2009 Legislative Session: First Session, 39th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Friday, November 27, 2009

9:00 a.m.

Douglas Fir Committee Room

Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: John Les, MLA (Chair); Doug Donaldson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Norm Letnick, MLA; Don McRae, MLA; Bruce Ralston, MLA; Bill Routley, MLA; John Rustad, MLA; Jane Thornthwaite, MLA; John van Dongen, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Michelle Mungall, MLA

Others Present: Josie Schofield, Manager, Committee Research Services

1. Pursuant to its terms of reference, the Committee continued its review of the three-year rolling service plans, annual reports and budget estimates of the Independent Officers of the Legislative Assembly.

2. The Committee recessed from 12:42 p.m. to 1:11 p.m.

3. The Committee adjourned at 2:26 p.m. to the call of the Chair.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

select standing committee on
Finance and Government Services

Friday, November 27, 2009

Issue No. 17

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 435 ]

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2009

The committee met at 8:57 a.m.

[J. Les in the chair.]

J. Les (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I think we are all here. It's a few minutes before nine, but we might as well get started. Hopefully, we'll finish a few minutes before quitting time this afternoon.

Starting off the proceedings this morning is the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, Stan Lowe and company.

Over to you.

Office of the
Police Complaint Commissioner

S. Lowe: Good morning, hon. Members. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to address you this morning. With me today is Shelley Forrester. She's the director of shared services. Lanny Hubbard, who you are all familiar with, is the director of corporate services. To my left is Deputy Police Complaint Commissioner Bruce Brown, and behind me is Cynthia Dyck, our information and policy manager.

This is my first opportunity to address you as Police Complaint Commissioner. My attendance before you today could not have occurred at a more critical time as it relates to the oversight of police complaints in British Columbia.

With the initial release of the Davies commission report Alone and Cold, the inquiry into the death of Frank Paul, and with the second inquiry report of the Braidwood commission into the death of Robert Dziekanski due out sometime in the new year, the topic of police oversight has attracted intense media scrutiny and has garnered significant importance amongst British Columbians.

On October 27, 2009, all hon. members of the Legislature spoke with one voice when this House passed third reading of Bill 7, the Police (Misconduct, Complaints, Investigations, Discipline and Proceedings) Amendment Act. By its very name, it envisages fundamental change to the police complaint process in this province. This legislation encapsulates the visionary recommendations of Josiah Wood in his report on the police complaint process in British Columbia.

Rather than just paying lip service to the concepts of transparency and accountability, this legislation will set the bar in Canada with respect to the oversight of police complaints. When this legislation becomes law, it has the potential to usher in a new era of transparency and accountability.

We share a collective view at the OPCC. This legislation should be viewed as an important starting point. It must be viewed as a work in progress, as we must continually assess its effectiveness and advise government of potential avenues for improvement through legislation.

We must also assist the legislation through initiatives by our office. We intend to take a leadership role in shepherding in the changes contemplated by this legislation.

[0900]

Our appearance before you today could not have come at a more crucial time for ensuring successful implementation of this legislation. It also could not have come at a worse time, when considering the current state of our national economy. In my submission to you today, I can assure you that I have adopted a conservative estimate of our needs, being mindful of the current economic climate. My concern is that in adopting this approach, I may have underestimated our needs.

When each member of this committee deliberates upon our request for increased funding, I ask that you place our request in perspective by comparing the cost of the proposed operating expenses to other government ministries and agencies.

It has taken a considerable commitment of time, effort and expense on the part of the members of the Legislature, the ministry and all stakeholders to reach this stage in the process. The only impediment to the successful implementation of this important legislation is funding both at the provincial and municipal government levels — in the latter, as it relates to police agencies.

At this point in my submissions to you, I'd like to provide you with some background information about the OPCC. Then I hope to provide you with a thumbnail sketch of the current system of oversight. This will provide you with a context with which to compare the fundamental changes contained under Bill 7.

You will hear as a continual theme in my submissions how Bill 7 will fundamentally change the oversight of police complaints in this province and, commensurately, the need to adequately fund these changes in order to attain success.

Our office provided to you, a week ago, our service plan. With respect to discussing a bit about ourselves, I'd like to take you to our service plan on page 4, the OPCC mandate. The OPCC is an independent office of the Legislature "established under part 9 of the Police Act to ensure that public complaints involving municipal police in British Columbia are handled professionally, thoroughly, impartially and ethically." The OPCC is responsible for overseeing complaints regarding the conduct of municipal police officers within the province of British Columbia.

We have a statement of purpose. The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner "provides impartial civilian oversight of complaints by the public regarding municipal police. We ensure thorough and competent investigations of police complaints and fair adjudication with respect to all parties. We facilitate quality policing
[ Page 436 ]
within our communities and uphold public trust in law enforcement and the complaint process through effective, transparent civilian oversight."

The OPCC provides an accessible way for the public to voice their concerns about the conduct of any municipal police officer or department to an independent body. The OPCC ensures that the complaint process is conducted with impartiality and fairness to both citizens and police officers alike. The OPCC maintains a record of all complaints and their dispositions, compiles statistical information and reports regularly to the public about complaints, their disposition and the complaint process.

When I began as commissioner, I brought my staff together, and I wanted to develop a statement of principles. I think it was important that we develop a statement of principles to apply to every aspect of our work, and I think it's important that I review those principles with you.

The OPCC is governed by four fundamental principles. Fairness. We act fairly, objectively and impartially in our oversight of the complaint process involving municipal police in British Columbia. Independent oversight. As an independent office, we serve the public free from any improper influence or interference. Principled. We follow a principled approach in arriving at decisions to enhance transparency and accountability. Commitment to excellence. We strive for excellence in our work while maintaining the highest ethical standards.

About a month ago I ended a two-month period in which I reviewed every decision made by every investigative analyst within our office. It was an important task for me to do because it gave me a very deep understanding of our work. It also allowed me to ensure that our analysts were applying these guiding principles. I was also able to see how our analysts were able to articulate their decisions.

Under our "Goals and performance measures." And this is the last area I'll touch upon. You have our service plan, so I don't want to read verbatim the entire plan to you.

[0905]

We have four goals to fulfil our mandate. The first goal is quality policing and public trust in law enforcement. Our second goal is the police and community's trust in the fairness and necessity of civilian oversight. We need buy-in, is what we're trying to engender as one of our goals. Third, increase public awareness in competence in the oversight process. Fourth, an accessible complaint process to all members of the community, especially those who are marginalized by our society.

Let me turn to page 6. One-third down the page are some statistics that I just want to raise with you, and then I'll expand upon those later in my submissions to you.

These are the number of files that have been initiated through citizen complaints and by our office over the past three years. In 2009 it's up to November 18. As you'll see, as far as initiated through citizens, we averaged just over 300 complaints. As far as self-reporting from police officers, police departments as well as matters that we order investigations into, we're just a short distance below 500 complaints a year.

That, in some way, may be a little misleading, because within each of these complaints what we have is our allegations. For example, last year we had just under 1,000 individual and discrete allegations that had to be investigated and had to be reviewed. Under Bill 7, I can tell you, through our anecdotal review of our materials and knowing what we know, the number of complaints and allegations, we believe, will rise substantially.

At this point I'd like to describe our current system to you. That way you'll get a full appreciation of where we are now. Then I'd like to speak to you about where we're going to, and then perhaps, within a context, you'll understand why we have a significant need for funding.

Any person who has a concern about the actions or behaviour of a municipal police officer or about the services of a police department may make a complaint. A complaint may be made orally or in writing to the OPCC or a municipal police department. However, the current Police Act requires that a document called a form 1 record of complaint be completed in order for a complaint to be proceeded with under the act. That is changing.

There are three types of complaints that we deal with under the act. The first is public trust complaints, and that deals with a citizen's allegation of misconduct by a municipal police officer. This, by and far, is the largest category of complaints that were received. Well over 95 percent on a yearly basis involve this type of complaint.

We also examine what are known as service and policy complaints. These are complaints regarding a police department's policy or procedures or the services that they provide.

The third type of complaint is internal discipline complaints. They generally involve an officer's conduct that is a concern of his employer but not one that affects the public. It's more of an internal human resources complaint. As I indicated earlier, 96 percent of Police Act complaints in 2008 fell into the public trust category, those of allegations of misconduct by an officer. So I'm going to focus on this area of complaint and take you through the current act.

In British Columbia we have the Police Act code of conduct regulations, and the code identifies 12 potential disciplinary defaults or types of misconduct for which an officer may be charged. That's the jurisdiction that a complaint must fall in to be admissible.

When a person lodges a public trust complaint with our office, a copy is sent to the chief constable of the police service where the complaint originates. It is the chief constable, at this point in time, who must make the decision whether the complaint is admissible.
[ Page 437 ]

This involves a review to ensure that the complaint discloses misconduct under the code — i.e., it must meet one of the 12 areas — that the complaint is not frivolous or vexatious and that the complaint meets the limitation date of 12 months from the date on which incident arose giving rise to the complaint.

This decision of admissibility initially taken by a chief constable is subject to review by our office. Under Bill 7 that will change.

When a public trust complaint is deemed admissible, in most cases it's assigned to the professional standards section of the police department to be investigated internally. There are occasions when investigations may be sent out to an external police department for investigation, either at the request of the chief constable or when the OPCC determines it's in the public interest to do so. An investigation must be completed in six months from the date of the complaint, unless we grant an extension.

[0910]

If I can digress for a moment, our current experience is that professional standards sections in this province are extremely busy and that many police agencies have said they're overworked based on their current staffing levels. I've appeared recently at the meeting of police chiefs in this province to impress upon them and their respective municipal governments to ensure that proper funding is in place to achieve the requirements of the act. Currently the primary reason for granting an extension by our office has been workload pressures.

One of the problems that all stakeholders in the process identified to Josiah Wood in his report on the police complaint process in British Columbia was the unacceptable delay that currently plagues the system. Bill 7, as I will expand upon, addresses this particular issue head-on.

A chief constable of a police department is referred to as a "discipline authority," and the discipline authority reviews the investigation by the professional standards unit and determines, on a civil standard of balance of probabilities, whether or not the allegations of misconduct are substantiated. That's the term we use: "substantiated" or "unsubstantiated."

Under the current system, the bulk of our work really begins when we receive the final investigation report and the decision of the disciplinary authority as to whether the allegations are substantiated or not. We conduct what is referred to as an ex post facto review — in the rearview mirror, after the fact. The final investigation report is reviewed by an investigative analyst in our office.

Final investigation reports are often complex, and they are a comprehensive summary of the investigation. They often include statements from witnesses, forensic reports, police reports, video and audio evidence, and documentary evidence. We also, with this final investigation report, receive the decision of the discipline authority, based on the final investigation report.

I'd like to take a moment to speak about the nature of our oversight work. The nature of our oversight work is highly complex and specialized. In reviewing a final investigation report, an analyst must examine the nature and quality of the investigation. They must review the investigational strategy, the investigative steps and the investigative techniques used.

To provide you with a brief illustration of the complexity of our work, when we analyze a police interview of a witness per se, we will analyze not only the information provided by the witness but, more importantly, the investigative techniques associated. We examine the timing of the interview. When did this interview take place in relation to the investigation?

We look at the questions being asked. Were they leading questions? Were they non-leading questions? Mr. Ralston, in his past life having been a defence counsel, certainly understands that concept. Leading questions are questions in which you suggest the answer to the witness. Non-leading questions are open questions that let the witness answer the question in their own words.

Another area that we examine is whether brief answers in critical areas were asked to be expanded upon, whether a witness was challenged with respect to discrepancies in the evidence or inconsistencies in their own evidence. Did the interviewer canvass all the relevant areas regarding the investigation of the complaint?

Please bear in mind that this is but one aspect of an investigation, a witness interview. There are several other aspects that have to be looked at with this type of complexity.

Any deficiencies in an investigation are considered investigative flaws. Depending on the number and severity of the flaws, we'll determine whether we will consider ordering a further investigation or a public hearing.

Those are our only two options at this point in time: to order a new hearing, which would mean either ordering an external police department to recommence and redo an investigation with another six-month time limit, or a public hearing, which may take many months to complete and several hundreds of thousands of dollars in expense.

When an analyst examines a disciplinary authority's decision, they must examine the available evidence or the lack thereof, the correctness of the decision in light of the available evidence, whether the weight assigned to each piece of evidence was reasonable, whether there was a reasonable evidentiary basis for the inference that may be drawn by a discipline authority, as well as the discipline authority's interpretation of any case law or provisions of statutes relied upon in applying the evidence to the law.

Many decisions involve complex legal issues associated with arrest, search, seizure or the use of force, and they often involve Charter of Rights and Freedoms issues. An important aspect of my work is providing
[ Page 438 ]
legal advice to the analysts or retaining commission counsel for the purpose of legal advice to assist in the review of a police complaint.

[0915]

This is just a small snippet of the complexity of our work with respect to investigative analysts. As you'll note, I'll be asking for a significant increase in the number of investigative analysts.

If we're satisfied with the quality of the investigation and the reasons underlying the decision of the discipline authority, we will confirm the decision and close the matter. But it's important — I've made it important — to my analysts to provide feedback to investigators and the discipline authority regarding their work. If we're not satisfied with either or both, as I indicated earlier, we can order a new investigation or a public hearing.

We have limited tools in our belt, under the current legislation, to perform our oversight function and to obtain adjudicated guidance. The remedial tools we currently have, unfortunately, have contributed to the unacceptable delay associated with this system.

I pause at this moment because it's important that I mention this.

The overwhelming majority of police officers conduct themselves professionally, honourably, and they uphold the public trust. It is this exemplary standard of conduct that we at the OPCC apply to our review of police complaints. This is the standard to which we hold those who are the subject of police complaints. Officers who fall short of this standard may receive discipline, if required, but also may receive corrective measures to ensure that their future conduct meets these high standards.

As I indicated earlier, a public hearing is a very expensive process, but it is a valuable tool. It affects transparency and accountability, and what occurs at a public hearing is that a retired judge sits as an adjudicator and he or she receives evidence and determines whether there's been misconduct.

As I have indicated, public hearings are very expensive and time-consuming, and historically they've only been reserved for the most egregious of cases. In the past ten years there have only been five full public hearings, which were conducted as a trial de novo. What I mean by a trial de novo is a full trial with the calling and hearing of evidence and cross examination, submissions and rendering a decision. What we had, though…. The end result of this is that we have very little adjudicative precedent to guide all the parties who participate in this process.

I'd like to take a moment and discuss what the numbers are, some important numbers for your consideration, if I may have a moment. As I indicated earlier, in 2008 there were 459 files reviewed and concluded involving 989 individual and discrete allegations of misconduct. Of those 989 allegations, 115 allegations were substantiated by discipline authorities.

Our best estimate is that with Bill 7, the number of files that we will have to review will likely increase between 20 percent and 30 percent, or 150 files. Extrapolate that to counts, and it could be as many as 300 to 500 individual and discrete allegations of misconduct.

I have been advised by my staff that this is a very conservative estimate. All we have to predict is past statistics, anecdotal experience with non-lodged complaints and measures intended to improve the accessibility to the police complaints system.

What I mean by non-lodged complaints is that there are hundreds of cases in which a citizen contacts a police department by phone, and that complaint is resolved over the phone. We never learn of it. We never learn of the substance of it. As you'll hear, under Bill 7, that will change.

Currently, the average number of files in a caseload of an investigative analyst is around 65. This caseload is not sustainable under a contemporaneous oversight system as mandated by Bill 7, nor could we meet the stringent time limits, which are under the act, to complete our work.

I'm not being critical of the time limits. I believe the legislation clearly addresses the delay that plagues our current system. But it substantially changes the nature of our work and the time we have to complete it in.

To give you a context, the average time for our office to review and conclude a file has been continually monitored. When Josiah Wood completed his report, he observed from his sample of files that the average time was 105 days by our office. It was his suggestion at that time, with a limited classification of cases that would be contemporaneously reviewed, that 60 days would be a reasonable period of time.

[0920]

However, the stringent time limits under Bill 7 make it that every case must be contemporaneously reviewed. I can tell you that over the past three years the OPCC average to review and conclude cases has been 54 business days. Our statistics have improved. However, comparatively, under Bill 7, there's a statutory limit of 20 business days. We're currently 2¼ times over the current limit imposed under Bill 7.

When I was first appointed, I conducted a review of our operations. I undertook a restructuring plan to improve upon our office's effectiveness and efficiency while remaining fiscally responsible. Through this restructuring, we've been able to hire a much-needed office clerical person, and we have created room to hire an additional investigative analyst within our current budget. I expect to have that position filled by the commencement of the new fiscal year.

As part of the restructuring plan, I've retained outside counsel as commission counsel, and my preference has been to utilize counsel who are special prosecutors in this province. I believe this adds an additional dimension of independence to the process.
[ Page 439 ]

I've also created and filled the position of information and policy manager from existing staff. This position will focus on the development and retention of business data that monitors the changes proposed by the bill as well as the development and distribution of data to the media and the public to promote transparency and accountability. We were not, in my view, getting enough information out to the public about our work and about our ongoing work.

This individual is also engaged in the planning and development of business practices regarding various aspects of Bill 7.

I want to speak a bit about our current work towards the implementation of Bill 7. The planning and development currently underway at the OPCC has resulted in a significant strain on our resources. All of this work has been done on the sides of desks on top of the current workload of staff.

We're currently engaged in the development of forms, guidelines and protocols as mandated under the act. In addition, we've been working in a consultative capacity with government with respect to the development of regulations. This involves working closely with policy analysts and legal counsel.

We're currently developing both an internal training program for staff as well as an external training program for stakeholders regarding the changes proposed in Bill 7. We intend to take a leadership role in providing external training for professional standards investigators, police unions, discipline authorities and legal counsel.

We are developing a training program for new civilian investigative analysts based on an entry-level mentoring program, progressing to a supervisory model. Given the complexity of our work, the best estimate we have for a time horizon for training is in the range of four to six years to provide a civilian investigative analyst with the necessary toolset or skill set to perform the work professionally.

We are in the planning stage with respect to modifying our business practices to incorporate the changes proposed under Bill 7. Some aspects of our planning are highly complex. For example, we are currently working on the transitional provisions of the act. When the act comes into place, how are we going to place the existing files that we have, and where should they be placed?

We're also developing an information management strategy for the collection of data and statistics, focusing on the evaluation of changes under the act; developing measures to determine whether these changes are achieved in the goals they are designed to meet; the development and retention of data to facilitate an audit, which is legislated under the act to occur within three years; and the development and collection of business information related to our work to better inform the public of our work.

The point I'm trying to drive home is that our staff is currently working at full capacity. There is no capacity to absorb the additional workload created under this act. I am very fortunate to work with a very dedicated and motivated group of public servants.

Now I'd like to discuss…. I've given you the background of our office and the work that we do, the current act. Here are four areas, or four changes, contained under Bill 7 that will substantially change the nature of our work as well as having substantially increased our need for further staffing. I call these legacy costs associated with the components of Bill 7.

From a legacy standpoint, Bill 7 will dramatically increase our costs of doing business in four primary ways. Accessibility. Bill 7 will significantly increase the number of complaints and the number of allegations requiring investigation and oversight. In addition, there are initiatives underway in our office that will further increase the number of complaints in investigations.

[0925]

The nature of our work will change. The change is to contemporaneous oversight as well as an increase in our oversight powers. This has been a dramatic increase in our oversight powers. This will have a dramatic impact on the caseload that an investigative analyst will be able to manage. There will be a significant reduction in the number of files an investigative analyst will be able to review and still maintain a high standard of review.

Bill 7 imposes strict time limits throughout the police complaint process. These time limits were designed to address the unacceptable delay associated with the current system of oversight. The reduction in time available to review and conclude a file will, again, reduce the number of files an investigative analyst will be able to manage.

Finally, litigation expenses. Litigation expenses will increase substantially with the introduction of two additional avenues of adjudicative review in addition to a public hearing. There will still be occasions when a public hearing will be called in the public interest.

In addition to these adjudicative avenues of review, there will also be litigation associated with the interpretation of the new provisions of the Police Act in Charter challenges to the validity of certain provisions.

I'd like to take a moment and expand upon each of these four areas. In relation to accessibility, the legislation relaxes the requirement for lodging a complaint. Complaints can now be made orally. They could not have been made orally under the current act. This is to facilitate individuals who are marginalized or reluctant to complete a written complaint. We also expect a significant increase in the number of complainants, with the ability to lodge a complaint orally.

We've also been tasked with the development of forms and a process relating to non-lodged complaints. We anticipate that these forms — the detail that will be required to fill in these forms — will lead to a significant increase in complaints arising from what was
[ Page 440 ]
viewed previously as the non-lodged complaint area. Currently, as I've indicated earlier, there are hundreds of non-lodged phone complaints which do not result in a formal complaint.

We're currently engaged in a public outreach initiative within our office, and we expect that we will have an increase in the number of referrals of complaints from community agencies to our office. Finally, in the accessibility area, we are upgrading our website to include the ability to file a complaint online 24 hours a day.

Now, with respect to contemporaneous oversight, if I could expand in this area. The introduction of the contemporaneous oversight model combined with the enhanced powers of oversight will substantially change the nature of our work. Contemporaneous oversight contemplates an extensive review of a complaint while the investigation is unfolding. An investigative analyst will be assigned to an investigation and will review the materials as they become available through the investigation.

An analyst will also have the power to provide investigational advice to an investigator during the course of the investigation. This tool of oversight is unprecedented. We will be the only agency in Canada that will have the statutory ability to direct a police agency with respect to investigational steps. Even the prosecution service does not have this power.

