most temporary employees are included in the individual business lines. So you won't be able to reconcile the salary and benefits numbers between the two schedules.

Page 7 of the document has our event budget and some explanatory notes about the types of those expenses. Linda is going to address those in more detail.

L. Johnson: Good morning. It's always a pleasure to appear before this committee and tell you about the interesting work that we do and our plans for the future. I'm going to be focusing on our event-related funding requirements, and I'll begin where Nola left off on page 7 of the document before you.

As stated, our current year budget for event-related activities is $1.639 million, and this is provided for research, planning and preparatory work for the four upcoming events. Next fiscal year our event work intensifies as we continue to research, plan and prepare for the 2009 general election and referendum on electoral reform and as we prepare and implement new electoral boundaries and administer most of an enumeration.

Elections B.C. has immensely improved our event planning methodology, and I think we're truly leaders in Canada in our approach to event planning and management. This rigorous approach, combined with fixed-date elections, allows us to plan very thoroughly on a predictable time line.

The electoral boundary redistribution will be fully completed in the coming fiscal year. This work entails not only the integration into our databases of new boundaries passed by the Legislative Assembly but the realignment and reassignment of every residential address and registered voter — and we have about 2.9 million of them — to their new district. Additionally, we'll be dividing every electoral district into new voting areas.

Voting areas are administrative units used for planning elections, assignment of voters to voting places and reporting of election results. The Election Act established that voting area populations should be no more than 400 registered voters unless the Chief Electoral Officer believes a greater number would facilitate voting. But we actually prefer to keep voting area populations below the 400-voter threshold. This ensures accessibility and efficient voting place operations, and it helps manage the workload of election officials who will be counting two ballots in 2009.

We anticipate that we will have approximately 10,000 voting areas at our next election. Every electoral district and voting area must be mapped. Our street index and address register have to be updated to ensure accurate assignment of addresses to electoral district and voting areas, and we build conversion tables to help Elections B.C., parties, candidates and academics understand the transition from existing electoral districts and voting areas to future electoral districts and voting areas.

It's of utmost importance that voters be assigned to their correct electoral district. This ensures that voters only vote for a member of their electoral district of residence. Errors in this regard can have catastrophic consequences, including controverted elections.

In the coming year we require $2.142 million to complete this important work. This represents the cost of temporary staff to complete the cartography, data conversion and proofing, development and production of map products and other tools. We are under considerable time pressure for this work, as the outcome will be the basis on which we conduct the next election on May 12, 2009.

Also, in the coming year is the majority of a pre-election enumeration. We'll be preceding our voter outreach by incorporating updates from the national register of electors, updates from the fall 2008 local government elections and the Canada Post change-of-address data in addition to our usual sources of Vital Statistics and the Insurance Corporation of B.C.

After we've used all that data to bring our list up to the highest level of currency available from those sources, then we'll go to the voters. We plan to send a mailing to every residential address in the province in February of 2009 to advise voters of their current registration status and encourage them to register or update their registration information. By doing this mailing in February, we'll be close enough to the election that people might be motivated to act at that time.

We're also going to be using that mailing to incorporate a redistribution message, advising voters of their new electoral district for the next election. This will be a very cost-effective way of reaching all the voters with both messages. We're going to share the cost between those two events.

After processing the responses to that initial mailing, we'll be following up with targeted mailings to neighbourhoods that have poor coverage or extremely high mobility. We'll also be doing mailings to voters whose records appear to be stale or out of date.

This will bring us to the end of the fiscal year, and about 90 percent of our enumeration will be completed. What will follow in the next fiscal year, in April 2009, will be the person-to-person enumeration of homeless shelters and long-term care facilities. This is a model we used prior to the 2005 election, and it was very effective for those voters.

Our enumeration efforts will be supported by an advertising campaign, and that will lead into and tie into our election and referendum campaign that commences the following fiscal year. Our budget requirements for enumeration in '08-09 are $2.828 million. This will provide for the incorporation of data from external sources, the mailing to every residential address, the targeted follow-up mailings and the establishment of a call centre to accept updates over the phone, data processing and advertising.

This brings us to the big ones, the 2009 general election and referendum on electoral reform. Those events actually occur in the following fiscal year, '09-10. But all the planning and preparation has to be completed in this coming year, '08-09.

By March 31, 2009, the end of the coming fiscal year, we will be one day away from establishing a district electoral office in every electoral district. Writs will be issued two weeks later on April 14.

This coming year we must appoint and train a district electoral officer and their deputy for every electoral district. Our goal is to begin orientation training of those new appointees in the spring of next year and complete the last of a series of training sessions in March '09, just before the election is called.

We must also print and prepare all of the forms and guides and manuals and materials that we use in those

events, and have them packaged and en route to those offices so they can open on time.

To support those offices, we will also be training their office managers and election official trainers. We must acquire computers and office equipment to make sure that all the office leases are in place. We must also hire and train temporary staff in headquarters to support those field operations. That must all happen in '08-09.

We'll also be preparing a comprehensive training program for election officials to ensure that elections and referenda are administered properly, and that voters receive good service. Despite all the good efforts of our excellent staff, the reality is that on general voting day it's all in the hands of people who work for one day. So really good training programs are critical.

We'll also be planning and preparing our advertising campaign and making sure it's ready to roll. The campaign will actually be launched the day after the fiscal year ends, so the ads have to be produced and proofed in the next fiscal year.

We'll also be making some minor changes to our systems to meet the demands of the events and make sure everything is tested and ready to go. In elections, failure isn't an option.

Our budget requirements for work associated with the general election in the coming fiscal year are $5.897 million. This will bring us to the point of readiness to administer that event in the following year.

For the referendum our budget requirements are extremely modest. This budget assumes that Elections B.C. will not be responsible for providing public education on the referendum topic and doesn't include amounts for potential funding of yes-no groups.

Conducting a referendum in conjunction with a general election brings great efficiencies and economies, and almost everything we need to do for a referendum is also needed for the election. So there is just a thin layer of additional work for the referendum.

The majority of the costs associated with the referendum are printing and packaging of materials unique to that event. For that work, next fiscal year, we require $297,000.

This brings our total event-related funding requirements to $11.164 million for the coming fiscal year. On page 8 of your document, you'll see a chart that represents the breakdown of that total across the four events.

H. Neufeld: As you heard from Nola, Elections B.C. is asking for a modest increase to our ongoing operating budget for next fiscal year, but that request exactly matches the figure we indicated for 2008-2009 in our three-year rolling budget projection provided this time last year to this committee. Members of this committee may be interested to know that our 2008-2009 request for annual operating funds is 23½ percent less than the Elections B.C. operating budget of 2001-2002.

Our capital budget for 2008-2009 is down significantly from previous years. Because of the need to invest in updating critical information-technology components, my office's capital budget needs will increase significantly following the 2009 election.

Because we are involved with the final preparations and at least partial conduct of four major electoral events in the next fiscal year, our event-related budget requirements are quite significant in 2008-2009. As Linda has just described, we require funding allocations to implement a time-compressed electoral boundary redistribution, conduct an enumeration of voters and get fully prepared for the general election and referendum of May 2009.

The strategic priorities on which Elections B.C. needs to focus in the coming fiscal year are to deliver ongoing services with professionalism while ensuring that we deliver the four electoral events with a high level of accuracy and efficiency. All of this needs to be done with a view of providing good access to the Charter-guaranteed democratic rights afforded to voters, candidates and parties within the constitutional and legal framework used to decide who will govern this province and which electoral system will be used for making future governance decisions.

There's a great deal of critical work to be done in the coming fiscal year, and the administrative success of the scheduled general election and referendum depends heavily on having adequate resources to fully meet the range of challenges that my office is facing.

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 requests of funding for my office: $7.659 million for our 2008-2009 ongoing operating budget, as per page 2 of our proposal; $304,000 for Elections B.C.'s 2008-2009 capital budget, as detailed on page 4 of our proposal; and $11.164 million in event-related funding for the next fiscal year, as appears on page 7.

At this point, I'd like to pass control of the microphone back to the Chair. With your agreement, Mr. Bennett, we'll be happy to answer any questions members of the committee might have.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much. Let me say, on behalf of the committee, that we are, I'm sure, very impressed with the presentation. I'm happy that I decided not to ask you to abbreviate your presentation because it was excellent, very well organized and understandable, and I think the best presentation we've had from any of the statutory officers. Congratulations to the three of you for that.

I can't read the Clerk's writing. Oh: "It would make a very good model for other statutory officers" — which I actually was thinking myself. What I was thinking was it's too bad that we didn't have you in first because it would have been a good basis upon which we could have proceeded through with the rest of the statutory officers. In any case, we may get you, in your spare time over the next year, to provide a little advice to some of the other offices.

D. Hayer: A very good presentation and an excellent way of presenting it. I always say, every year I have been on the Finance committee, that I think one of the most important parts is Elections B.C.'s part in our democratic system. It is having the confidence in our voting system.

That said, I just wanted to repeat my message, which people have told me before. I told them that when I saw you, I would say it again.

Some people say that sometimes, some elections in some ridings are very, very close, and they just want to make sure that the people who are voting are the ones who are really eligible to vote. If they aren't, they end up losing the confidence in the electoral system, especially if you have differences of one or two votes, maybe ten, 15 votes — that's how you count down if the election is very close.

They always say to somehow find a better way of finding that the people who actually should be voting are the ones who are voting — that there's no fraud in the system. I know we have talked before. Our system is based on the honour system.

Beside that, I was looking at your expenses here. We talked about the electoral boundaries redistribution and all that. We are here to approve the expenses for the next two or three years, but on the other hand, it's like a chicken-and-egg issue: what really happens from here on? Yesterday the Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act that was supposed to have gone through didn't go through. The next part is that if nothing happens by today, we'll go back to the act that was passed in the spring, which had a deadline till the 15th to do it.

I didn't want to go into the Electoral Boundaries Commission part, but some of it affects your budget, so I'm going to ask you some questions on it. If you look at next year and the report comes up, and the report says what was in the draft proposal and there's no change to it, and the government does not or the minority members do not end up accepting the proposal, then we end up staying with the old system. How is this $2.1 million affected? We are approving the funding, but we don't really know if it's going to be utilized or not.

The second part of that is there's also a referendum coming. It also says that you're supposed to show for referenda what STV boundaries will be done — right? So you might have to have some sort of part…. Maybe part of that can be still shown to the voters because that will still go on the referendum.

I'm trying to find out if there's any way you've been thinking, planning, so that you don't end up wasting money and then coming back, because it's taxpayers' money at the end of the day.

H. Neufeld: Maybe I'll start, and I'll have Linda talk a little bit about some of the details of what we do know.

With election planning, we need to make some assumptions. The assumption — which only started to, perhaps, be questionable in the last few days — was that there was going to be a boundary redistribution. We don't know what the Legislature's decision will be, when the final report of the Boundaries Commission comes in. If there is no electoral district boundary redistribution, there will still need to be a voting area redistribution.

We have not changed the voting areas substantially since the beginning of this century, and they're desperately in need of some attention. There will be less cost associated if the districts do not change. If the Legislature does not come to an agreement on electoral district redistribution, there will be less expenditure. That's a given. However, it won't mean that there's no expenditure.

