2011 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 39th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Thursday, November 17, 2011

8 a.m.

Birch Committee Room

Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: Rob Howard, MLA (Chair); Doug Donaldson, MLA (Deputy Chair); Bill Bennett, MLA; Mable Elmore, MLA; Dave S. Hayer, MLA; Pat Pimm, MLA; Bruce Ralston, MLA; Bill Routley, MLA; Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA; Jane Thornthwaite, MLA.

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 8:03 a.m.

2. 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 statutory officers.

    The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

3. The Committee recessed from 9:04 a.m. to 9:09 a.m.

4. The Committee recessed from 9:40 a.m. to 9:42 a.m.

5. Resolved, that the Committee meet in-camera to deliberate on the request for supplementary funding for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. (Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA)

6. The Committee continued in open session at 9:48 a.m.

7. Resolved, that the committee endorse the application of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for an additional $115,000 for fiscal year 2011-12, as requested in her correspondence dated October 27, 2011. (Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA)

8. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 9:55 a.m.

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

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Issue No. 64

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 1775 ]

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011

The committee met at 8:03 a.m.

[R. Howard in the chair.]

R. Howard (Chair): Good morning, members. We'll get ourselves underway. We are at the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, Thursday, November 17, 2011, and we are conducting annual review of statutory officers of British Columbia, three-year rolling service plans and budgetary estimates.

We have in front of us this morning, Elections B.C. — Dr. Keith Archer, the Chief Electoral Officer; and Nola Western, the CA, assistant Chief Electoral Officer; and Anton Boegman, assistant Chief Electoral Officer.

What we'll do, ladies and gentlemen, is give you an opportunity to present. You know, we've got about an hour set aside for you. I'll keep a speakers list, and we'll get into questions once you've wrapped up your presentations.

Dr. Archer, over to you.

Office of the
Chief Electoral Officer

K. Archer: Well, good morning, Mr. Chair and Mr. Deputy Chair and members of the committee. It gives me great pleasure to appear before you this morning and to share with you some of the activities of Elections B.C. during the current year and into the coming year and to review our budget requests with you. In support of this presentation I believe you all received earlier this week our written budget submission, and we'll be referring to this document as our presentation unfolds.

In just a moment I'll introduce myself to you as well as introduce my colleagues from Elections B.C. who have joined me today, but before I do, I'd like to get to the heart of our budget submission.

[0805]

While our subsequent comments will help explain why we came up with the budget submission before you, let's get straight to the numbers. Our budget submission this year includes five separate budget requests. Each year we submit a request for funds for ongoing operations, and in those years in which we have needs for capital expenditures, we submit a request for capital funds.

In addition, traditionally, events are funded separately from our operating budget, and for three anticipated events, each are included in separate budget requests.

The bottom line on our budget request for 2012-13 is as follows. First, we're requesting exactly the same operating budget for 2012-13 — $8.134 million, as we received for 2011-2012.

Second, we're requesting a capital assets budget of $735,000 for 2012-2013. This compares to a capital assets budget of $1.439 million for 2011-2012. This represents a decrease of 49 percent.

Third, we're requesting an event budget for the residence-to-residence enumeration. The request is $29.953 million.

As members of the committee probably know, we're required by section 42 of the Election Act to conduct an enumeration by door-to-door visitation in advance of each fixed-date general election. Since the fixed-date general election is May 14, 2013, we'll need to complete the door-to-door enumeration during the 2012-2013 fiscal year to comply with this legislative requirement.

However, Elections B.C. has previously recommended to the Legislative Assembly that door-to-door enumeration is not a cost-effective way to update the voters list, and this is a point to which I'll return.

Fourthly, we're requesting $5.224 million in event funding to prepare for the 2013 general election. The bulk of this spending for the 2013 general election will occur in the 2013-2014 fiscal year, and hence, will be included in our budget submission next year.

Fifth, we're requesting $537,000 to complete the Port Moody–Coquitlam by-election. In the event that this by-election is conducted in the current fiscal year, I'll be writing to the Chair and Deputy Chair to advise of the spending requirements of the event funding in the current fiscal year.

These five expenditure elements comprise our budget request for 2012-2013. Now that you know how our budget request ends, let me take us back to the beginning so that I may introduce myself and my colleagues and tell you more about our budget submission.

My name is Keith Archer, and as of September 1, 2011, I have the honour of serving as British Columbia's Chief Electoral Officer. I received a PhD in political science from Duke University in 1985, where my research focused on the study of voting and elections. I was appointed assistant professor of political science at the University of Calgary in 1984 and promoted to associate professor in 1988 and then to professor in 1995. I continued to hold my academic appointment at the University of Calgary until August of this year, when I left to take on this new role at Elections B.C.

In addition to my professorial appointment, I also have served in various administrative capacities, including as an associate dean, as an associate vice-president, research, and as the interim vice-president, research, at the University of Calgary and director of research at the Banff Centre.

One of the messages I've heard from colleagues across the country following my appointment was how fortunate I was to have the opportunity to work with a group of exceptional election administration professionals at Elections B.C. In the time since I've joined Elections B.C., my experience has affirmed this observation at all levels of the organization.
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I'm joined by several of my colleagues today. On my left is Nola Western, assistant Chief Electoral Officer, with responsibility for funding and disclosure. A chartered accountant, Nola's responsibilities include overseeing all aspects of political entity registration, financial disclosures, campaign spending limits and election and referendum advertising rules.

In addition, she's the executive financial officer at Elections B.C. and has overall responsibility for budget controls, payroll, office and warehouse space and human resource management.

[0810]

To my right is Anton Boegman, assistant Chief Electoral Officer, with responsibility for corporate planning and event management. Anton is a certified project management professional. His Elections B.C. responsibilities include strategic planning, risk management and performance measurement, as well as ensuring that all electoral events that my office administers are done in accordance with the detailed plans that are formally documented, tracked and managed within the funding appropriations recommended by this committee.

In addition, we're joined by Bob Jasperse, director of information technology; Don Main, communications planning officer; and Amie Foster, manager of executive services, who are sitting along the side. They are available to answer questions in their areas of responsibility.

Our presentation this morning will proceed as follows. First, I'll discuss our planning framework and work flow that contribute to our budget request for 2012-13. Nola will follow with a more detailed presentation on our operating and capital budget requests. Anton will then provide more detailed commentary on the event-related funding requirements. In my concluding comments I'll return to a discussion of several priority recommendations, since these recommendations may have downstream budget implications.

First, our strategic planning framework. Elections B.C. initiated a strategic planning process in 2009 that resulted in a draft strategic plan in 2010. My appointment in September 2011 enabled the completion of the strategic plan, which is now guiding the strategic priorities of Elections B.C. Both the ongoing operating budget and the capital budget requests have been assessed through the lens of the strategic plan, which includes the following elements.

Our vision is to be the leaders in election administration. Elections B.C. has long had a reputation among its federal and provincial counterparts as being a leader in electoral administration, in part due to the highly inclusive electoral process in British Columbia. Our mandate is broader than many other election authorities, and this breadth has both invited and required us to be leaders in our field. We intend to continue to aspire to this leadership role on behalf of the citizens of British Columbia.

Our mission is to serve democracy in British Columbia through the fair and impartial administration of the electoral process. Fair and impartial electoral administration is at the heart of democratic governance and defines our role as an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly. Fairness and impartiality are our defining characteristics and are the measure against which all of our actions are judged.

Our mandate is to administer the provincial electoral process in British Columbia in accordance with the Election Act, the Recall and Initiative Act and the Constitutional Amendment Approval Act. Although it might sound trite to say that our mandate is defined by these three acts, in practice it is profound.

The Constitution Act, among other things, sets our fixed election date in British Columbia. We were the first jurisdiction in Canada to adopt fixed election dates, and many others have now followed suit.

The Election Act contains many of the elements that have come to be known as the electoral instruments of representative democracy. Their characteristic quality in British Columbia is accessibility. In short, the ballot, both in general elections and in by-elections, is more accessible in British Columbia than anywhere else in Canada. Our citizens can vote on more days and in more voting places than is the case anywhere in the country.