With respect to time limits, once we receive a final investigation report and the decision of a discipline authority, under Bill 7 there are strict time limits imposed, and this will significantly reduce the number of cases that we will be able to process and review.

One concern about these strict time limits is that if we do not meet the limitation date, there is the potential that we may lose jurisdiction over a complaint. It will be summarily dismissed. So it's imperative from my perspective that we meet these limitation dates.

Finally, as I raised with you earlier, litigation expenses will increase substantially. Bill 7 envisages two additional avenues of adjudicative review in addition to a public hearing. One avenue of review is the appointment of a retired judge to review a complaint where we disagree with the disciplinary's decision of no misconduct.

I can tell you anecdotally that under the current act, there are numerous occasions when we disagree with the finding of no misconduct by discipline authority. Either we would request a reconsideration, or we'd determine that the matter does not meet the high threshold necessary for a public hearing.

This avenue of review will be resorted to frequently in appropriate circumstances. It will improve upon the accountability of our system, and it will provide adjudicative guidance for all the stakeholders.

[0930]

Another, if I may describe it as an intermediate avenue of review, is a review on the record. This is intended to apply to cases where a discipline authority has determined that a substantiation of misconduct has occurred. The matter is proceeded down the disciplinary track, but at the end of the day, either the OPCC or the respondent officer — member or former member — now raises an issue with respect to the process.

Again, this intermediate avenue of review provides for the appointment of a retired judge to review the matter based on a documentary record of the proceedings. It's an efficient and economic avenue of review because it requires the legal assistance of counsel, but within an appellant-like form. There is a very limited ability to call evidence within this. It's just purely based on the documents and the record of proceedings.

As I indicated earlier, these additional avenues of review will result in a significant increase in the litigation costs of our office, but it's important when we speak of the terms of transparency and accountability. These are forms in which to achieve transparency and accountability.

Finally, there are significant litigation costs associated with the challenges to the interpretations of the new provisions of the act from a judicial review perspective and from a Charter of Rights and Freedoms perspective. Any new legislation must pass constitutional muster and must receive judicial guidance as to the interpretations of the provisions.

As I mentioned earlier, there are other ongoing OPCC initiatives which will constitute a further drain on our resources. One that you may not be aware of is that we are in the final stages of a memorandum of agreement with all municipal police departments in British Columbia to provide an additional oversight function regarding officer-involved incidents resulting in death or serious harm or matters which could bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

This memorandum of agreement is a result of the prosecution service decision not to receive matters for charge assessment where the investigative agency is not in a position to recommend charges or is in need of the legal expertise of Crown counsel for the purpose of charge assessment. The OPCC will review the matter and determine whether to forward the matter to Crown counsel pursuant to its jurisdiction under the current act. This jurisdiction is repeated again under Bill 7.

This MOU is intended to fill a current void on an interim basis while the government examines the issue of police oversight of criminal matters. There is currently an MOU in place with the Vancouver police department. It has been resorted to on one occasion so far.

These reviews are very time-consuming and an immense drain on resources. This past review was conducted by the deputy commissioner, a senior investigative analyst and myself and literally took hundreds of hours.

Let me get to the brass tacks of the budget submission. As set out in our budget submission, I have requested
[ Page 441 ]
funding for four new investigative analysts in fiscal 2011 and two additional analysts in fiscal 2012. As I alluded to earlier, I have already secured funding for one analyst in fiscal 2011 through a restructuring. This will bring the total number of FTEs to seven.

The increase in staffing is staged in order to accommodate space and training requirements. It's important that you know my goal is to fill five of the analyst positions with candidates with a civilian background.

The proposed budget request also includes an additional $400,000 increase in dedicated funding for adjudicative reviews and associated legal costs. It's important that you're aware that this funding is reserved for this sole purpose only and, if not used, would be returned to the treasury as a budget surplus.

Finally, there are costs associated with acquiring the new space to be shared with three other officers of the Legislature. This particular endeavour had been approved previously by this committee.

The proposed operation budget for fiscal 2011 then is $3.114 million. In fiscal 2012 it's $3.541 million.

Those are my submissions to you. I would be pleased to answer any questions that you may have of me.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Stan. Questions from committee members.

[0935]

J. van Dongen: I'll say upfront that certainly the new act creates a whole set of challenges in terms of implementation. I think it's a good piece of legislation, but I believe that the implementation of that act can be significantly influenced by interpretation — how people interpret their job.

I want to just reconfirm, Stan. If someone has a complaint about a municipal police force, even under the new act it would initially go to the police chief or to the police force that the complaint is about, and the copy of the formal complaint will go to the OPCC. Is that correct, or do the complaints now…? Do all the complaints go directly to your office?

S. Lowe: Yes. Thank you for raising that, Mr. van Dongen. That's an oversight on my behalf. With respect to the area of accessibility, I should have also raised with you that the determination of whether a complaint is admissible or not will now be made solely by the OPCC, so that is another area in which our duties have increased.

Again, as I've indicated, the ways in which to initiate a complaint had been relaxed — if I could use that term. So again, we anticipate a significant increase in the number of complaints we receive.

J. van Dongen: So you'll be attempting to inform the public that every complaint…. If someone goes into a police detachment, they will be advised that this is the complaint process — there will be brochures there — and it will go directly to your office.

Do you receive the complaint, whether it's oral or written, and make a judgment about whether it's admissible and then turn it over to the chief in that detachment?

S. Lowe: That's right. Normally we would, but depending on the circumstances. Each case must be looked at on the circumstances. One of the questions we ask if we find it to be admissible is whether this can investigated internally. If it can be, it will go to the professional standards section of the police department that the complaint is made against.

J. van Dongen: Okay, so in most cases it will be turned over to the police force.

S. Lowe: Yes. The majority.

J. van Dongen: That would be the expectation.

S. Lowe: Yes.

J. van Dongen: Okay.

S. Lowe: I should add that even our current experience is that the appointment of an external police department is not a rare occurrence under our current system. It's something we resort to — if I could use a term that probably more accurately describes it — occasionally. It happens a number of times during the course of a year.

J. van Dongen: Yes. I think it's a practice now that's only triggered with some pretty significant thresholds. I think the various forces now have a better protocol around that, and they recognize the kind of cases where, for public confidence, the imperative is to bring in an outside police force.

S. Lowe: Yes.

J. van Dongen: Two comments. One comment, first of all. I was a little bit surprised you talked about doing public outreach already, right now, when my sense is that you're barely in a position to handle the workload and the transition. I'm a little bit surprised about that. Could you comment on that a little bit?

S. Lowe: Yes. What we've identified, when I first came in, is that we weren't reaching out to the community as much as I would like to see. I've assigned an individual to assist me in identifying large community-based organizations that already provide support to their communities so that I can come and speak to them.

I've spoken so far at Deltassist. In the new year I have a number of speaking engagements that are coming
[ Page 442 ]
in. What I'm doing is basically explaining the changes under the act and soliciting their assistance as referral agencies.

It's something that I think is necessary. It's something that I believe can't wait. I agree with you that we are spread fairly thin, but it can be done.

J. van Dongen: The issue of contemporaneous oversight. I have to preface my comments and question here with the fact that I am not personally specifically familiar with the legislation. But in working with the Josiah Wood report and working with staff to develop the legislation, I certainly had some views about the exercise of contemporaneous oversight.

[0940]

I also have some views that stem from my experience with other tribunal and supervisory board situations where you have an entity — in this case, shall we say.... I think you've used the term “standards review of professional….”

Interjection.

J. van Dongen: Whatever the title is for the unit in the police force, in the police detachment. I think it's correct, and it should be correct, to assume that the professionals at the police detachment are trained and capable of implementing a professional investigation. Would that be a reasonable assumption for us to make, because they're in the business of doing investigations?

S. Lowe: Yes. I think that for the most part, most professional standards sections do excellent investigations. But you have to remember that it is a significant departure from the normal type of investigation. We at the OPCC take the view that a professional standards investigation should be no different than a criminal investigation. A professional standard investigation brings a number of different variables and brings into consideration the Police Act.

We view our role in the contemporaneous oversight as one of advisory, assisting. We want to get to a point where everyone is satisfied with the investigation and what we're left with is the decision-making on the file so that when it gets to an adjudicative review, there are not gaps and holes where an adjudicator can say: "Well, I wish I had this information."

It's important that I hasten to add that we understand that the power to provide investigative advice is a significant power. We are striking a working committee with police to develop protocols. I've told my staff that there is a fine line between interfering with a police investigation and assisting a police investigation. So we're going to work with police to establish a protocol.

But I can tell you that now, currently, there are files in our office in the spirit of Bill 7 that are being contemporaneously reviewed by us. We are receiving on a daily basis evidence from investigations, and investigators are consulting with us pursuant to the investigative steps. So in this trial mode — if I could use that — it seems to be working well.

The question is that when the legislation comes in, everything shifts. That's one of the areas. Matters that were originally being investigated under the old Police Act are now contemporaneously looked at because the time limits come in.

Before, we had no time limits. We could look at it to our hearts' content. Hence, we started off at 105 days to arrive at a decision and whittled our way down to 53 business days. Now we have 20 business days. These are some of the transitional issues I raised earlier that we'll have to contend with.

J. van Dongen: I'm very interested in this area. I don't want to prolong or overdo the discussion, Mr. Chairman, but I do believe that how this section of contemporaneous oversight is implemented can have very significant impacts for cost. But it can have other significant impacts.

It still seems to me — and certainly with great respect to what you're saying, Stan — that the primary responsibility for the actual investigation and the quality of that investigation in my view, and I believe in the intent of the legislation, lies with the professional standards unit. I think that has to be very clear.

We have a bit of a risk here. We have the risk that unless we have a clear division of responsibility and clear protocols, you run the danger of having two people, or two players, competing for conduct of the investigation. I'm going to be looking forward to how you implement that.

[0945]

I have seen the difficulties that can be created when a supervisory or overseeing tribunal — or in this case an analyst who is providing contemporaneous oversight — gets into a position where they are almost directing the investigation. I think there are a lot of potential flaws there.

This is a very good section in the new legislation, but one that has to be implemented very thoughtfully and very carefully and with due consideration for the fact that the primary responsibility is still with that unit. And if they're not doing the right job in the first instance, there's a problem there.

It's not going to be properly solved by having a very active day-to-day oversight and direction and advice, etc., on an ongoing basis. If that oversight role becomes too intense and too busy, if you will, then we might as well go to a separate investigation unit. Then we have one investigation and not two.

It's just a caution. I want to be clear that I think it's a good section, but I also believe — and I'm going to
[ Page 443 ]
be watching very carefully — it's a section that could become an area of great difficulty if we are not careful in implementation — and great implications for costs as well.

S. Lowe: Mr. van Dongen, everything you've said I have no disagreement with. Philosophically, I am of the view that the primary investigating unit is the professional standards section.

While we're implementing it, without going into too much of our planning…. One aspect that we hope to monitor investigations by is the creation of investigational logs, where an investigator can lay out for us the investigative steps they've taken. Then, when it looks like an investigation is getting to a point of winding up, if we see any areas we have concerns about, that is the time to raise it with the investigators.

I agree with you. We're not going to be looking over their shoulders. We're not going to be riding in the seat next to them and conducting investigations. We won't have the time for that, to begin with. But one thing I'm very worried about is that once we've received a final investigation report, and we have 20 days to look at the matter, and we see investigative flaws that we should have caught…. That's our responsibility.

So I would like my investigative analysts to be on top of matters and to be sure that they are prudent with respect to their timing. Once we get to the final investigation report, once we have to look at the matter, the state of the investigation remains the state of the investigation. If an adjudicator has to be appointed, that's what they're stuck with. Our goal is to improve the quality. Our goal is not to direct the police.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I'll try a couple of quick questions, I hope, but maybe not so quick.

My first is on something you mentioned, and I believe the terminology is the intermediate avenue of review. I'm just trying to see if I heard correctly what you were explaining. I think I probably need to be corrected on my interpretation.

If there's an alleged misconduct and there's a disciplinary investigation by a police force and they arrive at the decision that disciplinary action is not required, then there is the ability through your office to review that decision. And then if you find by your investigation that disciplinary action was justified, what force do you have to apply that ruling?

S. Lowe: It's a little confusing where the review of the record is what you're referring to and where the appointment of a retired judge to sit as a discipline authority occurs.

If we can work down a tree diagram, once we get to a final investigation report and a discipline authority determines — let's go down one side of the tree — that it's unsubstantiated, the two avenues of review there are…. If we are in disagreement based on our review of the evidence, we can appoint a retired judge to look at the entire matter.

If that judge is of the view that the discipline authority was correct in saying it's unsubstantiated, he or she will provide reasons for us. If they are of the view that the discipline authority was incorrect, they continue on as a discipline authority. They will make a finding of substantiation and proceed down the disciplinary proceedings track to mete out discipline and corrective measures at the end of the day.

[0950]

Now let's go to the other side of the diagram, because it's a little more confusing. Let's say there are five allegations, and the discipline authority substantiates three and finds two allegations to be unsubstantiated. The discipline authority chief would proceed down the disciplinary track on the three.

During that process, after hearing submissions and doing a disciplinary hearing, they may impose discipline on the three. In reviewing the matter from our perspective, we begin with the initial decision of whether the two that he or she unsubstantiated are correct and then, as we move our way down the disciplinary track, whether the discipline engaged or the corrective measures engaged for those other three allegations were appropriate also. Should they be more, or were they too excessive?

We would be able to appoint at that point a retired judge to sit on a review of the record, and the act itself encapsulates a number of obligations for a discipline authority to document. For example, when there's a substantiation, under the new act a complainant can now come in and make oral submissions to a discipline authority that must be transcribed into writing on sufficiency of the investigation, what should happen as far as outcome and the impact that the incident has had on them.

That remains a part of the record, so that when a retired judge or adjudicator comes in, they will initially examine the two unsubstantiations. They will then examine the three substantiations, because the officer may say: "I shouldn't have been substantiated on those three either." So there are a number of issues.

It's a complex system, but at the end of the day the review is intended to be made through submissions from counsel, as opposed to calling evidence. So it's like an appellate forum, if I could put it in those terms. Everything can be done through documentary evidence, through a review of the actual record of the proceedings and submissions of counsel, which expedites the matter and makes it more economical.

Does that help you?

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Yeah, that's very clear. Thank you.
[ Page 444 ]

If I may, one final question. Forgive me if this is obvious, but I'm a new MLA, so it's my chance to ask you some direct questions that virtually a member of the public would be able to ask as well.

I notice that in the department agencies covered within your mandate is a tribal police service. I'm curious as to the process whereby you gain the mandate to be an oversight authority on these services. I would think there's more than one tribal police service in the province, and so I'm curious as to whether…. Do they apply to you to be covered under your mandate? Or whenever a tribal police force is created, does it automatically fall under your mandate?

S. Lowe: We have one tribal police force that falls under our mandate or under our jurisdiction. It's because they're a designated police service under the Police Act. That's the St'at'imc, which is up in the Lillooet area. Our jurisdiction to oversight of their department comes through their appointment as an agency pursuant to the Police Act itself. It's a jurisdictional matter. They're the only ones that have been designated within that category.

D. McRae: Thank you very much for coming. I have a couple of questions, if I may. First of all, I'm just making the assumption that all the revenue taken in by your organization is from provincial government revenues. It's not from municipal policing forces.

S. Lowe: No, it's all attached to government revenues.

D. McRae: Some other groups coming in before us have broken down in dollar amounts the actual cost of delivering brand-new services. Obviously, with Bill 7 you are being asked to deliver services your office hadn't done in the past. Do you have a dollar amount? I realize, obviously, you're asking for roughly $1.1 million more for your operating.

S. Lowe: Yeah. I think that just in a general sense…. I'll let Mr. Hubbard perhaps provide more detail, but generally, it is…. Yes, you're right. It's $1.1 million, and $400,000 of that is dedicated funding. So it's important to note that if it's not spent, it reverts back to Treasury Board.

[0955]

The remainder is purely for the retainment of additional personnel and the spacing needs — offices to put them in. We're at capacity now. The position that we've filled internally through a restructuring…. It will be an office-sharing scenario until we move into the new building. Perhaps Mr. Hubbard might be able to expand on this.

L. Hubbard: Just in terms of the increase year over year at a high-level analysis, as Stan mentioned, $400,000 of that increase is related to the dedicated funding for hearings and legal costs. Currently in the budget and for several years that amount has been $100,000. It's tracked separately so that if it's not required, then it's left as a surplus at the end of the year in anticipation of the increased amount of activity in that area.

That's why we're recommending that that be raised to a total of $500,000 of dedicated funding. That simply makes it easier for the members of this committee and ourselves. If we have to come back for additional funding, it actually translates into a lot of extra work through supplemental estimates and so on. So if we can deal with that upfront, then it's a better way.

So $477,000 of the increase is related to the new investigative capacity. It would be more than that except for the fact that, as Stan mentioned, again some significant part of one of the positions has been funded from internal reallocations and changes in the internal organization.

Then, $136,000 is related to the increased space costs associated with the new building, in terms of Stan's office share of that; and $100,000 is general professional services related to some of the preparations for the new legislation, ranging from advisory contracts to publications to just a number of different areas; and $25,000 in travel costs related to the increased staffing level. Basically, those amounts total up to the increase year over year.

D. McRae: My second question, if I may. Just out of curiosity, in terms of…. Like Doug, I'm also a new MLA. I never really thought about this question until now. Other groups have come before us as well.

Under "Capital budgets," you're obviously moving into a new building, and you have to do, obviously, some tenant improvements and need new equipment. However, the $223,000 under "Info systems and furniture and equipment" — does that mean your office is getting relatively all new furniture and technology equipment? Or do you bring a lot of the existing equipment from your prior offices, that you're in now, with you?

L. Hubbard: Yes, absolutely. In fact, in Stan's office, it's in relatively good shape on the furniture side. Obviously, if the committee approves the additional staffing, then we'll have to buy furniture for those additional positions.

The IT equipment. Through the Shared Services operation, we provide all our own IT support for the four offices. All of the servers and so on will be brought along. If it was a matter of starting from scratch, that number would be much higher on the furniture and equipment side.

On the systems side of it, one of the significant elements is to build in video conferencing capability as part of the ways of trying to minimize travel, going into the
[ Page 445 ]
future, as we're all trying to look at ways of doing that. Right now we don't have any video conferencing capacity within the shared office, so it's one of the elements that we're hoping to provide in the new facility.

D. McRae: Just following up on that, if I may. So between $15,000 and $22,000 per person, if you look at it that way — whether you have ten full-time equivalents or if it were to go up to 15 — is what you're looking at basically to outfit the office?

L. Hubbard: That's right. Yes.

B. Ralston: I think Don has covered the issue of what the increase is composed of. I think it would be certainly a contradictory message if the Legislature passes new legislation and doesn't give you the budget to properly implement it. So I don't have much difficulty with the way in which you've set this out and, particularly, the fact that half a million is in a reserve, and if it's anticipated but it's not used, it will be returned to the consolidated revenue fund.

I have a couple of quick questions. Just one on investigative advice from civilian analysts. I appreciate that you're going to develop some protocols and, obviously, develop the experience and knowledge of those civilian analysts.

[1000]

What resistance, if any, do you anticipate from police officers to getting investigative advice from civilians? I think there might be the view that that's more properly the province of the trained investigators on the police side.

Thirdly, it's just that in the Solicitor General estimates, the Solicitor General has said that in the contract with the RCMP for providing police services for the jurisdictions that this office doesn't have a mandate for, one of the points of negotiation is developing a new police complaints procedure.

This is probably strictly not within your budget submission, but are you being contacted or asked for advice on how the RCMP might fashion a complaints procedure, given that the wish, on the public policy side since the Oppal Commission way back in the 90s, has been that there be one system for all police forces in the province?

S. Lowe: If I can answer your questions in reverse. On the last question, with respect to the RCMP and whether we are being provided or consulted, the answer is no. It's outside of our jurisdiction. I think that, being an independent officer, we have to be restrained in engaging at this point in what really has to be decided in the political realm. My position has always been that we take whatever has been decided upon and implement that.

Generally speaking, though, I have my opinions in a general sense of oversight and the importance of increasing the independence of all of the oversight agencies in Canada. But to answer it quickly, on the RCMP matter, no we've not been consulted — gladly. It's a complex issue.

Going back to the issue of contemporaneous oversight and whether I viewed that there would be an impediment or perhaps some friction with respect to professional standards sections accepting our role, I don't believe that to be the case. Our experience on two matters that I think are currently being reviewed contemporaneously is that it's been a collaborative relationship. I know, in speaking with the inspector at the Vancouver police department, that he likes the fact of contemporaneous oversight because it provides another check and balance on his check sheet. He wants his investigations to be the very best that they can be.

I think it's also important, though, that who we have in the roles that we assign to provide investigative advice must be people that we view as our very senior investigators. They also are individuals that have developed a rapport with the professional standards community.

I think that if our current experience translates into the experience across the province, it will be a smooth transition, but a lot lies at our feet in our developing a protocol that everyone can accept and buy into and then, once there's a sign-off on that protocol, abide by.

J. Rustad: Thanks very much for your presentation. Just two quick questions. One is…. There are all the various police forces that we have on the lower section of the Island as well as the Lower Mainland. How would your services or the workload, perhaps, be impacted if they were to be amalgamated at some point down the road? Would you see efficiencies? Would you see difference? Would it be irrelevant?