L. Johnson: Certainly. As Harry said, we have to work on a set of assumptions. However, if the Legislative Assembly chooses not to proceed in enacting the Boundaries Commission's final recommendations — in answer to the second part of your question — there will still be a proposed set of STV boundaries in that final report, and that would become the reference for voters in considering their referendum choice.

From the perspective of redistribution, Harry's absolutely correct. We do have to continue with our voting area redistribution work. This is very important in terms of ensuring accessibility and managing the workload in voting places, and making sure voting places work efficiently.

How much impact that additional layer will have on our budget I really couldn't say at this point. It means that we don't have to redo our location index, which is a document used in every voting place, and there is obviously going to be a savings there.

Voting area redistribution still means that we have to redo our street index and redo all our maps. The cartography work will still be there; the street index work will be there. We will still have to reassign all of our voters and their residential addresses to their new voting areas, but the electoral district aspect won't be there.

So the work will not be reduced by 50 percent or anything of that nature. I think the reduction in effort will be less than that in terms of budget commitment. It does, however, bring the risk down, because we're not moving voters from one electoral district to another.

D. Hayer: In my riding, when election time comes, there are probably around 80,000 to 90,000 people there. Lots of new construction is happening. Every day there is a new condominium coming, and streets are coming, when you go through. That means you'll probably have to add a lot more people. You want to keep around 400 as the maximum rate for a voting area.

L. Johnson: The maximum is 400. We are in contact with the municipal governments in all the high-growth areas, so we know where building permits have been issued and what the anticipated population of those new developments will be. That's factored in when we do our voting area redistribution. So 400 is the limit. We're actually trying to keep that below 350 to give us some longevity in our voting areas and, again, to help manage the workload of election officials.

Particularly, Nola, every time we have a witness, I learn something. In your case…. I had no idea that computer equipment had gone to the operating ledger. I was always assuming that we were still on the capital front because of the declining cost. That was very interesting.

N. Western: The threshold for personal computer equipment is $1,000 and the same for software. So anything under that is operating.

J. Horgan: Thank you very much for that. Had I known that information, I would have asked different questions of some of our other witnesses.

I'd like to direct a couple of questions on the event budgets, in particular, with the confusion around the work of the Boundaries Commission, the time lines. If we don't find resolution today, I assume we're back to — as outlined in your annual report — a final report on the 15th of February.

Then time lines for the work in the event budget, which Linda has outlined, will carry on. Or do you contemplate, Mr. Neufeld, that that deadline may change because we've had to cancel all the hearings in the fall to comment on the preliminary report?

How are those time lines going to affect your budgeting? Will we still be able to meet that February 15 target? And, also, what was the cost — if you can outline it — of cancelling the hearings?

H. Neufeld: Let me start by saying that I'm not the chair of the Boundaries Commission. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on behalf of my fellow commissioners. We haven't met since this new development arose. We are meeting next week, starting Monday morning. And I'm sure that the commission will be making some announcements.

I can tell you that February 15 is going to be very difficult. It's hard to launch hearings and expect any attendance in December. It takes time to get a report printed after you've written it. You have to have all the maps produced and so on.

So meeting the February 15 deadline is going to be a challenge, and I expect that the commission, through the chair, will be in communication with the Speaker of the House on that topic.

That doesn't really change Elections B.C.'s deadlines. We've always worked from the assumption that worst case, the boundaries would be decided in June 2008 and we wouldn't have legislation through royal assent until the end of June 2008. That's a month later than the House is normally scheduled to meet. Under that schedule, we would have new maps out for the political parties, and potentially their candidates, by the end of the year.

There's a good deal of work after that, as well, that we need to get ready. And we have to remember that if a by-election is called, we have to run the election under the current boundaries. Meanwhile, we have to be getting our systems ready to run a general election under new boundaries.

All of that is in our planning framework. I don't think the change in timing, as a result of Bill 39 not being passed, is a problem for my office, provided that the legislation is dealt with in the spring.

Linda, you suggested that should a majority of the Members of the Legislature not approve the final recommendations from the Boundaries Commission, you would still be able to proceed with boundaries for the STV referendum. I'm wondering how you can do that. I'm assuming that the package that comes here will be a comprehensive package and we're not going to be able to pick out what we like and what we don't like — at least, I would hope not.

That being the case, if the government carries through on its threat yesterday to not pass what they don't like, what impact will that have on the referendum?

L. Johnson: Perhaps I wasn't clear in my earlier comment. We won't be doing anything with the STV boundaries. If the House passes new electoral boundaries in the spring session of 2008, we will only be implementing the boundaries under the current electoral system. The STV boundaries will simply sit in the report from the Boundaries Commission to inform debate around the referendum. We won't actually be doing anything with them or amending our databases based on those recommended STV boundaries.

The final report of the Boundaries Commission will, I assume, contain full maps of those proposed STV boundaries, and that will be available to voters in the lead-up to the referendum.

J. Horgan: If I understand you correctly, then, the referendum will be based on the boundaries that are produced by the commission, regardless of whether the final electoral boundaries for May 12, 2009, are in place or not.

Those boundaries will be the basis for the referendum. It will inform voters on a yes or a no on that referendum.

L. Johnson: It will inform voters on the basis of a proposal. Certainly, if the referendum passes, then the House will have to decide what boundaries they want to put in place to support that electoral system.

B. Bennett (Chair): Members, just to be clear for all of us, including myself, on that last exchange — and I appreciate Member Horgan looking for clarification there — the boundaries for proposed or hypothetical STV constituencies as mapped out in the final report of the commission will be what is before the voters in the referendum in 2009.

If the referendum passes and the people of the province adopt STV as our new system, then of course,

H. Bloy: We've talked a lot about the technical parts of the report, but are you doing a full enumeration this year?

H. Neufeld: It's not the enumeration that you may think of, which was the standard in Canada for about 50 years, which is going door to door and knocking on the doors to fill out a set of forms of who is eligible to vote.

The enumeration that we're doing is a combination of targeted enumeration that we used in the 2005 election and a mailing to every household. There will be one mailing to households that have registered voters and a different kind of mailing to households where we know it's a residential household but we have nobody registered, and we'll be inviting people to register.

As Linda mentioned, we're going to try to get the list as up to date as possible, as complete and current as we possibly can from our electronic data sources, and then basically send it out to the voters in order for them to provide us updates and for people who aren't listed to get registered.

H. Bloy: What happens if they don't reply? Are they left on the voters list? Is this a reverse thing?

L. Johnson: Currently registered voters will not have to respond to the mailout.

H. Bloy: What if they don't live there anymore? You're mailing it out. If nobody replies, they're still left on the list.

L. Johnson: If the mail is returned to us as "moved" or "undeliverable," we'll set a flag on that voter record that says we're not sure if this record is current. But people won't be removed on the basis of not responding to the initial mailout.

We will be doing a targeted mailout to specific voters who we have reason to believe are no longer resident at an address. If they don't respond, then we do remove them from the list.

H. Bloy: I believe the 2005 electoral list was the worst list I've ever seen. It was a combination of the previous federal elections, Telus…. There were duplicate names. There were addresses that didn't exist. It was the hardest list that I've ever worked with in many years of elections. We couldn't keep track of the names. We didn't know what was coming. We were wasting time phoning.

I'm waiting to see how you clean it up. How do you ID these people? I question, as well, the ID that's accepted at the polling station to say if the person lives there or not.

L. Johnson: We've done very considerable voters list improvement since the last election, and we have….

H. Bloy: But how do you do that? You've done it, but how did you do it? What did you do to clean up the list?

L. Johnson: We have been working very closely with Elections Canada on a two-way exchange. We get updates from the Insurance Corporation of B.C., so every time a driver changes their address, either on their licence or their insurance, we get that update. Nearly all of our voters are drivers.

H. Bloy: Only if they've ticked the box to allow you to get the information.

On the federal side, they get updates from the income tax forms. That is the tick box, though there is quite a high takeup. We exchange list information. Currently we have a linkage rate of 96.6 percent with the national register of electors.

We have coverage of about 90 percent of eligible voters in B.C., and traditional wisdom in electoral administration is that you're never going to get much beyond 90 percent. There will always be a hard-core 10 percent that opt out for a variety of reasons.

Our target is to have currency, and that's the really hard piece, in the neighbourhood of 87 percent or 85 percent — I'm sorry; I forget the number — going into that election. The currency piece is because we have such an extremely high mobility rate in British Columbia. That's why the Insurance Corporation updates are so important.

We're going to be adding the national change of address to that, as well, to pick up our currency a little bit more. We're also looking at all the updates that we'll get from the municipal elections, which are in the fall, immediately preceding our general election, to again increase currency of the list.

H. Bloy: Do you accept the electoral list of who's eligible that they put out from the municipal election, or do you take the list of who actually voted so that you know the address is confirmed?

L. Johnson: What's permitted between the two statutes is that if municipalities pass a bylaw, they can adopt our provincial list for their jurisdiction as their voters list for local government elections. We don't have authority to take any lists that they build and incorporate them into ours. The legislation doesn't support that.

However, what we have done is created a voter registration form that works under the provincial voters list legislation, the local government legislation and the Vancouver Charter legislation. That allows municipalities to register voters on a dual-purpose form. Those are the updates we get. Any changes of address, changes of name or new voters captured in local government elections on that form get added to the provincial list.

H. Bloy: The voters list now — what stage is it in? Can I get a copy for any riding in the province?

H. Neufeld: Maybe I could answer that. You'll be getting a letter next week, along with all the other MLAs and the political parties, advising you that the list is available. There's a nominal charge of $20 to get an electronic list for your district on a CD.

I'd invite you, Mr. Bloy, to have your staff review that list. Compare it to the 2005, and if there are quality issues, by all means, let us know. Be as specific as you can about the issue of duplicates. We've spent a lot of energy on trying to get duplicates off the list. We've put a lot of energy into trying to make the list as current as it possible can be.

If you find in your electoral district that there are still considerable quality issues, we'd like to hear about them now, rather than during the election.

H. Bloy: In the 2005 election there was a federal election just beforehand. When all the information was merged, you didn't get into it until you were into the election.

H. Neufeld: It was very time-compressed. We've had a lot of time to do quality control since then. The merger of the national register of electors with our provincial voters list was quite close to the election last time. We've been working with that list and in partnership with Elections Canada since then.

I'm hoping you'll see a considerable improvement in quality. If you or any other members don't, by all means let us know. We want to clean the list up.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Mr. Hayer, the MLA for Surrey-Tynehead, I think advised you of what I take to be the government's position that there's a possibility that when the final report comes to the Legislative Assembly in the spring, that may be rejected by the majority of the members of the Legislature, therefore forcing an election on the previous boundaries.

From what budget will you be drawing the money to defend the inevitable litigation that will flow from that decision?

H. Neufeld: I think the litigation would be with the minister responsible for electoral boundaries, which is the Attorney General. I don't see that the Chief Electoral Officer would be drawn into that litigation.

I. Black: Good morning. Referring to page 2 of your budget submission, I have two questions. The first is the line 4, where it says "Office expenses and telecommunications." I believe, Nola, it was you who identified that the increase in that line from $269,000 to $358,000 was due…. I think you said that the Pacific leaders scholarship program was the cause of that. That's about $90,000.

Could you elaborate on that just for a second, because that is a sizeable increase, and I note that it doesn't come down the following year. It actually bumps up again to $431,000 and then hovers around there for the '10-11 budget as well. Could you just elaborate on that for me, please?