The aspects of direct democracy are articulated in the Recall and Initiative Act and in the Referendum Act. Our citizens are able to express their democratic will outside of general and by-elections.

Administering this diverse set of electoral events and processes comprises our core mandate. Our corporate values are accountability, impartiality, independence, integrity, transparency and innovation.

When Elections B.C. had completed the first iteration of the strategic plan, the first five of these corporate values were identified. Since my appointment as Chief Electoral Officer we've added the sixth. My belief is that innovation is a core value that characterizes the reputation that Elections B.C. has had for some time. It resonates with my leadership style, and it enables us to rise to the opportunities that the electoral environment currently presents.

[0815]

Our strategic priorities are categorized as two mission-critical priorities and six enabling priorities. Together with our vision, mission, mandate and corporate values, these priorities enable us to take a focused approach to our activities. They are a lens through which we have vetted our budget submissions. Only those budget items that align with these priorities are included in our submission to the Legislative Assembly and are brought before you today. These priorities are as follows.

Our mission-critical priorities include, firstly, to successfully deliver scheduled and on-demand events, and secondly, to ensure the functionality of critical electoral systems.
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The enabling priorities include the following six elements: to improve the voting process to better serve voters; to improve the organizational well-being and culture of Elections B.C.; to provide high-quality services to stakeholders; to raise public awareness of the electoral process; to ensure quality and efficiency of the voters list, address data and the road network; and finally, to improve administrative and management processes.

I'd like to talk to you a bit about the work that we do at Elections B.C. Elections B.C.'s full-time permanent staff complement is 44 employees. Typically, about 90 percent to 95 percent of these positions are filled. For example, at present 41 of our permanent staff positions are filled. Our permanent staff are fully engaged throughout the electoral business cycle to support the many aspects of the electoral process for which we have responsibility and to ensure that the organization is constantly ready to deliver events.

It's impossible to understand our business or our organization separate from event activity. At its peak on general election day, Elections B.C. staffing reaches up to 38,000 employees. Think about that for a minute. For a general election event to be successful, we not only need to recruit 38,000 people; we need to develop appropriate training materials for this small army of employees who become, for the typical voter, the face of our organization.

We want to ensure that the 85 district electoral officers that run the elections throughout the province are provided with a common standard of interface with our office. We need to ensure that our information technology infrastructure is easy to use and fail-safe, because failure on general election day is not an option.

We require electoral geographic systems that generate usable maps for political parties and candidates and financial reporting systems that ensure parties and candidates can fulfil reporting requirements and that we can ensure compliance. Our efforts are directed toward building trust and integrity in the electoral process, and we direct ourselves to these efforts every day of the electoral business cycle.

Typical readiness work in our business, with an indication of the way in which this work has been manifest in the current electoral business cycle, includes the following activities.

Firstly, ensuring ongoing event readiness for scheduled and on-demand events with the capacity to deliver events as required. Since the May 2009 general election, this responsibility has included administering an initiative petition on the HST, verifying the petition, engaging with the Select Standing Committee on Legislative Initiatives regarding the disposition of this petition, administering for recall petitions, and designing and administering a mail-in ballot for a referendum on the HST.

In addition, at present Elections B.C. is designing and preparing to administer a pilot door-to-door enumeration and preparing for a by-election in Port Moody–Coquitlam.

Second, reviewing financial disclosures from political parties, candidates, constituency associations, leadership contestants and third-party advertisers according to mandated reporting requirements, and overseeing and assessing expenditure reports, based on legislative spending limits, and ensuring compliance.

Since the May 2009 general election, we have received reports from all candidates for the general election, from political parties and constituency associations on an annual basis and from registered third-party advertisers. We have also overseen expenditure reporting for the initiative petition, for four recall petitions and for leadership selection processes in nine political parties. This compliance and oversight is a key element in building fairness and trust in the electoral process.

[0820]

Thirdly, reviewing and updating plans for events such as recalls, initiatives and by-elections. This includes event delivery plans, risk mitigation plans and event communication plans. Reviewing and enhancing operational procedures based on lessons learned and best practices — for example, improvements to advanced voting processes. After operational procedures have been updated, testing them to ensure usability.

Fourthly, undertaking ongoing improvements to essential electoral data and analytical systems and applications used to process the data. In the period since the 2009 general election this included developing software upgrades — for example, to the recall and initiative verification system and to the electoral information systems. It also included database upgrades — for example, aligning all of the geographic-based data to the common provincial road network. This change will ensure that the next version of the electoral maps will have increased accuracy and currency.

Fifth, reviewing and updating documents, forms and guides; replacing event stock materials and documents, ensuring that they're available in the warehouse and suitable to be used; confirming supplier readiness to meet potential event delivery deadlines.

The election business is materials-intensive. Following the 2009 general election a regular process of material review has been implemented and pilots introduced for the enhancement of the effectiveness of all materials. An example is the transformation of training materials, previously produced only in booklet form, to be made available with and through a variety of electronic means. This supports the diverse learning needs of an organization that experiences such profound staffing changes over the electoral business cycle.

Sixth, reviewing and updating event staffing plans to ensure additional required staff will be available when necessary to administer events.
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Finally, reviewing and assessing our overall communication strategy, including ensuring that we're communicating in ways that reflect contemporary best practices.

Successful electoral events do not occur by accident. They follow from careful planning, reviewing, documenting, recruiting, hiring, training, deploying systems and resources, receiving financial reports and following up to ensure compliance with requirements.

The electoral business is also a changing business. We're changing public expectations of the way in which citizens may exercise their franchise and otherwise participate in the electoral process. Consequently, we also need to be a learning organization.

These are the activities in which we are engaged throughout the electoral business cycle. I'll now pause in my presentation and turn to my colleagues to provide further commentary on our spending plans in the year ahead — first to Nola and then to Anton.

N. Western: Good morning. You heard from Keith that Elections B.C. has several separate and distinct budgets. Our ongoing operating budget covers the costs we incur regardless of whether there's an election or another event. It provides for expenses such as permanent staff salaries, rent, computers and amortization. The capital budget is the budget for acquiring tangible capital assets, such as computer systems. Our event-related budgets cover expenses specifically incurred in relation to the delivery of the events that we administer — for instance, general elections, by-elections and door-to-door enumerations.

The requests for each of these budgets are shown separately in this budget proposal document. The format of the document itself is consistent with that used last year, and I hope you will find it usable and informative. I'm not going to go through this document in detail, but I will point out areas where our proposal differs significantly from the current budget and explain the reasons for those differences.

On page 11 you'll find our core services operating budget request for the next fiscal year and the following two years. Our current operating budget is shown so that you can easily compare it to our request, and you will note that for next fiscal year, 2012-13, we have not requested any increase. For the future two years the requested increases are minimal.

Salaries and benefits, amortization, rent, office expenses and information technology costs support all the business areas of Elections B.C., so they are shown separately from the other core business lines. Other expenses related to core business areas are also shown, and there are notes on the following page that provide further information about the nature of those expenses.

[0825]

You will see an increase to salaries and benefits next year, and that is a result of a need for us to fill three previously vacant positions. We have 41 positions filled now. We really need the 44 that have been allocated to us over the years. The three positions have been left vacant because of funding pressures, but we've found we really do need to fill them.

Amortization is the allocation of the costs of a capital asset to operating expenditures over the expected useful life of the asset. So although the actual cost of the capital assets must initially be paid out of our capital asset budget, the total cost must also be paid out of future operating budgets over a number of years. Amortization for 2012-13 will increase because of the investment in capital assets that we must make. I'll talk more about the capital assets budget in a moment.

Building occupancy charges are the rent that we pay for our office and the warehouse. The warehouse receives stores and distributes all of our election supplies and equipment, which, as you can imagine, is a considerable amount of material.

The increase in building occupancy next year is a result of our warehouse lease being up. We must either negotiate a new lease in the current warehouse space, which will have an expected increase in costs, or move to another warehouse. Since we are really squeezed into our current space, we've determined that the best course of action is to move. Although there will be an increase in rent over the current space, the actual difference between the anticipated increase if we stayed in the current space and the estimated lease costs for the new space is less than $5,000.

Expenses for corporate information systems will be higher next year as our IT support contract is up on March 31, 2012, and so the new contract is expected to cost a little bit more.

Event readiness includes the printing of forms and guides necessary to ensure that Elections B.C. is constantly ready to administer unscheduled events such as by-elections and recall and initiative petitions. Since we have just administered many of those unscheduled events, we think we have sufficient stock for the next year or two.

Since we've finished the migration to the DRA-2 version of the digital road atlas, the expenses for address and boundary maintenance will decrease next year, and they will decrease again in the following years as the new electoral geography system, or EGS, comes on stream.

Voters list maintenance will be lower by quite a significant amount next year because of the municipal elections this week. Many municipalities use our voters list, and after the elections they provide us with updates and new registrations, so the costs involved with entering that data will be incurred during the current fiscal year and won't be something that we incur next year.

Political entity reporting includes the costs associated with registering political parties and constituency associations, reviewing their financial reports and conducting investigations.
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There's a slight decrease in the budget for each of the next two fiscal years, and it increases again in 2014-15 because the 2013 annual financial reports, which must be filed by March 31, 2014, have to include all of the general election–related transactions. Those reports will be more complex and time-consuming to review, so we always see a little spike in political entity reporting in the year after a general election.

At $8.134 million, our ongoing core services budget request is 19 percent less than the budget 11 years ago and 5 percent less than ten years ago, in 2002-03. Elections B.C. is always aware that it is public money that we rely on, and we will continue to be prudent in all of our spending. I think that's reflected in the budgets for 2013-14 and '14-15, which are very similar to that for this fiscal year. We've made some adjustments in areas where we're confident that expenditures will change — amortization, for instance — but the increases are minor, and for both years they are less than the current inflation rate.

If you turn to page 15 of the budget proposal, you will find the request for capital assets. The $735,000 request for next fiscal year is almost 50 percent less than the current year's capital budget, and we plan to keep capital asset investment low again in 2013-14. We've consistently tried to minimize our capital investments, partly because all capital assets must be amortized, and amortized is charged against our ongoing operating budget. But the election business is highly reliant on technology, and as the notes to this budget explain, there are some capital assets that must be developed in order for us to meet our mandate and our strategic priorities.

On the final page of the proposal you will find the statement of operations, which presents both the ongoing and event-related operating results for the past two fiscal years, so you can see how we've been doing in the last two years. Anton will now address the event-related budget request.

[0830]

A. Boegman: Thank you, Nola.

Good morning, committee members. As Keith had mentioned, my focus is going to be on our event-related funding requirements. Elections B.C. has a detailed and comprehensive event-planning methodology. It's based on standards and practices endorsed by the Project Management Institute, and we're recognized as leaders in this by our colleagues in other Canadian provincial and federal electoral agencies.

This rigorous approach allows us to plan very thoroughly for both scheduled and on-demand events, incorporating best practices and enabling Elections B.C. to effectively manage risk. Our event funding requirements have been developed using a proven bottom-up process where the deliverables that are necessary to successfully administer electoral events are first identified, then scheduled and then fully costed.

To the budget. I'll begin where Nola left off on page 17. Firstly, briefly on the current year fiscal budget of $30.848 million. This is provided funding in relation to the planned and then cancelled HST initiative vote, for a by-election in Vancouver–Point Grey, for the HST referendum that was administered this past summer, for initial preparations for the next provincial general election and for a planned door-to-door enumeration pilot to be conducted early in the next calendar year.

From an event perspective, the next fiscal year will see a significant expansion on these latter two activities — general election readiness and door-to-door enumeration preparations. The general election preparations will increase in scope and scale as the next scheduled provincial general election on May 14, 2013, draws ever closer. Indeed, at the end of the next fiscal year we will be 16 days from writ day for that event.

Prior to the next election, however, in February and March 2013, Elections B.C. will also be administering a door-to-door provincial enumeration in accordance with section 42(1) of the Election Act. While Elections B.C. is planning on administering this event based on identified Canadian enumeration best practices adapted to our B.C. context, as Keith has mentioned, it's not our belief that this model of voter registration will prove to be cost-effective.

The next fiscal year may also see Elections B.C. required to administer on-demand events such as a by-election or a petition under the Recall and Initiative Act. We have included funding in our 2012-13 event budget for the pending by-election in Port Moody–Coquitlam. This event must be called by April 7, 2012, which would put the event into the next fiscal year. If the by-election is called earlier, however, such that the event occurs in this current year, the by-election funding request for Port Moody–Coquitlam next year would not be required.

I'll now speak to the specifics of the 2012-13 event budget. The information is detailed in the note sections, found on page 17 of the budget proposal document. The budget requirement for our general election preparations in '12-13 is $5.224 million. This funding will allow Elections B.C. to begin and complete the intensive preparations necessary to ensure complete readiness for that event.

We will identify and hire the required temporary staff. We will comprehensively train our 176 district electoral officers and deputy district electoral officers. These appointees will identify 91 office locations throughout the province and will prepare leases that will take effect on April 1, 2013.

We will ensure that our warehouse is fully stocked with the necessary forms, manuals and election supplies, from ballot boxes to pens, that are required to deliver the election. In real terms, this means approximately 87 metric tonnes of material. We'll also acquire computers on lease and complete and test the necessary updates to our in-
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formation technology infrastructure prior to the election period. To ensure that voters are educated and informed of the available voting opportunities, we will staff and commence call centre operations and will have planned and prepared our election advertising campaign.

As mentioned, the other main event focus for Elections B.C. will be preparing for and doing the final planning and delivery of a provincewide door-to-door enumeration. This event will build from the lessons learned that we've identified in the door-to-door pilot project that will be conducted this fiscal year.

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The estimated budget requirements for the enumeration are $29.953 million. It includes funding for rental of field offices; the hiring, training and wages of approximately 14,000 enumerators; the production of forms and manuals; the purchase of necessary supplies and equipment; technology acquisition; design and launch of a comprehensive enumeration; voter education program; the staffing and operations of the 1-800 call centre; and a post-enumeration voters list quality review. This enumeration cost is 89 percent greater than the funding that was expended to deliver a mail-based provincial enumeration in 2009.

Last, if the Port Moody–Coquitlam by-election is held in the next fiscal year, we will require a total of $537,000. It includes expenses for election official wages, which is the greatest part of this budget, as well as benefits, ballot printing, production and mailing of where-to-vote cards, information systems upgrade, a by-election advertising program, general office expenses and office and voting place rental.

This brings our total event-related funding requirements to $35.714 million for the coming fiscal year. This total is displayed on page 17 in a table which shows the breakdown of that total across three events.

I will now turn things back over to Keith for his closing remarks.

K. Archer: Thanks very much for the opportunity to meet with you so we could tell you about the business of Elections B.C. and present our budget request for 2012-13.

Before closing our presentation and responding to your comments and questions, I'd like to use this opportunity as a very important input to the Legislative Assembly to raise four matters for consideration.

In 2010 the Chief Electoral Officer submitted a report to the Legislative Assembly with a set of recommendations for legislative change. That report included 41 recommendations entitled "Technical changes" and a further 14 items listed as considerations for policy change. To date, the recommended changes have not been implemented in legislation.

From the initial list, I wish now to highlight three changes that we previously raised and one additional item to set four high-priority recommendations. We raised these four items last month in our meeting with the Election Advisory Committee. I bring them to this committee today because it's my belief that they may have budget implications at a later date. The proposed changes are as follows.

First, remove the definition of "voting officer" from the Election Act together with the requirement to include a second election official at each ballot box. The rationale is that the current configuration of election officials appears unnecessarily labour-intensive at the voting area and could benefit from modernization efforts.

We have 85 electoral districts, each with about 125 voting areas, each of which is responsible for one ballot box. This translates to about 11,000 voting officers and then a further 11,000 election officials to hire, train and deploy on election day. Since many of the voting places have multiple voting areas, changing the legislated structure for staffing these position will provide greater latitude to examine improved service-oriented voting opportunities.

Second, enable the creation of a provisional register of electors for 16- and 17-year-olds. At present the lowest participation of voters is among the youngest eligible voters, aged 18 to 25. This group also has the lowest participation on the voters list. The creation of a provisional register of electors would enable the development of a curriculum set for students in high school and would provide a prime target group for educational programs on civic engagement, starting with the inclusion on the provisional register of electors. At age 18, eligible voters would transfer automatically from the provisional register to the permanent register.

Thirdly, eliminate the requirement to complete a provincewide door-to-door enumeration in advance of fixed-date general elections. This recommendation has the most significant impact on the budget request that we place before you today.

We're currently required to complete this enumeration and will comply with this requirement. However, we're expecting the enumeration will cost $29.953 million to complete. We believe this is not the best method nor an efficient method to update the voters list in advance of a general election. We conduct ongoing updates to the voters list throughout the electoral business cycle, and the methods for updating the list at present, including such things as data sharing with Elections Canada, using our on-line voter registration system and data sharing with ICBC, amongst others, ensure a high-quality voters list.

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Fourthly, provide greater flexibility in the Election Act so that we can introduce, on a pilot basis, electronic technologies into the voting process.

Societal expectations about the mechanics of voting are changing. It's becoming less common to wait in designated queues for the delivery of a variety of services.
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The actual voting experience has changed little in the past century, while new information and communication technologies have revolutionized many parts of our lives. By changing the legislative requirement around the voting experience, Elections B.C. will be better placed to examine what types of innovative approaches are effective while also maintaining the integrity of the vote and maintaining trust in the electoral process.

With those comments, Mr. Chair, I turn the meeting back to you and look forward to responding to the questions and comments of members.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Archer, and Nola and Anton. We do have some questions.

P. Pimm: Thanks for your presentation. Actually, I have a few questions. I'll just start with the first one. I think your No. 4 request just answered my question. That was electronic ballot systems and that kind of thought. Would that fall right into that No. 4 category as a…? Okay, I'll just stop right there.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation and for the information around budgets compared to ten years ago and further back. That was quite informative. And congratulations on managing within a pretty tight budget scenario.

Could you just fill me in a little bit more on the pilot project, the residence-to-residence enumeration — specifically, when that might be happening, and will you be sampling from areas around the province?

Secondly, in regards to some of the recommendations that you put forward…. From your background I understand you studied electoral processes quite thoroughly. In the areas that I represent, which involve a lot of people who don't participate in the electoral process — marginalized populations, First Nations populations — it has seemed to me that what would be needed to get people on the voters list and enumerated is an increase in the door-to-door component.

Oftentimes in a census we see people just leaving a package on the door and never coming back. The bag hangs on the door handle for a couple of weeks and then gets blown off in the wind or whatever. In the relationships that are part of that whole small rural community scenario, it seems to me it requires even more human contact to get people enumerated.

Maybe you could just elaborate on the kinds of strategies that you would see that would work in those kinds of situations, if you're not advocating for the door-to-door anymore.

K. Archer: Sure, thanks. Perhaps I'll start by responding to the second part of your question and comments and then ask Anton to comment on the details of our plan for the pilot door-to-door enumeration.

We've had an opportunity to look at the experience of a number of other jurisdictions with door-to-door enumerations over the recent past. What we're finding is that election authorities that are committed to using this approach to developing their voters list are experiencing very different circumstances in actually administering the enumeration than was the case even as recently as a decade ago, and certainly a generation ago.

Some of our colleagues in other provinces, for example, in conducting recent door-to-door enumerations, have discovered that the recruitment of enumerators is far more difficult today than was the case previously. The retention of those enumerators throughout the enumeration process…. Oftentimes enumerations are administered in a two-week, three-week or four-week window, and keeping the enumerators employed for that period of time is increasingly difficult. They're finding it less likely to actually contact a person at the door, even with the door-to-door visitation.

There are several processes going on there, I think. The first is that our residences look different in 2011 and 2012 than they looked in 1990 or 1980. Many of the buildings are much more secure than was the case, and even floors between condos or apartments are much more secure. It's very difficult to get into a secure building and actually conduct the enumeration.

[0845]

The other experience, and probably the most important experience that they've had, is that people are less likely to answer the door and less willing to answer the door. When you think through the electoral calendar that we would likely be dealing with for enumeration in advance of a May fixed-date election, the enumeration will probably occur in the period of January to March. In most instances, if we have our enumerators going out and doing much of the enumeration in the evening when they are hoping to find people at home, they're going out in the dark. So you're knocking on people's homes in the dark. Their experience has shown that even when doing it in the summer months, you have far less success in getting people to actually respond.

Part of our concern with using the door-to-door enumeration method across the board is that the evidence shows it's less effective in other provinces. Now, one of the purposes of our pilot — this was brought before this committee last year, and the funding was approved — is to test some of those ideas in British Columbia. We want to use this pilot enumeration experience to affirm to us and to you about the quality of the voters list that will derive from a door-to-door enumeration.

With that policy discussion, let me turn to Anton for more detailed comments on our pilot project.

A. Boegman: Certainly. Thank you, Keith.

In terms of the pilot project, right now we're targeting early January, and we're targeting Port Moody–
[ Page 1782 ]
Coquitlam as the location where we're going to be conducting that pilot. We think it's an excellent opportunity to test the processes and procedures that we are going to be developing and what the impact will be in an actual event that will occur.

Port Moody–Coquitlam does have a variety of geography and residential scenarios that make it a good location for the pilot. That being said, however, we're also doing parallel planning for a second option. That will be implemented in the event that the by-election is called before we have a chance to conduct the door-to-door enumeration and if we feel the enumeration did not answer all of our questions about various scenarios that need to be enumerated.

By that I mean if we feel there are rural areas and they will offer a different challenge to us, we will identify specific voting areas that meet those characteristics. We will be conducting small pilots in specific voting areas to make sure we are able to experience the full diversity that's offered by British Columbia in terms of reaching voters.

Those are the two approaches right now. The target is Port Moody–Coquitlam. If we're unable to do Port Moody–Coquitlam because of timing, we'll be doing enumerations in a variety of voting areas that will allow us to do high-density residential, distributed rural, mixed communities and these sorts of things.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you.

I'll move on to my questioners. We have about 15 minutes left. I have a growing list of questioners, so I'll ask everyone to be as brief as possible. At the end, if we don't have all of our questions out, we'll kind of get them onto the record, and you can respond to us in writing at a later date.

J. Thornthwaite: Thanks for your presentation.

I get what you said about getting into the high schools. I know that will involve probably more than just Elections B.C. It's probably part of the education curriculum. I'm wondering: isn't a provisional registry kind of redundant? If they've got to go to the regular registry, why have a provisional registry? Why not just educate the voters through the means that you've discussed? Then when they turn 18, they're along with everybody else.

K. Archer: Well, that's certainly one approach that we have been taking. Our experience with that approach is that the segment of the voting population 18 to 25 is more difficult for us to contact and to ensure that they're on the list.

One of the requirements in British Columbia is that there needs to be an affirmation by the voter that they meet the eligibility requirements. For example, you need to affirm that you're 18 years of age, that you're a Canadian citizen and that you've lived in British Columbia for six months. You need to affirm those three things in order to get onto the voters list.

[0850]

Consequently, there needs to be some type of direct contact with the voters in order for that affirmation to take place. It's possible to do that kind of encouragement through working with educational authorities when people are 16- and 17-year-olds and taking grade 11 social studies, for example. But there's no direct action for them at that time. So you're saying, in effect, to people that when you turn 18, remember to do this. Obviously some do, but many don't. The participation rate for people 18 to 25 is actually quite a bit lower than the participation rate across the board on our voters list.

It's been used in other jurisdictions to good effect. Australia is the best example that I can think of. Registering to vote and voting in Australia is mandatory, and so substantial efforts are made to ensure that people are on the list. I think that has emerged as a best practice for ensuring that the voters list is accessible to young voters.

M. Elmore: Thanks for your presentation, and I think you're also to be commended in terms of the high-quality work you do with a staff of 44,000 and expanding into tens of thousands of staff needed to run a general election.

My question. I'm interested in terms of following on the door to door and enumeration. I wonder if you can tell me what the number of currently registered voters is now. And do you have the number in terms of the additions from the federal election — the new voters who were added to the list — and the number of eligible but unregistered voters? Also, you won't have the data from the municipal election, but I'd be interested to see what numbers are coming forward in terms of increased additions to the voters list.

My concern is with the ability to access particularly our multi-ethnic communities. In my constituency it's very diverse — 75 percent. I've been doing a lot of door-knocking in the last month. I don't know. Maybe it's just because it's the MLA knocking on the door, but I get a good rate of contact. That's very effective for me, I've found, in contacting people.

Another concern is the issue of language as well. You basically need to speak the language, particularly Chinese and Punjabi and other languages, to access those folks and get accurate information. I'm just wondering if you could comment on that.

A. Boegman: Certainly. In terms of the first question around how many eligible voters there are in the province, it's 3,264,381 as of October 22. That was the latest eligible estimate that we received from B.C. Stats, which we used to then estimate eligible and take the registered component and look at what our coverage is doing. Our
[ Page 1783 ]
coverage is in the area of 93 percent of those that are on the list.

M. Elmore: Coverage in terms of….

A. Boegman: Coverage in terms of what percentage of the eligible voters is on the list. We estimate with 3.264 million estimated eligible voters in the province, 93 percent of those are actually on the list.

We have done studies, again through B.C. Stats, looking at the breakdown of voters and non-voters and have identified through these studies that there is probably a core of about 6 percent of individuals who have made the decision to not participate and are not found on federal voters lists or provincial voters lists or other voters lists. So in terms of our ability to get the most number of voters registered, we think we're quite close to achieving the highest target that we can.

In terms of your other questions around strategies door to door to meet different ethnicities and different things like that, we're looking at making sure that…. Similar to our process for hiring election officials in areas of ethnic communities, we look at hiring individuals from that community.

[0855]

In Port Moody–Coquitlam, for instance, there's a heavy Korean context. We'll make sure that enumerators in those areas are from that community, that they do speak the language and that they're able to communicate with the voters in their language of choice.

We also do a number of translations of forms, especially guides to completion of forms, so the kit that the enumerators will be walking around with will have copies of these documents in the languages that are representative of the people that live there so that they can distribute those if people need assistance interpreting what's on the forms and these types of things.

Also, part of the outreach program that we're going to be doing with the district electoral officer and the deputy in that community prior to the enumeration would be working with local community groups to raise awareness of the event. The enumerators will be going forward, making sure that questions of those communities and considerations that are unique to their ethnicity are taken into account and that they're able to approach and deal with the voters in the way that they expect to be approached and dealt with.

M. Elmore: Do you have the numbers in terms of from the federal elections, the additions?

A. Boegman: We don't have those numbers yet. The feds have provided us with some data. They provided us with a very small amount of data prior to the referendum, which we were able to add onto the list. I can see if we can get those numbers for you, and we'll make sure we can do that.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation. I have a few questions.

What I've been hearing from the constituents is that either in my own election or other elections or the by-elections…. One is knocking on the doors. When they're on the voters list, they go in there. They say: "I'm sorry. We're not Canadian citizens. We have no idea why we're here." I found that in the last by-election. I found it at my election time. I found it at other by-election times before. It's not something new.

The second thing I have heard from people is that sometimes some of the staff that are hired at election time actually are biased. When you try to put in a complaint on the last day, it's very difficult. Nobody can make a decision fast enough.

Elections B.C. staff is supposed to be non-partisan. They're not to support any party, but there are some who actually go out of their way to try to tell them which way to vote. That has happened in different stations, in different locations in Surrey. I talked to the people who ran in them, and they said nobody could do anything.

The third thing was that I have heard of cases where people actually do mass fraud. They change addresses from one location to another so they can just put in some extra if the riding is going to be close enough.

You should talk to some of the federal counterparts. There are probably some complaints from some constituencies, where people have massively changed their address on the last day or something so they can vote. Sometimes you don't need that many to change.

I think having confidence in the system is very important. It's not who wins or loses, as long as it's fair. When they think it's not a fair election, that's when the problems come in — right?

We want to make sure we do everything in our power to make sure the system is fair. We will try to prevent it. Also, if somebody is trying to encourage doing it or somebody's doing it, let them know what the penalties are.

R. Howard (Chair): MLA Hayer, I'm going to have to…. Put your question on the record. We've got to move on.

D. Hayer: The last one. When you talk about electronic voting, are you thinking of maybe getting the same type of machine that cities, municipalities use, where people can use the machine that cuts down the counting time and also, probably, having a mistake around voting because the machine won't accept the ballot until it is valid? Maybe you can use those same machines for municipal elections and provincial elections.

R. Howard (Chair): Okay, we're going to let you take those questions on record, I think, because I know we have some other questioners that we want to get on the record so that you can respond to us.

Sorry, MLA.
[ Page 1784 ]

If you don't have a proper note, we can check Hansard and make sure you've got a good grasp on the questions that MLA Hayer has just put forward.

MLA Routley, could I just get you to put your question. We won't expect any answers now, but we'll get the question on the record.

B. Routley: Thanks for all of the work that you do, particularly in dealing with issues that were unexpected, like the HST. I'm sure it was quite a task to pull all that together. It was done very professionally. Certainly, people felt a lot of trust in the process.

I've got two questions. One is: how do you deal with cultural or language issues? You partly answered that.

[0900]

In the Cowichan Valley one of our largest groups is Cowichan Tribes. The one complaint that I've heard about the election process was that there are two recognizable community centres. There's the community centre, and then there's the First Nations gym. I'll probably torture this name. It's Siem Lelum or something like that. I'll have to get the actual wording of that name, but it's known as the First Nations gym.

People wondered why they couldn't have elections there, because that's where, particularly, people living on reserve…. I wondered: are there laws against having elections take place on reserve? That was one issue, a cultural issue. I just couldn't figure out why I've heard this complaint over and over again from First Nations — that they don't seem to have easy access and have it right there at their gym.

The other one was about the electronic. One of your recommendations was about new electronics. Just a caution that on DriveABLE, I've heard a lot of complaints about electronic, especially from seniors. You'd have to be aware that there are a lot of seniors that don't like computers.

R. Howard (Chair): MLA Ralston, could I get you just to read your question on the record.

B. Ralston: Unfortunately, the time available for this kind of discussion is very compressed.

On page 15 there is an extensive note about the EIS system and the so-called slow migration, which was a budgetary decision made a couple years ago. I suppose the basic question is just to be assured that the system is reliable, given the changes that have been made over the years and the rate at which it's being converted. I want assurance that the transition is to a reliable one.

R. Howard (Chair): I have a few, and then MLA Bennett, who had to leave to chair another committee meeting, left me a few questions.

The first, I think, is just in context. I do appreciate…. It seems from your presentation that you've really had a look at your core services and you're confident what you're providing is core service.

You've managed your costs by…. I think an example used is that on-line versus printed materials are saving you some money. We really appreciate that, and coming forward without a further request this year is also appreciated.

Probably just a little heads-up for future years, there are some pretty dark clouds on the horizon. Money is not going to get any less tight moving forward.

Interjection.

R. Howard (Chair): We may well be.

I have a question on the pilot project. How much of that is spent and/or committed at this date? Is there a cut-off date for the expenditure of those funds?

Third would be: do you participate in Shared Services?

Last would be to make sure we get a copy of your four priority recommendations. It would probably be very helpful if you could quantify the cost savings, even if they're order-of-magnitude kind of cost savings that are available by the implementation of, I think in particular, No. 1 of your recommendations.

MLA Bennett wanted to know if the 2013 election costs budget is similar to the 2009 costs. And what are the implications of not funding all or part of the capital request and/or event funding?

I think we'll leave you with those questions. If you could respond to those in writing through the Clerk, I think that would be great.

If anybody else has any questions, they can get them to me or the Clerk, and we'll make sure they get to Dr. Archer.

With that, we thank you very much for being in front of us this morning.

K. Archer: Thanks for having us.

R. Howard (Chair): We'll take a brief recess, Members.

The committee recessed from 9:04 a.m. to 9:09 a.m.

[R. Howard in the chair.]

R. Howard (Chair): The second half of our meeting this morning is Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. We have Shelley Forrester, executive director of shared corporate services, we have Catherine Tully, assistant commissioner, and we have Mary Carlson, deputy registrar of lobbyists, in the club seats at the side there.

[0910]

We have now probably just a little under an hour, Elizabeth. I thought what I would try and do, because there is a supplemental request that was in front of us, is
[ Page 1785 ]
go through the meeting. I'll try and hold us…. Maybe at about ten to, if there are still questions, we'll read them onto the record, and you can respond to those. That'll give us a few minutes to go into the supplemental part of the request.

The microphone is yours.

Office of the
Information and Privacy Commissioner

E. Denham: Thank you. Good morning to the Chair and members of the committee. You know who I am accompanied by. Before you, you should have a copy of our budget submission for the next fiscal year and, for planning purposes, the next two years after that and also a copy of our annual report and service plans for both of my offices.

I wear two distinct hats, one as registrar of lobbyists and the other as Information and Privacy Commissioner, and my presentation falls along these two lines.

I appreciate that the government is in a very difficult fiscal situation and is facing challenges in determining priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. I also acknowledge the responsibility to run my two offices on as lean a basis as possible.

A clear priority for the government is the fundamental changes brought about by Bill 3, which removed traditional constraints between public bodies to allow personal information of citizens to be shared, matched and linked. In my budget request I've asked for resources so that this office can fulfil a new legislative mandate related to the government's priority.

My budget submission for both offices takes into account the difficult financial times facing the province, so aside from asking for funding for a new mandate brought about by Bill 3 and a very small amount to pay for an increase in building operating costs, I'm not requesting any new money.

As the registrar of lobbyists, my job is to oversee, monitor and enforce the Lobbyists Registration Act. That act requires individuals who lobby public officer holders to register the fact that they are lobbying in a searchable registry. The goal of the act is to promote transparency and allow the public to know at any given time who is actively lobbying, on whose behalf, on what subject matter and to what end.

As you are aware, the rules around lobbying in B.C. were significantly overhauled and came into force April 1, 2010.

This year the ORL, under Mary's leadership, has begun to intensify its efforts to investigate incidents of non-compliance, from failure to register to registering late. At present I think we have 16 active investigations.

To promote compliance, the ORL team, led by Mary Carlson, publishes a quarterly newsletter on lobbying, develops and publishes advisory bulletins for lobbyists, meets quarterly with an advisory board of lobbyists to obtain feedback on our processes, and carefully reviews each registration and verifies the information filed. The staff also conducts investigations.

While I believe this office needs additional full-time investigation staff, I am not this year asking for any FTEs, and I'm requesting a status quo funding consistent with last year's budget.

In my role as Information and Privacy Commissioner, my job is to oversee, monitor and enforce compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, or FIPPA, as it is commonly known. FIPPA is a primary tool citizens use to hold government to account. Access-to-information rights are very important in our system of accountable and transparent government.

On the access-to-information side, the law requires public bodies to respond to access requests without delay and to tell requesters what information they are withholding and under what legal authority. Requesters who are dissatisfied with a public body's response may ask for an appeal of that decision by the Information and Privacy Commissioner. At last count, FIPPA applied to more than 2,900 public agencies across the province, and we conducted 490 appeals last year.

[0915]

On the privacy side, FIPPA sets rules that protect privacy by limiting the circumstances in which government can ask for, use and share the personal information of citizens. These rules exist to provide citizens with assurance that personal information is used appropriately and only for the purposes for which it was collected or as authorized by law.

One of the most critical roles that my office needs to play is ensuring that government addresses and mitigates privacy risks at the design phase, before programs and technologies are launched. That ultimately saves government from implementing costly privacy patches after private data has been compromised. Since I came to the office, I find that we are increasingly challenged in our capacity to conduct these technical and complex privacy investigations.

We also oversee the collection, use and disclosure of customer and employee information by the private sector. Over 300,000 businesses and not-for-profit organizations are subject to the Personal Information Protection Act, or PIPA. Supporting businesses to meet their responsibilities through education is a key compliance strategy of the OIPC.

Turning now to a bit of a progress report, I'm pleased to provide you with an update of some of the significant accomplishments in the past year. Last year before this committee I stated my intention to improve government transparency through better proactive disclosure, which is the posting of information without the need for an access-to-information request. This year my office issued a major investigation report on B.C. Ferries' proactive disclosure
[ Page 1786 ]
program, which really set the standard and expectations for all public bodies.

On the privacy side of our mandate, my focus was really on systemic investigations — trying to tackle matters of significant privacy risk, particularly in the face of rapidly changing technological environments. With the hiring of a technical investigator, we were able to do a better job of investigating security breaches and assessing the privacy risks and impacts of new technology on privacy.

This technical expertise was mission-critical for a number of our key investigation reports, including B.C. Lottery Corporation's playnow.com data breach, in our investigation of social media background checks, and also in our current investigation of B.C. Hydro's smart-metering program and ICBC's use of facial recognition technology. Each of these systemic investigations requires, really, months of work and in-depth knowledge of networks, databases, information security and the application of privacy law to new technology.

My office also paid particular attention this year to our public education mandate, part of our core mandate, addressing more than 5,000 individuals. Most significantly, I think, we provided specialized training to practitioners — to 150 access and privacy professionals within local public bodies, police forces, health authorities and Crown corporations.

With our colleagues in Alberta, we also organized a highly successful private sector privacy conference in Vancouver, attended by chief privacy officers for small and medium-sized businesses.

I strongly believe that investing in the training of these practitioners is an excellent way of avoiding incurring costs in my office as a result of inconsistency, misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the laws.

Turning now to our processing. For many years my office has struggled with the size of our caseload. Last year we closed 1,129 reviews and complaints. However, we had an unacceptable number of cases waiting in a queue for assignment to an investigator.

Last fall I told the committee that I intended to implement a number of new strategies to tackle the backlog of access reviews and privacy complaints. While the numbers reported here indicate that we didn't meet all of our goals in fiscal 2010-11 with respect to the timeliness of our investigations, I'm pleased to report that in the first seven months of '11-12 we were on track to exceed our timeliness targets.

[0920]

Most importantly, we reduced our backlog from 180 files last November to less than 100 files this November. That's a 44 percent decrease in our backlog.

With respect to adjudication decisions, all decisions are up to date, and for the first time in many years, there is no queue for formal hearings.

I would like now to turn my attention to the budget request for the OIPC. I'm here today to ask for five new positions to properly carry out my new mandate to oversee the government's plans to share and link a number of databases as part of its vision for a more efficient, citizen-centred service.

The government has given itself permission to enhance the sharing of personal information through the recent significant changes to the privacy law contained in Bill 3.

Prior to Bill 3's passage into law privacy rules in B.C., and around the world, generally prohibited government agencies that collect personal information as part of a service — for example, your height and weight on your driver's licence — from using and disclosing that information for purposes unrelated to driving. In addition, government agencies must tell citizens why they're collecting their personal information and how it's intended to be used.

Under current rules, if the government wants to use or disclose your personal information for a different purpose than the one that it was collected, the government must obtain the consent of that person. For example, ICBC can't, without your permission, send the fact that you are perhaps 50 pounds overweight for your height to the Ministry of Health to receive information about healthy living to reduce your chance of a heart attack.

You know what? Intuitively, this has appeal. If we're looking for ways to make our roads safer, why wouldn't we want to reduce the risk of a heart attack by someone who's driving a motor vehicle by sharing information and providing support for that driver? And if we're trying to improve the overall health of children in care, wouldn't it make sense to link key information — such as their medical records, their school nurse records, pharmacy records and maybe records from their counsellor — to get the bigger picture of what's transpiring with respect to that child?

The reality is that these types of massive data-linking initiatives, if not done with proper regard for protection of privacy or robust independent oversight, are privacy disasters in the making. Sharing greater and greater amounts of information for a common and integrated service delivery and at the same time properly and ethically controlling the flow is a difficult task. These challenges are the same as those that we continue to confront, for example, in building the electronic health record.

What are these challenges? How do you decide how much information should be shared? How will citizens know what's happening to their personal information if it's accessible across a wide network? How will the government ensure that inaccurate information isn't replicated and spread across a network?

The new oversight responsibilities in Bill 3 will allow my office to identify these challenges and work with the government to ensure that these risks are fully and adequately addressed. The new legislation charges my office with reviewing and commenting on data-sharing and
[ Page 1787 ]
data-linking projects upfront in the design phase. Public bodies have to give notice, and they have to provide my office with a privacy impact assessment which identifies privacy risks and how they will be mitigated.

In addition, this office must be consulted in the development of the information-sharing code of practice and data-linking regulations that are required under the statute. These new responsibilities require the hiring of a team with very specialized technical knowledge and analytical skills.

The B.C. government is charting new territory here. No other jurisdiction in Canada has adopted this model of data sharing across a broad spectrum of agencies.

[0925]

The government has decided that the increased risk of misuse of personal information can be mitigated by providing my office with increased oversight and responsibilities. Without new resources, we will not be able to deliver on those new responsibilities.

The legislation was passed on the assumption that there would be robust oversight and review before these systems are implemented. The development and operating costs of major provincial computer systems which share huge amounts of personal information — such as integrated case management, identity management, CareCard and electronic health systems — will cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming years.

My request for resources for five additional staff will provide oversight and rules, policy controls which will give citizens reasonable assurance that someone's watching out for their privacy interests. Even in tough economic times, given the magnitude of spending on these and other initiatives, I believe that my office's request is necessary and appropriate. My budget request is on page 10 of the budget submission. I am requesting $490,000, as is outlined in the column titled "Change."

Thank you very much for your attention, and I'm happy to answer any questions, Mr. Chair.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you very much.

J. Thornthwaite: Thanks for your presentation. What did you mean when you said…? You made a comment about social media background checks.

E. Denham: Many, many organizations are using Facebook and are looking at social media sites as a way to evaluate prospective employees. We thought, "Hey, this is a new area" — that employers don't necessarily understand some of the risks they're getting into by using social media as a potential screening tool. So we issued guidance to help employers stay on the right side of the law.

J. Thornthwaite: How would you know that, unless they told you that that's what they were doing?

E. Denham: Well, that's the point. Under the law, when employers are collecting your personal information to screen you as a potential employee, they need to get your consent, for example, for contacting a reference. But using a social media site introduces all kinds of complexities. There's third-party information on there. It could be information that's inaccurate or irrelevant to the employment relationship, so I'm basically cautioning employers to beware.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for a very good presentation and, I think, a very important presentation. When I go out, people constantly remind me that with the BlackBerry they can tell people exactly where I am at what time. Some of the other machines can tell you how fast you're driving in your car.

Then using a credit card, they know exactly where you're shopping, what type of stuff you're shopping for. So the world is really changing, especially over the last ten, 15 years, and the world will keep on changing more.

But people always ask me: "Why is it that the government has so much data?" They can collect data without affecting people's privacy — without having their names, addresses and phone numbers used — to provide better service to the public. They say it almost seems to be that privacy is used to make life more miserable and more difficult for people, especially your health records. If you are a patient and you have all these medical reports, you should be able to go somewhere to the doctor and say: "Here's my passport. I'll punch the passport. You can take a look at the data."

And I said: "Well, we have a new Privacy Commissioner, and we have a government that is trying to make sure that it's a fair system." So I'm happy to see that you can see both sides of the coin. At the end of the day, we can move forward for the good of all British Columbians and all Canadians. We can use this data better. Rather than giving somebody higher rates for MSP premiums because they're overweight or because of their age, and that, maybe you can use other risks that associate with them. You can take appropriate actions — right?

So people tell me…. They say: "When you talk to the commissioner, can you please keep the common sense? The public is looking at these decisions. Not just have one side. What you started with was that you were able to see both sides of the argument. So I'm happy to see you doing it, and I'm hoping that in the future you will look at the big picture, especially if you can take some of the information and can take the personal name and address out so that people can't find out who it is.

P. Pimm: How many staff members do you have, and how big a facility are you operating out of?

[0930]
[ Page 1788 ]

E. Denham: We have 26 staff. That's the total staff for both of our offices, both of the functions. In terms of square footage, I'm going to refer that question to my colleague Shelley Forrester. Do you know how much space we have for the OIPC and the LRA?

As you know, we moved into a new building for the four offices that have the Shared Services arrangement just last fall. We've been in that building for a year now.

S. Forrester: Approximately 11,000 square feet.

E. Denham: For the building or for us?

S. Forrester: For your office.

E. Denham: So 11,000 square feet. If we are successful in hiring five new staff, we will not need any new office space. We will just be doubling people up or converting a meeting room to office space. So we can exist within the current footprint.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you. I just can't help but observe that in most other presentations, what we look for is technology to offer some efficiencies and cost-saving. But this is the other side of technology that is creating some more work for you.

I'm intrigued and very pleased to see that you have come up with a strategy to break the backlog or, at least, make great progress. I'm a little intrigued to wonder if the new system will offer some efficiencies moving forward.

E. Denham: The new requirements under Bill 3?

R. Howard (Chair): Sorry. No, this would be the new system that you developed to break the backlog.

E. Denham: Right. I'm encouraged by the success of some of the strategies that we've undertaken in the last year, and I think we've only seen that success in the last six months. I hope that it will continue.

I think that our backlog is too high. Again, citizens are waiting several months before their file is assigned to an investigator, and that's unacceptable to me. So we will continue within our current budget to work on this problem through triaging, through pushing back some complaints if they don't have sufficient evidence for us to investigate, for example.

We are really trying to reduce that backlog and increase our service to British Columbians.

R. Howard (Chair): That's excellent. So if you processed an extra 80 cases on top of the regular workload of, roughly, a thousand or 1,100, you've found a system within to be more efficient and tackle more cases. And we're talking a magnitude of 7 or 8 percent, which is actually pretty significant. Is that factored into your thinking moving forward? Can you maintain that rate of processing moving forward?

E. Denham: Well, I'm concerned that we can't keep reporting to you that kind of a success, because what's happening is that, historically, most of our cases have been requests for review, so FOI. A lot times we're seeing the same kinds of requests over and over again.

Increasingly, we are investigating privacy complaints, again, and within the private sector, where there is potentially more push-back for our investigation. We're also seeing increasingly complex investigations that involve, again, new technology like social media. So we're going to try, but I think that our cases are getting a little bit more complex.

I gave you some of the examples: smart metering. We had 50 complaints about smart metering. Well, that's a hugely complex system, and it's taken us many, many months to investigate a system such as that.

R. Howard (Chair): Is there a component to your budget that addresses awareness and education that can help, moving forward, kind of reduce…?

E. Denham: That's been one of our key strategies. It is a core mandate for us to educate the public and public bodies and private sector organizations to do a better job in managing their privacy risks and in processing FOIs.

I really think we will continue to focus on the people who are on the ground: the chief privacy officers in businesses, the access and privacy practitioners within public bodies. If they have more training and more assistance, then we should feel the effect of that in our office with fewer complaints and fewer appeals.

R. Howard (Chair): A few more questions.

B. Routley: You talked about five new positions who will, I assume, link to Bill 3. How did you come up with that determination that you needed five and not six or four? And what kinds of things will they be doing?

[0935]

E. Denham: The most significant task under the new mandate of Bill 3 is reviewing privacy impact assessments. That's a mandatory requirement for public bodies that are engaging in information-sharing or data-linking activities. That's actually the biggest add-on for our team.

I looked at three factors in coming up with five new positions. The first is that we have experience in reviewing extremely complex programs such as the downtown community court, complex databases such as the PARIS system with Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. Based on this experience, we know that reviewing a privacy impact assessment, even if it's well done, can take between several weeks and several months. I estimate that one policy
[ Page 1789 ]
and technical analyst would be able to properly review between three and five complex privacy impact assessments a year.

Then I had to look far afield to find another jurisdiction where a commissioner had mandatory responsibility to review data-linking activities, and that's the New Zealand commissioner. I looked at New Zealand's population, which is roughly equivalent to British Columbia — 4.4 million to 4.5 million.

The New Zealand commissioner advises me that when she was given new responsibilities to review data-linking activities, she hired three new policy analysts. So I looked at that experience. Again, we've got a greater responsibility in the B.C. law because we're also looking at data sharing, not just the matching of computer to computer.

Then I looked at: "Okay, what's in front of us?" The B.C. government has 18 ministries, seven central agencies and ten Crown corporations. Even if half of these 35 public bodies undertake integrated programs or data-linking initiatives, then my office will get 17 complex privacy impact assessments.

I did the math, and that doesn't even take into account whether universities and municipalities and other public bodies will provide us with PIAs for review. That's how I got to that. I think it's a modest request, given what I think the work is in front of us.

B. Ralston: I think you've effectively conveyed the scope and breadth of the new duties that are being suggested for you with the passage of Bill 3.

Certainly, having participated in the debate to some extent and listened to the minister, one of her frequent responses was that your office was going to be reviewing the activity. That seemed to be the balance that was being struck between the very sweeping nature of data linking and its unprecedented nature in Canadian government, with the understanding that your ability to examine those initiatives would offset any concerns the public might have.

There seemed to be an assumption by the minister that you would automatically do this. Have you discussed with her any alternatives that you would suggest to her, should funding not be forthcoming from this committee to put in place the people to do that evaluation?

E. Denham: It is clear to me in following the debates and in discussions with the minister that she did expect our office to have a prominent role in the work, and she stated that an independent official must monitor the development of these new systems.

I have shared with the minister my concerns that if I don't get new resources to take on these very important responsibilities, I will not be able to deliver on this work. I don't know what the alternatives are, because again, I think the government wants an independent officer to review these complex systems.

R. Howard (Chair): Excellent. Thank you. That actually gets us out of questions, which is fortuitous from the timing standpoint. I think we will now go in camera.

Sorry, did I miss MLA Pimm?

P. Pimm: You didn't miss me. I just wanted to clarify the staff numbers again. The number you have here, the $2.708 million — is that for 26, or would that be for 31, with the five additional?

E. Denham: I'm sorry. For the ask that we have?

P. Pimm: For your salaries.

E. Denham: For the salaries?

P. Pimm: Yes.

C. Tully: The salary we were asking for in this budget request is for 31. We currently have 26 staff.

P. Pimm: Thank you. That's what I want to know.

[0940]

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you. So that will wrap us up. We'll let you go. You have left us enough time to deal with another issue here. So we'll let you depart, and then we'll go in camera as a committee.

We'll take a little recess.

The committee recessed from 9:40 a.m. to 9:42 a.m.

[R. Howard in the chair.]

R. Howard (Chair): All right, Members, we'll reconvene. We have a supplemental request from the Privacy Commissioner's office to consider. Could I have a motion that we go in camera?

M. Stilwell: I so move.

The committee continued in camera from 9:42 a.m. to 9:48 a.m.

[R. Howard in the chair.]

R. Howard (Chair): We're back on the record. MLA Stilwell, you have a motion?

M. Stilwell: Yes. I move:

[That the committee endorse the application of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for an additional $115,000 for fiscal year 2011-12, as requested in her correspondence dated October 27, 2011.]

I felt that she made the case that the expectation of her new duties is impressive and substantial, and at the same time, she made the case that she felt she could manage within the budget — under the circumstances
[ Page 1790 ]
that she could use monies that were in the budget that she felt would be available to her. So I thought she made a good case overall.

R. Howard (Chair): Yeah.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): Yeah, I feel that the commissioner made a compelling case for the additional funding for this year that's required under the new duties of Bill 3. I agree that this should be an additional funding and not result in the decrease of funds that were already allocated by this committee in previous years for other items within the budget regarding legal proceedings.

I'm in support of increasing the funding as requested by the commissioner, but not for it to be at the detriment of another line item that could be needed for legal requirements. I believe that it's more productive and efficient to do it this way rather than to work in an ad hoc basis where, if the legal requirement funding is needed, the commissioner has to come back to this committee, which would be the case if we approved the motion as put forward.

D. Hayer: Yes, I think maybe we can get it clarified. Now, when the commissioner was here, my understanding was that she had this money sitting there that was not being used. At that time the Finance Committee had said that if the money is not being used, what's the use of it just sitting there. Basically, we are sort of saying: "Yes, she can use this amount of money she is requesting." She is requesting some more funding. I thought it was a very simple request.

[0950]

Are there more complications than that? What MLA Doug seemed to be saying seems completely different than my understanding for this.

R. Howard (Chair): Well, I think MLA Donaldson — I'll let him speak for himself — is just taking a different view of how the money should be demarcated, so I'll come back.

D. Hayer: This is basically from the existing funding. She had as existing. We could say that we're allowing her to use that as she has requested — the $115,000.

R. Howard (Chair): Well, the motion on the floor refers to her letter where she sets out that that's what she would like to do — yes.

D. Hayer: So we're just forwarding her letter with her request and with the motion — right?

R. Howard (Chair): That's correct.

D. Hayer: Okay.

P. Pimm: Well, I'm in support of the letter that she put in front of us. I'm not in support of adding it to the base budget. She's identified how she can find these funds for this year, and I'm in support of that. I'm not in support of adding it to the base budget, which will appear there every year from this point on.

B. Ralston: Well, it may amount to the same thing, because if she doesn't use the $300,000 that's set aside and then returns it — and this is offset by this amount that we're going to vote on now — it may amount to the same thing in the budget. I guess my concern would be…. Because we have a bigger decision coming for the budget next year, I think this may be…. I'm just not clear where the members on the other side of the House are going with this.

She's made it very clear that the additional staff would be a supplement to the budget. That's why I'm just in favour of making that clear in this submission just so that it's clear that it's a supplement to the budget and not something that we're expecting to be funded out of the existing budget.

Perhaps I'm anticipating the debate that we may have later on. If this is a signal from the other side that they're going to ask that the five staff she requested…. The minister responsible for Bill 3 seems to expect that will be forthcoming. If they're going to suggest that those resources be found within the existing budget, then I think that's a real problem.

Maybe the mover of the motion could clarify her intention.

R. Howard (Chair): I'm going to just interject, because we haven't done our deliberations yet. We've simply been listening and asking questions, so your reading of the tea leaves may not be that accurate at this time.

I still have a list going. I had MLA Donaldson.

D. Donaldson (Deputy Chair): I just want to further clarify that I support the increased funding for the duties that have been outlined by the commissioner. I just wanted to make sure that it's on record that I don't feel it's the most efficient way to run our business — for her to come back for contingency funding if required on the legal front.

M. Stilwell: I would just respond that the motion is not intended to foreshadow or be nuanced in anyway. It is simply to support the officer's letter and request as she has framed it and does not imply anything for the future of how to execute on Bill 3 in the best possible way.

R. Howard (Chair): I think I would just add to that that the majority of the costs asked for in this supplemental request are startup costs. They're one-time, upfront costs, so to create a new line item just doesn't make sense to me. I think the way she's framed it is responsible, it's smart, and I'm prepared to support it.
[ Page 1791 ]

D. Hayer: I just want to clarify that I fully support the request dated October 27, 2011, by the commissioner, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. That's what we're voting on. Then, we have not started discussing the next budget, which is 2012-13. When we get to that budget, we'll deal with it at that time.

So just to clarify, I support this motion. I support her request. We are here to deliberate the 2011-2012 budget, not the 2012-13 budget.

R. Howard (Chair): Thank you. Seeing no other questions or comments, I'll call the question.

Motion approved.

R. Howard (Chair): Motion to adjourn?

The committee adjourned at 9:55 a.m.

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