S. Lowe: No. The complaints are usually driven proportionately by the number of police officers in most cases. They've been relatively steady with respect to the rates of complaints, so I don't see any change. I would just hope that if that was to occur, the staffing levels for professional standards would remain as they are or increase.

J. Rustad: I didn't think there would be, but I just wanted to ask.

S. Lowe: I'm not commenting on amalgamation.

J. Rustad: I'm not suggesting amalgamation is about to happen. I was just wondering. That's obviously a question that keeps coming up from time to time.

J. Les (Chair): There is much wisdom in your position on that.
[ Page 446 ]

J. Rustad: The second question I have is…. You know, obviously we are facing some very challenging economic times at the moment. I understand that you're ramping up the significant ramp-up in 2011 with a little bit more in 2012.

[1005]

Would it be possible within your budget to balance that more, so that there was less ramp-up in this next fiscal year and a little bit more in 2012, given the challenges that we have in finding those extra dollars within the budget.

S. Lowe: The concern I have is that if we don't ramp up now, it's the implementation stage that really sets the tone for the legislation and sets the tone for the process amongst all the stakeholders. If we don't properly finance it now and have it running efficiently, you'll hear from me in a year's time.

It will be put in my reports that we're going to be missing these timelines. The issues that the legislation was designed to address won't be addressed. What we're looking at, basically, is what I submit as a minimum level to achieve success. I have taken into account the current economic status.

Like I say, I believe that to some extent I've underestimated our needs. But it's important with any legislation that you get started on the right track, that you set high standards of efficiency and that you try to achieve those goals as early as possible in order to set the tone for the system as a whole.

As I said before, this is a starting point. I think in three years' time when the audit is performed on the system, there will be a number of innovations. But one thing the audit shouldn't come back and say is that the system is underfunded. That's something we can control at this stage.

Now, the audit may come back and say it's not being used efficiently, and we'll be all ears for that. But it shouldn't come back and say it's underfunded. We have control at this stage to do that.

B. Routley: A question about the different authorities that you have oversight for. What is your reaction if you have a disproportionate amount of complaints coming out of one area or region? Is that a factor, or is it generally your experience that the numbers of complaints are coming kind of evenly from the various regions?

You've got Vancouver Island and south Vancouver Island, where I'm the MLA, so I'm obviously interested if we have less problems in our region as compared to, say, the Lower Mainland, which I assume would be the case. So I'm interested in that.

The other one I noticed is that there is a rising number of reconsiderations and public hearings over the past four years anyway. I'm also hearing you state that you expect that now, with the new legislation, there will be more activity in this area. While transparency is good, obviously, I believe that policing is a very difficult occupation at the best of times, and our society is not necessarily getting any gentler.

I guess your comment on that growing trend…. We've got a rising crime problem. We see all these street gangs. I'd be worried if our police force turned into a bunch of Melba toast. They've got to be able to handle…. These guys are packing guns. They've got gangs out there, and if they're complaining about getting roughed up a little bit…. I'd just be interested in your views on that.

Finally, what is the major complaint? The kind of complaints that you get — are they mostly about the way that individuals have been handled by the police department?

S. Lowe: I think I've got them all here. I'll try to address them in order.

First of all, with respect to regional differences with numbers of complaints, I think every police department experiences ebbs and flows. But over a tracked period of time, they do have a proportion of complaints that remains fairly consistent. I can tell you that our offices provide statistics to individual departments. If we see a trend, we immediately provide the information to the chief constable — alert them as to a trend, because that's our obligation — and they respond to that. I think they're appreciative of that type of information.

[1010]

We're also big proponents of early intervention. We provide statistics to police departments on individuals that may be seen as a trend of having a number of complaints. These matters are best addressed through human resources to get to the root of the problem, so it doesn't manifest itself later. We're not only looking to examine conduct; we're also trying to address individuals and provide the police with the tools to address these individuals so that the problem is eliminated, we hope.

Now, with respect to reconsiderations and public hearings, reconsiderations will go the way of the dodo bird, if I can use that term. A reconsideration was really a letter back saying: "We find, with respect to our review based through the common law, that you did not properly assess this matter. We're giving you an opportunity to reconsider."

If they reconsider and it remains the same decision, the next avenue that we have to consider is whether to call a public hearing or not. The trend in the last four years has not really been to call more public hearings. They're really issue-driven.

In calling a public hearing, you really have to look under the current act at the factors that we must consider, because we have to be able to articulate that. Our decisions to call a public hearing can be judicially reviewed. So they're called, and I think they're called for good reason. They're an important attribute.
[ Page 447 ]

Dealing with the issue of gangs and the difficulty of a police officer's work…. A number of my staff are former police officers who have worked their way through their organizations up as high as the inspector level. As I indicated earlier, we understand and we know that the overwhelming majority of police officers perform their work professionally, honourably. They uphold the public trust.

Those officers deserve, when reviewing complaints, that our office review those who fall short of that standard and that those actions be addressed. Otherwise, what's the point of acting that way? What's the point of holding that high standard? It's important to them, when they're working and applying this high standard and doing good work, that those who fall short should be encouraged to change to attain the same standard. It's not only for the public; it's for the police themselves.

So it's not lost on our office that, in many instances, police officers are called to deal with situations that we as citizens don't want to deal with. They're difficult situations, and this is something always in the back of our minds. We bring to it a lot of experience.

I want to make very clear that we're not anti-police. Our job is primarily to be objective, fair to all parties. In developing the guiding principles, this is something that I want as a hallmark or cornerstone of our office — to go to this all the time. We do question ourselves all the time. I challenge my analysts often with respect to their objectivity and their fairness.

As I indicated, I've reviewed all of the decisions. That will be on an ongoing basis because I view the analysts as a reflection of me. I can assure you that we strive as hard as police in doing a good job, in doing our job well.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, Stan, for a very thorough presentation this morning. As Bruce pointed out, we have saddled ourselves and you with new legislation that does require resources. In the meantime, of course, this is probably the worst year to try and do that. We will have some difficult decisions to make in the days ahead, but I assure you that your presentation this morning was very helpful.

[1015]

Okay. We are now going to hear from the newly minted Ombudsperson.

Good morning, Kim.

I'm going to move along a little bit here, because we've fallen slightly behind with the previous presentation. Perhaps we can make up that time, said he optimistically — very subtly, of course.

Kim, over to you.

Office of the Ombudsperson

K. Carter: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and good morning. I will try and keep in mind your injunction. I am aware that to some degree we're in a "school's out" situation here, so I will try and keep that in mind.

I welcome the opportunity to appear before the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services to report on the work of the Office of the Ombudsperson over the past year and present the budget for fiscal 2011-2013.

I have with me two colleagues: Mr. Lanny Hubbard, the current executive director of corporate services for the Office of the Ombudsperson and other offices; and Miss Shelley Forrester, the future executive director of the Office of the Ombudsperson and other offices of the Legislature.

I don't have a deputy with me because I don't have one. The position hasn't existed in our office since 2003, so I'm afraid it's just me who's going to be taking up your time.

This is my fourth appearance before this committee, though my first as Ombudsperson. I can truthfully say that each time it's a different experience. However, as this year we're operating under a more standardized submission format, there may be less variations in the future, and so I would like to express thanks to Craig James and his staff for the work they did in standardizing the format.

While a number of the members of the committee are familiar faces from my previous appearances here or as a result of other interactions with them in my capacity as Ombudsperson, I would like to take a few moments to set out what the Office of the Ombudsperson does and how we work.

I then propose to report to you on our work over the past year — the current situation in the office, the challenges we face — and then go into the details of the fiscal 2011-2013 budget submission. So I would ask, Mr. Chair: is that a satisfactory approach, from your perspective? Thank you.

As most of you, I'm sure, are aware, 2009 was the 30th anniversary of the operation of the provincial Ombudsperson's office in British Columbia. This anniversary was marked in a number of ways. One was the change of name that's been referred to, from Ombudsman to Ombudsperson. But there was also a reception in the Legislative Assembly and the declaration of Fairness Week, from Oct 12 to 16.

Fairness Week recognized that administrative fairness is a hallmark of good governance. It celebrated the rights of British Columbians to fair, reasonable and respectful treatment by public authorities and the contribution that this makes to accountable government and confidence in the democratic process.

[1020]

It also highlighted the role of the Office of the Ombudsperson in independently and impartially enhancing and promoting administrative fairness in public authorities in British Columbia, and the assistance it has
[ Page 448 ]
provided to both British Columbians and public authorities over the past 30 years.

In addition to being a noteworthy anniversary in British Columbia, 2009 marked an important anniversary internationally. It was the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the first Ombudsperson office in Sweden, in 1809. Today there are federal- or provincial-level statutory Ombudsperson offices in 152 countries around the world.

The first provincial Ombudsperson office in Canada was established in Alberta in 1967, and now nine of the ten provinces and the Yukon Territories have statutory Ombudsperson offices.

In British Columbia it took a number of years in the early '70s to establish the office, but its role, our raison d'être, was set out quite eloquently by the Attorney General who carried the legislation at the time. He explained the following:

"With the establishment of an ombudsman" — as it then was in British Columbia — "we will have a person who can represent the conscience of the state and provide additional services for our citizens, move aside the bureaucratic roadblocks, wade through the red tape, approach the unapproachable and recommend improvements to administrative practice and procedures.

"Government and regulation, order and edict, law and bylaw, and the rules and the road maps that are constantly being imposed upon society today obviously illustrate the need for a citizen champion independent of the civil service, independent of the system, independent of the administrator and independent of politics, to wade through administrative hurdles, to cope with crises and to recommend betterment, as well as to defend against unjustified and uncalled-for criticism.

"Or in short, to render every man" — as the expression was at that time — "his due, I'd say, both for those within the organization structure and for those who are dealing with it."

Some of you may recognize the inimitable style of the hon. Garde Gardom in those words.

Whether you go back 200 years or 30 or look at it today, the role of the Ombudsperson's office remains unchanged. It is there to speak out for fair treatment for every person — not as an advocate for the individual who is aggrieved, but for the interests of a better, stable and more efficient society.

The value-added of the work we do does not simply benefit individuals who come to us with their concerns and complaints, though the office is, very clearly, an important component of access to administrative justice in British Columbia. Poor administrative practices — maladministration, as it is described in the world of the Ombudsperson — also undermines the efficiency and effectiveness of government and public agency programs and policies.

The Ombudsperson Act sets out that the Ombudsperson can investigate complaints about any matter of administration that is brought to her or him that involves a public agency within the jurisdiction of the office. A "matter of administration" is a somewhat awkward term, but it is the term that is used in the legislation. It was defined by the Supreme Court of Canada as "everything done by government authorities in the implementing of government policy" — excluding only the activities of the Legislature and the courts from the Ombudsperson's scrutiny.

So the office can look at decisions, recommendations, actions, omissions and procedures.

We work through an integrated process. Firstly, we receive individual complaints and act upon them. Secondly, we look to identify and remedy underlying problems when resolving those complaints, improving processes so that the same problems don't recur.

Thirdly, we work to improve understanding of administrative fairness through consultation, presentations, reports and the production of materials that will assist public organizations to improve the fairness of their own administrative processes.

These activities allow us to do what was described in the Legislative Assembly as "generally oversee the administrative actions of government authorities with a view to upholding the democratic principles of openness, transparency and fairness." As you will appreciate, we do this through people — effectively, knowledge workers supported by technology.

[1025]

You will see on page 11 of our service plan the general organization of our office, though I will say that the numbers that are there are those that are requested in the budget submission.

Most of the approximately 8,000 inquiries and complaints received in fiscal 2009 we received by phone. About a third of all the complaints we receive are dealt with by our call coordinators, who can answer questions and offer basic assistance to citizens who call on our 1-800 number.

Another third are dealt with by complaints analysts. Complaints analysts ensure that a matter is within our jurisdiction, that the complaint is about a matter of administration and that there is not an existing internal resolution process with the public agency the complaint is being made about that the complainant could benefit from.

In essence, if there is an existing process and if it's one that we know about that the complainant is unaware of, then we will assist the complainant and refer them back to that process to give the agency an opportunity to resolve the matter.

The other third are matters that go on to either early resolution or to our Ombudsman officers for investigation.

Early resolution is a new process that was set up in September 2008 and currently is providing expedited service to deal with complaints that in our experience have led us to believe have a high likelihood of being resolved quickly when our office is involved. "Quickly" is both a defined and a relative term. If appropriate action to resolve a matter cannot be agreed upon within a week
[ Page 449 ]
and completed within two weeks, then by definition in our office, it is not part of our early resolution process.

Speedy action, however, does not always translate into little work. We have had early resolutions that have required up to 27 interactions — phone calls, e-mails, etc. — in order to achieve that resolution. Nevertheless, over the past year early resolution has succeeded in diverting approximately 10 percent of our investigative files away from our investigators.

There are matters, however, that are not suitable for early resolution or, indeed, where early resolution has been tried and has not been successful. These go on to the Ombudsman officers for investigation. The Ombudsman investigation is an administrative investigation, not a police one. The standard of proof that we use is the civil standard of balance of probabilities.

Our investigators speak with complainants and consider the information that is provided. Where required, we research the area that the complaint is about before contacting the authority complained about.

Our expertise is in fair administrative processes. That is our focus. It's not on the operation of aggregate mines, child protection, local development, school closures, coroners' inquests or the dissolution of water utilities. However, complaints may come to us about all of those areas and almost any other area that the provincial government or local government or other public authorities are involved in.

Our office is, perhaps, somewhat unusual inasmuch as we do not work with one act and multiple authorities or a few acts and a few authorities, but rather with almost all the legislation and regulation in British Columbia, together with policy guidelines, procedures and practices — in our experience, both written and unwritten. The unwritten ones prove more challenging to deal with than the written ones, usually.

We also have the widest jurisdiction of any Ombudsperson in Canada. We deal with provincial ministries, provincial commissions and boards, Crown corporations, local governments, health authorities, colleges and universities, school boards and schools, various pension boards of trustees and self-regulating professions.

At the end of our service plan there is an extract that gives you those authorities in a somewhat different format, but I like to group them so that they're a little more clear.

[1030]

There are a number of agencies with whom we do have regular contact. From our most recent fiscal year of 2009, the top ten are the Ministry of Housing and Social Development, the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, ICBC, WorkSafe B.C., Vancouver Island Health Authority, the Ministry of Health Services, the Ministry of Attorney General, the Fraser Health Authority and the Interior Health Authority.

Those are the authorities that we received the most number of open files from in 2009. I can go on, but I think that gives you a flavour for it.

However, somebody in our office, one of our investigators, might get a file assigned that involves WorkSafe B.C. following one involving the Teachers Pension Board of Trustees, then ICBC, then perhaps the provincial emergency program, then the Land Title and Survey Authority, B.C. Transit, the Motor Vehicle Sales Authority. That's just from one of our teams.

We have three teams who specialize, and I use the term loosely because we have over 2,500 authorities, but have focused areas of social programs, health and local government, and regulatory programs. So you will understand that on occasion a little research, just to orient the situation and the investigator, is useful when dealing particularly with some of our less regularly investigated authorities.

When we investigate a matter, it is our matter and it's your matter — the people of British Columbia — of administration that we're looking into. A complainant may come to us with a series of issues and concerns, but it is the investigator who must apply our act and decide which of those concerns we can and should investigate.

When we do so, we do so impartially. Just because we open an investigation does not mean we conclude that something has been done in an arbitrary, unfair, unreasonable or unlawful manner.

In cases where we find a person has been treated fairly — and we do find that on a number of occasions — that individual, who until that time clearly has not been satisfied that that is the case, may now be satisfied or at least prepared to put the matter to rest. That is because we are an independent agency, and I believe also it's because of our work processes. We do take the time to listen, to clearly and fully explain what we did and why we concluded what we did.

This provides a service to the individual but also a significant service to many of the authorities. It allows the authority, too, to be confident and the individuals in the authorities to be confident that they did the right thing.

For many of the smaller authorities we deal with — and this is something particularly I hear about when I go on my tours and speak to school boards and local governments — part of the service we provide is that when they no longer have anything useful they can do with an individual who is returning with a problem, they have the ability to refer the individual to us and to say: "Here is an independent option for you. You might wish to seek their services."

That assists them and their staff. It also, of course, is of some assistance, because if the individual, at the end of our investigation, is satisfied and can put the matter to rest, then it is not something that continually recurs.

In cases where we determine that there has been a problem, an unfairness, our approach is to discuss that
[ Page 450 ]
conclusion with the authority we are investigating. Most authorities, once they see that that there has been an unfairness — not something necessarily they do without some discussion, but once they have accepted that — are happy to work in a consultative manner to find a good resolution.

Even more important, we can work to ensure that the underlying problem, if there is one, is resolved, so the same situation will not recur. That requires some action on their parts. It may involve staff training or retraining, writing procedures down, changing a policy or even requesting a change to regulations and legislation. Occasionally it may just require reading their own policies and legislation and applying them.

[1035]

The assistance is very directly to the individuals and the authorities, but it is much broader. It is really to the operation of good government in British Columbia.

There are also practical issues which resolving some of the problems that come to us may avoid. I will just use one case summary from files from last year. It involved the Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre segregation cells. All of the regional correctional centres have segregation cells. I have to tell you that although you might think segregation means you get put in a cell by yourself, there is double-bunking in a number of the cells. You have double-bunking in segregation cells due to crowded conditions.

In Kamloops we received a complaint from one of the inmates. I mentioned the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. The bulk of the complaints we deal with under that ministry are from provincial correctional institutions. You will understand we deal with people who are interacting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a public authority and can't really leave. So they are a source of a number of the complaints.

In this case, there were segregation cells. There was double-bunking, and there was no video or panic button in the cell. If things went awry, there was not necessarily immediate supervision. This came to us as a complaint, actually, from one of the inmates at the centre who was expressing concern that if he was double-bunked in segregation with somebody else who he knew, either he or the other person would not be responsible for their actions.

We engaged with Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre. They took the appropriate action, so now there are panic buttons in all of those cells. I say that because you can imagine not only the concern we would have if something had gone wrong there but also the potential liability there might be if something had gone wrong in those situations. Correcting that problem solved something that not only is the right thing to do but also has the potential to avoid financial issues down the line.

If a fair resolution cannot be achieved with authorities, then the Ombudsperson has the power to make findings and recommendations to remedy the situation. If the public authority does not take what the Ombudsperson considers appropriate or adequate action, then the Ombudsperson, under the act, can go the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, the Legislative Assembly and the public with the matter. This is not usually necessary.

In addition, the Ombudsperson can issue public reports on an investigation which, although successfully concluded, holds useful examples for other public authorities or sets out useful lessons about administrative fairness that is in the public interest to set out.

Usually these reports are the result of one of our systemic investigations. Systemic investigations usually arise as a result of identifying a series of complaints, often from different areas of the province, which indicate there are some challenging issues of administrative fairness that call for focused attention.

We have a small systemic investigation team: three people full-time augmented by students, sometimes one of our senior managers and others from time to time, as we can find some space. Over the past three years we have done systemic investigations into administrative fairness aspects of the victims of crime program, lottery prize payouts, drinking water safety, income assistance programs and currently seniors care.

Over the past three years I've also introduced a practice of following up on recommendations that have been accepted to confirm that they are being implemented, particularly in the case of systemic reports.

This not only is practical but benefits the authority who has agreed to implement the recommendations by serving as a reminder of those commitments. Thus it can avoid embarrassment if there's a subsequent complaint about a matter that everybody, including the authority, thinks has been satisfactorily resolved, but the recommendations have just not been followed up on.

Finally, we are developing administrative fairness materials that can help public authorities self-assess and improve their processes.

[1040]

Let me, if I can, move on to a report on the 2009 fiscal year activities, and I'll also try and include the first half of 2010.

Last year in my submission to the committee, I set out six priorities for the office. The progress we've made in these areas is outlined on page 9 of the service plan. Progress has been substantially satisfactory in three areas.

The first is in consolidation of the early resolution process. This was established, as I said, in September 2008, and has been very successful. It has increased complainant and authority satisfaction, it has better utilized the skills and strengths of experienced members of the intake team, and it has reduced 10 percent of the file load from the investigative teams, thereby reducing file backlog and work pressures. The effect of the implemen-
[ Page 451 ]
tation of the program is set out graphically on page 6 of the service plan.

The second area where there has been substantially satisfactory progress is in that of the reorganization of the investigative teams, moving from two to three.

This reduced the span of authorities that the teams and their individual members were responsible for. It facilitated investigators working more efficiently, as they could more quickly develop an understanding of authorities that they deal with on a regular basis and had fewer other less usual authorities that they had to do research on. It also enhanced their job satisfaction because it increased their feelings of capability. Finally, it allowed new team members to be more effectively developed and mentored.

The third area of real progress has been the long-term office consolidation project, which has been moving ahead on time. There has been significant design work completed. The construction now is above the ground level, which is reassuring for all of us who are looking to move into it.

Progress on outreach has been slower than I had hoped, but our multilingual brochures are now available on line. We have set up telephone access to a multilingual interpretation and translation service, and we are currently looking at how we can relocate some of our mobile intake locations in the Lower Mainland to improve accessibility.

The two other priorities set out — maintenance of the systemic investigation program and addressing the high volume of complaints relating to seniors care — have both been slowed significantly due to a shortage of investigative resources.

In fiscal 2009 we saw a 19 percent increase in intakes over the previous year. This upward trend, which began in fiscal 2008, continues to date. The number of investigative files opened also increased 14 percent to 2,269 in fiscal 2009.