N. Western: It's not just the Pacific leaders scholarship program. That is part of it. Part of it is workplace. A chunk of it actually comes from corporate information systems. As you see, that number's gone down. As I said, I reallocated some charges from workplace technology services, from the corporate information systems line, up to the office expenses and telecommunications line. There's a little bit of difference there. The other part was Pacific leaders scholarship and…

N. Western: …the political party annual information session that we've instituted. The B.C. Public Service Agency is going to charge us several thousand dollars for recruitment and retention programs for the public service. They're charging all ministries and offices a chunk for that. So it wasn't just Pacific leaders.

I. Black: Okay, let me try the question a different way. Of the approximately 33-percent increase on that line item year over year, how much of that is a transfer from other line items, and how much of it is a net new expenditure?

N. Western: I don't have that number with me. I can get that for you, though, by the end of the day.

I. Black: Okay, let me flip down then to my next question. On the voter list maintenance line item, line 8, you've identified how it jumps considerably from $91,000 to $256,000. The nature of that expenditure…. First of all, is it correct to assume that's primarily people — that those are salaries of some kind?

I. Black: Would those people be on contract, or are they permanent employees?

I. Black: Okay. I see that after the election in '09-10 it doesn't come back down to the $91,000 level…. You did identify the numbers of '10-11 as being soft, and I appreciate that. It doesn't come back down to $91,300; it stays at the $152,000 level, which is a sizeable increase, notwithstanding inflation, over $91,300. What is the rationale for not returning it to something resembling $91,000?

N. Western: Back down. Again, I'll have to go through the numbers. I mean, I don't create the numbers, obviously. It's the relevant directors.

Also, a lot of the voters list maintenance is…. There are some charges there for new servers next year.

I guess what I'm observing and would appreciate a comment on is that it seems the views of the baseline budget of '07-08 is $7.322 million — an understandable lift for municipal elections in '08-09 and likewise in '09-10 — most of which would be incident-based funding. To see the budget settle, for lack of a better phrase, at a number of almost $8.7 million in '10-11 — again, I appreciate your caveat that those are soft numbers — relative to a baseline this year of $7.3 million after the two significant events happening and no other significant events on the immediate horizon catching my attention.

I was wondering if you could comment on that, please. I would have expected it would be somewhere around the $7.5 million or $7.7 million range, not $8.7 million.

N. Western: So 2010-11 is, of course, three years out. Amortization is going up by almost half a million dollars that year because of the investment for our electoral information system. You can see that that is a substantial increase there.

The other line items don't really increase very much. Event readiness goes down quite a bit. Address and boundary maintenance is a little bit up. Voters list maintenance is back down, and the other ones are substantially the same. It really is the amortization that makes that big impact for that third year out.

Linda, you mentioned the yes-no campaign and the fact that Elections B.C. hadn't budgeted for funding that campaign or assisting that campaign at all. Have any discussions taken place about who might be engineering that campaign or supervising it with resources? It's a question I get about the STV referendum, and it would be nice to know where we're at.

L. Johnson: We don't know much more than what was in the throne speech in 2005 — that there is an intention to fund yes-no groups. We've had some very high-level discussions with the Ministry of Attorney General, who is responsible for the legislative suite around elections and referenda. There are early indications that we may be responsible for administering those funds and managing the registration process of yes-no groups, which would be consistent with our current responsibilities of registering and overseeing the financial reporting by election and referendum advertising sponsors, for example.

I don't know how much money is considered in terms of funding those groups. No legislation has been brought forward on this, to my knowledge, at this time. We haven't had any basis on which to allocate funds to that specific item.

B. Simpson: It's not without precedent or not without a framework for Elections B.C. to take that job on if asked, if resourced appropriately and if given the legislative authority to do so. Is that correct?

R. Hawes: I have a couple of questions. One of them is on page 1, your historical statement. Just a quick question.

There was $2.940 million allocated for the STV vote in the municipal elections, which didn't happen, so you returned the money. I notice that of the $2.940 million you returned $2.549 million. Within the budget some money was reallocated.

It looks like you're slightly over budget in some other areas. The biggest one is building occupancy. You explained something about a warehouse. Is that where you were talking about? Your building occupancy was budgeted for $393,000, and it came in at $653,000. I notice that in the subsequent year, it drops back down again. I just wondered: was there an unusual event that happened in '06-07 with respect to occupancy?

N. Western: There was. Because of the throne speech, when we thought that we would be running the referendum in 2008 with the municipal elections, we had to acquire additional office space to prepare for that. At the time, remember, we also thought that we could be running the 2009 election on the STV model if the fall '08 referendum had passed.

So we acquired additional office space in Victoria. Some of the $2.9 million was spent for that, and we've kept that space. Office space in Victoria, as you probably know, is at a premium. The accommodation and real estate services people have told us that it's unlikely we will find office space that we will need for the election in 2009, so we've maintained that space, and we're using it.

R. Hawes: Yet for this year, you've dropped back down to $419,000 — what you're asking for — which is a quarter of a million dollars less than you spent in 2006-07.

N. Western: Also in 2006-07 we still had additional office space after the election. While we did a lot of election cleanup, we had additional office space just down the road here. That does include some of that.

R. Hawes: Okay. Just an observation and then a question I just want to address, because I've heard several times today that the government is going to not accept the report of the Boundaries Commission.

I would suggest that that's pure speculation. I'm not anxious to get into that kind of speculation, but at the same time, the observation I would make would be that I think both the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition have publicly said that they could not accept or did not want to accept a loss of representation in the rural areas.

I'm presuming that's part of the place that the speculation flows from. I would suggest that that probably sounds like both sides of the House don't want to see rural representation lost.

I want to actually speak to Mr. Ralston's question about litigation. In the past there have been Boundaries Commission reports that were not accepted. Was the litigation flowing from that?

H. Neufeld: No. I think the issue around litigation is probably going to be based on a Charter challenge on section 3 of the Charter, equality of voting rights.

The situation right now is that parts of the province have grown exponentially. In other parts of the province, the population has stayed stable, and in some parts it's dropped.

So we have 17 districts that are beyond the plus or minus 25-percent variance from voter parity, from being equal in terms of the number of people per electoral district.

It's speculation, as well, to say that somebody is going to challenge. We don't know that, but I believe that if there was a challenge, the challenge wouldn't be naming me as defender of the existing boundaries.

L. Johnson: I would just like to add that there has been litigation on B.C. electoral boundaries previously. That was in the early '80s, the so-called Dixon case, which now Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin made a ruling on.

That set the plus or minus 25-percent framework that is being used across the country since that time.

B. Bennett (Chair): Members, we've been around. I haven't asked my questions yet, but we've been around. John, do you have a quick question?

J. Horgan: It has to do with events and the Electoral Boundaries Commission. In your annual report you say that geospatial and cartography services are being contracted from your office to the commission.

I'm wondering if you could quantify the value of that service and also if you anticipate, because of the contraction of time available, that those services will be increasing or decreasing. If they do increase, would you come back to this committee to seek further resources?

L. Johnson: The contracting of services by Elections B.C. to the commission is budget-neutral for us. It's on a full cost recovery basis. So the costs associated with cartographic services are borne entirely by the commission.

J. Horgan: The second question I would have would be: Nola, you suggested that because of the throne speech suggestions that we would have a referendum in 2008 at the time of the municipal elections, expenditures were made. Can you quantify what those expenditures were? You said office space. Were there any other expenditures at that time, based on the government's commitment to a referendum in 2008?

N. Western: I think Linda can probably address this better than I can. We did incur some expenses related to research, looking at different legislation. Even though they changed the date of the referendum, we still knew there was going to be a referendum, so we continued to research STV as a system.

L. Johnson: Nola is absolutely correct. Other than the building occupancy costs, the majority of the costs were around research about and consultation with other jurisdictions in the country that had implemented electoral system change, what was involved in that, what we could anticipate in terms of necessary time lines and, sort of, the gotta-haves and the nice-to-haves. Elections B.C. has never done this — well, certainly not for 50 years. So, most of it was around research.

B. Bennett (Chair): I like that terminology — "gotta-haves" and "nice-to-haves." What we do on Treasury Board is try and sort all that out.

I've just got a couple of quick ones here. On page 1, I haven't quite figured out why you gave back as much as you gave back. Last year for event-related funding you were allocated $1.639 million, and you gave back $2.5 million.

N. Western: In 2006-07 the event-related funding was $2.94 million. The $1.6 million is for this current fiscal year, '07-08.

I notice that your ask on the operating side is about 4½ percent, which is admirable.

Just bear with me just for a second. I know that your office, Mr. Neufeld, is having discussions with the Ministry of Attorney General with regard to the work that will have to be undertaken leading up to the referendum on STV. I note that you're requesting $30,000…. No, you had $30,000 in your budget for STV this current fiscal, and so you're not asking for anything for '08-09 for that at this point?

B. Bennett (Chair): Is that in anticipation that there will be funding coming from the ministry for that?

H. Neufeld: Basically, we have changed our assumptions. At one point — and this was very much the case after the 2005 throne speech with regards to the referendum and the possibility that we would be running an election in 2009 under STV — we were very much of the opinion

that legislation needed to be researched and would need to be passed well in advance of the referendum so that we could get ready to administer an STV election if that referendum actually passed the thresholds. That, of course, is a moot point now.

We did continue with some research in the last fiscal year, and we have some materials that we're ready to share with the legislative drafters, should STV pass and should there need to be a legislative framework for that. I will be encouraging the Legislature to give that priority as quickly as possible after the referendum, should it pass. But there's no expectation that we're going to be involved in that kind of activity in the coming fiscal year.

B. Bennett (Chair): On page 7, item 3, the electoral boundary redistribution. You've provided some answers on this already, but I'd like to just clarify. The $2.142 million — should it come to pass that there isn't a boundaries redistribution, would you give back all of that money, or is there some of it that you'd have to use for the internal work that Linda referred to?

H. Neufeld: Maybe you could provide a better answer to this, Linda. The voting area redistribution — we have been holding off as long as we could. It's far more efficient to do it when you're changing the electoral boundaries of the electoral districts anyway, but we're overdue. We have to do a voting area redistribution, and that's going to take a large component of cost.

L. Johnson: I would be absolutely guessing to provide you a proportion of how much money we would be returning. We would certainly be returning some of it, but voting area redistribution is a very significant amount of work, and that work would need to continue.

B. Bennett (Chair): Just so we understand what voting area redistribution is, it is the distribution of polls within existing boundaries.

B. Bennett (Chair): So when you did your budget presentation and you called this particular item electoral boundary redistribution, perhaps you might have considered including voting area redistribution in there as well, because it sounds like that's a significant portion of the money.

L. Johnson: And that's why we've entitled it electoral boundary redistribution rather than electoral district redistribution, because it is both sets of electoral boundaries — the district level and the voting area level.

L. Johnson: We are well underway with our voting area redistribution at this time.

B. Bennett (Chair): I have one last question, and it goes to the exchange that you've had with members with regard to the voters list. I understand, in note 4 on page 7, all of the things…. And I commend you, actually, for all of the different attempts that you make to give us an accurate voters list. I don't think that it's done any better anywhere else in the country. But it sounds like we don't really end up with the best voters list until a few days before the writ is dropped.

Something happens in February. I've made a note of it here, somewhere. You've got the call centre. You've got the ICBC information. You've got the national register of voters, and you do a mailing in February. That's what you do in February.

So we really don't get that accurate voters list until almost days before the writ is dropped. Is that correct?

L. Johnson: That's right. Voters aren't very motivated to let us know that they've moved until they see an election looming. That's why registration in conjunction with voting is so popular. A lot of people just like to wait until the last minute.

B. Bennett (Chair): One final follow-up to that. In terms of your response, Mr. Neufeld, to Harry Bloy about purchasing a copy of the voters list, is it fair to assume that the closer to the election you acquire a copy of the voters list, the more accurate it will be?

H. Neufeld: I think that's just reality. We're doing quality studies annually, and we're cooperating with Elections Canada on quality studies. Elections Canada is very motivated, because they have no idea when the next election is going to be. They have a fixed election date, but they have a minority House.

They are very keen to have as good a quality a list as they can at all times. You know, our most recent quality measures indicate that we have in excess of 90 percent of eligible voters registered and in excess of 75 percent of them at the correct address. We want to get that at least another 10 percent higher before we're into an election, in terms of address currency.

The last information that I had from Statistics Canada was that 18 percent to 24 percent of people in this province change addresses every year. The first thing they think about is not keeping current on the voters list, I'm afraid to say. Their motivation about being current on the voters list only rises as we get closer to an election, and it's only rising for those people who actually intend to vote in that election.

It's a very, very difficult challenge to keep a fully current voters list available at all times. Keeping a register is now the preferred method for 12 of the 14 Canadian federal, territorial and provincial jurisdictions. It is a method that we're all struggling with, in terms of how you do a really good job without putting a big administrative burden on the voters and being efficient with your expenditures.

R. Hawes: Mr. Neufeld, maybe you can tell me. I'm not sure…. When the Boundaries Commission uses its population figures and its estimates, are they getting those numbers from Elections B.C.? The reason I'm asking the question is…. I have not verified this, but I have been told with reasonable certainty…. Using Vancouver-Burrard as an example, the estimated population there was somewhere around 80,000-plus, but the actual number of addresses, based on postal code according to the post office, is over 120,000.

I would assume there are faces behind those addresses, so I'm just wondering where the numbers come from.

H. Neufeld: There is a chapter in the preliminary report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission about the basis on which the parity figures are based and the whole issue of where the figures come from.

To just give you a quick summation, it's all based on the actual census of May 2006. It's based on population. It's not based on registered voters, eligible voters or Canadian voters. It's based on the population as of the census.

That's the case across the board. Now, of course, the things we do internally at Elections B.C. are based on registered voters. We're working with Statistics B.C. to try and get an accurate projection of the number of eligible voters per electoral district and, ideally, down below the electoral district level.

It's difficult to do. The whole thing is that the census numbers are the most accurate all the way down to the census block level. But not everybody participates in the census. There is a census undercount figure. There was an elaborate process to decide what the census undercount was. The census undercount for the last census before 2006, in 2001, was roughly 4 percent across the province.

We know that it's higher in some areas and lower in others in terms of the participation rate. That isn't calculated by Statistics Canada. To do it with a high level of accuracy is quite challenging from the perspective of Stats B.C.

Our source for eligible voters is Stats B.C. The source for the Boundaries Commission is Stats Canada through Stats B.C., based on census numbers with no adjustments for what the census undercount might be. The census undercount is not yet established for the 2006 census.

R. Hawes: Just as an adjunct, then. As I say, if the post office…. They do keep an accurate count of the number of addresses, because each postal walk is based on how many drops they have.

H. Neufeld: Vancouver-Burrard is a unique case. We keep an address register of residential addresses, institutional addresses and commercial addresses. They're doing all addresses. When Canada Post does a count, it's all addresses.

R. Hawes: I agree. But when you take out institutional and commercial — who, incidentally, also need to be represented by whoever the elected official is…. If you have 120,000 and you take those out, I would assume you're not taking out 40 percent.

H. Neufeld: It's a good question. I think there is value in digging down, not only how many people are in each district, how many eligible voters there are, how many actual registered voters there are…. I think you have a good point. How many addresses are there? How many of those addresses are truly residential addresses, how many are commercial, and how many are institutional?

R. Hawes: I think the post office does differentiate between commercial and residential. At least they do where I live.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Neufeld. I'd like to congratulate you and your team on your presentation today and just tell you that it's the most transparent, the best-organized and most understandable presentation we've had.

We appreciate it. We also appreciate that your request to the public purse is less than 5 percent, and we will deliberate in camera on your request.

B. Bennett (Chair): Members, we'll just take a very brief recess to allow our next presenters to get into their seats.

Welcome to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Mary Ellen, I'll let you get started with your presentation, and of course, introduce your staff.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. I'm the Representative for Children and Youth, and I have with me today the Deputy Representative, John Greschner, who's seated to my left, your right; and behind me I have the Deputy Representative from Prince George, Andrew Robinson. Seated up at the table with me I have two members of my staff. First, to my immediate right, I have Cory Heavener, who does corporate services for our office; and second, I have Tanis McNally-Dawes, who's the manager with respect to financial services. They may also assist in responding to any questions that the committee might have this morning.

B. Bennett (Chair): I know that we've got members coming back here very shortly.

Jenny, would you like us to give you an opportunity to get your colleagues back, or can we proceed with the presentation?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Today I am presenting my estimate of resources for fiscal years 2009-2011. You'll have a copy of the budget submission before you, as well as the three-year service plan.

You may recall that this is my second meeting before this committee. When I first appeared in December 2006 to present the representative's first budget submission, the office of the representative was not operational. I had been, in fact, on the job just two weeks.

The first budget submission was a transition budget, based on anticipated needs of the office, and that was uninformed by operational experience. I had a twofold responsibility for that first year. I wound down the office of the child and youth officer as well as starting up a new, independent office.

Today I'm pleased to be here with the advantage of a three-year service plan, which was taken before the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth — the Chairman of this committee also sits on that committee — and adopted by that standing committee earlier this week, as well as having the advantage of eight months of operational experience.

When I made my first budget submission, I was invited by the Chair at the time, Mr. Lekstrom, to approach the committee again during the first year of operations if there were any difficulties with respect to the initial budget — if it was inadequate, and so forth.

I did not choose to return to the committee. I was able to operate within the first year based on the following. I felt there was a need to develop a comprehensive three-year service plan for the organization in order to describe the work that would be needed prior to coming back, although I became very keenly aware of the fact that there would be additional resources required to fulfil the mandate.

My statutory mandate, largely set out by the Representative for Children and Youth Act and the goals articulated in the service plan that was adopted this week, can only be met if there is an increase in the base budget. In particular, for me to fulfil the mandate will require an increase in my staff complement.

To summarize just at the outset, I'm requesting a budget for 2008-2009 in the amount of $6.558 million. This is an increase of $1.743 million over the 2007-2008 budget of $4.815 million. It amounts to a 36.2-percent increase.

Before I go into the details of why the additional resources are required, I'd like to provide you with a brief overview of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth. The mandated functions of my office were proclaimed on April 1, 2007, with the exception of the function for critical injury and death review or investigation, which was delayed until June 1 to permit the policy framework to be established in our office.

Since April 1, 2007, the focus of the organization has been on establishing the infrastructure, operations, policies and practices of the organization so that all mandates of the office can be fulfilled: developing and implementing advocacy; monitoring in critical injury and death review and investigative programs; informing children, youth, families, communities, and government and non-government child-, family- and youth-serving organizations about our mandate and services.

Currently there are 30 staff positions in addition to the representative's position in the office. Of the 30, 28 are either permanently or temporarily filled at this time. Three deputy representatives are now in place, and active recruitment is underway to permanently fill all of the positions in the organization.

The office is making a concerted effort to recruit aboriginal staff, in particular, at all levels, given the prevalence of aboriginal children with vulnerabilities over which we have responsibilities. At this time 30 percent of the staff are aboriginal people, including myself and a deputy and other line staff people.

We have three offices out of which we operate — Vancouver, Victoria and Prince George. A key priority for our office has been to establish a presence throughout British Columbia to ensure that all vulnerable children and youth, including first nations and Métis children and youth, have access to our services.

I and my staff have travelled extensively throughout the province to provide information on our mandate. If you go to the last page of our budget submission, which is a map on page 26, this will just give you an idea of the reach of our advocacy outreach in the first period of operations. You will see that particularly in the north we've had a very strong period of outreach to develop relationships with communities and engage in advocacy and community engagement plans to hear from children and youth and ensure that they're aware of our services and that we understand their circumstances.

The remote and rural areas in northern British Columbia have been a priority for us during this first period. These areas will continue to be a priority, as it is our view that in many of these areas the needs of children and youth are quite significant, and their access to services and supports has been uneven in the past.

Another key priority for us in the first period of operations has been strategic planning. As I mentioned, the three-year service plan was presented and accepted. I do note that under my statute, the Representative for Children and Youth Act, I was not required to prepare a service plan until next year. I prepared a three-year plan in advance as I felt, at least for the benefit of my own mandate of five years with one year already passing, that I didn't want to wait an additional year to prepare a plan. So we prepared the plan, which you have a copy of.

I would like to review just a few points in that service plan so that you can have an understanding of the

work that lies ahead that is required to fulfil the mandate. First of all, with respect to our core business areas, our office has three main goals: firstly, that vulnerable children and youth have their rights and interests protected and upheld and their voices heard and considered; secondly, that the work of the representative's office supports improved results for vulnerable children and youth; and thirdly, that the office delivers its mandate in a child-centred, open, collaborative, accountable and responsive way.

My core functions are set out in section 6 of the Representative for Children and Youth Act. They include advocacy, monitoring, reviewing, investigating critical injuries and deaths of children, and research, data collection and analysis.

I'd like to direct your attention to page 7 of our budget submission, where these core functions are outlined in greater detail. In terms of the advocacy function I won't actually read out the bullets provided; I would just draw your attention to that area. In terms of monitoring the same holds. Finally, reviewing and investigating critical injuries and deaths.

For your reference, if you go to page 8, I've also included some comparison information with respect to mandates and budgets of previous child-serving oversight bodies in British Columbia. I wanted to spend a moment on this with the committee. There have been previous external bodies that have played a role in addressing issues of public accountability in improvements to the child-serving system in British Columbia. The mandate of the representative's office is much broader than these previous external oversight bodies such as the advocate for children, family and youth; the Children's Commission; and the Office for Children and Youth. The current mandate encompasses aspects from all three, while also being independent and adding new responsibilities.

In 1995, following on the heels of the Gove inquiry into the child protection system, the B.C. government established the Children's Commission. The main focus of the Children's Commission was to examine the deaths of all children and youth in British Columbia. The commission also heard complaints, had tribunals review issues not otherwise resolved and monitored a limited number of specific activities of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, such as plans of care. Its budget and FTEs for its final year of operation, which was 2000-2001, was $2.9 million, with 27 FTEs.

At the same time that the Children's Commission was operating, so was the Child, Youth and Family Advocate's office. This office performed a single function, which was to provide advocacy services to children, youth and their families in dealing with issues relating to the child welfare system. The office provided information, education, support and advice to individuals to assist them in self-advocating. It encouraged and promoted community advocacy and provided direct representation at times. This office existed from 1995 to 2002. Its budget and FTEs for the final year of operation, which was 2001-02, was $1.6 million, with 16 FTEs.