At the end of fiscal 2009 the number of open investigative files had essentially doubled from 471 to 934. It continues to rise in fiscal 2010, but at a lower rate and for reasons that I'll explain to you.

We continued, in terms of organization, to receive the majority of complaints about provincial ministries, and I've gone through with you the major authorities, so I won't do that again.

The types of investigations and resolutions we obtained are reflected in our annual reports. In terms of early resolution, I will simply mention that we have dealt with everything from assisting somebody with a debt that they had…. They had been trying to resolve their debt with Health Insurance B.C. for more than seven months. They were teaching in Asia, and they just couldn't get through and couldn't get the matter resolved. Our early resolution program became involved, and the matter was resolved in the two-week time frame that I explained to you.

Not only is that important because there was in fact a problem with a debt — the individual didn't owe the $700 he was being told; he only owed $50 when it was properly reviewed — but it also is part of what I would say is the long-term effect of the office. If this hadn't been resolved, that person, when they returned to British Columbia, would have a credit-rating problem. So fixing this now avoids that kind of long-term issue.

[1045]

We also had somebody, a father, who had been trying to get answers on an autopsy for almost three years. That got resolved. A year-long wait for a CareCard was ended. These are all set out in our annual report, but I just wanted to give you a flavour of the results that the early resolution had obtained.

We had somebody who was involved with the transitional assistance program, which provides funding to older forest workers so that they can transition to retirement. This was somebody who had been dealing with the program — was entitled and had been told he would have his cheque before Christmas. He didn't get it. He and his wife were short of money and waiting for the cheque.

Time passed, and he couldn't get a straight answer. He got conflicting information. He came to our office. We were told, when we investigated, that in fact the cheque was being processed and would be mailed the next week. We called back to make sure that happened, and we found out probably the same thing that he found out. It hadn't happened.

The manager then said: "The cheque didn't go when I thought it was. It's going to be mailed today." We did follow up again, and in fact the individual got the cheque the following week. That was a cheque for $10,000.

I'm just giving you some highlights of that. In terms of some of our cases, just a couple of them…. This is one that involves B.C. Hydro. A gentleman came to us with a concern about his hydro bill. He'd just moved into a new Vancouver highrise. He felt his bill was incorrect. He'd worked through with Hydro, and they assured him that, no, they'd looked at it and this is how much he owed.

He was willing to pay, but he just wasn't satisfied that it was accurate, so he came to our office. We became involved and went through the process with B.C. Hydro. Another look — a look with, perhaps, a different viewpoint — determined that indeed there had been a problem. What had really happened was that the timeline for transferring the hydro bill to the individual from the building was wrong.

In the case of this individual, it only meant a difference of $60, so you would think it, perhaps, not that significant. But when we're looking into it, it turned out there are 580 other people for whom the same thing happened. So ultimately it was an overbilling of $114,000 that was remedied.

I'm sure a number of you drive, and you probably haven't noticed one of the changes that have been made
[ Page 452 ]
to some of the material produced by ICBC. One of the issues that came to us was from somebody who had moved, had had an accident and had been denied coverage because they hadn't complied with the requirements to advise of moving within a specific time.

This is a situation where there was something…. As ICBC, properly, said: "It is there in the material." But the question is: does everyone read all the documents that they receive?

What you will find today, as a result of an investigation and what we considered a fair resolution, is…. If you look at the document, your AP2500 that's in your car, it has a series of warnings. This has now been added to that warning section: "Contact your local Autoplan broker when you change your address, vehicle description or use, or the place where your vehicle is kept or operated. If you don't, your claim may be denied."

For us, that was something…. When you talk about administrative fairness, there are reasons why ICBC may wish — and they have valid reasons — to change this. But you don't want to have people being deprived of coverage simply because there is poor communication and poor notification and they don't know.

I do have a number of others. One involves a college in the north and some education — retraining of workers who were seeking heavy-duty-equipment operator certification. They had some real concerns about the training they were getting, and they couldn't resolve it with the college.

They came to us. Their concerns were very much that they weren't getting the training that they needed to be safe operators at the end of the course. They wouldn't be able to get their certificates. They wouldn't be able to get the jobs that they were retraining for.

[1050]

This is really a good-news story because, although they were unsuccessful in working it out with the college, when one of our investigators called and went over the situation, one of the college administrators put on her hardhat, went down to the worksite, had a look and closed it down. She said: "Absolutely. They're right. We've got to change this."

They had a look at changing it, and not only did they rectify the problem; they found a new worksite; they hired a new instructor; they introduced an educational assessment tool for the program; and as well, they added, for all the students who were on the course, extra instruction at no charge for two weeks as well as per diem expenses, to make sure that they had the training that they were being paid for.

There are different ways of doing this. I mean, you can wait until all of this goes wrong afterwards and fix it then, but I think what that would highlight is very much the role we play in trying to fix things at the time.

We produced two systemic reports in 2009, one about drinking water safety and the other one about income assistance. The 39 recommendations on drinking water safety were accepted and are being implemented, and 27 of the 28 recommendations on improving income assistance were accepted.

The kinds of recommendations we make in systemic investigations are both specific and more general. We made recommendations that two regulations should be changed. One of those was a regulation that said to people: "Even if you've been looking for work for months before you turn up to apply for income assistance, when you come in to apply, you're going to have to go out and look for work for another three weeks, because those are the rules."

While we accepted that there might be a reason that if somebody hadn't been looking for work, you might say, "You should look for work before we're going to process this," if somebody had been out there looking for work in the area, hadn't found it in six months and could demonstrate they'd done exactly what you wanted them to do for the previous three weeks, why wouldn't you have them apply for income assistance if they met all the other qualifications?

It required a regulatory change, and that was made, actually, very promptly. Indeed, before we actually went to deliver our report to the Legislative Assembly, the regulatory change had been made.

The work done…. I'm happy to go into more detail, but I think you would like me to move on to what our current issues are. Currently on systemic reports we have our seniors care. It's been developed into two parts for a number of reasons. In part, it's a shortage of investigative resources. We can't do things in the time frame that we had hoped if we don't have the resources to do so.

Part 1 is essentially complete. We're just waiting for the final response from the ministries, and as with, perhaps, Last Resort, some of the changes we've recommended have already been made. So we consider that very positive.

Our current situation is that intake and early resolution are stable. We have experienced staff, but they're not out of balance. Shared Services is in the similar situation. Again, it's a compact organization, but experienced. They work well together, and we have at least one person — if somebody gets ill or leaves us — who can actually cover off for a while what the other person does.

Systemic investigations, I am satisfied, will function well once they do not have to be bogged down with a caseload, which is what I have had to do with them over the past year. The focus, and where we have a problem, is in the individual investigations.

I have to say that one of the things, when I looked at the submission I was going to make this year, is…. I did go back and look at my last three submissions to see whether or not I had missed this, whether or not I hadn't come forward to identify this problem.

[1055]
[ Page 453 ]

It's really only of marginal satisfaction to say that I can point in each of them to where I've identified: "The crisis is coming. The crisis is coming."

In the 2007 submission, there I pointed out that we could manage the individual workload but not do systemics. "Could we have some positions for systemics?" The committee provided that.

In 2008, I had offered some options. I had indicated, if option 1 was chosen, that workloads were growing and that I would expect over the next 18 months to lose experienced staff. They did, and I did. That happened in the summer of 2008, which was just about eight months after the submission.

Last year what was identified was that the number of open complaint files was rising. Essentially, what that means is that as more files come in and you have a greater workload, then you don't get around to completing the same number of files as if your workload is balanced.

Essentially, today — this is in the service plan on pages 6 and 7 — this is our current challenge. This is the issue that we have been wrestling with and trying to address for the past 24 months.

The projection you will see there is that in essence, our new investigative files this year will run to about 2,800. I have to say that in my projection last year I underestimated. I said 7,500, and it was actually over 7,900. I don't know if we're doing the same thing this year, but we took the first six months and projected.

You will notice on the graph next to that, of course, that the first six months include our traditional dip in August. That will explain to you why I always introduce changes in September. For some reason, August is when people don't complain. They have, perhaps, other things to do.

Anyway, through early resolution, we can reduce that. I am looking at redirecting, perhaps, a little more than 10 percent so that I can get the 2,800 down to 2,500. The last time we had this number of files was in fiscal 2002. At that time there were more than 25 FTEs for investigative resources.

What has happened since this time is that there were a series of reductions in fiscal 2003, 2004 and 2005 — not only reductions in investigative staff but reductions in caseload. The low point was fiscal 2005.

At that time we were not exercising jurisdiction over significant parts of the authorities — local government, health authorities, colleges and universities, school boards and schools, and the self-governing professions.

That's a group where there's a particular importance that we're involved and engaged with, because we are really the public interest oversight for the self-regulating professions, for people who are dealing with complaints by doctors and lawyers and who feel their complaints haven't been dealt with properly by those self-regulating professions. They can come to us, and we can look at the process to assess whether or not it was a fair and reasonable process.

The intakes and number of files being opened over that time frame were declining. Not surprisingly, as fewer files came in, more time could be spent on getting out the ones that were currently here.

In 2005 there were 1,697 new investigative files opened. During that period of decline there was essentially a balance and an equilibrium.

[1100]

That started to change in fiscal 2007. Essentially, since then the investigative file caseload has gone up, and the investigative resources have not gone up. It started to change slowly.

I would say an additional factor is the re-establishment of our jurisdiction of all the areas in 2006. Currently, we have a health and local services team that deals with those files. These were things we weren't doing at that time.

It started to move up then, but really, the full effect did not hit for another 18 months, and that began with the files staying open longer. That was step 1. But it continued, so one of the things last year that I explained was that traditionally the caseload for investigators was 30 to 35. It was going up to 50, and for some people it hit 70.

What I have had to do, and it is with the greatest of reluctance, is…. Now, as of September 1 — and you will all have received the letter in your constituency offices about this, because I know your assistants refer people to us — we have a files-awaiting-assignment list. That is, we cannot immediately take on and investigate all the files that we're receiving.

To continue to do that would be to continue to have the open-file list simply going up. It would burn out more investigators. It would slow down the investigations for the files we currently have. It would end up taking longer to complete files.

We have as one of our performance measures completing investigative files — 70 percent of them — in 90 days. We're down to under 60 percent, around 59 percent, and it's slipping. So that's really the consequence.

It's not simply that one of our goals is to be a recognized centre of excellence, and it's very hard to hold other authorities to principles of administrative fairness if you're not following them yourselves. It's much more that we are not providing the service that we need to provide to individuals and authorities.

What I've done is instituted that. I've also instituted the other actions of the early resolution and streamlining to three different teams. I have also taken what I will describe as other people's money this year. In essence, we have a case-tracker system which we have been able to sell some of — license other people to use them. So I've taken that money and applied it to temporarily fund two additional investigative positions.

We've had two additional investigative positions this year that have been funded that way. It's not something
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I can continue to do. There was a very nice little peak in interest when the federal government had a little bit of an accountability exercise. For example, the Procurement Ombudsman federally has our case-tracker system and has kindly donated enough for almost one investigative position. But I can't continue to do that.

It is something we've done for this year. That's why, if you look on page 7, "Timeliness of Work Completion," you will see that our open files are not going up at the same rate this year as they were last year because I've addressed that by having two positions. It's not something where it's not a trend; it is a trend.

We are in the situation where we need the investigators we needed before, and now we need more of them because numbers are continuing to go up. If you asked why, I would say it probably a number of factors. One is that we are going back to our full jurisdiction, and I've told you that's resulted in…. You heard the authorities who are the top authorities. A number of those are ones we weren't dealing with five years ago.

[1105]

Also, it's a period of uncertainty. When people are uncertain they tend to come to us more often, I think, to look to make sure that they've been treated fairly.

I'm happy to talk about this or about other details of the budget, but the baseline is that I'm asking for six investigative positions. You will say, I think quite rightly, that it's a time of fiscal constraint. I will say yes, and the fiscal constraint, I think, increases our workload. It's also decreased my ability to find other people's money to cover off. In this situation, I don't really have any alternative except to set out very straightforwardly for the committee what has happened over the past three years, what we have done to mitigate it and where we currently stand.

I am happy to go through the budget STOB by STOB or take questions, Mr. Chair, as you wish.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Kim. I think we can probably go to questions. I think the numbers in your proposed budget are fairly self-explanatory. So we'll start with the questions.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much for your presentation and also for the work that you have been doing. I know the feedback to my office from the work that you've been doing has always been very positive, and I think that is a reflection of the quality of work that is being done in your office.

But I do have a question around the budget. I mean, these are significant economic challenges we're facing, and you're asking for an 18 percent lift in your operating budget and a 22 percent lift in the number of staff FTEs that you will have. That's a pretty big ask at a time when we are facing significant budget challenges.

The question I have around that is: what would happen if we had a baseline or a flat budget for the next year? That's the first part of the question. The second part of the question is: how much of the capital, in terms of tenant improvements, that is being put forward — the $721,000 in tenant improvements plus the additional that's in for the system and furniture improvements — is associated with the proposed 22 percent increase in FTEs?

K. Carter: What that will be is essentially a reduction of two more investigative positions. As I was explaining, I've been funding them for the past year with the money that we've derived mainly from the other case-tracker sales. Some of it is from internally, from the professional services budget. But you will see that in the budget this year, that's the one area where I said I've been able to cut, so that's not available. So flat line will be a cut of two investigative positions.

What does that mean? Essentially, two investigative positions are roughly 250 investigations a year. That's the way we've done the analysis. That would be if they are experienced investigators. Obviously, less experienced investigators don't do quite as many, but I'll give you the best overview. That's what the effect would be.

In terms of how much of, if we get the extra positions…. Frankly, not very much. There would be the requirement for…. Obviously, for the two positions I'm currently funding, they actually have desks and computers, so we don't need new ones for them.

For the other four positions we're looking at, there would be some modest increase in terms of…. I'm not sure. We have some desks in storage we could look at getting out. I have to say that with the demographics, it's usually the ergonomic chairs that cost the most for people these days.

[1110]

There would be some, but it really would be very minor. I mean, you're not talking a great deal of money for the additional positions — to support them. You will see that in the areas such as travel, etc., I haven't increased that. I'm hoping, first of all, that we're going to focus on the Lower Mainland, as I've indicated, for our tours. That will, hopefully, reduce some of the travel costs. In some other areas, if we do have access to some video conferencing, we may be able to deal with it that way.

J. Rustad: If I may, Chairperson, just with regard to the tenant improvements. Then the vast majority of the tenant improvements are required regardless of whether you get the uplift in terms of the FTEs that you're looking for.

K. Carter: Yes. Those were actually established….

J. Rustad: I seem to remember that last year when we talked about this, this was part of the establishment of
[ Page 455 ]
the joint offices. That was there. I just wanted to clarify that.

K. Carter: Yes, it is. It's essentially the same, regardless of if we have the additional positions or we don't have the additional positions.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation. I have two questions. One is related to school boards.

Say somebody complains about something, a decision that a school board made, and then they come to you. Then you follow up with the school board. How do you ensure that the recommendation that you would have recommended is actually followed up on and done? If you are doing that, do you speak with the so-called complainant in addition to the school board? How binding are your decisions?

K. Carter: They're all good questions, and perhaps I'll start with the last one, which is how binding my decisions are. The answer is that they're not. I mean, the strength of the Ombudsperson's office is in our analysis, our investigations and essentially our persuasiveness in getting change. Truthfully, we're not a flashy organization. What we do is work on a consultative basis with authorities.

I'll give you an example of one of the school board problems that we have had and will continue to have, which are complaints about the fairness of the processes when schools are being closed. These are decisions that school boards have to make, and they're difficult decisions. Our focus isn't on coming in and saying: "You should have closed that one instead of this one." When we look at complaints, our focus is on: was there a fair and reasonable process? That's what we look at.

We often work with school boards to try and improve their processes. Sometimes they have a process, but they haven't properly explained it. Sometimes they have a process, but there are some areas which need improvement perhaps in consultation or communication of reasons, and we would look at working with them in that way.

At the end of every investigation — this is why I think a number of complainants go away satisfied, even if they don't get what they originally came looking for — we do two things. We provide the complainant with a written letter that explains what we investigated, how we did it, what our conclusions were and why. If we've concluded that they've been fairly and reasonably treated, it's all set out for them.

We do the same for authorities, so they too get the letter. Usually authorities don't do very much with it.

We did have a little period of time when some of the local governments liked to read out the letters that said they hadn't done anything wrong, at the end of council meetings. Really, it wasn't something that they necessarily wanted to trumpet. If it was necessary to clarify something, fine. Those letters are ones, frankly, that both the complainant and the authority can share with whomever they want. The rest of our investigations are confidential.

I don't know if that answers it. You had three questions I tried to answer.

J. Thornthwaite: I actually have another one. That was actually only one question.

K. Carter: Okay, that's fine. Sorry. A three-parter.

[1115]

J. Thornthwaite: Then the other one is about travel. How much travelling are you doing, and where are you going?

K. Carter: Great question. Not a lot. Predominantly to the Lower Mainland because there are authority headquarters there and similar things. I do tours. I try to do three a year to different parts of the province. I've only managed two in the past two years. The last one was actually South Okanagan from Princeton through Osoyoos and up to Kelowna. The one this summer was from Fort Nelson to Mackenzie. That was my summer vacation.

In terms of professional travel in the office, I am the chair of the Canadian Council of Parliamentary Ombudsmen, so I went on one trip to Quebec City this year. That was a meeting of all the Parliamentary Ombudsmen across Canada, and it's kind of hard when you're the chair not to turn up for the meeting.

I have had one other trip. It cost $91 to the government of British Columbia, because it was the government of Brazil — in fact, the Brazilian ombudsperson — who wanted me to come down and speak to their people. So they paid.

In terms of travel, that's it. For the investigators, we do have some telecommuters on the Lower Mainland still, so we pay their travel costs when they come over to our office.

B. Routley: To start with, I'd like to certainly thank you for the service that you provide for all British Columbians. I think it's an incredibly valuable service for people.

Having been on the side of the desk where I have had a variety of complaints of all kinds, I was wondering if your office has considered any kind of educational tools for new MLAs and new constituent staff.

While there has been some training made available, there doesn't seem to be a consistent program throughout the province of how to access resources. It's very much a find-it-yourself approach that new staff…. If we
[ Page 456 ]
don't do it in the constituency, then I'm sure it ends up finding its way to you. That would be one issue, because I think all of us have to be working together.

The other issue is that I'm very concerned about your comment about the files-in-waiting. Justice delayed is justice denied, as far as I'm concerned. Again, having a lot of experience dealing with workers that have had justice denied…. In one case we had fallers wait three years and go through a whole host of processes to find justice at the end of the day. There was a $3 million settlement in that case, but it took a long time to get there, and it was very, very painful for the people and their families involved.

Anyway, there are a couple of issues.

K. Carter: In terms of training. Actually, in regards to our office, I have a pretty active program. One is that when I go out on the tours, I always visit MLA offices. If they're there, that's wonderful. If they're not there, then I visit anyway. So I've done that. For example, I met with, I think, one of the constituency assistants of the new MLAs just recently on the Okanagan tour. So I do that.

We also send out binders to all the MLA offices, which not only talk about the work we do but also provide useful contacts and references for other organizations. I have talked to both parties' constituency assistants get-togethers here in Victoria — one before the most recent election and one after the most recent election — and I'm very happy, of course, to continue doing that.

[1120]

As you will see, one area that I am looking to do next year is to try and develop some more administrative fairness materials for authorities. If I can increase, essentially, the satisfaction, the ability of authorities to deal with complaints, then that is one way of looking at reducing the continued increase coming forward.

It's trying to do a little bit of proactive work there. It's not immediate. You can't just put it out, and it kind of lessens the flow, but it is a long-term thing.

You talked about waiting. We have had the files-awaiting-assignment list since September 1. There are 113 files on it. In essence, you are looking at a little less than 40 a month. That's what I would predict that, if we have the current number of investigators that we have, it would continue at. If we lose two, then you can increase it at a more rapid rate. That's presuming that we don't get the increase we've had in the past three years in terms of number of complaints still going up. If we do, then it will increase some more.

I have looked at the list. I have my managers look at the list. We try to identify if there is something on there that has changed or is critical, because we have to make decisions on who's going on the list and who isn't going on the list. It's very, very hard. As the list gets longer, we'll spend more and more time not doing work, more and more time not investigating, not getting to resolutions, and more and more time just administering things that aren't happening.

Right now, I have to say, is the opportunity. The situation hasn't appeared overnight. It's been growing. It is pretty obvious where it's going. This is an opportunity, and that's why I've come forward. I'm quite aware that eyebrows kind of went over foreheads when you looked at what I'm asking for, but that's why.

B. Routley: That list is growing. There's no change in sight of seeing that come down without additional staff. Is that basically the bottom line?

K. Carter: No. As I said, I have tried things. I've diverted 10 percent. I've looked for efficiencies in reducing the breadth of the jurisdiction so that people can be more efficient. I mean, I will continue to look for ways to try and do things, but they're not of the amount that allows us to deal with the kinds of increases that we've had.

As I said, you have 1,697 in fiscal 2006, and we've got 2,800 coming up. I will do everything I can, but short of burning out everybody…. And that doesn't make for better investigations and better results. It just means that I get a whole new crop of people coming in who aren't experienced, which isn't going to solve the problem. No, I need more resources.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. A final quick question from Doug.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I've always wondered about that. That's a five-letter word isn't it — quick?

Thank you for your presentation and the work that your office does. I will try to be quick. When I read the service plan — the last sentence on page 10 of the paragraph around effectively addressing continually increasing investigative workload — I find that I was very concerned when I read that.