Both the Children's Commission and the child and youth advocate were discontinued in 2002 and replaced, in part, by the Office for Children and Youth. This office had a narrower mandate than the previous two offices and was not independent, yet it did combine some functions of both the offices.

The Office for Children and Youth provided advocacy services of a considerably reduced nature than those that were provided by the previous child and youth advocate. It provided little direct advocacy services and focused its energies on expanding community-based advocacy supports. It had a minimal role to play in relation to reviewing or investigating the deaths or injuries of vulnerable children and youth. Its budget, including FTEs, for its final year of operation, '06-07, was $2.3 million and 21 FTEs.

I go through this long history to explain that the functions of the representative's office include and have functions in addition to those previously carried out by these three different entities. The main difference between the representative's office and the predecessor offices that I've just described are the following. The representative's office has an expanded advocacy mandate, and as I've indicated with respect to our outreach, certainly a stronger outreach and presence in all regions of the province is required.

Unlike some of these other offices, we have three regional office locations. We are also actively supporting collaboration and systemwide integration of services and supports for children.

The function to review and investigate critical injuries and deaths. In the past the Children's Commission was looking at the issue of injuries, but that wasn't really engaged. The review of injuries to children that may be in care or having received services in the year prior to their injury — and we're dealing with serious injuries here — is a new mandate, a very significant mandate, which requires a significant amount of attention, expertise and dedication. As well, the representative's office has a broader monitoring and research mandate and function.

Having said that about the mandate and responsibility, as this new entity has taken up some of the core functions of prior entities and expanded them, I would like to share with you some of the work that we've done in our program areas in our first eight months of operations.

First of all, with respect to advocacy — and this is outlined on page 11 in the budget submission — we have been extensively involved in community awareness and engagement. We've received over 500 inquiries with respect to just electronic messaging on our website, which was operational in April.

I personally have attended 26 major engagements speaking to children and youth, or adults who are in the child- or family-serving area. We have attended to 45 northern and rural communities and have visited staff and engaged with over 900 people at these visits. There have been another 20 speaking engagements or presentations by staff throughout the province.

Individual advocacy really commenced from the time I was appointed as representative in December of last

year. The full advocacy function was proclaimed on April 1. From April 1 to September 2007, in that period alone, there were 561 individual advocacy requests made to our office. In total we've had in excess of 1,000 individual advocacy requests that have come forward to our office.

These are split between youth and adults. They run the gamut of issues. The monthly advocacy calls to our office have been increasing by about 20 percent per month, so they have been growing quite substantially.

With respect to the monitoring function, we have issued two reports. Earlier this week we issued a 2007 progress report on the implementation of the recommendations of the B.C. Children and Youth Review — the Hughes review, in other words. We also issued, in May 2007, a study of 32,000 children in care from 1997 to 2005. It looked at their health and well-being and, in particular, their education outcomes.

We also prepared an evaluation of education outcomes for children in the home of a relative, which is a MEIA program.

A number of other reviews are underway. Although they will not be reported out in this fiscal year, they are underway. We are engaged in a joint project with the Ombudsman's office to review the complaints process within the Ministry of Children and Family Development, delegated agencies and for Community Living B.C. We're engaged in a review of medical examinations of youth in custody in British Columbia. We are engaged in a review of the sexual abuse intervention program, and we're doing an evaluation — potentially, audit — of the services and programs in place for special needs children in British Columbia.

As well, we are promoting the development of a child-focused, holistic plan to make measurable improvements in the overall health and well-being of children in B.C., in collaboration with a number of relevant ministries.

On the other area of our mandate, the review and investigation of critical injuries and deaths of children, which we outline on page 14 of our budget submission, on November 7, I issued the first public report on the number of critical injuries and deaths of children and youth reported to the office during the period June 1 to September 30.

There were 69 critical injuries reported to the office. Upon further review, it was determined that 15 involved only minor injuries and did not meet the criteria for further review and/or investigation. However, 38 will be further reviewed and investigated. Of those, 13 will be sent for aggregate analysis for the purposes of identifying and analyzing circumstances or trends around injuries; three are pending decision.

The Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth has also referred one historic critical injury to our office for evaluation and reporting.

There were 26 deaths reported to the representative between June 1 and September 30, 2007; 17 were natural deaths of children with serious medical conditions. The remaining nine deaths were reviewed and are in the category of "under investigation."

In addition to those reportables, the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth has referred four historic child deaths to our office, which we are investigating and will report on early in the new year.

In keeping with the recommendation in the Hughes review, the B.C. Coroners Service was to refer to us any historic child deaths of concern during the period November 2006 to June 2007 — any ones they identify that would warrant further review or investigation.

I received correspondence from the chief coroner referring to us three specific files, which I will take before the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth on December 11, 2007, and seek there a formal referral to our office for further investigation and reporting.

In terms of the core functions of this area and establishing the policy frameworks for critical injury and death review, we have established a multidisciplinary team, which consists of leading experts and responsible individuals from a variety of professional fields who meet to review the circumstances and review recommendations with respect to prevention and to strengthening the service delivery system for children and youth and for vulnerable children and youth.

As well, I chair something called the Children's Forum, which comprises me, as chair; the Ombudsman; the Public Guardian and Trustee; the chief coroner; the provincial director of child welfare; the provincial health officer; and some other representatives of agencies, such as the Ministry of Health perinatal death review committee.

We've met four times. We look at ensuring that there is a coherent strategy across the systems in British Columbia for the reporting, review, investigation and prevention issues for vulnerable children.

We took up that Children's Forum function — to chair it in the end — to begin this process of operating a children's forum in British Columbia. The idea came from the Hughes review. We have provided the administrative support to that forum, and we hope, with this budget, to have the resources to do that in a more supported fashion in the next three years.

The budget request. The additional budget request is mainly for new staff salaries and benefits, travel, professional consulting services. To meet my mandate and the goals and objectives in an accountable and responsive manner, I am proposing 14 additional staff positions. That would bring our staff complement to 44, in addition to me. On page 18 there's a table that outlines the proposed new staff positions in order to fulfil this mandate.

You can see that with respect to, first, advocacy, four new positions are proposed. Three are new advocates to handle this very substantial load of advocacy requests and also to have geographic coverage of all areas of the province. One of the positions is to be a call analyst, which is a very significant function to have, to be able to quickly respond to the intake of calls and to triage them to some extent, because in some instances with respect to vulnerable children and youth that are calling in, some of their needs are extremely urgent.

The need for additional advocacy is to support our goals to engage in community outreach and to provide individual advocacy to children and youth receiving designated services. It's difficult to determine on any given day the exact number of children and youth receiving designated services in British Columbia that may want to use our services. We do know that as of October 2007 there are 9,192 children and youth in care of the director of child protection.

I have been informed by the Attorney General for British Columbia that the Child in the Home of a Relative program will be a service reviewable by our office in the very near future. There are 4,791 children and youth in that program. Once that becomes a designated and reviewable service in the very near future, we will also be monitoring and reviewing the circumstances for that cohort of children — which, given changes to the program, may expand or may contract. Again, another very substantial number of children will be able to have advocacy supports and services as well as monitoring of their outcomes.

The general category of monitoring, review and investigations. You can see, with respect to increasing the staff complement, where we have a current staff complement there of 12. We are seeking four additional staff positions, three as investigators. I've described to you that we will put one-quarter of the number of injuries and deaths into the category of further review and investigation.

The investigators have a diversity of skills. They need to be able to review material, to interview, to compel production of documents and to ensure that a complete record is there — before, say, a critical injury or death was to go to a multidisciplinary team, to ensure that all of the information required is present. They'll have a particular lens on the investigation side, which is a lens of improving the service delivery system for children — having a knowledge of the service delivery system and understanding that system quite well — so that any investigation and material can support an analysis of that. Three investigators and one program manager are required, in our estimation, to carry out the scope of that work in the year ahead.

A final request is with respect to what we call knowledge exchange. We're looking for two new positions of analysts on knowledge exchange. This is something that is extremely important for us to be effective. I can use the example of the first study that we did, which was on the educational outcomes of children in care. We looked at these 32,000 children from 1997 to 2005 to see what their educational outcomes were.

After we completed this study, the standing committee adopted the recommendations in that report, and we engaged with ministries to see stronger supports for vulnerable children in the education system. However, we probably have had close to 50 requests, just around that study alone, to meet with teachers, school superintendents, trustees, parents, teachers colleges and others, etc., to explain the findings.

The knowledge exchange function is to allow us, when we do significant activities in the area of monitoring and research, to be able to exchange that knowledge and disseminate it so that there can be full benefit. Of course, we do that with ministries in particular, and we may partner with ministries. An understanding of the circumstances for vulnerable children and youth in the education system can be disseminated, as an example, so that we can encourage all of the partners in the education system to more effectively meet the needs of vulnerable children and youth, who are not graduating at anywhere near the rate of children in the general population.

In order to close gaps in some areas, some of this knowledge must be exchanged with people who work on the front lines of the system or at what we might call the street-level bureaucracy side.

B. Bennett (Chair): Mary Ellen, we're being summoned for a vote. It usually takes ten minutes, so we should be back within ten.

Mary Ellen, sorry to interrupt you and your presentation, but we're back. I don't think there will be any more bells, so why don't you carry on.

I'm at the point where I was discussing, on page 18, new staff positions. I'm to the final component there, which is on an administrative side. There is a need, in our estimate, for four new staff positions — to meet the ongoing administrative and corporate needs of the organization, to provide administrative support to existing staff in addition to the new professional staff we require to fulfil the mandate, to provide communication support to the organization as well as the human resources, records management and financial support to the organization.

You'll see, as well, that there's a request for an increase to the travel budget. Again, given the community outreach that I've spoken of…. I think that can be explained through that — and to support the travel requirements of new staff.

With respect to the professional consulting side, there is an increase requested in the area of professional consulting. I think it would be helpful to direct the committee's attention to page 22 at this time, which is the proposed operating budget details. You'll note that on page 22 we have included the 2007-2008 estimates, the '08-09 plan, and we have actually included a column so that it would be easier to see what the dollar change is from '08 to '09 in this area. You can see, in the category of professional services, that there is a significant increase sought, and I wanted to speak a little bit about what that is.

Professional consulting is required in our operation, for legal services and, in particular, for if we were ever to get in a situation — not that we are — where we had to compel the production of documents under our legislation. We have access to documents, but if for some reason we weren't able to obtain them in the investigation of a death or injury or otherwise, we may need to have a reserve with respect to legal services in order to do that. That's one area.

Also, the program and service analysis and evaluations to support the monitoring program. There are certain projects that we undertake where professional consulting services are required over, say, in-house staff — very specific. So in one project that we're engaged in now, which is looking at medical examinations of youth in custody, we would engage the professional services of a panel of medical experts. They would not join the staff. That would be a consulting function. It's more of a transitory function.

However, under the professional and consulting services are also the payments for members of our multidisciplinary team — the roster that we have for a multidisciplinary team. These are individuals who have a base position somewhere else. You may be a pediatric neurosurgeon…. They're going to be paid a stipend, if you like, according to Treasury Board guidelines with respect to their participation on a multidisciplinary team. They are not someone who we would bring on staff, of course. That is a professional service that we would contract.

Some of the members of the multidisciplinary team who we've identified actually have base positions and seek no additional payment for participation in it, but some of them have fairly specialized expertise that we have to contract with. We require their advice and guidance in terms of looking at improvements to the system.

So the professional services category has these key components, which I would be happy to describe in greater detail, should you have any questions.

Finally, with respect to capital funding, I just wanted to address the capital funding request. We're requesting $100,000 in capital funding for fiscal 2009. This will be needed for expenses related to an additional staff complement, office space, equipment and furniture. Again, I can explain that more fully.

For the other years in the plan, the '09-10 and the '10-11, we have simply projected the 2.5 increase for salaries in those years. So we see it being stable with the exception of those increases.

With that overview, what I would do, Mr. Chair, is end my presentation and go into the portion where I'd be delighted to answer any questions that you might have about the proposed budget.

B. Bennett (Chair): Thank you very much. I think there will be some questions.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): You spoke, on page 10 of your presentation, of the Child in the Home of a Relative program. You said, in your comments here today, that you had the assurance of the Attorney General that that would be added as a designated and reviewable service very shortly.

I wasn't clear, from what you were saying, whether that additional advocacy service was included in your projected budget, or would you be thinking of coming back and requesting further support for undertaking what looks to me to be a very substantial assignment there?

M. Turpel-Lafond: In preparing this budget, I took into account that a change would happen sometime in the next year. I'm delighted, though, with the notification from the Attorney General that that will happen sooner rather than later — likely by December — which means we would then have the formal oversight responsibility there.

This budget does capture that. I anticipated it would, and I'm delighted that we would be able to meet the needs to monitor that population of vulnerable children under this current projection.

D. Hayer: Thank you for your presentation. My question is on page 18. You talk about FTE total going from 30…. You have the current going to 44. One of the things I always hear outside. In my constituency they always say: "Do we have enough people who are doing the real work, who work with the ones who are just doing the administration stuff?"

You have around 57 percent of the people who will be involved with administration and advocacy, and approximately 43 percent of the budget is going to go into monitoring and reviewing investigations.

They always say: "Not enough is being done — people doing investigations." What are your views on that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think that for us, with the additional staff complement, quite a bit of the work that we do is this…. The requests that I'm making stem from the need for front-line advocates. So you can see that the increase in the front-line advocate and the call analyst is very much a front-line operational issue for us. As well, on investigations, that's a front-line operation — and the analyst, as well — because they engage with people on the front lines.

Around the administration, the four administrative positions and the one program manager, those are more of administrative support functions, not management. We're mindful of this. I think that, being an independent organization with the type of functions we have, we have to have a balance there. But being responsive to children and families that request advice and support is where the primary focus is, in terms of the increase here.

On the investigative side, that is a front-line function — to meet with families, meet with people, collect the information, and ensure that these death and injury files are completely examined.

D. Hayer: I thought that the 43 percent might be higher. It might be the other way around with 57 percent or 60 percent in the investigations, review and monitoring and then the balance in administration and advocacy. So you think it should be the other way around, then?

J. Kwan: I'm wondering whether or not your office has the mandate to review complaints or concerns from social workers. We're hearing that social workers are very worried about what's going on in the ministry. They're very concerned that they don't have the adequate resources to carry out their work.

So my first question is whether or not your office has the ability or the mandate to review their issues and the complaints that they bring forward. I'll wait for an answer for that first.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. How we handle that is as follows. We are really child- and youth-focused. So if there is a front-line worker working with a child or youth, where they're not able to, say, access a service that they feel is important for that child or youth, they refer that child or youth or their family to us. So we take in an advocacy matter for them. We don't take it for the social worker; we take it for the child or the youth or the family.

I would say that in our referrals, a very significant number are coming from people either in the contracted child and family service sector or through the ministry. We do not have a function to deal with that, although in our monitoring function it is very significant for me, in particular, to attend to the front-line offices.

So where social workers are engaged in the child protection side, it is important for us to see how it operates, to understand if they have concerns and to look at if they don't feel that the system is adequate, with the tools they're given, to meet the needs of the children they're serving.

These are all things we deal with in monitoring more so. The communication line is open there. Of course, it is very significant for our office, though, when a ministry staff raises a concern, that unless there's a specific file for a child or youth, we would encourage them to take those concerns inside their own ministry structure to address them or to whatever other processes there are.

We are not that process. We are child- and youth-focused. But for the most part, what I've found is that they're very satisfied that we take the file at the behest of the youth or the child.

J. Kwan: Okay. In your advocacy capacity and the increase in the budgeting to take on the volume of work that your office is now faced with, is it a right assumption to have that when and if the ministry fully implements the Hughes recommendations, in particular to the resolutions complaint process, that will in effect have some ramification for your office potentially resulting in a reduction in its advocacy role? I wonder if you can just expand on that for us.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, that's a very good point. I mean, our goal as an independent office in this field would be to strengthen the system so that we don't need to exist. Right now we have to expend resources, and we are requesting a budget to meet the need.

Even when you consider a thousand advocacy files in a very short period of time, if that need is to be met by 12 or 14 advocacy staff — as significantly as I can see it growing and quite exponentially…. The goal would be that dispute resolution and conflict resolution processes are strengthened in the ministry, in youth custody, in Community Living B.C., in police complaint processes, in other processes and in other places where there could be more child-focused, quick responses where vulnerable children have challenges or they're presented with challenges. Therefore, our advocacy responsibilities will decline.

One of the things we do with our advocacy files, in addition to supporting individual children and families, is that we roll them up. I will look at them and say: "Well, gee, a hundred of them are in this area." Then I will go and meet with the ministry or the agency and say: "Here. We have received a hundred complaints, and here's what they look like. How can we make this more responsive?"

That's part of my other role, which is continually seeking improvements in the system itself. Or if we see 50 complaints where youth are transitioning out of care at 19 and there are 50 files where they have the same concern — namely, they are perhaps transitioning out of support with no new system of support — we can then look at that as a systemic issue. How can they be more effectively supported?

As some of these system matters are improved, we should see a decline. When exactly that will happen, I can't say. I'm anticipating an increase in workload because in some of the communities that we visit, particularly in the north, it would be very easy to do an intake of 100 files in one place. That's not an exaggerated assumption.

I don't know what the saturation point is, but you can see why in our operations, our overall interest is to see the system improved. We don't want to be an organization just swamped with advocacy calls. We want to see the system improved so that this can happen.

J. Kwan: One last question. Are you experiencing that the families that come forward are having language barriers? In that instance your office — I'm assuming, with the budget change — will have the capacity to assist in eliminating the language barriers that some families may face.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, and part of the increase in the budget here around the professional services, around advocacy, are the requirements for us to make sure that our staff reflects the full diversity of British Columbia and that our materials are available in all languages.

We certainly are dealing with that. In terms of the new immigrant community, we have had advocacy files

that maybe don't deal so directly with children. Let's say it's a woman living with her children in a shelter, and the landlord needs an assurance that she has a deposit for rent. If she can't get an apartment and she can't stay at the shelter, her children may come into care.

So we may intervene to make sure that MEIA assures the landlord that there is a deposit coming, that she has an apartment, so that a woman, say, from a war-torn country…. She's come to Canada with her children — that her children won't come into care. That isn't such child-focused advocacy as it is that there are language barriers. She's having difficulty contacting people, difficulty dealing with others.

We're working with community organizations, and many of those will identify to us, particularly in the new immigrant community, families from war-torn countries where the children are having real challenges to resettle. Then we would also go to the ministry and say: "Could you strengthen your services for new Canadians and their children?"

The diversity of languages that our staff represent, the full diversity of British Columbia, and that we be available and accessible, often partnering with non-governmental organizations to see that these children are well served, is very significant to us. We require the resources to make sure that we're out there.

R. Hawes: Thank you for the presentation. I guess I should preface my questions by saying that I'm not an expert in your area of service, so I'm not going to ask you questions on the services you provide. I know they're all very necessary. But I am going to ask some questions about the financial side of your presentation here.

The budget last year allowed for $4.815 million. That's eight months ago, I guess. Something like that — was it?

R. Hawes: I note in your presentation, for example, that the 30 FTEs are not yet filled. I know that across the province people are having difficulty recruiting and finding people with the right expertise. As you said in here, I think you're probably having the same problem.

I'm assuming that you spent well under the $2.377 million that you have allocated in your budget for salaries. I don't have any idea of how much you spent. I don't know where the benefits are.

I'm sorry. I need to refer you back…. I don't know if you were here for the previous presentation when the Chair was talking about the clarity of the financial side of the budget presentation from the Chief Electoral Officer. I'm seeking clarity here. I don't know where you are in last year's budget. I'm assuming you are going to be considerably under the $4.815 million.

I don't know if the full amount was allocated, and then you're going to turn a lot back — how much you're going to turn back. I don't know if you're over in some areas. I have nothing to base what you're asking for upon. It's very difficult.

Look, my background is banking. I need to analyze these and know where the money is flowing. I see that as our function here — less because there is another committee that's looking at your full operation, but this committee…. In my view, my job here is to put a financial lens on what you're doing. As I try to do that — and please don't take it the wrong way — I need to see the information, and I'm not seeing it here.

I have a number of questions. For example, STOB 59 and STOB 75 deal with occupancy. They total roughly $840,000. Now, you're going to open a new office, or you're going to move an office from Vancouver to Burnaby. Your occupancy expense is going to drop to $769,000, I guess. That's included, though, with other things, not just your occupancy. I don't understand…. As you're now expanding and building into something, I'm not seeing why this change in occupancy expense.

You've opened offices now around the province in three locations. I'm assuming that the travel — much of it — will flow out from those locations — for example, Prince George, etc. You're now in different locations in the province, and I don't know if the travel allowance — $300,000…. Is this a number that you have actually sat down and worked out? From a budget perspective, do you have a worksheet on how you arrived at that figure?

Professional fees — $450,000. I understand what you're saying you need or the need for professional services, but I don't know how you arrived at the figure. Is it something that you just sort of estimated, picked out of the air? Or are there actual worksheets where you've said: "Okay, this is the likelihood of what we have to have, and this is what each one is going to cost"?

I'm sorry. Those are just the financial kinds of things I'd like to look at to know that your planning and your use of taxpayers' dollars, in terms of providing the service, are proper. I see that as my function here — to review that. That is the function of the Finance Committee, as far as I'm concerned. There are a number of questions like that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: There are quite a few questions in the question, so I will be delighted if I could ask for some assistance from my staff. We have come prepared to answer these very questions. As I understand it, you don't present working sheets, but I can certainly share the assumptions that were made with respect to developing this.

If I could just break the question down and take it piece by piece with your guidance, Mr. Chair, I'd be happy to do that.

B. Bennett (Chair): Just hang on a second. You've asked a question. Now it's time for the representative to answer it.

M. Turpel-Lafond: All right. First of all, with respect to the current budget year — namely, the '07-08 year — and whether we're on track to meet and to spend the money allocated for this year, I can report that we are.

On that front, what I would do is ask Tanis McNally-Dawes from my office to maybe speak to that item. Of course, we do monthly reports with respect to it. At this point, we're projecting to be on budget and to fully spend the budget allocated. Perhaps Tanis can speak to that more fully.