Your statement that "it's simply not possible to deal with the broad mandate of the office and the continuing increase in investigations without a proportional increase in investigative resources" is troubling when we pass an act in the Legislature and create expectations amongst the public and then don't resource the mandate that the act legislates.

I find that quite troubling, especially in light of what you pointed out about the work your office does that can avoid litigation and further costly processes to government — the liability issue you pointed out in one of your examples that potentially was avoided with the work of the Ombudsperson.

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Trying to assess that further, I noticed you had 23 percent of the intakes that went on to investigation in 2002, and now it is up to 31 percent. You might have covered
[ Page 457 ]
this in your talk, and I apologize if I didn't pick up on it correctly. Can you point to some reasons for that 8 percent increase over the last seven years?

Then the second part of the question would deal with preventative work that you do and about the good governance materials for authorities. Do you have an estimate of…? I would consider that preventative measures, maybe to reduce…. Do you have an idea of the resources that you're putting into the good governance materials and what benefits you expect to be seen, as far as caseload?

K. Carter: Yes. The increase in the percentage of matters that are going on to investigation is essentially, I think, a reflection of people having a better understanding of what our office is. When there's a higher percentage of matters that you aren't investigating, that often means that what's coming in either isn't something that's perhaps within your jurisdiction or people haven't realized that they need to go through an internal resolution process first, before coming.

What I would say is that it's a reflection of a better understanding of our office and perhaps also a reflection of some of the good governance work that's been done, so that authorities now — a number of them — have better internal resolution processes that are diverting the complaints that can be diverted and resolved at their level. That's really what I would attribute that to.

With the good governance material, this is something that in the office we've been trying to do — not just myself as Ombudsperson, but with my predecessors. I certainly do it when I go on tours, because I go out and talk to all the local governments. I go and talk to the school boards. I talk to the other authorities. I also talk to the service clubs and other people. That's where I focus my attention.

We do have, essentially, a report about developing good internal complaint resolution processes, which I bring with me and distribute widely. I offer people the opportunity to talk to us about that. It's something that we do work on, that I work on.

In terms of the resources…. It's on page 7 of the budget, note 1. You will see that, essentially, one of the positions that is being added to our office isn't really an additional position. It's a position that was a shared services position before — that of a researcher-librarian. Now we're shifting the last $11,000 into our office because other offices have changed how they approach certain things.

I would be using that resource and probably some of my systemic investigation resources to try and provide some good governance material. There are a couple of areas where I think some good work could be done, and one of them is in local government. We've had a lot of contact with local government. We did a very well-received presentation at UBCM this year, with a lot of interest from the participants. So I think there's a real area there to assist the authorities to work towards some resolutions.

J. Les (Chair): All right. We've run out of time, unfortunately. But I think we have had a good overview from you of your budget situation. Thank you for your presentation this morning. You've left us with difficult decisions to make, and we will make those in the weeks ahead, one way or the other.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): We like difficult decisions.

J. Les (Chair): We like difficult decisions, says my co-Chair.

We will take a quick break while we shuffle chairs, and then we'll hear from the child and youth commissioner.

[1130-1135]

Okay, we're going to carry on with the meeting. We now have the Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.

Welcome, and please go ahead.

Office of the
Representative for Children and Youth

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity and the responsibility that I have to provide the committee with the operational and financial information that you need to make a decision about our budget.

I'd like to introduce the staff that's with me today. To my immediate left I have Jeremy Berland, who's the Deputy Representative for Children and Youth. Two over is Tanis McNally-Dawes, whom some of you that have served on this committee before will know. She is the manager of finance and facilities for my office.

First I'd like to talk briefly about the work of the Representative for Children and Youth's office and then walk you through our budget proposal. I've divided my presentation into four parts. First, a very brief overview of our mandate and the state of vulnerable children in British Columbia.

I'm aware of the fact that there's at least one member of the committee that also is a member of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, which is the committee before whom I table my service plan and consider it. I know you have some expertise on this committee that crosses over from the other one.

I'll also talk, on a second point, about our work in the current year; third, our work in the upcoming year; and fourth, the overview of our budget request.

In terms of part 1, then, our mandate and our accountability to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. Our office came about, of course, as a result of the 2006 review of the child-serving system by Ted Hughes.

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He recommended that there be an independent body, the Representative for Children and Youth, established
[ Page 458 ]
to do three basic functions: first of all, to advocate for children and youth, which includes individual case advocacy, which I'll speak about a bit more in a moment; to review and investigate the deaths and injuries of children and youth where those children and youth or their families had some connection with the child-serving system; and to monitor and report publicly on systemic issues in the child-serving system such as the effectiveness and responsiveness of program areas.

My office was created in 2007. On April 1 the act was fully proclaimed in some areas. With respect to critical injuries and deaths, it wasn't until June that that part of the act was proclaimed.

Of course, a central theme of the creation of my office was the need to promote stability in the child-serving system, to have a greater degree of transparency and accountability around outcomes and supports for vulnerable children and youth and also to restore, to some extent, public confidence in a system that had been buffeted by an unmanageable degree of change.

The public accountability function in my office — and it's inherent in all of our functions — is necessary to assist the government in restoring that type of confidence of the public in a very critical area of public service.

I think it's helpful to explain to the public — my office has that obligation to explain to the public — a complex system, different aspects of it, to report regularly on how it's functioning and doing, as well as to assist individuals, particularly children and youth, who are navigating often a complex and large and sometimes impersonal system.

I would note for the committee that the volatile economic times that we faced, including since the last appearance before a Finance Committee, have raised additional issues of public confidence in the area of service to vulnerable children and youth and have also put additional pressures on my office.

I think the role of the independent Representative for Children and Youth is to reassure the public that there is an independent body that is providing oversight and, when necessary, acting as a liaison between the public being served and government, especially in the area of children and youth.

As you know from your own experience at the constituency level, there are many people for whom dealing with a large government bureaucracy is extremely difficult, if not intimidating. This can prove especially the case when it's children and youth who are not living with their legal guardian or are living out of the parental home.

There are very few provinces now in Canada or the United States that do not have an official independent advocacy function to try and level the playing field in these difficult and complex situations. As Mr. Hughes noted, this office is there "to assist, encourage and sometimes prod the government to be more aware and responsive to the individual concerns of children, youth and families and to recommend changes that will address broader problems in the child welfare system."

I expand on this by assuring you that my office is also here to support the success of government, and particularly the Ministry of Children and Families, because their daily successes, in small ways and large, mean better lives for our children.

A final general comment about my office. It has a unique role, I think, in contrast to some of the other independent offices. We have some very specific responsibilities set out in legislation that we must perform over and over again. In addition, we often have an unpredictable and fluctuating workload.

It's impossible to predict, for example, if a government policy shift, say, as moving services for children and youth with disabilities from an independent agency, CLBC, back into government, as an example — whether or not those types of shifts will change or result in a large increase in advocacy cases or if a particular homicide or death of multiple family members will require a hugely complex investigation by my office because the system may have been involved with the families.

So there is an unpredictable element to the workload, and we certainly have taken that into account in preparing our budget submission. Both of these examples I provided and all the work of my office involve responsibilities, of course, related to some of the most vulnerable children and citizens in our society.

Now I'd like talk about the core business areas a bit more. The functions of the representative are set out in section 6 of the Representative for Children and Youth Act. The mandate is to "(a) support, assist, inform and advise children and their families respecting designated services."

What are designated services are a fairly extensive list of services to children and youth across the spectrum, and not just child welfare services. They're also services to children and youth with special needs, addiction services, some services in relation to income assistance and a range of other services in relation to the justice system.

[1145]

We provide information and advice for children and their families on how to access services, how to become effective self-advocates around those services. We advocate directly on behalf of a child receiving or eligible to receive a designated service. We support and promote in communities, and we comment publicly on, advocacy services for children and their families with respect to these services.

Of course, we monitor, review and audit. We do have audit powers. We are engaged in an audit, which I'll speak a bit about in a moment.

We conduct research on designated services in order to make recommendations to improve those services. As
[ Page 459 ]
I mentioned earlier, we do review, investigate and report on critical injuries and deaths of children.

Three principles — independence, public accountability and transparency — are fundamental to my office's operation. I report to you and your colleagues in the House through the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and, of course, work closely with the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth when the House is in session and the committee is able to meet.

My legislation also provides for direct public reporting at the end of an investigation into a critical injury or death of a child in care or one receiving special government services. Our ultimate goal is to encourage improvements to the child-serving system that eventually culminate in better lives and outcomes for vulnerable children and youth.

A brief snapshot of the focus in terms of the vulnerable children and youth that my office has made as its priority. As you know, there are half a million children and youth in British Columbia. Who are the children and youth, in particular, that we focus on as a priority area?

First of all, children in care. I'll give a brief definition for those of you who are not familiar with who that is, how a child in care would be particularly needy. The reason a boy or girl may be taken into care varies greatly from situation to situation. Generally they're taken into care as a result of abuse or neglect. Provincial child welfare authorities assume responsibility for them on a temporary or permanent basis.

A boy or girl or youth going into care faces many emotions and challenges, such as the stigma of foster care, separation from parents and siblings, the loss of family connections. On top of these circumstances that they face, they also require particular supports. Because they experience a loss of belonging, they may lose their family history, their self-worth may be very impacted, and even their identity, namely — particularly for the aboriginal children — their understanding of their cultural identity.

Fortunately, in British Columbia we have a dedicated network of foster parents and child-serving workers throughout British Columbia who support these children. But it's clear that the unsettling experience of coming into care, and that is for a group of approximately 8,600…. The last monthly snapshot is 8,681 children in care. The unsettling experience of being taken into care and the very human face of all the vulnerable children and youth we are concerned with….

This is the reality — the core reality — that we have to keep in mind when, I think, you consider your discussions today and the purpose and function of an office like mine. Of these 8,600 children in care in British Columbia, more than half of them, or 53.5 percent, are aboriginal children. In some regions — like in the north region of the province — more than 80 percent of the children in care are aboriginal children.

For the Child in the Home of a Relative program, or the CIHR program, that, at this time last year, was in the Ministry of Housing and Social Development and now is housed in the Ministry of Children and Families due to a shift that occurred throughout this past year.

For those children — namely, children living out of the parental home but for whom guardianship remains with their birth parents, who do not, though, assume day-to-day responsibility for their care — their care is given to another relative, and they are supported under a government contract for some financial remuneration in recognition of that support to the child.

For those children, children in kith-and-kin arrangements, children in the guardianship financial assistance program, which is the on-reserve program for status Indians equivalent to the off-reserve CIHR program, and those on youth agreement — all of these are children and youth living away from home without a guardian and often in a great degree of vulnerability. So what are those numbers?

Well, CIHR numbers are 4,422 at recent count — that's for October of 2009. We do not have the exact number of aboriginal children in that category because an aboriginal identifier is not kept in terms of the administrative data of government, but twice we've looked at the full set of data, and it's turned out that approximately 40 percent of those are aboriginal children.

[1150]

There are 187 children living on kith-and-kin, which is a short-term relative placement. About 1,500…. Again, we have no really strong, reliable data there — another area of accountability that is significant.

Then we have 759 youth in British Columbia living on youth agreements. Again, I note that aboriginal children are represented — in some instances, far beyond the percentage of population that they comprise in British Columbia in each of these.

Because of the issues — particularly for children living out of the parental home, and aboriginal children — my office has a very strong and distinct focus on engaging, collaborating and supporting aboriginal children and youth in all areas. Not surprisingly, many of the reports that my office produces touch upon the lives of these children.

One other dimension that I think it's important to note around the issue of advocacy for us is the issue of child poverty in British Columbia. B.C. once again has been found to have the highest child poverty rate in Canada by all three commonly used measures.

There's really no consensus in British Columbia, no accepted definition by the government of British Columbia, of what constitutes child poverty. On all three measures, which are variable, British Columbia still comes out as one of the highest rates in Canada. Certainly, it places between 100,000 and 156,000 children living in poverty.

I think, although estimates vary, one thing we can certainly agree upon is the harmful effects of poverty.
[ Page 460 ]
Poverty certainly has been a key presenting problem for the children and the families in the child welfare system, in the youth justice system and also who are seeking to access supports in my office.

I raise this issue because, of course, poverty is not inevitable — we need to work on it — but also it does affect the workload of my office, particularly poverty coupled with a period where services at the front line may be shifting, changing, reduced or more difficult to access. This does affect my office.

The work in this current year. First of all, in the area of reviewing and investigating critical injuries and deaths of children, my office receives reports of critical injuries and deaths.

We have sort of three levels of work that we do in this area. First we do an initial screening of these reportables, we call them. Then we review them, which basically is looking at the files, which may be health-related, child welfare–related, education-related — combining on them all together. Then we decide whether or not the case merits a full investigation — if it would be a full individual investigation or an investigation with some other children.

All reports receive an initial screening, and we look at what service delivery issues may have been involved with the child, and that's very crucial. The actual numbers here…. Between June 2007 and September 2009 — up to the most recent date I can provide you — we have had 352 critical injuries reported to the office and 214 deaths. In total, it's 566 reports.

At the end of September 2009, reviews — meaning the detailed review stage, which is a precursor to a decision on an investigation — have been opened on 179 critical injuries and 89 deaths, 34 reviews have been completed, and another 30 individual reviews are underway.

Another 50 injuries and deaths will be part of two aggregate reviews. One is a review of deaths of children under the age of two, and the other is a review of self-harm or suicide injuries and deaths — primarily adolescents, although I would note that the youngest suicide that I have had reported to me is of a nine-year-old.

An aggregate review is where we take a variety of cases that seem to have similar characteristics, and we put them together to see what we can learn about the services that they may or may not have received.

The third stage of our critical injury and death process is investigations. Investigations, I note for the committee, require considerable staff work, and sometimes it's challenging to get all of the file information from the range of government agencies and service providers that may have been involved with the family.

This investigation function has been a matter of allocation and reallocation of resources within my office to be able to perform that function not knowing what exactly the workload would be.

A full-blown investigation, given the powers under the act, includes calling of witnesses; examinations under oath; review of all related documents; interviews in the community; interviews with staff, family, caregivers; re-examination to confirm facts in dispute; research into similar situations; review of case law policy documents; interviews with collateral professionals; and a consultation with a highly qualified, multidisciplinary team specially appointed to this function under the act.

[1155]

When the investigation into a critical injury or death of a child is reported, we do produce and publicly release a report on the investigation. In '09-10 two individual investigations were publicly reported on, one of an injury to a child and the other the death of a child, Christian Lee, which was a death pertaining to domestic homicide. That was not too long ago, so members may recall that one.

Currently there is one full-blown individual case investigation underway. Five others are requiring an investigation very soon. In some instances I am waiting for criminal proceedings to be completed. They will be commenced once those have been completed.

As we look ahead, it must be noted that we continue to face significant pressures relating to the numbers of critical injuries and death investigations required. You will note in my budget submission today that my budget submission is for the most part a hold-the-line submission, taking into account the difficult position of the public purse in British Columbia.

But I do note that this is a very significant issue for me as representative — the workload around critical injuries and death investigations. It's an area where, in the past, I've asked for permission to come back, if need be, to address some of these concerns if a hold-the-line approach would not be adequate. Of course, if I had any concerns regarding it, I would engage immediately with the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth.

The next area is reviewing, auditing designated services. Just to give you an idea of reports that are completed and soon to be released and the type of work that this engages, I have a joint report with the Ombudsman on the complaints process for children and youth that has been completed and will be released very soon.

I provide regular updates and will provide another one very soon on services and supports for children and youth with special needs. My last one was in November 2008. I have a report on the sexual abuse intervention program and an audit on the children in the home of the relative program and, particularly, the addition in December-January 2009 of a criminal check for applicants and how that is progressing. That was a very important innovation, and we were auditing files to see how that's progressing. That involves auditing in excess of a thousand files. We also will produce an update on the Hughes review.

In the area of advocacy, I'll note that between April 2007 and October 2009 we have 3,750 new advocacy
[ Page 461 ]
cases taken on by the representative's office. We average about 130 cases per month. A portion of these come directly from children and youth. Some of them come from parents and family members, particularly when the child doesn't know how to use the phone or is a newborn or what have you.

Some of them actually come from workers at the front line of the system — whether they be in the income assistance side, Ministry of Children of Families, delegated aboriginal agencies or what have you — who simply call our office and say: "We can't coordinate things for this child. Would you become involved?"

About half of our cases have to do directly with MCFD services. Three big themes are children and youth not feeling protected and safe, children and youth who feel that their right to participate in decisions about them are not being respected and children and youth who feel that important people in their lives are not engaged with them or communicating adequately with them.

Our advocacy staff and myself, as representative, make a very concerted effort to inform British Columbians and children and youth about the services that are available. By the end of October 2009 my advocacy staff have made presentations, in addition to the direct-case advocacy work we do, and have worked in more than 45 communities across the province.

You'll see a map in our annual report that lists those communities. It's important that we go even to the far north, places like Atlin. We went to Blueberry River recently, to Osoyoos, Skidegate, New Aiyansh. We get out because we need to get out and engage with children and youth, particularly in areas where there have been significant challenges and where maybe they do require additional advocacy supports.

Travel costs associated with advocacy are a significant part of our budget. It's important that we do get out. We can make some effort to scale those back, but it's very challenging, in order to be comprehensive in serving children and youth, if we don't travel out and meet with them. We can conduct some of our business on the phone, if you like, or by e-mail — or even occasionally, kids text message us. But we actually need to have the face time to talk about these powerfully important issues with kids.

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Particularly, I'd note that the first nations communities in British Columbia have, as many of the Members of the Legislative Assembly know better than I, significant historic grievances about the presence of the government and the extent to which government has served and supported their children and youth. So a very strong outreach, including a significant number of aboriginal staff members in my office, is made to go out to communities, work with them, participate in workshops and assist them, both in terms of individual children and also on the community side.

I must highlight for you that this collaborative work with respect to aboriginal children and youth, I think, is extremely important, and I think it's really a major area of success for us as well. Certainly, I would say personally that we've had a significant engagement in that area, which I'm pleased about, although I would say that there's much more work to be done.

There are examples of advocacy cases in our annual report, and certainly, if there are any questions I can give you some additional examples. I'll just give you one that's not in the report that occurred just recently — a positive example of the work that we do.

That was a case where a foster mom had been attempting to adopt a foster child since birth. The child at birth was placed in the foster home, had been in a stable foster home for 12 years, which is really quite remarkable because many of these children are moved from home to home to home. A very committed foster parent. The foster mom was in the adoption process for 12 years, and the adoption process had not been completed.

We got involved with them. We were able to get everyone to the table — a lot of pushing and prodding, particularly back and forth with some of the things that just had not been done because they hadn't been considered to be a priority. MCFD approved the adoption this summer, and the papers are in the registry as we speak. The mom — the foster mom, now adopted mom — and the girl actually showed up to say: "Thank you very much. We're so happy to be a family."

So important service. Just to get everybody to come together is sometimes all it takes, but after 12 years, you can imagine the degree of frustration that may occur. I think that the prospects for that child in particular are very positive.

Now going forward with our budget request. This budget request is required, of course, to carry out these duties I've just described, under the act, in the three areas. Our service plan identifies how, in fact, we will do the work, the goals and some performance measures. In fact, you'll note that the performance measures in the service plan from my office are very similar to those of the Office of the Auditor General — to evaluate and report.

I've framed performance measures to try and make sure they align with the function that we have. Real things do happen out of the work of the representative's office. For instance, I'll give you a few examples. The report I did on Christian Lee, the domestic homicide in which the six-year-old boy was murdered by his father, and his mother was murdered and his grandparents.

That report is very significant, probably the only complete investigation of a domestic homicide with a public report in the history of B.C. that looked at the family justice system, the child welfare system and the criminal justice system.
[ Page 462 ]

Immediately at its release, one of the police departments, Victoria police department, announced that it would create a domestic violence unit, which was one of the recommendations, even without the resources to do it because they thought it was so important. So very practical examples of how systems might work together better to serve kids.

Another significant report I did last year. Kids, Crime and Care was the largest study ever done of the youth criminal justice system in Canada, looking at an entire cohort of children born in one year — so 50,000 children — who ended up in the criminal justice system. One of the important recommendations in that report was to have someone in every school in British Columbia to pay attention to how children in care are doing in school.

I'm very pleased to say that with the support of the Ministry of Education, that happened this September. There is someone designated in every school in British Columbia to pay attention to that. That's a very significant innovation, and I'm very pleased about that change. It's a beginning, and it's a very important innovation. I don't think it would have been possible without the work of the representative's office.

Finally, medical assessments in B.C.'s youth justice system. We put out a report in September about how medical assessments are done of youth in particular in the in-patient assessment unit. Every one of those recommendations was almost immediately implemented and changed, those processes.

The reports of this office, many of which touch upon tough issues which will take a few years and a lot of work to address…. Many issues do get picked up and resolved.

On the budget submission. My organization, with approximately a $7 million budget, provides oversight, of course, of the Ministry of Children and Families, which has a $1.4 billion budget. I would direct your attention to page 6 of the budget submission.

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You will note that given the current economic conditions and the pressures faced by government — and I'm sure the worries and concerns of members of this committee — I plan to operate the office next year within the current allocation of $7.027 million, and I'm not requesting an increase to the operating budget. Frankly, a stand-pat budget does represent a bit of a reduction for my office, in some ways, but I do understand the extremely challenging economic circumstances.

It is certain to me, as I noted earlier, that we probably will be receiving more calls, and if there are any more shifts in services or what have you, that may increase this fluctuation. I do note that in this particular economic climate there are fewer places for people in need to turn to and that services, in some instances, are running at full capacity. Some services face significant funding cuts and shutdowns, and others may be less responsive due to demand.

A good example — recent autism cutbacks on the EIBI programming almost overnight resulted in an additional number of phone calls, in excess of 100, to my office. Things like this result in much more work that's to be done, but important work that's to be done. It's important that my office is there to be that interface.

In very general terms, if you look at how our resources are used, approximately 43 percent of our resources go to advocacy — those 3,750 cases and that outreach to communities; about 32 percent go to monitoring, things like audits, reports, reviews; and 25 percent go to critical injuries and deaths.

We have taken some measures to be able to manage within our budget allocation. In particular, I reduced a senior executive position. I consolidated some of my critical injury and death activities. I worked very hard to develop more internal expertise and less reliance on external consultants.

I note that that is a difficult task because the advocacy and death and injury investigation functions were ones that existed in British Columbia for a time and then were shut down, so we had to sort of redevelop this. We've had some, I think, quite good success here in developing a very good team, but we've put a lot of emphasis on building that.

Also, I've tried to reduce staff travel wherever and whenever possible but not to compromise in any way the importance of our advocacy outreach. I've certainly now had the benefit of 2½ years of carrying out our management under our legislation.

I also note for you that in the past year I asked the Office of the Auditor General to conduct a review of our operation and to provide an evaluation of our financial management practices.

The results of that management review: the auditor found that the management practices in our office were "far more robust" than they might have expected for an organization at this stage of the development. And they do audit our books. We're one of the unusual independent bodies in the sense that we do annual service planning and audits. I think that's a very important part of our function. I'm very comfortable with that.

I'm going to speak briefly to four of the more significant categories in our budget, then open up to questions, which I'm sure you have.

First of all, travel. You'll note that it's reduced. It certainly is a conundrum where a problem might arise in one region or what have you. That may fluctuate, but I am attempting to bring that down.

The area of professional services. There is an increase due, in particular, to the demand for expertise in monitoring and critical injury and death as well as an increase to legal services — legal services in particular. We do an investigation…. One of the reports we did this year was an investigation into critical injury of an infant in foster care who was then returned to the birth parents. We did
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the report, but there are many significant issues around the compellability of witnesses because there was a civil action also underway.

We don't not report during a civil action, but of course the lawyers involved in the civil action get quite concerned about what might happen, what questions will be asked, how they will be asked and so on. So there are legitimate legal issues that need to be clarified and developed in some of these reviews and investigations.

The other side on the legal issues is the interpretation of the legislation as a new statute, a new oversight function. There are differences of opinion at times with government on what the mandate is, what the right to have access to documents is. Are we entitled to have this class of documents or not? As a result, we may have to obtain a legal opinion. We may have to engage in some discussions between our legal counsel and government legal advisors in order to resolve those issues.

Those are costs that are difficult to manage, but they are significant and important costs when you're doing the types of functions we're doing.

We are staffing internally as opposed to relying on professional services, except in those narrow categories where we do require highly specialized expertise. We couldn't afford to, say, bring a developmental pediatrician on staff to look at all of our intakes around critical injuries and deaths, but we might be able to contract occasionally and periodically with someone of that expertise.

[1210]

Office and business expenses. We have a small increase due to moving the expenses required in order to raise public awareness with kids. It's moved to the office expenses, to better reflect these actual expenditures. As I said prior, it's important that we reach out to children and youth that are at risk, so they know that the advocacy supports are there. Even though we have had a pretty good caseload, I still go out, and we still regularly find children and youth that are not aware of the ability and the services there to help them.

I'll just conclude by saying that our request is of course to operate within the existing allocation. I do expect that we may face increasing demands in some areas. I also acknowledge to members of the committee that this is a bit of a risk, certainly to me as representative, in the sense that I want to make sure that I can fulfil all the functions, the three functions I've identified.

If there are additional pressures that I face, I would like to have the permission of the Chair and Deputy Chair to come back to the committee, if there was a change in circumstances that cannot be managed internally with good practices. I think I've sort of maxed out on all of those, and this year I would like to ask the committee for that same opportunity to return — should it arise.

Also, if more were to be asked of my organization — perhaps a new area of advocacy to be added or what have you — I might need to return to the committee to speak further about those.

I thank you very much for your time, and I'm certainly delighted, with my colleagues, to take any questions members may have about our budget submission.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you, Mary Ellen. Perhaps this time I'm going to take the first question.

A few years ago I became somewhat familiar with the Coroners Service. Within that, there is what is called the child death review unit. I've been away from it now for a little while, but I'm curious as to the relative areas of responsibility of what you do and what that unit does. Is there any overlap, and how has that settled down ultimately?

M. Turpel-Lafond: There is. In fact, I chair a body called the Children's Forum, which comprises myself, the chief coroner, the Ombudsman, the Public Guardian and Trustee and, when we had a director of child protection, that person. Now it's usually a senior ADM in the Ministry of Children and Families. Also, the public health officer is there. The provincial health officer is there as well. We sit together. We look at cases. We look at how overlap occurs in our various mandates and so on.

Quite apart from that, I have a very good protocol with the Coroners Service. The child death review unit looks at closed, cold cases, if you like. They're finished. Like, they did a report on swimming pool deaths, for instance — swimming risk. They do very significant work. They don't limit their data only to vulnerable children. In my side, I do actually direct investigations, and the cases tend to come through my process a little quicker. It isn't as long a process, but we do work together.

I mean, the Coroners Service has produced, I think, some valuable reports, particularly in the area of sleeping, safe sleeping. You know, I may have reports of children where there are deaths because they were sleeping in car seats, but there may also be a child protection concern or what have you. They may look at it through other factors, so we do work carefully together. I think we will continue to work very carefully together in the future, but they don't do full-blown investigations of individual cases.

There are also some issues about the extent to which they can make recommendations to government. As you know, the Coroners Service is not as fully independent as an independent officer of the Legislature. Certainly, I know there are issues that occasionally arise, but the ability of a ministry to make recommendations to other ministries is a concern.

One of the benefits I think I have from being independent is that, taking the domestic violence report as an example, where there's a need to strengthen the family justice system, a need to strengthen the child welfare system and so on, my hands are not tied around
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making recommendations, which I think is really valuable in this area.

With the Coroners Service, the people that work in that unit are extremely qualified, and we work very closely with them. In fact, they occasionally earlier on will have a child death which they will bring to the attention of the representative. It's an important function, and they look at deaths of all children, which I think is important, whereas I'm looking at those children where there were some services to their families.

[1215]

N. Letnick: Thank you for your presentation and all your hard work. Also, thank you for the hold-the-line budget. It's much appreciated. Also, the domestic violence issue — it was a big one when I was on city council in Kelowna. We dedicated some RCMP specifically for that. Thank you for identifying that as well.

I'm going to preface my question with a little bit of a lens on my history, and that will give you an idea of where I'm coming from, with what the question is. I was born into a lower-class family in Montreal. Three-storey walk-ups, and our playground was the street. You know, that kind of scenario. I never knew I was poor. I grew up, I was happy, I had really good family, and I thought I was on cloud nine.

Sometime in my teenage years I got into a bus and took the bus to what we call CEGEP, in Montreal. Colleges — right? This bus went through all the normal areas that I was used to, and then it went through a place called the town of Mount Royal. There I saw all these single-family homes. I said: "Whoa. How come people live in beautiful, large, single-family homes and my family has the three-storey walk-up, one next to each other?"

That's when I realized there was a different way of living besides the way I grew up. I didn't know until that point that there was, really. Then I worked really hard most of my life to make sure that at some point I could afford one of those single-family homes and raise my family and not have my children live in the financial poverty that I was used to.

When you talk about poverty in your report…. Actually, I didn't see it in your report. I saw it in your service plan. When you talk about poverty, when you mention it today and you say that B.C. is one of the places in the country which has the worst record on child poverty, that hits to the core — for me, anyway, and I imagine for many of my colleagues around both sides of the table here — because that's why we're here: to improve the economy and to improve the quality of life for everyone in our province, especially our children.

So then I dig, and I say: "How can they say that of B.C.? It's such a rich province. How can it be?" Then I look and I say: "Well, you know, we're talking about relative measures of poverty." LICO, from StatsCan, is a relative measure. It's not an absolute measure of poverty.

So my question to you is this. You said there were three commonly used measures of poverty. I'm sure you were talking about LICO as one of them, which is a relative measure.

For those who are listening who don't understand it, it's basically how much money you have relative to how much money the aggregate might have in the province or in the country, as opposed to an absolute measure, which says, "Do you have enough money to pay for your accommodation, for the food that you need?" — the basics to sustain life, the ones that I had when I was growing up as a "poor child" but had a wonderful childhood.

My question to you is: are there any absolute measures of poverty out there that are commonly accepted? How are we doing with them?

If there aren't any absolute measures, which measure whether people can actually afford the basics of life, what would it take to come up with one for British Columbia so that we can say…? Rather than look in an omnibus way, we look all the way across the board and say that we have to take from the wealthy and redistribute it to everyone who isn't as wealthy, which is what the relative one talks about. We can then target those areas that need it the most.

For instance, maybe first nations need more help. Well, perhaps with an absolute measure of poverty that measures first nations versus city of Vancouver versus the Okanagan versus the rural, we could actually see, with an absolute measure, if there are particular areas in our province that we should be targeting resources to instead of just trying to put money everywhere and hope that at some point we have no longer the lowest level, as described.

That's basically my question. I don't want to be called the worst place in the country for children. I don't believe we are, but I don't have the numbers to prove that we aren't, so I need your help with that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I really appreciate your comments, because there are three measures. I think there's the low-income cutoff, which is used by Stats Canada, in part because StatsCanada as an agency hasn't received direction from the federal government of what a Canadian definition is. Then there's the market basket measure, which is how much a family needs to pay for what it needs to consume.

[1220]

Then there is a third measure, which is sometimes favoured by some independent think tanks and institutes like the Fraser Institute, called the bare necessities line. That is just the bare minimum of what you require to live. That one is, of course, a much more narrow definition. For instance, it doesn't allow a family to buy school supplies or reading material. I think the bare necessities line would, for an elderly woman, allow $23
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a month for food, so there are some fairly low thresholds around that.

There are three measures, and I think your point is a very significant one. For me, as representative, because poverty is so presenting on the issues in the child welfare system, in the poor education outcomes for children, in the issues around health care, I think British Columbia should have a measure that we agree on. What will it be?

Unfortunately, right now there is no definition in the government of British Columbia of what child poverty is. We have three different variables, three different measures. Some people use one; some people use another.

As representative, one of the pieces of work I've been attempting to do is to actually get people in the Legislature together to talk about what it will be, how we will approach it. You know, is it 156,000 children? Is it 100,000 children? How do you look at it? The most important thing is: what are the outcomes for children living in straitened and difficult circumstances?

Certainly, for any child living in a family on social assistance, they will be below the bare necessity line already in British Columbia, but children's vulnerability in terms of having a good education outcome — which, probably for you, I know for me, was a ticket out of poverty — requires you be supported.

Those kids living in the LICO category are demonstrated not ready to learn when they come into kindergarten disproportionately. They're also demonstrated not to have progressed adequately by grade 4, when they're assessed, or grade 7 or to graduate. Those are areas where we have work to do in British Columbia.

My role as representative is very non-partisan, to say: "Let's come together. Here's an area where we don't have to fight about the definitions. Let's get a definition in British Columbia that works, and let's work on it."

You're absolutely right in the issue of what services reach those families. I look at things like the Ministry of Housing and Social Development. It targeted…. It was hoping to reach 14,000 families — there were 14,000 recipients last year with rental assistance — and actually try and get support for them. It only reached 4,200 low-income families. It didn't reach a whole bunch of families.

Why did that happen when the money and the plan were there? Those are areas where, when you talk about supporting families in key areas like shelter or whatever…. How can we make it work better? I think, for children, absolutely….

You know, there are children living in poverty, and of those children on youth agreements, every single one of them is living in poverty in British Columbia. They certainly come to my office in tough straits. Not only are they living in poverty, but they don't necessarily have a legal guardian that can even consent for them, as a person under 15 or under the working age, to be able to work.

These are really important issues, and I really appreciate the work of all members of the Legislative Assembly on it. The Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, I think, will be focusing on this, very much so, in the near future.

D. McRae: Again, thank you for the work you do for children and families in our province. Two questions for you. Actually, one that's not really concerned about the budget but just a question about child poverty.

When I was doing some research, I found out that B.C. has one of the highest divorce rates in the country. After 30 years there's a 39 percent chance that a family will end in divorce; whereas, Newfoundland has, like, 17 percent. How much impact does the divorce rate actually have on child poverty as a factor?

M. Turpel-Lafond: That's a really good question — family breakdown and its relationship to child poverty. If I look at the last year, during the economic downturn — again, tracking it — the increase of single-parent families — people who had been working, probably went through EI — coming on to social assistance went up 40 percent. The increase of working families on social assistance went up 80 percent. It kind of turned some of my theories on their ear, which is: what's the reality?

The reality in British Columbia is that most children living in poverty are living with a single mom. There's no question about that. That is also the reality in almost every other province but British Columbia. I think your point is a good one, which is: do we have a strong enough maintenance enforcement system, child support system? Those are other aspects of the picture.

[1225]

The key thing for children is what type of stability their lives have. I mean, children don't choose to be born into families where they don't have the support of two moms, two dads or a mom and dad. They are born into the families they're born into.

Your point is an interesting one. I don't think it explains everything, but it's an area where…. We have to make sure those kids are adequately supported.

D. McRae: Just a question of curiosity, because what's happening in our province is not happening in Newfoundland. If it's a larger issue than just one province, it's something that needs to be addressed.

The other question had to do with budget. Since I'm new to this committee, I haven't had a chance to actually see prior years. One of the things that caught my attention on page 5 was the 2008 budget and then the 2008-09 actual budget. You were very good. You spent to very close to within your means and actually gave back a little bit to the province.

The question that I have is…. Your budgeted requests don't equal your actual spending. You know, it can vary
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very widely, anywhere from 20 percent to 700 percent differences. Now, the 700 percent, by all means, is a smaller item. But is this an area that traditionally occurs within your budget requests — that there's just such a skew of expenses that what you ask for and how you spend it is just completely different — or is this a one-year-of?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'll just defer to Jeremy to deal with some of the details with you on that.

J. Berland: This is an office that has now existed for 2½ years, so I think that what you see in the previous year expenditure is an attempt to really rationalize the way that money is spent across the whole operation, to say: "Did we allocate too much into professional services versus direct staff services? Can we find the staff?"

Certainly, in the first couple of years, we have had difficulty, as have had most other human service organizations, of finding the right staff for the right positions.

Some of what you see there, really, is that they're using the resources in the best way possible to try to achieve the efficiencies — putting money into investigations; making sure the advocacy functions are staffed up; really paying attention to getting the work done; and trying, in this new fiscal year and the next fiscal year, to have a better alignment of resources and staffing. I think that's what we've done.

The big part of the difference lies there.

D. McRae: Fair enough. Thank you very much.

J. Rustad: Thank you for your presentation. In the interests of time, I've just got a couple of quick questions that I wanted to ask. The first is on the travel budget side. I see it's reduced. I'm just wondering how much international travel is in your budget, or is there any?

M. Turpel-Lafond: International travel?

J. Rustad: Yes.

M. Turpel-Lafond: No, there's no international…. I don't mean to laugh about it. There's no international travel.

I can say that for me as representative, occasionally I'm invited to participate in things, but I certainly have felt the enormity of the work here. I don't feel I'm in a position that I can go out and do things elsewhere. I mean, all of my work is here, and I have a bit of a strong policy.

Occasionally there is an investigative-related event, mostly in the U.S. There are some very good death-injury investigation programs that are offered in the U.S., in particular. That's occasional. Otherwise, I don't think we've budgeted…. We have no international travel budget.

We're pretty much going to Prince George and Atlin and Dease Lake. Those are our destinations of choice for the representative's office.

J. Rustad: That's good.

The second question I have is around the tenant improvements. I want to, first of all, preface this around…. I very much appreciate the budget that you have put in, given that we are in very challenging economic times. As has been said by one of the previous members in the questions, it's refreshing to see a budget that is a hold-the-line budget, because obviously we do face a challenge. Even though we have $40 billion or so in the provincial budget, every dollar is significant.

I'm just looking at the tenant improvements and wondering if there's a possibility that that may be able to be deferred for another year.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think I'll defer that question to Ms. McNally-Dawes or Mr. Berland.

J. Berland: Of course, everything is a possibility. Nothing is off the table. Some of this goes, really, to the space we have in our three existing offices and the adequacy of the space in terms of…. For instance, we're facing a significant storage issue in our offices in terms of the confidential nature of the material.

[1230]

Now that we are at max in our Victoria office, we have absolutely no room for the storage of the confidential file material. We have to store it in a manner that will protect the privacy — very delicate file information, as you can imagine — of that information. So that's a pressure for us.

We equally have pressures around the minor issues in each of the other two locations. Certainly, we can defer that. There are things that we can do about it, but ultimately, they are issues that we're going to have to address, really, from the security and adequacy of our arrangements. Because we've done so much allocation in the Victoria office, particularly, we just don't have any more…. There aren't any options for us. The space is fully used up.

You are certainly welcome to come and see it. There's nothing like a site visit.

J. Rustad: I've been in the office on a number of occasions to say hi.

The last question I have — if it's all right, Chairperson….

J. Les (Chair): Quickly, quickly.

J. Rustad: It's around your performance measures. In particular, I noticed one of the performance measures around the number of cases each year. Part of what
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you said is that raising the level of awareness within the public with regards to your office….

I'm wondering if you've considered a performance measure where you actually, perhaps, survey those in care and those that are providing care about the services that your office has, to see what level of awareness is there and develop a strategy, perhaps, around increasing that level of awareness.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you for that question. A two-part answer to that. First of all, we are now designing, actually, a review of advocacy which involves surveying those who have sought our advocacy services, including children and youth, to see: were they satisfied, were they supported, and so on. So that piece is really important, the kind of front-line service. Are we doing the piece of work that's so important to be done?

The second part, though, is one that I'm certainly grappling with very much. That is, we could have the Ministry of Children and Family Development provide an automatic notification of our support to every child in care.

Some of you may be surprised that that doesn't happen. It doesn't, but we could have them provide that. There would be approximately 9,000 kids — or every child in the home of a relative — who would receive an automatic notification: "There is a representative's office that you can seek advocacy services from."

I'm seriously looking at that and discussing that with the Ministry of Children and Family Development. I do anticipate that that would quickly jump that advocacy caseload quite a bit.

My advocates are a little bit queasy about that, saying: "Let's not do that." I'm not saying that every child in care will require advocacy. I am assuming that many children are supported and so on, but they may not feel their voices heard. How we will make sure that core group receives support is an ongoing area that we have to grow in.

I know that in Alberta they have mandatory notification to kids. They still deal with a smaller number of advocacy cases than we do, which is really interesting to me. I think it's, in part, because our staff are pretty good at getting out and so on. But I do feel that there are children and youth that are not being reached, and we do need to do a better job of reaching them.

I think we can say that there have been some successes to date, not only in getting 3,750 cases but in helping to resolve most or many of them. But I know that there are other kids out there that we're not getting to.

We are doing a review, and we're going to report to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, because we want to say: "How can we do it better? What can we learn?" It's a bit of an independent review. We're going to have a look at it. We're going to do some surveying. We're going to try and use some technologies more effectively — YouTube and so on — to try and get some of those kids captured.

I appreciate your question. It is something that we're grappling with. Maybe next year we'll have that solved somewhat, but I know that there are kids out there that we need to reach. I appreciate that all Members of the Legislative Assembly, the constituency assistants and others bring cases to us as well. But there are more that we certainly have not yet been able to serve.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Yes, I really appreciate your presentation and meeting you and the staff — and appreciate the work, especially in remote, rural and first nations communities. That's where I represent.

I also find it amazing that you can continue in the work that you're doing, considering the content of the presentation. I'm getting a bit emotional here because…. I'll just have to leave it at that for now.

[1235]

J. Les (Chair): Bill, you had a question.

B. Routley: Again, thank you for all of the amazing work that you do on behalf of children in the province. I certainly understand the emotion of my friend on this side of the House. The issues that we deal with as MLAs…. I recently had…. I hope I don't start now too. I had a first nations…. Her name is Christine Brett. She specifically gave me permission to use her name and said that she was adopted out. She got trapped in a lifestyle of drugs and alcohol. Now she's trying to get her own child back and has been dealing with all of that.

She's advocating now for follow-up on things such as — and I wanted to specifically ask — the Hughes report. In your last report you outlined some concerns about the Hughes report. I heard from this first nations mom that she believes that the restructuring that government is currently going through goes against everything that Hughes had suggested. She specifically talked about feet-dragging regarding aboriginal children and youth and that there were continued cuts to programs that affected them.

My question, while I hear the cheerleading section from the other side about cutting budgets or staying the line on a budget…. I'm actually concerned when I read in the report that there's been a 31 percent increase in your advocacy cases taken on. Yet, you've got a hold-the-line budget. Are you really cutting yourself short? You know, I've heard from other groups that, with increasing demands, they're obviously looking for assistance and help in having more. I know that I've asked several questions that all blend together here.

Again, I appreciate all of the work that you do. My grandson has autism. I consider, that in all of the negotiations I've done in my entire lifetime, the most important negotiations that I did was fighting with the
[ Page 468 ]
psychologist to get my grandson approved for autism when he was three years of age, because the doctor had said: "Wait one more year." So I know that there are all kinds of tragic stories out there with children.

I definitely feel that I owe it to Christine Brett to follow up on what's happening with the Hughes report.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I'd like to thank the member for that question and also make a note, through him, that we can follow up outside this room on some of those specific issues as well.

As many of you will know, I'm from Saskatchewan. There's a bit of a saying in Saskatchewan, which is that you don't need to buy a Cadillac if you think the Buick will take you to the Grey Cup. I think that's a bit of a philosophy that I take, which is: could I table a budget that asks for a significant increase here to deal with these issues? Yes. Why haven't I? Because we're in very difficult circumstances.

Certainly, the budget that I have will, I think, allow me to continue to do the work, with the proviso that I'd like to have an opportunity to come back if there's a dramatic change. I am not interested, as representative, in building a Cadillac. I'm interested in building the Buick that's going to get me where I need to go and do the work that I need to do to support Members of the Legislative Assembly and children and youth. I'm very sensitive to that.

In particular, the last comment, which is about providing hope…. I mean, this office was created in part to deal with some of those most difficult cases and to provide hope that we will improve things in the child-serving system. I can say that I have seen improvements. I see challenges.

The most important thing inspired by Mr. Hughes is that we all work on them together, that we don't finger-point. We work on them together. I've seen some progress on that front, as well, so I'm very encouraged by that. It takes time, but I'm very encouraged. I think that the children and youth are also encouraged — which is not to say that there aren't lots of them that are vulnerable, for whom we need to do more, but I think that we have seen some progress.

I can understand the emotion around the issues, because it's tough. I think the most important thing is to remain hopeful, do the hard work, be decent about it, be transparent, be accountable and be a good example of what we want to be for the children.

[1240]

J. Les (Chair): Thank you.

Jane, you had a question.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation. I also will say thank you for your budget and your recognition. I think in these times it's really refreshing to see realism, and I really appreciate that. I also appreciate your comments about the Ministry of Education coming through with one of your recommendations with regards to getting assistants in every school for children in care.

My question is: can you explain what the grants are?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I can. One of the things we do, because we do research…. Instead of developing an in-house research…. We have some in-house research capacity, but I do partner with leading researchers. So we have a partnership coming with probably the leading researcher in Canada on risk assessment for vulnerable children in child welfare.

We provide grants to UVic; UBC; HELP, the human early learning partnership; UNBC — different areas where there is strong research being done with a child focus and also, in some instances, institutes that have that ability, like an institute that does a very large health survey of children. It's a good partnership for us, because they do the survey and we can get access to their data. We can help shape questions.

So again, it's an efficiency issue. I can't have a Canada Council chair on research in child development on my staff without enormous cost, but I can, through a grant, work very carefully together and buy access to that research. They can also get some access to our data, provided proper privacy protections are in place to do research. So it's an odd thing to call it a grant, because really it's about research.

J. Les (Chair): Okay, thank you very much. We've run out of time, and we do have the Auditor General coming this afternoon in a half-hour, so we've got to make a pretty quick transition here and try and get something to eat at the same time. Very much appreciate your presentation this morning. Very well done. Very much appreciated. Thank you.

We'll break until…. Lunch is in the Cedar Room, which is in the hallway next to the legislative chamber.

The committee recessed from 12:42 p.m. to 1:11 p.m.

[J. Les in the chair.]

J. Les (Chair): Okay. We will get started, assuming the other committee members will arrive very shortly. I believe we're all set to go.

We're now down to the Office of the Auditor General and the budget request for the coming year. I'll turn it over to the Auditor General, John Doyle.

Go ahead.

Office of the Auditor General

J. Doyle: Good afternoon, Chair. Good afternoon, Members. Thank you for the opportunity to present
[ Page 469 ]
the 2010-2011 estimate resources for the Office of the Auditor General.

I'd like to walk through the documentation that we've already provided to the committee and expand a little bit on some of the aspects, some of my observations in regard to how we think we're tracking and why we need the quantum of funds that we've requested. Then, obviously, I would leave plenty of time for questions afterwards. We'd be happy to go through any questions that you may have at that stage.

I've got with me today three or four of my senior staff. A couple are with me. At my far left is Michael Macdonell. He's responsible for strategic planning and our operational focus within the organization.

Next to me is Russ Jones. Russ is an assistant Auditor General who is responsible for a large part of the financial audit that the office conducts, but also has particular responsibility for the internal financials.

Behind me we have our finance manager, Katrina. She has come to make sure that we provide all the correct information, obviously. Also with her is one of my assistant Auditors General, Malcolm Gaston, who also sits on our finance subcommittee and is the assistant Auditor General responsible for the governance reporting area.

The third person behind me is someone who knows more about budgeting than I do, she tells me. That's my wife, who keeps an eye on me in regard to the household budget.

I've been asked to apologize in advance for Michael Macdonell's appearance, because he's actually part of a process of fundraising for prostate cancer for men. He's part of Movember. I might add that we're in competition with the Australians to try and grow the most hair, and we're losing. I'm not quite sure what that says about us. Anyway, that process will come to an end in the very near future, and we will have raised quite a bit of money for prostate cancer. That's a function that occurs right across the world.

Back to the business of today and the estimate of resources. I suppose I wanted to start with saying that the mandate for my office is very broad and is governed by the Auditor General Act, 2003. In that respect we may be a little bit different from some of the other independent officers that have come to you, in that we've already had approved, by the Public Accounts Committee, the coverage plan that we present to them, which details how we're going to deal with our largest single block of work that we undertake, which is the audit of the summary financial statements of the province.

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Depending how you measure turnover, the financial statements will show that there's something in the order of $38 billion, $39 billion worth of turnover. If you change the modified equity provisions, then it's up to about $60 billion worth of turnover and $60 billion or more worth of assets.

My responsibilities under that legislation are broad. There are some things where I have absolutely no choice to do things to a certain standard and to follow certain rules that are mandated by organizations outside of my control. I must comply with certain generally accepted auditing standards and issue an opinion based on the accounting standards that prevail.

In addition, the act also gives me the authority to conduct other investigations in regard to efficiency, effectiveness and economy of government programs. In that way, we hope to achieve our mission statement in regard to providing a valued service to not only citizens but also the Legislative Assembly and individual members in regard to observations regarding how well the process of delivery of services is going.

We usually would consider that the breakdown of our services would be broken down into three broad categories, or three broad streams, of activity.

The first would be the conduct of financial audit itself and all the associated work that links into that and to the provision of the opinion for the summary financial statements.

We'd look at the second stream as being a performance audit. That's called a number of different things and has been called a number of things over time, including value-for-money, efficiency-effectiveness-type audits — those sorts of areas of activity. I can give examples later as to the kind of work we conduct there.

Thirdly, the value-added service governance: an associate group of other work that we do that adds value to decision-makers, and also to ministries and to other members or parts of the government reporting entity as well as citizens, in regard to how they should view performance of government.

It would be fair to say that I am following a strategic direction and have been doing so since the start of my mandate, which was in the end of October, beginning of November 2007 — so literally two years.

I've been before this committee three times. This is my third occasion. In coming before the committee, I have been able to explain what it is that I intend to be doing over time to deal with the challenges that I face. So far, I have been able to rely upon the support of the committee in going forward in a strategic manner to actually overcome those obstacles and difficulties, which I will go through in some detail before I finish.

Briefly, I face external and internal problems. The external problems are simply that the accounting environment and the auditing environment are changing fundamentally in Canada over the next few years. This is not something that's driven by any particular province; it is something that is being acted out at a national level.

Because of the financial management legislation and because of the Auditor General Act, the province is locked into complying with the high standards of financial reporting — and that's GAAP — and also is locked
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into providing the auditing services to the high standard, and that's GAAS.

Both of them are subject to significant change over the next few years. That means, inevitably, that costs will rise, and the challenge for me and my office is to try and mitigate that risk by becoming more efficient in the way that we do things and offset the increasing costs.

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The other major aspect that's going forward is that I, along with many of my colleagues within the public service and the broader public service, have an — I wouldn't say elderly — older workforce, well-experienced people who intend to retire within the next period of time.

The description I gave in previous presentations has come to pass. I have had a number of very experienced, highly competent directors leave the organization and move on. We've had to deal with that — that loss of corporate memory and that loss of experience — as a natural part of what we do.

Why is that important for my estimates? Well, I believe I still need to deliver the same level of services. I've articulated the way that I've gone about it to this committee over the last couple of presentations to them. Basically, it centres around training people — in this case, mostly chartered accountants, but not exclusively — from the ground up and making sure that they can then fill in roles as they move forward over the next period of time.

I'm pleased to say that that process is working well. We still have a few more years to go before that process provides all the fruit that we need, but it's certainly beginning to demonstrate fruit, as we are at the moment.

The next thought I would like you to have is that I do wish to be seen as a frugal and responsible money manager. I have come before you on two occasions before and said that I could not spend all the money that you gave me, and therefore, I did not spend it. I made a commitment, on both of those occasions, which said something along the lines of: "I won't spend the money if I don't have to or if I can, in some way, find a better way to do things."

As you'd appreciate, occasionally, as things play out during a year, if there is not a need to incur expenses, then in fact I should take that opportunity. If, however, there is a need, then obviously you'd expect me to make sure that the ongoing operational capability and the way that the office works continues to meet the appropriate standards. Basically, if it doesn't, then I'm contradicting the Auditor General Act, 2003.

Last year we made a request for more money than we actually were awarded. That's fine. We took that. We went back, and we re-evaluated, right from the beginning, everything that we needed to do and how we could cope with this change in expectation.

It would be fair to say that the first part of that was that we had to pare back our performance audit programs. I'm not prepared to compromise the financial audit work at all. It needs to be done to a certain standard, and it needs to be delivered by a certain time. The resources or the default within the organization is still that that block of work gets done. It has, if you like, primacy over many other things that we do.

The effect was to actually reduce the amount of performance audit work that we're able to achieve. That question was asked me by a member of this committee. I'm afraid I can't remember who asked me the question. The answer I gave was that we'd have to reduce performance work, and indeed, that is exactly what happened.

My personal view is that we actually don't do enough performance work at the moment. It is an area that we should be expanding not reducing, particularly in these current circumstances. But I understood, and my office understood, the need for frugality, and we were able to cut our cloth to meet the situation. I would say, in my view, I think we've probably gone as far as I would be prepared to go in regard to that.

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What I did within the office was put together a group. We call them the razor gang. Their job was to go through everything we did within the office and not only find a way of saving the reduction that flowed from the decision of this committee but also see whether or not there were additional savings that could be made. If you like, the way I described it was that we have a sponge. Could we squeeze the sponge even more without adversely impacting our performance or the way that we actually operated?

They came out with a number of interesting observations. They challenged some of our norms and were able to actually squeeze additional funds out of the operational budget which we believe we do not need on a year-to-year basis because we're basically changing the way that we work.

Some of those were to do with administrative expenses. Some of those have yet to come into play and are linked to our telephone systems and the technology which we deploy, some of which are actually going to be an impact for next year as opposed to this year. When we decided that we can defer the automatic renewal of certain equipment, we could actually make that equipment last a little bit longer and, therefore, push off the purchase of that equipment and the renewal of that equipment to a subsequent period. That has a one-off effect on making savings.

The effect of that is that we believe that we've found an additional block of money that is available for a reduction in our base budget. We've put that in our documentation and presented that to you.

I suppose it's important to talk, also, about something which may have a nil effect but in fact consumes quite a bit of thinking and work within my office. That is the changing environment of the accounting and the auditing
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standards. If anyone's got a pleasant hour sometime, I can give you an introduction as to how big that will be over the next period of time.

This is worldwide. It's not just me in B.C. saying this. The whole world has experienced or said this. Costs will go up significantly. I've somehow got to counter with actually acknowledging that as we change the mix of our staff and their capacity to become nimble in the way that we conduct work, there's a downward push on us becoming more efficient in the way that we do things.

We're ever learning from the profession, and I think the profession is ever learning from our work in regard to how we can conduct public sector audit, particularly the financial audit components, in a different way. Most people within the financial audit zone within the office would be able to explain that this process has been ongoing for the last couple of years and will be ongoing into the future as we look at different ways that we can actually provide the same level of assurance but not necessarily increase the costs associated with that.

In the performance audit area we're also looking at a way that we can adapt our methodology to actually provide the same level of assurance and quality of report without necessarily taking up as many resources as may have been the case in the past. We have revisited our methodology, and we are ongoing in the way that we review how we operate and what we can deliver to make sure that it is value for money.

My estimate of the resources that I would require within my office to exercise my powers and to perform the duties specified in the Auditor General Act for the coming year, 2010-2011, is $15.4 million, which is actually $136,000 less than you awarded me for this current financial year.

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There is a page in the report which talks about the dynamic of why I would need less. I think that that value, $15.4 million, is enough for me to deliver the services that I believe that I need to deliver based on my view of the risk and what needs to be done out there at the current time.

We will still be providing increments for our staff, so there's a cost uplift. We will still be incurring any shifts and changes in rent or other contractual relationships. We will still be incurring the general inflation change in prices that other organizations incur.

We've found ways of offsetting those. Because of the strategic approach that we adopted and which was endorsed by this committee a couple of years ago, we're starting to shift away from the expensive external consultants that would come in and assist with our financial audits and starting to rely much more upon our audit associates and our newly qualified staff — of which 11 will get their results later on next week, and we'll know where we're at as far as they're concerned. Good luck to all of them. I hope they've all passed.

If you take the office and you put it into the context of the national arena, you would, to be fair, when you compare, find that the mandate is different from some other jurisdictions. It's broader, and it's deeper. That reflects the provincial government view of how important the role of the office is and how that office should inform not only members of the Legislative Assembly but also citizens in regard to operations of government. If you like, that is to the credit of the province.

Now, when you look at all the funding arrangements for all of the other jurisdictions within Canada, you would find and could conclude that we are underfunded in comparison to them. The level of underfunding is on the order of $5 million.

I'm happy to talk a little bit about it and discuss that, but I actually sense that $15.4 million is adequate for us to conduct the work that we're undertaking or plan to undertake in this jurisdiction. I will continue to leverage off of the ideas, competencies and capabilities of other organizations in the conduct of assurance work. The differences — or the apples and pears, if you like — that exist in comparatives with other jurisdictions shouldn't distract you from the view that, in fact, the funds that I'm requesting are adequate for the task.

If you go into each other jurisdiction, you will find the subtleties of the differences in what they do would mean that, in the end, we'd have a very complex array of normalization calculations. Having done some of those, I still think we are underfunded on certain criteria like per-capita or expenditure. But I'm comfortable that the funds that we've asked for are adequate for us to provide good service and value for citizens.

I'm happy to stop at that point and respond to any queries or questions that committee members may have, Chair.

J. Les (Chair): Thank you very much, John. The first question I have is from Norm.

N. Letnick: Thank you very much, John, for your presentation and all your reports. I have three questions. The IFRS, the international financial reporting standards — are they being adopted throughout the world, including the United States, in 2011, or is that Canada's target date and not the Americans' target date?

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J. Doyle: Implementation of the international financial reporting standards does change with different countries. It is not the plan of the U.S. to bring it in, in 2011. It's a Canadian target.

There are lots of other countries in the world that have brought in IFRS. Some have modified IFRS. The Australians, for example, modified IFRS, and they call it A-IFRS. They went down a path that Canada has decided not to go down. But the IFRS changes only relate to a
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small number of the Crowns that exist within the government reporting entity. These are the Crowns that are consolidated on a modified equity basis, and there is a huge amount of work that each one of those Crowns has to do.

The problem for my office is that we've got to basically audit them twice in this coming year. The reason we have to audit them twice is that there's the normal audit, based on the old rules, that we have to do, and then they have to prepare comparative figures for the first set of financials which will be prepared on the new basis, IFRS. We have to audit those to make sure that they're right before we start the audit fully on IFRS in 2011. That's why there's a one-off double load in that particular area.

The other thing is that although many of the accounting firms do provide them advice, we're also expected to provide them advice that is congruent with all the other information and advice they're receiving. We have had to set up a process within the office where we have that capability.

N. Letnick: So we don't have the discretion to postpone our changeover to IFRS for another couple of years. We have to do it now.

J. Doyle: That's correct.

One thing that government did do…. Sorry if I may add a question you didn't ask, but perhaps it's of interest to you. That is that there was some push-and-shove when it came to who should adopt IFRS or, indeed, what accounting framework government entities should adopt. Without explaining the whole rationality of it, basically what's going to happen is that the ten or so entities that are consolidated on the modified equity basis are all going to IFRS, but almost every other Crown agency has got to change its basis of accounting at some time in the next short period of time.

I'll say that again. Every other one has got to shift or change. Government could — and maybe will; we're not sure yet — mandate what that framework should be. That would be fine if the accounting standards board had actually stabilized that framework to mandate it on. That process hasn't been completed yet. But it would be, without exaggeration, that almost everything has got to change over the next period of time, and that will be a huge headache for the entities themselves but also for the audit processes that follow up that whole exercise.

N. Letnick: My questions — the remainder are on page 7 of your estimate of resources, November 2009. While you're going to page 7, I just hope that going from GAAP to IFRS this year does not mean that in two or three years you'll go from IFRS to something else, because that would be very unfortunate.

J. Doyle: No, that wouldn't happen.

N. Letnick: On page 7 you have in there, on table 3, training costs. I imagine part of that is for new employees. As you have people that are retiring and you bring on new employees, you have to train them. Is that what the training costs, or a big chunk of the training costs, are for?

J. Doyle: No. There are a number of different components of our expenses in regard to training, and in this respect I would submit that we are quite different from many other organizations that you may have had presentations going to you. Training, for us, is non-negotiable. We have to do it because in our professional standards, in the duty of care that we have to conduct our work, we must make sure that everyone is up to date.

We have three layers of training that we need to deal with. The first layer is not new people that have come this year, but people that are training as associates to become chartered accountants or to lift their capability and skills as a chartered accountant in order to conduct the work. There are different layers and responsibilities as you move further up in the process of conducting financial audits and other work.

It takes about seven to ten years to actually take someone from a graduate right the way through to an engagement leader able to conduct relatively straightforward audits with an element of complexity in them.

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The associate process is a training program that we have to follow. It takes three years for associates to go through that. It was part of the change in strategy that was endorsed by this committee over the last two years in an effort to try and replace the very expensive people that were retiring because of age and length of service and so on.

If you like, they're the future. What happens to those people is that they don't just stay in the Auditor General's office. They actually export into the rest of the public service. We have alumni scattered right across the public service — chartered accountants or other bodies that have come up through and moved out into other jobs. That takes up quite a bit of our direct cost because it's restricted and focused.

The second big component is simply keeping up to date with all the changes that are occurring. We try to reduce the cost of this by bringing people in — to train the trainer, as it were — to help us to actually deliver our own training programs and everything else, to make sure that technically we are up to date and able to deliver the level of services that audit committees expect. By the way, they don't expect you to say: "I'll come back later and give you the information." They expect that when you arrive, you actually understand and you know what the issues are as they relate to them, not some theoretical frame that may exist.

So we need to keep up to that, and we have different ways of doing that, but it takes up time. We also have to
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make sure that we do that wisely and sensibly. There's no point in overtraining. There's certainly no point in undertraining. So we have to try and balance that right. We have a very careful process by which we do that.

The third is training and development, which you would find similar right across the public service. That is the soft skills, the communication, supervision training, management training — all those sorts of areas — how to use different professional tools and those sorts of things. In that one layer you would find that we're common or similar to other elements of the government reporting entity, but the other two are actually quite different.

We have looked long and hard at that training program, and if the question is going to be, "Can we cut it back?" the answer is: "We've already done that, and we think this is the bare minimum that we can cope with." But again, that's always covered with the view that if we don't have to spend it, if we can find a better way of doing it….

I've just attended some excellent internal training within the office where we actually did that, and that saved us someone coming in from outside to actually do that work. We will do that. I believe that we do a good job of it right the way through.

N. Letnick: Okay, my last two questions.

Cost of salaries. You show the cost of salaries going up over the next three years. With the retirements that you're going to have, I imagine, of the more senior staff and being replaced by, I imagine, less senior staff, would not your salary costs go down?

J. Doyle: There will be a number of pressures on our salaries. The first thing is that there's about 2 percent or 3 percent that occur for increments. So for example, we get a junior member of staff that comes in and starts to work for us at, say, $40,000. Based on the exams that they pass and based on the performance in the work that they do, they get increments so that by the time they are qualified, two or three years later, they're on about $65,000 a year.

Now, first question is…. That is in line with the profession. No one asked me the question. I'm just letting you know. It's in line with the profession. If you didn't do that, you wouldn't get them in the first place, and the whole exercise would be a moot point.

Logic would say that if you're losing the very experienced, then you could replace them at a lower level, and I agree. So if you like, there is a downward push when it comes to the senior staff leaving. And if you like, there should be a reduction in our overall cost if everything else remained the same. The reality is that it's ups and downs, so these are estimates. We don't know exactly how it's going to go yet because we don't know exactly who's going to leave.

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We don't know exactly how many people will want to, for example, not take all their annual leave but would like a payment in cash, which is something that they're allowed to do under the existing public service provisions. If that were to occur, then that actually increases our cost, because we effectively are then paying someone for 55 weeks in a year instead of 52 weeks of the year and so on.

The way we see things at the moment, we believe that because we did recruit and we're growing, we will see movement at the lower end as people get increments and they go up. That is offsetting some of the savings that we're making.

We will revise these in our model each and every year to see where we're actually going to be. This is an estimate at this stage — the best estimate we can make.

N. Letnick: My last question is on travel. Does this travel allowance or estimate include any international travel for you or anybody else on your staff?

J. Doyle: The travel is broken down into a number of different components, and there is some international travel built into it. First, may I say that the quantum of travel simply means that it recognizes the reality of how to conduct audits. If you're not actually physically there, sometimes it's hard to conduct the audit, so we always need a quantum of travel.

The issue, then, is the other travel that we undertake. I have recently sent people, for example, to other jurisdictions as a cost-cutting exercise. I have at the moment a member of staff who is on secondment to the United Arab Emirates. The full cost of her going there and her salary for that period of time is refundable to the office. If you like, it's part of the element of us trying to maintain our costs at a reasonable level.

Another example is that we had in the office, from Australia, a director who is a performance auditor, for an extended period of time, approximately one year, at no cost to us. The reciprocal part of that is to send one of our staff over to Australia for one year, and there is international travel that is built into that component.

We have a twinning arrangement with Barbados. It started fairly recently, and we have at the moment a visiting fellow from Barbados conducting performance audit work within the office. This is a national program. All the travel and salary expenses of the visiting fellows are covered by CIDA. It is likely that I will have to go down to Barbados to visit and speak with the Auditor General down there. All my travel expenses and costs are covered under the same block of funds.

So the answer is yes. There is some international travel. Some of it is covered by income streams that we have. Last year, because we were having difficulty recruiting anyone — not just senior people, but anyone — I sent some staff over to the U.K. along with…. It was
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a B.C.-supported mission to go over there and, if you like, display Canada, and B.C. in particular, and see if recruitment could take place. We actually went as part of that, and as a consequence we recruited a couple of experienced chartered accountants, who we brought back.

We still have not yet decided whether we need to do that again. It would depend on how many of our junior staff elect to stay with the office and continue their career with us, because we need to decide where the gaps are in our skill base and how we can fill those particular gaps.

N. Letnick: I just want to understand. You're saying that you've sent some staff over to other countries in an exchange program. You had some revenues to offset their…. Where do the revenues go? Is there a line item in your budget for revenue, or has it gone to reduce the travel line item itself?

J. Doyle: It gets offset against the expenses.

N. Letnick: In the travel line?

J. Doyle: Yeah.

N. Letnick: So in other words, all that net amount of travel is for local travel. Almost everything else was offset. Okay.

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J. van Dongen: Thank you, John, for your report. My first question. First of all, you talked about the changing environment for accounting standards. I noted your comments that the B.C. government has established a high level of standards for generally accepted accounting principles and generally accepted auditing and assurance standards.

I wonder if, first of all, you could comment on that relative to other provinces in Canada. I believe we do set a high standard. I'm familiar as a minister with the discipline and sometimes the frustrations that that imposes at that level on a ministry in terms of the requirements that are put in place by those standards, but I also detect a concern about even greater impending costs.

So if you could comment on the standards relative to other provinces and how we implement them here, and the impending costs and what is driving those costs, what is driving the changed environment.

J. Doyle: There are two different groups of standards that I'll need to talk about. One is GAAP, and one is GAAS.

We'll talk around GAAP first, which is the accounting standards. This province went to accrual accounting some years ago and was one of the leaders in Canada to do so. It consistently, and I quote them:"This province wants to stand on the bar and demonstrate consistently that it follows and complies with the full suite of generally accepted accounting principles."

When I conduct my work, I expect the statements to demonstrate that in every respect and have detailed conversations if I feel that is not the case. It is absolutely commendable that that would be the case.

Outside of the control of the province, there have been significant shifts and changes in, particularly, the public sector accounting standards as they are deployed across the whole of Canada in the last recent period of time. That is causing some angst, first of all because of the nature of the changes, but also different jurisdictions are in different places with their adoption of GAAP and, therefore, the impact that the changes to GAAP would have on their financial statements.

If you like, there's a natural fear that a change in the rules means that people could interpret the results differently. Now, my personal view is that that is an explanation, a describing of what the real story is in the financial statements issue, not whether or not you should follow GAAP. However….

So there are differences within different jurisdictions in regard to the way the GAAP has been deployed. But most jurisdictions — and I can't say all at the moment — are now in a similar place to British Columbia in that they have full GAAP accrual accounting.

Many of them, including this province, still have a ways to go in bringing that into the budgetary process, the estimates process. There needs to be some effort around that into the future. But it's a long way forward from where it was, for example, ten years ago when Enns did his first review on the state of budgeting and financial reporting.

The costs and the challenges are quite significant. Perhaps I can give you an example from my own history, which could run parallel and give you a bit of an idea as to how difficult these kinds of shifts and changes will be.

In Australia I joined an organization called the Lotteries Commission in 1986. Just before I joined, unbeknown to me, government decided to bring in something called the Financial Administration and Audit Act 1985, which required full accrual accounting by every Crown — and I'm using local terminology here — plus a full set of financials. Full accrual accounting, auditing, the whole thing. I didn't know it was hard, so I did it.

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My colleagues in many of the ministries who had been used to cash accounting or modified versions of accounting up to that point had considerable difficulties trying to convert from one paradigm, if you like, to a different paradigm.

I think it would be fair to say that the way that translates into British Columbia is that this province does not
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require every ministry to produce a set of financials. I think it should. Although I know the counter-argument, I think it should. Every other entity, including the smallest trust fund, does produce a set of financials which are audited.

To build up the skills of the financial people to actually deliver those products and provide that level of accountability is a challenge, and it will require an investment in people and process and support that will increase costs in the short term.

My personal view is that if you have people at the micro level, the granular level, monitoring financial management, working capital, the way things should be, reading the story properly from the financial statements, you will inevitably improve the quality right across the whole province of financial management, financial reporting, transparency and accountability.

Basically, because this jurisdiction, along with many others…. Alberta does produce financial statements for each ministry. There's going to be a lot of effort and pressure on certain people within the ministries, who are going to see their workload double or triple over the next few years as they try to come to grips with this level of change.

I would only suggest and ask — not because I'm their best friend; I'm still not on their Christmas card lists — that some slack be given to them so that they could build up that capacity to do their job properly as we move into the future. It's going to be a difficult time for them.

Now the GAAS side of it. The whole of the country is shifting over, basically, to the adoption of the international auditing standards. When they shift over, there are fundamental changes in the quantum and the quality of evidence that will need to be collected. There are different foci in the conduct of work. For example, there's a much greater elevation in fraud and management representations and control frameworks and those sorts of things.

All of these have a natural consequence in the amount of work that will need to be done in the future. It was okay in the past, but it might not meet muster into the future. Plus there are fundamental changes — and this affects my office in particular — in the way that group accounts should be done going forward. Those fundamental changes basically mean that we have to go back and revisit the way that we do things.

We have been incrementally shifting towards compliance with that standard over the last few years, and it's built into our future plans because they go over a three-year period, but it will mean a lot of extra energy and work. That's why I mentioned that we needed to find ways of doing things better and more efficiently so that we didn't have a terrible escalation of costs.

To give you an example based on the Australian and the New Zealand focus, when IFRS was brought in the audit costs for entities that adopted IFRS went up by 15 percent to 20 percent and, in some cases, 25 percent. They stayed there for a couple of years and then came down slightly, but there was still a step cost of around about 15 percent higher than they were before.

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J. van Dongen: I appreciate your answer. I've got two other quick questions, but just to say that I also appreciate your focus on costs. It seems to me that the trend I saw in the corporate sector of corporate accounting in the '80s was of really, consciously looking at risk-based auditing, for example. That's still a legitimate argument today. I think we have to be concerned about the costs. I mean, there's a price to pay for every escalation in accuracy, if you will.

I appreciate the chart on page 11, and if there is one thing that stood out for me very, very substantially, it's that Ontario's cost of their Auditor General is markedly different than anybody else's. British Columbia is very close to the average for Canada. Ontario, at a little over $16 million, is just slightly higher than British Columbia, in a province with a much larger entity and that, by any measure, is significantly smaller than any other province per capita or per gross dollars.

Is that a different methodology, a different standard? What would be the single biggest explanation for the huge gap between the Ontario numbers and every other province?

J. Doyle: Thank you for that question. I really appreciate it because Ontario is one of those examples of apples and pears. When we conduct audits here, they can either be done by my office or by private sector organizations. Our focus is to get the financial audit work done and also the performance audit work and so on.

In Ontario the bulk of the work of a financial audit is actually done by firms that are paid directly by the different entities, so they are not included in this figure. If you went and found out the sum of all those expenses and then added it on, we're not quite sure where Ontario would be, because their focus is on performance audit.

I had this long and detailed conversation with their Auditor General. I don't want to put words into his mouth, but basically he said that they were more interested in the value for money, the effectiveness process and then the high-level sweep over the financial audit part of the audit universe, if you like, than some other jurisdictions where there was a focus solely on the financial audit area, which is not our focus, but it is the case in some other jurisdictions.

The simple answer to your question is that they're different. They are different to such an extent that it is an apples-and-pears type. In fact, it might even be that different that it is an apples-and-oranges type of situation. I share their view that performance audit is very, very important, but I also feel that it should be strongly
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rooted in the financial audit process because the financial audits, as far as I can see, are one of the things that underpin all the other assurance and credibility flows that come out of an auditing exercise.

People can rely on the numbers. Then, going from the numbers, you can rely upon looking at how well or not well things have occurred and how efficient or effective they may be. I think that you need a balance between the two, as opposed to a default to fundamentally just the one. So they're different. It's a simple answer.

J. van Dongen: I appreciate that. I knew there had to be some kind of an explanation. It was so markedly different. But that's a good segue into my final question. This is on page 5, the second paragraph, where you talk about providing oversight for 22 organizations whose audits are done by private sector firms. Between that and the work that you do on the ministries, etc., that's 74 percent of government's $38 billion in gross expenditures.

Just a comment about oversight. What's involved in that — the cost of it? Is there a danger of duplication? Is it necessary? What determines why some entities have private sector audits with oversight and then others appear to have private sector auditors with no oversight?

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J. Doyle: Around the world the practice of providing assurance does change. In some jurisdictions — Alberta is an example — the Auditor General signs all the opinions for all the entities, although he does not conduct all the work. He brings in firms to do that work for him.

In this jurisdiction the way things have played out is that the Auditor General can elect or not elect to conduct the audits and be the auditor of record for a particular entity. If I elect not to be the auditor, then the boards of government can choose an auditor, subject to certain rules, which I monitor. That auditor would then report directly to them. My office would then conduct sample work, just to make sure that the work conducted is in fact satisfactory and meets our requirements, to rely upon for the summary financial statements.

The next level up from there is where we do a detailed review of the working papers, which is the area that you're talking about at the moment. This is the area where we actually spend time on the audit committee. We do everything other than actually conduct the audit work itself, if you like. We do a detailed review of the documents and the working papers to make sure we're satisfied.

In other words, what we have done is leveraged off the cost out of this budget. But it's still a cost that comes out of the public purse, because the entity itself pays the money to the private firm to conduct the work.

The reason we do that is, first of all, it would be quite difficult to build up that number of people to do that work. Secondly, I'm firmly of the view that we should have a group of private sector auditors that can do public sector work. We need to keep that particular group strong and robust, because it is a natural extension to our capability.

The last group is when we actually conduct the work ourselves — either my own teams or a firm that we have asked to come in, who does the work on our behalf — and we sign the opinion. Then we have a 100 percent overview in looking at the working papers. I actually do sign the opinion in that particular situation.

Now, where the cut-off points is a judgment issue. It's part of the coverage plan that we had approved quite recently in the Public Accounts Committee. It relates to our view of risk and how much I need to know, or how much my teams need to know, about what's going on in the different component parts of the government reporting entity in order to be able to sign the opinion on the consolidation — the summary financial statements, the public accounts, if you will.

It's that process we go through. It's quite a detailed process that we do. It's risk-based, and it's around how much involvement we should have in different entities and how those entities could impact on the summary financial statements.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation and the important work that your office does. My question relates to something you alluded to and talked about as part of that important work, and that's the performance audits.

On page 5…. I just want to know if I'm correct. In that bottom half of the page is the venue of performance audit. You talk about doing 15 reports in 2010-11. I thought I heard you say that you wouldn't want to do any less than…. It's almost a bottom line now on performance audits.

What's the percent that you've come down on from, let's say, 2008-09? I assume that back a couple of years ago you were doing more performance auditing. Can you tell me how fewer you are doing — whether in raw numbers or percentage-wise — of the work?

J. Doyle: Thank you for the question. It's actually a question that you could spend a day discussing, but I'll give it a go.

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It is not the number that's important so much as the assessment of risk, if you like, and going in and looking at particular areas and evaluating how well or not well they're being done. For example, in the past we have done such things as literacy. We've done infection control. We've done surgical services.

Now, I would argue that every one of…. There are three. But the amount of resources that went into those could be a lot more than the resources that went into three others that I could mention.
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It's really an issue around selection processes, to actually find the most relevant and appropriate ones which we can deal with or to find additional resources if we feel that we are light on when it comes to our knowledge or understanding.

Moving forward, what concerns me is the ones that I would not be able to do if I do not have the staff in place within my office. You will note from my presentation that I am not asking for any increase in the FTE numbers. I'm looking at ways that I can move my staff around within the office to give them different experiences.

For example, financial auditors are trained to do financial audit work, and there is a natural extension into governance work and other control work that they can do. Also, we've been trialing the transferring of them into performance audit work, or subsections of performance audit work, so that at some time in the future they could make the shift from financial audit into performance audit — because, and I don't quite understand this, every chartered accountant doesn't want to stay an auditor for the entire range of their lives.

Some of them have described the transition process as "getting a life," others as "going into the light side," and so on.

We're giving them an opportunity to shift over and to move, and so I have to look carefully at what skills and capabilities that we have.

Now, we have done — and we will be publishing these reports early in the new year, so I'm not going to talk about the detail of them — two reports that I believe should have been done. I would never like to be in the situation where I can't do a block of work yet consider it so important that I have to compromise the independence and the way that we operate as an office.

It didn't come to the point where I needed to come back and say: "Please, can you give me some more money so that I can do something." I've always managed within the block of funds that I've got at the moment. But you need to be aware: it's a continuous process, which does absorb a lot of my time, to decide what reports should go forward at what time and when and how they should be reported.

I have work that I would like to do next year, which is implicit in this forward service plan and also in the budget, which I believe is very, very important and of great interest to citizens and to members of the assembly.

I suppose I would wish to see that flexibility continuing to operate, bearing in mind that I will not spend money unless I need to. I'm not asking for huge sums. What I'm saying is that I need sufficient to move forward and to go into those areas that need to be gone into.

For example, I'm not sure what any of you…. I don't want to ask the question, so it's rhetorical. If I didn't have enough funds and couldn't have gone into the infection control work that we did do a little while ago, would that have been right? It would not have been good for me, personally, not to have done that work, because I think it's very important. All the feedback I get from the Health Services authorities and the ministry is that it was such an important piece of work that they use it as a leverage to go and do the things that they go and have to do.

I wouldn't like to be in a situation where I have to put aside something that important simply because I don't have the funds available or the resources available — all because, for some reason, I've denuded my office of the capability to conduct work of that importance or that quality.

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B. Routley: First of all, I'd like to say that I much admire the quality and competency of the work that you do. I'm a little concerned about the budget actually going down, but on the other hand….

There are a couple of areas that I would like to…. I was on page 5 as well. It's interesting. My friend and I had underlined the same point about going down to 15 reports and that public accountability is referred to there.

I'm troubled as a new MLA. When I first discovered and saw with my own eyes an agreement, signed by the Premier of British Columbia and the Finance Minister, committing to something that had not even been discussed and has yet to be discussed in the province of British Columbia: to accept $1.6 billion from the federal government…. No legislation, just an announcement that this was going happen.

At the same time, this government is committing deals behind closed doors without legislative oversight. I mean, I was elected to represent the people of the Cowichan Valley. How am I supposed to do that when this government is running around cutting deals left, right and centre under what I see as the P3 model?

I got lectured about how that wasn't debt, but I'll tell you that if I went over to my neighbour and cut a deal with him and said, "You go and buy this house, or whatever, for me," and I commit an agreement to pay my neighbour thousands of dollars every year — or millions, in the case of what's going on with the government — that's debt. In my view, that's debt.

I'd be interested in your view on accounting practices. How on earth can you manage with all of these things going out that have…? One of your roles is public accountability, particularly for provincial legislation, but there are all kinds of things going on that have nothing to do with provincial legislation.

I'd be interested in your comments on those two areas specifically. It's income, potentially. We still have yet to actually have a bill or legislation before this House to deal with the HST, but we've got the government doing their $1.6 billion agreement with the feds — and this debt. So those two areas.
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Lastly, because I got made the deputy Forests critic, I'm alarmed at what I've learned about 14 million hectares of forest in British Columbia that's in some state of falling apart as a result of forest health issues. We've got forest fire problems. I'm hearing that they're cutting the number of people working in the Ministry of Forests, and I was told by the registered professional foresters that we don't have updated inventory information in the province of British Columbia.

How on earth can we run a province if we don't have up-to-date inventory information for one of the most important resources in British Columbia? That's our forest. I know that you did do some work on the forest industry in the past, and you made some very proper comments about what was happening about private land being taken out of tree farm licences. Again, coming from that part of the world all of my life, I just want to say that that was a terrific piece of work.

Back to the two issues that I have: money coming in, money going out, and seemingly no control — even of this Legislature.

J. Doyle: Perhaps a couple of comments may be of help. The first is that I am constrained under my legislation in that the work that I do is in no way to challenge or comment upon the policy of the government.

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It's quite a clear aspect of the legislation. It's normal for Auditors General offices throughout the world to have this in their enabling legislation, and it's there for a good reason. Therefore, I don't talk about anything that's associated or that could come close to that.

Looking at some of the other things that you mentioned, I'll just start off with…. We can produce so many reports this coming year given the funds that I have suggested. If I wanted to change the quantum of what had to be done, I would need quite a big step-cost increase, because I'd have to build the teams. It's not just bringing in LEGO blocks and sticking them on to what we've already got. We actually have to start new foundations, build the teams up from scratch and make sure that everyone is capable and competent. You can't just dilute talent and spread them further.

We actually need to build new teams. We're not able to do that at the moment. As much as I would like to have an empire, it's just not practical, not sensible at the moment. Quite frankly, if you gave me all of the money, I wouldn't know what to do with it, because I wouldn't spend it unless I had to.

The second part of your question, in regard to the shift over to HST…. The only part that my office has got involved in at this stage is how the flow of funds from the $1.599 billion will be recorded in the financial statements. That's an ongoing discussion that we're currently having with the office of the comptroller general in regard to the bookkeeping and how it actually fits in and how it impacts onto the financial statements of the province.

We're also concerned, however, that the impact of HST will increase the workload within many of the ministries and school districts and what have you, as those shifts and changes will actually have a cost for all of them, which is not quite as simple as the rate has gone up — the percentage rate. There are also all of the processes and the move from the PST to the HST.

Regarding forests and what have you, I have established recently, in the last year, a portfolio headed up by an assistant Auditor General called Morris Sydor. He's responsible for looking at environmental portfolio and environmental issues. On his radar screen are some of the things that you have mentioned, Member. He's also very keen to receive comments and observations from any MLA in regard to the conduct of our work.

We are always seeking input and feedback and ideas in regard to anything. One of our performance indicators is to acknowledge and to recognize the contribution of ideas from not only members but also from committees and from citizens in regards to audit topics that we may have. We have acted on some of those in the past.

J. Les (Chair): Okay. I'm going to, maybe, just make a bit of time here for John's final question, and then we're going to have to wrap.

J. Rustad: I'll avoid the politics and stuff. I just want to get back to the budget that you've submitted. What I'd like to do is…. Actually, I have three questions, and we don't have time, unfortunately, for a response, but if you could e-mail a response to these questions, that would be much appreciated.

The first question I have is around the "Capital spending" and "Information technology," particularly the $150,000 that has been requested for capital. I would just like to know what the impact is if we were unable to fund that for this year, on your ongoing replacement plan, I imagine, around equipment and things that need to be done. I'm just wondering what an impact would be. I'm not suggesting that is the case, but if that was something that we had to look at.

The second thing that I wanted to ask is around the work that's being done through professional services versus the work that's being done with your staff internally. Have you ever done a value-for-money audit on the work that's being done outside versus inside? It would just be interesting to see what the comparison is between the two.

The last question is back to your planned salary and benefits and the increases in the outgoing years. Although we are dealing with this year, and I see a small increase this year, the increases proposed in '11-12, '12-13 represent about a 5 percent increase.

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I'm just wondering — given what we're doing internally with a zero-zero mandate going out because of the financial situation — whether or not there are any wage increase components. I understand there are cost pressures that go with various scales within this side, but whether or not there are general increases to those various categories, whether that actually is part of that budget….

With that, thank you very much, and unfortunately, I've got to run.

J. Doyle: I can answer all those questions very quickly.

J. Les (Chair): Sure, but why don't you put them in the form of a memo and then through Craig? He will distribute them to the committee members. I think that would be the best way to proceed. I know that various members have pressures to get out of here, and so rather than try to squeeze anything else in…. I think we've had a pretty good conversation here this afternoon, and on behalf of the committee, thank you very much.

J. Doyle: Thank you.

J. Les (Chair): Motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 2:26 p.m.

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