T. McNally-Dawes: The information I have is based on this budget that was presented and done on our behalf by the Ministry of Attorney General. They made up this budget with some of the unknown information that they had, to the best of their ability.

Since then, I have taken that information and reallocated it by office location so that we have an idea where we are spending the money. I do have a forecast, and I'm tracking the information by those STOB codes. I can assure you that we're tracking it on a monthly basis.

If you want something more specific, perhaps you can clarify to me what you're asking.

R. Hawes: To be clear then. We have this brand-new entity that starts up, and we have a budget estimate prepared by someone other than yourselves. I don't know whether that was accurate or not accurate, and I can't tell from the presentation you have here if what they presented was on track.

Now, you're saying you've done some reallocation. I don't know where. I would really have appreciated, as a part of this package, having something that says: "Here's what was estimated, but now that we're up and running, here's what really is happening." I don't see that here.

I guess I'll give you an analogy from a banker's perspective. I've seen many, many businesses grow quickly. As bankers, we used to have to put the brakes on them and stop them and say, "Get your whole organization flowing smoothly so we can see that your growth isn't outstripping your ability to manage what you're doing" — if you know what I mean.

I just wanted to see a little bit more information about…. I don't know if the budget that was presented last year is accurate. I have absolutely no idea from this presentation. I don't know where your reallocation is. That would have helped me a great deal in looking at how you've arrived at what you're forecasting for the future.

It's very difficult for me to compare last year's budget estimates — not seeing any actuals, not seeing a reallocation — and then try to piece that together with what you're projecting. It's so difficult from a financial perspective.

T. McNally-Dawes: This is actually this current year's budget, '07-08. We don't even have last year's budget to compare to or to provide actuals for you.

T. McNally-Dawes: I do have the forecast information for this current year. I think that's probably what you're looking for.

That would have been very, very helpful. It's not here, so I'm just not very comfortable with the budget presentation. I'm sorry. I'm not going to comment at all on what you want to do within your workplan and your service plan. It's the financial side of things that I'm very, very concerned about, and I just want to see where that all fits.

M. Turpel-Lafond: In terms of your concerns, I think that we're prepared to meet any specific questions you have. I think the first annual report that we present, which will include a report on the '07-08 estimates and expenditures, will provide, probably, more helpful information for future years.

However, as Miss McNally-Dawes indicated, we were handed a budget prepared by a ministry.

M. Turpel-Lafond: As I said at the outset, instead of returning to the committee to ask for additional allocation, I made the commitment to develop a service plan, develop the operational expertise and reallocate as necessary in order to get the plan to get the operation going. Hence, we're presenting it.

We're presenting an estimate for next year, and we have hard numbers around it in terms of occupancy costs, building costs, centralized management and support services, and office and business expenses. We have the hard estimates on that.

Certainly, around professional services and other areas…. Travel is an example. When we arrived at the estimated travel costs, we looked at where we are; what our plan is; the amount of travel that is required, particularly on the advocacy side; the additional staff; and also on critical injury and death investigation. For the first report that we're preparing…. Four of them are from the north, so there is extensive travel required to the north on that. Then we projected those into the future.

I feel that we made very modest projections with respect to that, understanding that there can be the

That was the reality that we've dealt with. Our annual report will be able to peg that down more effectively. I think that we certainly can share some additional information. It was my understanding, though, that you're not required normally to share that. If you would like to have it, we would be sure to provide it to you.

R. Hawes: I would. I think the reason I would is because this is a new entity.

I'd also refer you back to a comment that was made during the Chief Electoral Officer's presentation. The Chair, assisted by the Clerk, I think, suggested that maybe his presentation could have been used as a model for all independent officers of the Legislature. It's a very clear presentation.

I hope you'll take a look at that, and the next time you come before this committee, I would hope you would at least think about how they made that presentation, from a financial perspective, very clear and easy to understand.

Again, as I say, not being a person with an expertise in what your service plan really is and the service you're delivering — that's not my area of expertise — you could have made it a lot easier for me with a different financial presentation. If I could get some additional information, I'd be most appreciative.

B. Bennett (Chair): We're going to go to the next questioner here in a second, but is there any additional comment from the representative or her staff?

I. Black: Good morning, again. I have six questions, but they are fairly specific.

The first one is…. I want to pick up on the comments of MLA Hayer with respect to the number of people involved in the administrative and support side. That jumped out at me a little bit as well.

A lot of the other independent officers who've come before us have gotten into some rather creative arrangements whereby they are sharing some of the — and I'll use the word "overhead," not in any way disrespectfully — common administrative elements of their offices on a joint or shared basis, in some fashion.

Given that the number there, stripping out the advocacy piece — and I accept at face value your response on that, by the way — focusing only on the administration and support side, you're still dealing with about 30 percent of your HR complement tied up in the admin, HR and finance end of the world, which struck me as being quite high.

I was wondering whether you'd had the opportunity, in the brief time that you've been here, to have a look at whether a shared-services model of some kind could be deployed to lessen the requirement in that one area and focus the resources, as I know you would like to, in the front lines.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, first of all, in terms of working with other independent officers of the Legislature to see how we can share a variety of things, we are involved in that process — everything from buildings and other services. We do have some shared services now. Miss McNally-Dawes is actually from Elections B.C., and she's in our office. We do share services around payroll. We share services in a variety of other areas.

One challenge we face around this is that we have confidential material. So files that we keep are very confidential, and in terms of the access and sharing, we have certain firewalls that are required. Maintaining confidentiality of death and injury files and so on…. We're very cautious about the extent to which we can share. On an administrative side, that presents some issues, I would just note.

Also, the communications side is very significant for us as well, in terms of communicating out, ensuring that children and youth understand what our services are, have access to material, etc. That creates a certain additional administrative load for us, unlike some others, although I realize others have those as well.

Elections B.C. is an example. They would ramp up during an election period and do a massive campaign of information. We're kind of ramped up all the time on the massive campaign of information.

That gives you some. But in terms of sharing, I think it's an extremely valuable model, taking into account, though, that we have some issues around confidentiality and the need for separation from those other institutions.

I. Black: That's a message, I suspect, and a sensitivity that would be shared by the Privacy Commissioner as well.

I. Black: The next question I have is: in your calculations coming up with your salaries — and perhaps this is a question for Tanis or Cory — what was the full burden rate associated with the FTE count, on average, that you were working with when you are adding 15 people? I mean, I could just take the number and divide it by 15, but that's a little bit crude. Can you give me something a little more specific to work with here, please?

C. Heavener: Sure. We actually looked at what the 14 additional positions would be doing, and we looked at actuals — the applied leadership band. We'd look at what type of work we were looking at — if it was advocacy work, we do have advocates now — and what is the range. So instead of coming up with a general average across the 14 new positions, we were trying to be more accurate.

C. Heavener: Sure. Basically, the range is in applied leadership for our front-line positions. The range would be anywhere from probably $65,000 to close to $75,000.

Next question. We had a very compelling presentation yesterday on the public record from the Ombudsman's office, presenting their budget. The Ombudsman's office presented a budget with a base of about $4.2 million. Looking at a scenario of options before us, one of which, at the low end, was about 10.8 percent….

Part of the presentation — in approaching us and looking for the Finance Committee to approve their budget increase — was the suggestion that giving them a bigger budget increase, in the double-digit range, would somehow relieve the tension in other offices that also do advocacy work.

I wanted you to comment on that if you could, given that with $4.2 million, the Ombudsman's office is to serve about 22 ministries. Of course, with a base of $4.8 million before any increase, you're focused primarily on one. I recognize that there are other broader responsibilities. That's not where I'm trying to take you with this question. I'm looking, really, to understand any areas of overlap that may exist for collaboration and where you are distinct in the advocacy work that you do relative to the Ombudsman's office.

M. Turpel-Lafond: First of all, one of the reasons why our office was created was that there was a sense that children and youth do not engage, with respect to the advocacy side, with the Ombudsman's office because they don't provide advocacy. They deal with administrative fairness.

In terms of the child focus, at one point, of course, the Ombudsman's office in British Columbia had a very strong child unit. That has changed over the years.

Also the issue of responsiveness and being able to respond quickly. When the Hughes review was done in 2006, this was looked at fairly extensively — to say there needed to be more direct and individual advocacy in another institution. There are some instances where there is overlap.

Particularly, let's take a child in care. We would be the advocate for a child in care who is unhappy about the foster home they're in. Yet the foster family may be concerned about the application of ministry policy to them, and they may have an administrative fairness concern. That might go to the Ombudsman office, but we're on the child. That's our issue — the child focus.

So the administrative fairness issues may come into play. Hence, I said earlier…. A good example is that we can collaborate — the Ombudsman and our office. We do collaborate, and we're trying to map this out more effectively, if you like. But it's distinct from their side, because they don't do advocacy. They do administrative fairness, and that's a completely different bailiwick with respect to these children.

If you look at how many of the 10,000 kids in care or others have used the services, it's a very, very fractional number. It's a bit of different regime, if you like.

Now my next question. You touched on it at the beginning of your answer there, so I'm going to take the segue. You mentioned it during your presentation, and you articulated it on page 15, where you talk about the work you do with respect to critical injuries or death of children and youth. There's something here that caught my attention. My memory could be wrong on this, and I don't have the information in front of me, but I need you to reconcile something that I think you said with my understanding.

I thought that in the Hughes report, when they spoke about envisioning the creation of the role that you're currently in, the work with respect to the critical injury and death of children was to be focused in on the area of death of children in care. I think there was one other category as well. But there was a specific mention that the child death review unit of the coroner's office would handle the bulk of them, because the focus was to get you focused in one particular area.

If I read this right and if I understand you right, you've got a broader focus than that which was envisioned by Hughes. Am I right on that? Can you reconcile that for me?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, with the greatest amount of respect, you're not right on that one.

M. Turpel-Lafond: If you go back to the Gove inquiry, the Gove inquiry invented this category, which is "known to the ministry" — which was a new category, if you like. The Hughes review looked at injuries and deaths of children — of course, coming out of Sherry Charlie and other children. Sherry Charlie was not a child in care. She was a child known to ministry placed in kith and kin, which is not in care.

It's the children who interface with the child welfare system in some form. Some 4,700 children in British Columbia are in the home of a relative, 153 are in kith and kin, and 9,160 are in care. The children that I look at in terms of review are children who were receiving — or their families were receiving — designated services in the year prior to or at the time of their death or injury.

What is a designated service is a broader package. It might be a child connected to Community Living B.C. It might be a child connected to other programs that are there to support the well-being of vulnerable children.

The numbers that I presented…. Largely, when we make the choice about which cases to investigate and which cases to look at, it's not the status of the child per se. It is the service delivery issue, if there are significant service delivery issues there.

The child might have been in care and come out of care and then died, or the child may die in care. The child may be in kith and kin. The child might be in a relative's home. Or the child may have attempted to receive service and not received service. There may just be in intake file, shall we say.

It's a broader category, but it really stems back to the Gove inquiry — this category "known to the ministry," which means that we now see reportables. But what we've done is…. All deaths of children go to the coroner — natural, unnatural, children in care, etc. They look at it. They have a child death review unit. Those are historics.

They have active files in the Coroners Service or ones where they're considering inquests, where there may be an unknown cause of death. That's where they look at it. Or there may be some other reasons why they feel an inquest is required.

We are in very close collaboration with the Coroners Service in the sense that we say: "Here are the children where the cause of death is known. It's clear, but there are service delivery issues." And they send them to us. The child death review unit in the Coroners Service did a report on backyard-pool-drowning deaths of children.

We look at sort of a different side of the situation than that. We would look at the suicide issues, particularly around vulnerable kids, etc. They may not have been in care. They may not have been receiving services, or the service system may not have reached them for whatever reason. There is overlap, but they deal with all of the deaths. We deal with the deaths of children in care receiving services or known to the ministry.

Now, I mentioned a moment ago that many of the presentations that have come to us were presented to us on the option 1, option 2, option 3 kind of basis. One of the burdens of the committee, of course, in trying to be the guardians of the public purse, if you will, or to do a critical assessment….

J. Horgan: I'll take it on. The member just said that there were numerous presentations that had options. I've only seen one, and last time I checked, one was not numerous.

The presentation that I referenced early in my remarks to you, which was specifically what I was trying to get to, spoke of options that were presented to this committee as we do the challenging work of trying to critically assess the requests of the different independent officers. The information you've presented to us certainly reflects the service plan that's been assembled for your office.

In not giving us, as options…. My question would be this. If we were to go with the status quo model and we were having this conversation 12 months from now, how would the review of the last 12 months be different from the discussion we're having today? How would your world be different as you look forward 12 months on kind of a status quo basis? What would you be able to do? What wouldn't you be able to do, etc.?

M. Turpel-Lafond: A couple of comments. I realize this isn't the most rational statement, but I'm from Saskatchewan — right? This is a Chevy model. This is not a Mercedes model. The Chevy model that we're presenting is to do the work.

This is our first budget. I was very upfront including in the materials submitted to say what the percentage changes are. It represents a 36.2-percent increase over the current budget — I'm unabashed about that — in order to meet the mandate.

If we do not receive a budget increase, what does that mean? It means we will not be able to investigate and review the deaths and injuries of children based on current projections of what our workload will be. What would I do in that circumstance? I will go to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth and say: "There are five children, and we can't review them. Help me."

I feel this is a unique type of work, and I wouldn't want to have happen what has happened in the past, which is, for whatever reason, that these matters carry on for 15 years before someone looks at them. Including the four deaths that I'm reviewing now for the select standing committee…. Some of those go back nine years, where for whatever reason, it didn't happen. I want it to happen in real time — to be able to have the strong responses and go forward.

Other ways? Well, if I can come back before the committee next year and say, "You know what? Our advocacy load has decreased. We can change," I'd be happy to do that. As I say, I have a bit of a Depression-era mentality myself, coming from Saskatchewan, and any resources in this field…. You know, these are public resources. We are transparent, we are open, we are accountable, and we are miserly as a result.

It's very difficult for me to present five scenarios. I considered that. But I really thought that I should come forward fairly and say: "This is what is required to fulfil my mandate." Respect, if you can, the fact that I have eight months' operational experience. I've seen what the load of injuries and deaths is that comes through my desk. I've seen that. I have this number of children, and I've just been added this other group of children in the home of a relative.

Also, understand that the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth can say to me at any time: "You know, Representative, here is a big issue for children in British Columbia that has come up. We want you to evaluate it." I'd like to be able to be responsive on that front as well.

That's where I come from. We will come back. We will report on it. The 36.2 percent…. Do I have a 20-percent model? Do I have a 10-percent model? No. This is the model. We live with whatever happens, but it's the Buick and the Chevy model.

I. Black: My final question to you is this. Thank you for that answer, by the way.

The perspective that you have on this is enormous. The role that you have, by definition, is unique. What counsel could you give to us? If we are sitting in that unenviable position of saying: "We've got" — pick a number — "$1 million dollars. And we can spend it in the Ministry of Children and Family Development, or we can spend it with you."

What counsel can you give us as we go through the thought process of prioritizing what is always a limited budget of money to spend?

M. Turpel-Lafond: From my perspective, perhaps the Prairie perspective, things that will strengthen and support the lives of children, vulnerable children, are the most important things. But the work that we're doing is trying to understand what the impact of current programs and services is on children and where children fall off these services and end up having very poor outcomes on their health, well-being, etc.

How are programs and services that are being created and designed today really meeting those needs? We are trying to have a better understanding of that, to support the system across the way.

A lot of my monitoring work is to say that, yes, we're spending $10 million on child and youth mental health — as an example. How do we know that child and youth mental health has improved? What are the performance measures? How do we respond to that? How do we see improvements? How do we know that programs and services are effective in changing or improving those situations?

The performance piece is a really significant part of the work of the independent office — evaluation, quality assurance and so on. For vulnerable children, what works? What doesn't work? How can we support it?

You have a very big task ahead of you. I can say that that is something of great interest to me: to see what does work, what doesn't work and where outcomes are improved. I would like to see actual outcomes for vulnerable children improved. Whether or not the current system effectively does that is a point of dispute, but we will look at it rationally, with evidence and with a lens around public accountability and results.

B. Bennett (Chair): Members, we are about ten minutes past time. We have two agenda items that we have to deal with in camera that you know about and one that I am going to tell you about when we do go in camera. So we have three items in total that we have to deal with.

Can I get a read from committee members as to how late you're prepared and able to stay here?

J. Kwan: Quarter to one, as we have other commitments we have to go to. Already, as it is, we are missing other commitments. Having said that, I think the latest we can go to is quarter to one.

B. Bennett (Chair): I know that government members have lots of things on their plates as well. Randy, what is your sense of this? Is quarter to one…?

R. Hawes: …more questions to ask, and then we can move in. I don't know how long it's going to take.

B. Bennett (Chair): I'm not asking how long it's going to take. I'm asking: what is the latest time that you have to be out of here?

I. Black: My suggestion would be that we complete the questions of the representative and then make an assessment of what time is left.

I suspect the three items are going to take — my guess is — more than the time left. If we have to reconvene, that may be a logical break point. But I will defer to the rest of the committee at that point.

B. Bennett (Chair): This is our last opportunity to decide these three items unless we come back to Victoria, so I'd sure like — I think we'd all like — to get them resolved.

We have three questioners on the list. All three of you have asked questions previously.

B. Bennett (Chair): My mistake. Member Horgan tells me that he hasn't asked a question. I thought he had.

So John, I'm going to allow you to ask a question. I've also got Jenny and Dave. I would prefer that you didn't ask any more questions, unless they are just burning a hole in the bottom of your shoe.

J. Horgan: I withdrew my first question, but I felt an obligation, at least for this side of the committee, to speak up and to give some comfort to the representative and her staff that this presentation is equal to many that we've received. I find it quite comprehensive, and for your first one, I applaud it. So I wanted that to be on the record, hon. Chair.

In keeping with your comments earlier, Mary Ellen, of an increase of 4,791 potential cases asking for a 36-percent increase — to meet that challenge alone would seem to me to be sufficient. You add in a dysfunctional complaints and resolution process within the ministry.

I think that this is a reasonable budget submission, and I wanted to assure your staff that this is more than adequate. If you want to provide other information to

Mr. Hawes that would be great. But other independent officers that come here don't bring this level of detail in terms of mandate. As a new and unique function within our system, I think this is more than appropriate, and I thank you very much for your presentation.

B. Bennett (Chair): I have just one question, and it is in the form of a comment, I guess, or statement that I'd like you to respond to. In this committee, we deal with the Merit Commissioner, the Police Complaint Commissioner, Elections B.C., the Ombudsman, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner and the Auditor General. They are all statutory officers, as are you.

I certainly, as Chair, accept what various members from both sides of the House have said today about your role being unique. It is created by legislation, and I think there is no question that it is a unique role that has been created.

Having said that, you are asking us for a 36-percent increase over the budget that you had last year. I don't know enough about the history of this committee to know whether that's unprecedented, but it certainly, for the normal budgetary process that statutory officers go through and that ministries and Crown agencies go through with regard to the Treasury Board process, which I'm a participant in, that's a very large increase, relatively speaking.

I'm not suggesting that I think that that's too much. I'm asking you to respond and to justify that level of increase, given that it is really your first full year going forward. Do you know enough about what's happened in your first year to be sure that you need that much?

I gave one of my members the dickens a while ago for being too long-winded in the question, but I'll just finish up by saying that on your first page, you do indicate that you won't be able to fulfil your statutory mandate unless you get "an increase."

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think the point I said earlier in response to Mr. Black's question was that it's the Buick, not the Mercedes. The reason I spent some time in my presentation, in my formal submission, going through a comparison of mandates and budgets in the past….

If we go back to 2001 when there was a Children's Commission and there was also a Child and Youth Advocate, those two offices together had 43 FTEs, and they didn't even have as large of a mandate as I have. That was in 2001.

Their combined budgets, at that time, were around $4 million. They still didn't have an injury piece. There were other parts of the puzzle. They didn't have a research and monitoring piece that we have.

So when I tried to look at…. Well, where can I look to see that these types of mandates have existed in the past? That was the best thing I could look at. The request here is for 36 percent. When I go back and look at that, I can see that that's why the budget was allocated there for these two different entities. This has been merged into one independent entity with a broader mandate.

So I spent some time in the submission explaining that for that very purpose — not only looking at the past but also looking at the slate of activities that we have before us and in monitoring advocacy, which has that element of being unknown. It could spike. It could flatline. I don't know. I suspect it's going to spike a little bit more.

Then on critical injuries and deaths. We can say that there generally are a range of injuries and deaths to children. It can happen in years that there is an increase; it can happen that there's a decrease. But we have to have the core staff available to handle the load on that front.

The budget that I put forward I feel is a reasonable budget. I appreciate very much that it's a 36-percent budget, but it is, in a sense, my first budget — my first ability to come forward and say: given the mandate, given what I've learned about what's happened in the past and my operational experience at eight months, this is what it's at.

We can be a less effective organization, if you like, in pushing these matters forward with fewer resources. I think it has to be put in some context here. I'm very mindful of this. I have an office of 28 people and myself, and I'm monitoring a ministry of 4,000 people and 19,000 contracted services — 19,000 contracts; 4,000 staff people — in addition to the work that I do to monitor Health, Education and others. I'm asking for 44 FTEs — and myself is 45. If you just look in comparison….

I want it to be a small, effective organization that can fulfil the mandate. I don't want thousands of staff. I want it small, effective, strategic — that can have some results. That's my goal. It is, at times, daunting when I consider that there are 4,000 people and 19,000 contracted services over here that I'm monitoring. So I have to have enough to do the work, I guess is my point.

B. Bennett (Chair): Okay. I think we're done with questions, Mary Ellen. Thank you very much for your patience with us and for all of the information that you have provided us. We appreciate it.

Members, we'll take a very short recess. We need to keep going here. Once the room clears out, we'll go in camera.

J. Kwan: I want to make sure that with the final report coming out, of course, that the Clerk's office and the Chair will also communicate with our Deputy Chair. To ensure for the release and so on.

Let me say that although this is ending on a rather emotional note, because it's been a difficult file to deal with, I have enjoyed doing this. I appreciate the effort that everyone has made, including today, to be as non-partisan as we possibly can to do the business of the people, which I take extremely seriously. Thank you very much for that.

B. Bennett (Chair): I would like a motion for the Chair to deposit a copy of the report with the Clerk of the House at the earliest possible opportunity.

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REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES