Public Accounts — Issue No. 12 — Wednesday, October 1, 2014 (HTML)

West Meeting Room 111 and 112, Vancouver Convention Centre
1055 Canada Place, Vancouver, B.C.

Present: Bruce Ralston, MLA (Chair); Sam Sullivan, MLA (Deputy Chair); Kathy Corrigan, MLA; Marc Dalton, MLA; David Eby, MLA; Vicki Huntington, MLA; Greg Kyllo, MLA; Mike Morris, MLA; Linda Reimer, MLA; Selina Robinson, MLA; Shane Simpson, MLA; Laurie Throness, MLA; John Yap, MLA

Officials Present: Carol Bellringer, Auditor General; Stuart Newton, Comptroller General

2. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions relating to the Office of the Auditor General's Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan for Fiscal Years 2015/2016 through 2017/2018.

3. Resolved, that the Public Accounts Committee endorse the three recommendations listed on page 3 of the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan for Fiscal Years 2015/2016 through 2017/2018, as required by sections 10 and 14 of the Auditor General Act. (Sam Sullivan, MLA)

4. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions relating to the Auditor General Report: Disability Assistance: An Audit of Program Access, Integrity and Results (May 2014).

5. The Committee recessed from 11:06 a.m. to 11:22 a.m., from 12 p.m. to 1:01 p.m. and from 1:40 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.

6. The Committee continued its consideration of the Auditor General Report: Information Technology Compendium (January 2014). The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

• Ian Bailey, Assistant Deputy Minister, Technology Solutions, Office of the Chief Information Officer

8. The Committee continued its consideration of Riverview Hospital Historical Documents Retention and Disposal. The following witness appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

9. It was moved by Sam Sullivan, MLA, that having examined the retention and disposal applications made by the Public Documents Committee, the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts recommends Resolution 1 to the Legislative Assembly, pursuant to section 3 of the Document Disposal Act.

10. Resolved, that the Committee adjourn debate on Riverview Hospital Historical Documents Retention and Disposal. (Sam Sullivan, MLA)

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS


CONTENTS
Page
Auditor General Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan	467
C. Bellringer
R. Jones
Auditor General Report: Disability Assistance: An Audit of Program Access, Integrity and Results	471
R. Jones
L. Hatt
S. Taylor
D. Galbraith
M. Harrington
C. Bellringer
S. Newton
Auditor General Report: Information Technology Compendium	498
C. Bellringer
S. Andersen
I. Bailey
C. Dover
R. Jones
S. Newton
Records Retention and Disposal	512
A. Wright

B. Ralston (Chair): Good morning, Members. I'd like to begin our deliberations for today.

There's an agenda that's been circulated. The first item is consideration of the Office of the Auditor General's financial statement audit coverage plan for the next three fiscal years. You'll know from reading the material that the Auditor General Act, which is the statute that governs some of the actions of the Auditor General, requires that this plan be presented to the Public Accounts Committee for consideration and approval.

I'm going to turn it over to the Auditor General and the Deputy Auditor General, and we'll hear from them on the plan. The plan itself is in your materials at the first tab.

The financial statement audit coverage plan was distributed before my arrival, but Russ will be relieved to know I've read it through, and I concur with the three approvals that we're requesting.

I did want to just comment on the actual process itself. The Public Accounts Committee can be very proud of this approval process. It's not in place in all jurisdictions in Canada. I was impressed when I went through it with the attention to detail that's provided to you, the fact that the approach is formalized this way. Within the plan there's a good link between the proposed audit coverage and both the independence rules for the auditing profession and the assurance standards that are behind the work that we're doing on the summary financial statements.

Russ will go through our slides and walk you through the three approvals we're requesting.

Chair, Deputy Chair, Members, good morning. I assume everyone has the plan, so we're going to move right into it here.

The background behind this is that the annual audit of the public accounts, or the summary financial statements, is the largest audit performed in the province and provides assurance on whether the financial statements present fairly the financial position and operating results of the province.

The opinion on the summary financial statements is the Auditor General's alone. That's not in discussion for this plan. The audit of the reporting entities that make up some of those numbers that are in the public accounts, however, is the combined work of our office and private sector auditors.

Section 10(2) of the Auditor General Act requires the Auditor General to audit the ministries and other agencies that are part of the consolidated revenue fund. However, most of the other organizations and trust funds comprising the government reporting entity are audited by the private sector, as you can see from the plan that's in here. We audit a few — not too many.

Today what we're seeking is approval for the following three things, which are in the plan in appendix A — the fact that we would like to continue being the auditor of ten entities where our term exceeds five years, and we're also continuing as direct auditors for two entities that aren't part of the public accounts.

The plan's foundation is that it meets the requirements for audit coverage under generally accepted auditing standards, and those are the standards that we need to adhere to when we're auditing any financial statement. It will allow the Auditor General to sign the audit opinion on government's summary financial statements.

The selection process that we get into is risk-based and aligns with these standards and is specific to the audit of what we call group financial statements. We have the public accounts, and within those public accounts there's a group of financial statements that are also audited, and we have to audit a certain amount of it in order to be able to give an opinion on the summary financial statements.

This plan details the range and levels of involvement that are used to gain knowledge of these organizations and sectors during the overall audit of the summary statements.

As you probably remember from last year, we have three different levels of involvement that we undertake.

There's the first one, which is limited, where we don't do any fieldwork. We do correspond with the auditors of those entities and ask them for certain information, but we don't actually go out and audit any of the work that they've done.

Then we have what we call oversight. A private sector firm is appointed the auditor of, say, B.C. Hydro. We actually go out and conduct some procedures on the work that the auditor of B.C. Hydro is doing. We look at their plan to make sure we think it's appropriate, we look at the year-end sign-off that they do, and we also review their working papers to give us assurance that they've carried out the work to the level that we need to be able to sign off on the public accounts.

Then we have direct involvement, which is where we do the audit ourselves. Or in some cases, like Liquor Distribution Branch, we have PwC do the audit for us, and we sign the opinion. So we're involved in the audit, but we have PwC staff do the work for us.
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Determining coverage. In determining involvements, we first look at each organization and do a risk assessment to determine if it is a significant component. We look at whether it delivers a core service, has a high level of public interest, has a high inherent risk with respect to programs delivered, and we also look at its complexity, potential future issues or other factors that we need to be aware of. Then we look at each sector to see if we have sufficient coverage.

Now, when we're referring to sectors, we're referring to, for instance, health, education, transportation, natural resources — the sectors that you'll see in the public accounts.

Finally, we look at new organizations. Normally, a new organization we'll audit for the first three to five years. This year there were no new organizations.

The provision in our act around appointment over five years is to…. We need to request approval from this committee for extending our direct involvement beyond the five-year limit.

In this plan we have to balance the benefits achieved through auditor rotation with professional standards that require us to maintain appropriate knowledge and experience. For audits that exceed five years, we usually shift our senior staff so that we have some staff rotation. It's very similar to the rotation that you would see in the private sector.

We don't think any rotation of audits where we have been the auditor for more than five years is warranted at this point. A rotation of organizations to private sector auditors is either not feasible or will have limited benefits and will possibly increase costs to the organization as well. The rationale for appointments exceeding five years is documented on pages 13 to 15 of the plan.

Turning now to the detailed plan, this is the table on page 10 of the plan that you see on the screen here. It summarizes our plan coverage for the next three years for the 149 entities that are covered in the plan, 2016 through 2018. This is a rollup of the detailed plan, as you might see in appendix A. There are lots of things in appendix A.

The first column shows the type of entity. The second shows the expected number of entities in each type for their fiscal year ending 2015. The remainder of the table shows our plan coverage by entity, fiscal year and level of involvement. For example, in 2015-16 we plan to have limited involvement in 18 of the 27 universities, colleges and institutes, have an oversight in seven and directly audit two of them.

As you can see from the totals, our levels of involvement do not change much from year to year. Also, our highest level of involvement is still in the Crown corporation group — ten oversights and 12 direct audits out of 42.

As many entities are selected based on magnitude of risk to the government reporting entity as a whole, they also tend to be more significant in terms of expenditures, as shown in this chart. The Auditor General had oversight or direct involvement with 84 percent of government entity expenditures for the 2013-14 year, so we get a fair amount of coverage.

Trends by sector. In education, rotation of OAG direct school district audits. We try to maintain five school district audits each year. However, in 2015-16 we plan on only four, and then we'll be back up to five going forward. We have a number that we come off of and a number that we go on to.

One of the new ones that we're going on to fairly soon is the French school district, which we've never done in the past. It's slightly different than all the others, so we thought it was probably a good one to take a look at and get involved in.

In 2017 we begin the audit of school district 53. This brings us back up to the five that I said we needed to get to.

In advanced education we rotate on universities, colleges and institute audits. In 2015 it will be the last year that we audit Camosun College, and in 2016 we begin the audit of Vancouver Community College. We also plan to have an oversight role in seven or eight university colleges and institutes each year. One of the new universities that we're going to be doing oversight on is Kwantlen. We're not going to take a look at the University of Northern British Columbia because we're taking Kwantlen on for a couple of years.

Health. We rotate on the health authorities. We do one; the firms do the rest. There haven't been any changes to the health sector audit coverage from last year's plan. We'll continue to directly audit Vancouver Coastal until 2018, and then we're switching to Interior Health, so we're making our way around the province. We also oversee the Providence Health Care Society.

Rotation of OAG Crown corporation audits. There's been very little change from the previous year's plan. We take on the audit of the Organized Crime Agency in 2015-16, and we plan to rotate through pretty much all the smaller Crowns at some time, but not quickly. We end our oversight of B.C. Securities Commission in 2016.

As per the previous plan, we've reduced our involvement with WorkSafe B.C. We've contracted that out to PricewaterhouseCoopers. They do the work for us, and we just sign the opinion and oversee the work that they're doing now.

Each year we consult with all the organizations that are being impacted by our plan, especially when we're taking on oversight or having them have us as their direct auditor. We call them and let them know that, and everybody's always happy that we're coming in. At this time we've met with and contacted everybody that we need to.

As far as budget implications go, we've planned these changes so as not to impact the resources that we need. This plan is one of the key things that we need approval from this committee for because we take it to the Finance
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and Government Services Committee when we're discussing our budget. We take it to the Government and Finance Committee so that we can get our budget approved, and this forms a fairly large part of that.

As we've noted in the past, government's organizations are required to follow the Treasury Board regulation on deferred contributions. While we're required to report on the summary financial statements in accordance with GAAP — that is without the regulation — this increases the audit work in a number of cases, because we have to try and determine what that difference is.

There are also a number of interesting accounting issues that come up that we have to tackle from time to time. Accounting standards are continuing to change, so that always impacts the amount of work that we have to do, but we think we can manage within the budget that we currently have for financial audits.

In summary, we need three approvals, please, from this committee. There they are on the screen.

That concludes our presentation, and we're happy to take any questions that you might have.

K. Corrigan: I was interested in the change in appendix B, the summary of changes from the prior year plan, and you noted it in your presentation as well. I'm wondering why for Kwantlen there has been a change from a planned limited involvement to an oversight involvement in 2014-15 and 2015-16.

R. Jones: As I mentioned, we always do a risk assessment of all the entities that we decide to look at. As I think everyone is aware, during the year there were some issues raised around salaries and whatnot, so we thought it might be prudent of us to take on an oversight role there.

K. Corrigan: Would the audit include consideration of the issues that were raised, then? Will it be part of the audit whether or not, for example, the compensation caps are being complied with, and so on — that kind of work? I know it's being looked at right now.

R. Jones: Whenever we are planning an audit, we take into account any risks that we feel could impact the work that's done. We would be working with the current auditors of the organization to ensure that all risks are covered off in the audit plan.

L. Throness: Just a couple of short questions. Are any government entities missing, or are all government entities covered under one category or another?

L. Throness: Okay. Is a direct audit an indication of suspicion of trouble or of difficulty?

R. Jones: No, not at all. You can only get so much knowledge from doing oversight within each sector. What we try and tend to do is pick a direct audit in each one of those sectors as well, because if we're involved as the direct auditor, you're just involved a lot more and it gives us better knowledge. What it also does is it allows us…. I think I've mentioned this before. Once a month we have a teleconference call with all of the other big six firms in the province to discuss issues and go over accounting issues and whatnot. That allows us to understand each sector that they're involved in as well.

V. Huntington: On page 13 you start the discussion of the rationale for exceeding five years on some of the agencies. I wonder if you could just enlarge a bit on the rationale for the B.C. Immigrant Investment Fund decision. You comment on the complexity of the entity's programs and the risks associated with its financial reporting. Could you describe that a little bit for us, please?

R. Jones: The investment fund is unique to the province. It's one of those entities that there aren't any others of in the province. There's a fair amount of money that flows through that investment fund.

We've been the auditor since 2000 and have a very good knowledge of what's involved and an understanding of the underlying transactions. They, believe it or not, are very happy with us as their auditor as well. It just gives us an insight into something that we wouldn't be able to get any other way. Because the client likes us and wants us to continue on and because it is unique to this province, we feel it's one for us to audit.

The B.C. Transportation Financing Authority. You comment that there were…. The audits in 2011 through 2014 were qualified. Could you enlarge on that a little bit, please?

R. Jones: This gets back to the government transfers situation in terms of the way that the organization, B.C. Transportation Financing Authority, is interpreting the standard versus the way we see the standard. They figure that they should be able to defer and amortize the capital contributions they receive, and we believe that there are no what we call restrictions on how that funding is to be used and that it should be recorded as revenue once the capital assets are built. So there is a huge difference.
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V. Huntington: A big difference. Is it going to be resolvable at any point, do you think? Or are we getting into policy?

C. Bellringer: I'm quite open about what my position is. I would love to see the qualifications in the audit opinions disappear, which doesn't mean that we're just going to accept the differences of opinion. We've got to work them through.

Really, the Canadian standards are looked at worldwide in awe, because we've really come a long way in the last 30 years. It really would be great if British Columbia could stand up and be proud of the fact that there are no qualifications in the audit opinions.

How we get there I'm not sure at this point, but that's something that I'm going to be putting a lot of effort into this year.

M. Dalton: We see your reports, obviously. They're available to the public. But I'm just wondering how much more detail is available to the public or to government or MLAs in the research, in your background materials for each audit. Is there much more material? For example, on the school districts or on the health authority or whatever, is there…? Sometimes what we see can be fairly thin. Is there much more material that is available for view, for examination, or not?

R. Jones: We do have a great deal of background material and support in our audit files. Our audit files are not available to the public because there is information in there around risk and whatnot that…. It's our judgment and our assessment, and we don't take it lightly. As I mentioned, there's a fairly robust procedure that we go through. There's a lot of information supporting what's here.

K. Corrigan: Yesterday we heard from the chair of FICOM that in order to contract out the investigative work — any evaluations that they were doing, the risk assessments and so on that needed to be done…. They'd done the work and determined it was going to cost them 3.2 times what it would cost them to do it in-house.

I know we've talked about this before, and members have asked the questions before of your office about whether or not it costs more to contract out some of the services — a significant number of services that are contracted out. I think what we've been told is that, really, there is no difference.

I'm wondering: is it because of the different type of work or the way that the work is costed? Why is it that there's such a difference?

R. Jones: I mean, when we're contracting out our work, it's for a very specific time period. It might be for 800 hours in a year to do an audit of one of the entities versus…. I think FICOM was talking of having somebody for the entire year.

What we also do, which I guess we're fortunate enough that we can do it, is when we contract out an audit to, say, PricewaterhouseCoopers, we actually look at the RFP when it comes in and try and ensure that it's not costing the entity in terms of time and money any more than it would if we were doing the audit.

Because there's a risk transfer — PwC is working for us instead of signing it on their own — it helps to reduce the cost. We're pretty careful. We would not contract it out if it was going to cost the entity more money.

B. Ralston (Chair): The nature of your work is somewhat cyclical, so it would be impractical to expect your office to do everything, given that the audit cycle peaks at a certain point and there are valleys at different times of the year. Is that correct?

R. Jones: Yes, that is correct. The benefit of being able to do five school districts is that their year-end is a June year-end versus March for a number of the other government entities. It allows us to spread out some of our work throughout the summer. But yeah, it would be very impractical for us to try and do them all. We couldn't.

C. Bellringer: If I could just add, on the way we do our staffing, that one of the other challenges our office faces is balancing out the staff that are working on financial statement audits with the staff that are working on the other project audits, the performance audits. It's a bit of a different skill set, but we still try to give the financial statement auditors some experience in performance audit. It's a real trick to balance that out and try to…. The whole scheduling exercise is quite complex.

We have to keep the right number of students coming into the office, the right number of individuals assigned to each of those teams. Then at the end of the day it all shakes out, and you say: "Do we hire a couple more, or do we use the contractors?" It's a bit of an art, and sometimes we end up hiring a few too many students. Then you have to figure out what to do in the fall or whatever period of the year where they're not doing the financial statement audit.

I looked at the plan that we're currently using, and we seem to have an optimal number of students coming in, and the use of contractors doesn't seem excessive. It seems to be right at that right point, which is only going to stay that way until we end up with some turnover. Maternity, paternity leaves — things happen during the year, and we have to take that into account as the year goes on as well.

V. Huntington: I just want to follow up on a comment pursuant to Marc's question.
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Your reply, Russ, was that the information in those particular audits is not public. Do you consider this committee to be public? Or if we wanted to pursue a specific audit with you, can we go in camera and have that discussion?

R. Jones: I would assume we could have that discussion in camera. What I meant was the information isn't public. If someone were to ask for our working papers that support how we come up with our assessments, that's not FOIable. That is one of the things with our files. It's not accessible.

V. Huntington: I just want to be sure that we could have that discussion based on your working papers if we so wished.

B. Ralston (Chair): I think there was a point in the past in which we did go in camera on a very specific audit. There were some issues that had to be discussed in camera. So that option is available.

If there's a specific audit you're interested in, perhaps you could speak with me, and then we'll make those arrangements.

K. Corrigan: I wanted to ask a couple of questions about the planned audit coverage for school boards. First of all, it's my understanding — maybe you could just remind me whether this is true — that actually you do go through, over time, all the school boards. The expectation is that you will go in and do direct audits over time, and the fact that there are direct audits of a particular school board may or, quite likely, may not indicate that you have any concerns about risk — just that you feel that that should happen over time. Is that correct?

R. Jones: Thank you for the question, Member. Yes, that is correct. We plan on going into all the school districts over time. Sometimes we'll change the priority that we put on a school district if, for example, there are some concerns with governance or something in a school district where it may help us to go in and help to inform some of the performance audits we might do.

It doesn't happen very often, but every now and then if something comes up where we think we can be of value to the school district, we can shorten the time frame that we were looking at.

K. Corrigan: Langley school district, I believe, has had either direct or oversight auditing for several years now. Is that correct? I wonder if we could get maybe just a very quick update about how Langley is doing and why the direct audit is continuing on for a couple more years.

R. Jones: I believe this was our last year, if I'm not mistaken. I just finished reviewing the financial statements Monday, and they look very good. This is one of the organizations where they've actually asked us to stay on.

K. Corrigan: Oh, interesting. Well, it says: "Year ending 2015." So that is this year, right?

There is a proposed motion. I think the Deputy Chair has it. I'm going to ask him, if he agrees, to move the motion, which would be endorsing the recommendations that have been suggested by the Auditor General.

S. Sullivan (Deputy Chair): Okay. I move that the Public Accounts Committee endorse the three recommendations listed on page 3 of the Financial Statement Audit Coverage Plan for Fiscal Years 2015-2016 Through 2017-2018 as required by sections 10 and 14 of the Auditor General Act.

B. Ralston (Chair): Thank you very much. We'll now perhaps just pause momentarily while we set up for the next item on the agenda, which will be consideration of the Auditor General's report, Disability Assistance: An Audit of Program Access, Integrity and Results dating from May 2014.

Auditor General Report:
Disability Assistance: An Audit of
Program Access, Integrity and Results

B. Ralston (Chair): I'm going to introduce the representatives of the Office of the Auditor General: Carol Bellringer, Auditor General; Russ Jones, Deputy Auditor General; and Laura Hatt, the director of performance audit.

Representing the government is Stuart Newton, comptroller general, and from the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation, Sheila Taylor, the deputy minister — welcome — Molly Harrington, assistant deputy minister, policy and research division, and David Galbraith, assistant deputy minister, regional services division.
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Thank you very much. So perhaps we can begin. Over to the Office of the Auditor General.

C. Bellringer: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Russ will go through the summary. I don't have any additional comments to make on this one.

Today we get a chance to discuss our report on disability assistance. The goal of this audit was to look at accessibility, accuracy and timeliness of eligibility decisions and if, at the end of the day, the program contributed to improved outcomes for clients.

While our recommendations address these three themes, what surprised me the most was that government had not determined the extent to which basic needs should be met by the program and that financial support rates for shelter and other basic necessities provided are still at 2007 levels of $906.

The government has set a goal of becoming the most progressive jurisdiction in Canada for people living with disabilities. Our hope is that our recommendations will help government move closer to that goal.

One last note before I pass it over to Laura. We're really grateful to the numerous individuals and groups that we spoke with as part of this audit. All of the people that we talked to are very dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities, and I thank them for that.

With me today is Laura Hatt, director of performance audit, who will provide you with a brief overview of the report, and we'll take any questions after that.

L. Hatt: As Russ mentioned, the government of British Columbia has set the goal of becoming the most progressive jurisdiction in Canada for people living with disabilities. To achieve this, the province has a wide range of programs and services, administered by several ministries, for people with disabilities.

In this audit we examined B.C.'s disability assistance program, an important program for adults with health-related challenges that restrict their independence. The program is the responsibility of the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation. All but one province in Canada have similar programs, and all are experiencing growing caseloads.

The disability assistance program provides financial assistance to individuals to assist them with meeting their basic needs, including shelter, clothing and nutrition. It also provides them with some health supplements not covered under public health care, assistance with transportation and supports to find employment.

Over 95,000 British Columbians are currently served by the disability assistance program, with financial assistance and supplementary benefits and services totalling over $1 billion annually. The program provides financial assistance for basic needs, supplementary health and living supports, and employment supports.

We undertook this audit to determine whether the ministry's disability assistance services are accessible, whether the ministry can demonstrate that its eligibility decisions and payments for disability assistance are accurate and timely, and if the ministry can demonstrate whether it contributes to improved outcomes for its disability assistance clients.

We concluded that the disability assistance program is not easy to access. We also concluded that risks are not being fully managed to ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible individuals and that eligibility decisions are made in a timely manner. Our third major conclusion is that the ministry has not completed a comprehensive evaluation of the disability assistance program and is unable to demonstrate that the program is contributing to improving the lives of clients.

In terms of our first major conclusion — that the ministry's disability assistance program is not easy to access — we found that although the ministry has a number of policies and strategies for promoting accessible services, the disability assistance system is administratively complex and difficult to navigate. Clients often need support navigating the system. Information is not always easy to find or clear, and the on-line and telephone services are not consistently accessible.

The ministry has done some analysis and consulted with stakeholders. However, we found that it has not fully assessed the accessibility needs of its clients. Further analysis is essential to ensure that service delivery options are appropriate, given the needs and resources and abilities of the clients it serves.

Regarding program integrity, and eligibility in particular, we found that the ministry has a number of systems and processes in place to assess the financial eligibility of clients. However, the ministry's system and processes for determining initial and ongoing eligibility for the PWD designation, which is based on a person's health status, can be improved.

Health status is only checked when someone enters the program. As a result, there is a risk that some individuals may receive benefits that actually no longer qualify. On the flip side, there is also a risk that clients whose condition has worsened may not have received services or supports that they would benefit from.

To know whether the disability assistance program is successful, the ministry should review and evaluate the program results. The ministry has not undertaken a full evaluation of its program outcomes. The ministry has not clearly defined what it means to meet the basic needs of clients and the extent to which basic needs should be met by the program.

That said, the ministry does track aspects of client outcomes. This information indicates that given the level of
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assistance provided, some clients may be at risk of not having their basic needs met. Individuals may require charitable donations, family support and other sources of assistance to obtain appropriate shelter and other basic necessities.

Tracking clients' health and social outcomes would also help the ministry identify gaps and any overlap with other government and community programs that serve the same group of citizens. It would also help decision-makers better understand the impact of policy choices regarding the amount and type of assistance that is provided to clients.

Improving outcomes for people on disability assistance does require the efforts of multiple agencies, and we recognize that leadership from government as a whole is required.

Regarding accessibility, we made seven recommendations. We recommend that the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation collect additional information on its clients' needs and use this to address accessibility barriers for vulnerable clients; ensure that its online information on PWD designation eligibility is clear and easy to find; review the PWD application process to address the risk that some applicants may not have a family physician; and improve the clarity of the PWD application form. This includes developing guidance to help clients, physicians and other assessors in completing the application.

We also recommend that they ensure front-line staff training is relevant, current and addresses topics such as client-centred services, accommodation, and working with people who have a wide range of barriers and disabilities; and develop and implement additional strategies to ensure that timely, accurate and consistent services are provided through the toll-free telephone service.

We also recommend that they improve the on-line application process to address redundancies and improve the clarity of guidance for applicants and work with trusted third parties and Service B.C. to identify and address physical accessibility issues for clients.

Regarding timeliness and the integrity of eligibility decisions, we recommend that the ministry develop and implement a risk-based approach for reviewing initial and ongoing client eligibility for the PWD designation to better ensure the program is serving only those clients who are eligible for benefits and supports, and report on the timeliness of eligibility decisions by measuring and reporting results against the service standards.

Our final recommendation is around program results. We recommend that the ministry develop a comprehensive evaluation framework for the PWD program that sets objectives, targets and benchmarks to define what it means to meet basic needs; set standard measures to track whether clients can access appropriate shelter, food and other necessities; establish a baseline and targets to measure employment success for clients; and in partnership with other agencies, define, track and monitor a range of health and social indicators to assess this broader range of outcomes.

S. Taylor: Thank you, Chair. I've just got a couple of remarks, and then I'm actually going to turn it over to Molly and David to address the specific recommendations.

We would like to thank the Office of the Auditor General for the work they did in reviewing our disability assistance programs and to the committee for the time we have today to go through those and present the ministry's response.

I think one thing that I'd like to point out before we start is that the ministry does accept all of the recommendations and is moving forward to address each and every one of those. We're also committed to supporting government's goal to be the most progressive jurisdiction for people with disabilities. Above all else, in the work that we do every day, we do consider the well-being of the clients that we serve.

D. Galbraith: In response to recommendation No. 1, the first thing I'd like to flag is that for the ministry, communicating with our clients and their advocates is key for ensuring that we're providing the services as best we can to our clients to ensure their well-being.

We actually have a pretty good history of communicating with our clients. In addition, hearing the feedback since the audit work was done, we've actually been able to expand on that. Presently, applicants are asked to respond to a voluntary survey when they use the self-serve assessment and application to submit an application for assistance.

Starting in March, we started a service satisfaction survey, which gave clients an opportunity to provide feedback regarding the ministry's service delivery, as we continually work to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery. We received over 3,000 responses to that survey.

The other thing that we do is hold client focus groups, and we also hold focus groups with our advocates to ensure that we're getting feedback. Also, I'd like to add that with the recent changes, moving to a provincial telephony queue with a new back-end system, we have the ability to receive clients' comments through the telephone. Also, we recently launched our new on-line portal called My Self Serve, which also has the opportunity to provide direct feedback about their service experience.

We take into account all of those comments. The 1,500-odd people that provide the services really care about their clients, and we use that feedback to try and either speed up the process or make it as simple as possible.
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M. Harrington: Just to add to David's comments, subsequent to the fieldwork…. We worked quite closely with the Auditor during this, because the audit was happening just as the disability white paper process was starting, which concluded in government's release of Accessibility 2024, which is a comprehensive plan to address the goal that the Auditor identified of being the most progressive disability jurisdiction in Canada.

As a result, and being cognizant of improving the information we collect on clients' needs, we held a robust consultation process through the province in terms of on-line, social media and face-to-face sessions. We were able to augment our understanding of clients' needs and their day-to-day existence in a much more robust way and have a lot of face-to-face engagement with clients. I'll speak to that in a more detailed way once we get to the evaluation framework.

We held 23 in-person sessions, visited 15 communities and, really, basically engaged face-to-face with about 1,200 people, a significant number of whom were persons-with-disabilities assistance clients. We also held a large and ongoing on-line discussion. Again, obviously the identity of the client was protected for privacy purposes, but many people self-disclosed as being PWD clients during that on-line discussion, so it provided us with an opportunity to collect a lot of qualitative information that had not been previously accessible.

D. Galbraith: With regard to recommendation No. 2, the ministry has heard the recommendations from the Auditor General and also from feedback we've had from our clients. We're presently working on refining the functionality of our web-based policy manual. A plan is in development to refine the functionality of the tool as well as improve the clarity and accessibility of information based on our user feedback.

We want to make it easier to search for information. We want to make sure that the language is easy for our clients to understand and also that we have the right groupings of the information so that people don't have to either see repetitive information or look in multiple places for certain information. That's actively underway now.

M. Harrington: Recommendation No. 3. Again, we agree and accept this recommendation, that we review the PWD process to address the risk that some applicants may not have a family physician and improve the clarity of the PWD application form. This includes developing guidance to help clients, physicians and assessors in completing the application. We've also received, at the same time, a recommendation from the Ombudsperson to improve the PWD process as well, to improve the accuracy of decisions.

One thing we are doing is conducting an administrative review, a Lean process review, of the PWD application process to streamline and to make process improvements to that process. We will report out on that over the next year. As well, in terms of the family physician and access to a family physician, we recognize that, and we've worked with the Ministry of Health.

There was a consequential amendment to our legislation in the last session to allow nurse practitioners to fill out the form, which, again, will enhance the access to the medical community for applicants. We're just starting the process of working with that professional cohort to develop the regulations to allow them to fill out the form as well as MDs.

D. Galbraith: With regard to recommendation 4, the ministry regularly provides training to staff with a focus on providing client-centred services, accommodation and working with people with a wide range of barriers and disabilities.

Training is delivered to front-line staff and then embedded into core training for new staff. Since 2010 the following training has been delivered: "Duty to Accommodate," "Mental Health," "Active Listening," "Recognizing and Reporting Child Abuse and Neglect," "Domestic Violence," "Diversity," "Service Excellence," "Violence Prevention," "Advanced Decision-making."

The other thing I'd like to add is that I sit on the article 29 committee of our ministry. One of the things that we talk about with the union is any feedback that they have around training, because sometimes they hear additional issues on the areas that staff would like to be trained on. Then we take that advice, and we move forward on it. We'll continue to ensure that our staff training is relevant, current and focused on improving the client experience.

Recommendation No. 5. As part of the ministry's channel strategy, significant advancement is in progress related to telephone service delivery. Through the telephone service channel, there are currently eight linked contact centres answering approximately 1.5 million calls annually. In January 2014 the ministry began piloting the new ICE telephone software, and in June 2014 the ministry introduced the enhanced telephony software provincewide. We've effectively moved to what we call a provincial queue so that calls are answered as fast as possible by whoever is available.

Provincewide deployment allows for equalized response times regardless of where in the province the call is initiated. The new telephone technology also improves the ministry's telephone service, offering flexible, consistent options for clients, including phone system messaging that alerts callers when the contact centre is experiencing higher than normal call volumes; an option to leave a callback number while continuing to keep the caller's place in line; and also additional access to self-service information, including the status of the monthly stub and cheque amount.

We follow the information and the metrics around
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the telephone system closely. We see reports on a weekly basis. The new software we have is actually quite powerful in the reporting that we have to ensure that we are dealing with clients as fast as possible.

The new callback function is actually quite valuable for our clients, especially those that are on time-limited mobile phone types of systems. That way they don't have to use up valuable minutes waiting on line. We found that's something that clients really enjoy.

We're moving forward on having a much more robust telephone system. I actually got to visit the new integrated centre that we have in Surrey, where we're housing approximately 100 people on the telephone system. It's quite an impressive system to see in action, and the staff there do a fabulous job.

Recently the ministry has moved to what we call a centralized intake process. Basically, what that means is that when someone applies for assistance, that work can be done virtually anywhere in the province, as opposed to by just someone in that local office. The intention there is to ensure that we're trying to reduce the number of office visits and also speed up the process for those people involved.

We continue to look for opportunities for feedback on how we're doing with regard to our assistance process, basically through the numbers of feedback mechanisms that we have — either in person, on line, through the telephones or virtually.

As I said, the ministry continues to update our on-line application tool in response to our feedback. Several enhancements have been made, including that applicants can select a preferred callback time. There's an enhanced progress bar that shows the applicant their progress with completing the application. We've improved the language, based on clarity. We've also reduced the number of employment-related questions to address redundancy.

With regard to recommendation 7, the ministry is committed to ensuring physical access for all of our clients. While all sites where the ministry delivers service are wheelchair-accessible, there are a small number of sites where wheelchair access is not viable from the parking area. The ministry will discuss these specific sites with Shared Services B.C. and, where possible, encourage the consideration of accessibility modifications or try to build that into future lease agreements.

M. Harrington: With regard to recommendation 8, that the ministry develop and implement a risk-based approach to review initial and ongoing client eligibility for PWD designation to better ensure the program is serving only those clients who are eligible for benefits and supports, we take this recommendation by the Auditor seriously.

We've spent a considerable amount of time over the last few years improving the adjudication process to move people through the system as quickly as possible and with as much accuracy as possible. As a result, about 72 percent of the PWD designation requests are approved at application.

There are significant improvements that we've made to the internal appeal process, the reconsideration process, based on recommendations from the Ombudsperson. About 66 percent of those reconsideration applications by PWD clients are approved at recommendation. As a result, we've seen a significant drop in the number of PWD applications that go to appeal, and only about 8 percent of the ministry's reconsideration decisions are overturned at appeal. So we've ensured that clients have more timely and more accurate access to benefits.

What we will turn our heads to on a go-forward basis is the flip side, which is this recommendation that we ensure that only those clients that are truly eligible for benefits are coming onto assistance. We believe that that's primarily at the primary and the original decision-making process, as clients come onto the system.

As the Auditor indicates, there is ongoing review of financial eligibility, but there is not ongoing review of somebody's designation eligibility. The last time we did do a review of that, and the Auditor did review our work, was in 2002. At that time only a very small number of clients were deemed to be ineligible, about 0.6 percent of the entire caseload, so we believe that our effort is best focused at the front end in ensuring that there is indeed accuracy of decision-making.

We're fairly confident, based on the work that we have done, that we have ensured people are moving through the process that are indeed eligible, and we will turn our heads to ensuring that there is no sense that there is…. I think the Auditor's words were a "false positive approval" at the front end.

D. Galbraith: With regard to recommendation 9, with the recent changes that we've had on moving to more of a provincial approach to our services, plus with the new back-end solutions that we have with regard to the telephone and the systems that are attached to it, on a weekly or a monthly basis the ministry monitors a number of performance standards and metrics with regard to intake. The ministry has been updating its reporting system for intake-related standards as the result of recent system enhancements and process refinements.

We monitor the number of applications received, the average number of days prospecting, the number of days to eligibility decision, the number of applications outside service standard, the applications of triage so that applicants fleeing abuse or with immediate needs are addressed first. For telephony we have a dashboard that includes calls offered, calls answered, abandonment rate, percentage of calls answered within two minutes, average wait time and average talk time.

As noted in the report, we monitor the PWD deter-
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mination standard, which is the standard of 90 days. The average in March 2014 was 62 days. The reconsideration decision standard between April and February — the reconsideration service standard of ten business days was met in 97 percent of the cases. In addition, internal to the ministry we're engaged in a large project to align reporting and accountability and offer integrated monthly reporting of key performance information.

M. Harrington: Recommendation 10. Again, we fully accept this recommendation that we put in place a full and comprehensive evaluation framework for the PWD program. As the Auditor indicates, we do track a number of indicators on an ongoing basis there, within the audit report itself. But we'll enhance that to put a comprehensive evaluation framework in place.

We've basically done an initial review. There's no such other program, and as the Auditor indicates, almost all the provinces, with the exception of Newfoundland, actually do have a PWD-type program. So there is nothing that is an example for us or anything that we could benchmark ourselves against. We are entering new territory in putting this evaluation framework together. We'll do that in cooperation with our partners in the disability community and our key ministry partners.

In terms of evaluating the employment programs, the employment programs have initiated the procurement process for undertaking an evaluation of the employment programs. I believe a successful proponent will be announced shortly, and they will initiate the work to evaluate the employment programs.

As well, we've entered into initial discussions with the Michael Smith Foundation at the University of British Columbia to help us with the mapping of the complexity of the system of supports that is provided. As the Auditor indicated, we are going to have to work in partnership. It is a whole-of-government effort to undertake that evaluation. In terms of the supports for persons with disabilities within the provincial system, there's over $5 billion worth of supports across the system, and the PWD program is obviously a subset of that.

We're going to have to work closely with our Ministry of Health colleagues, our Housing colleagues, our Community Living B.C. colleagues as well as our federal partners to map through that complexity, to see how this particular program contributes to the PWD clients' outcomes. The Michael Smith Foundation is working with us to map that complexity.

S. Taylor: In summary, the ministry is moving forward to address the Auditor General's recommendations, and we are very committed to improving client accessibility, the integrity and timeliness of eligibility decisions, and the relevant evaluation framework.

As many of you may know, the ministry recently released government's ten-year plan on accessibility for people living with disabilities. It's called Accessibility 2024. In that plan there are proposed outcomes and measurements that will increase accessibility in B.C., and there are a number of things outlined as initial actions that we can take and commit to today. So there is a lot of work going on in the ministry and with our partner ministries right now in making that plan a reality.

Among the measurable outcomes included in Accessibility 2024, both accessible service delivery and income support are highlighted as actions that government plans to work on over the next ten years.

S. Robinson: I appreciate the work of the Auditor General's office and certainly appreciate hearing the response. As someone who spent most of her career in social service, a lot of these issues that were highlighted were things that we certainly saw in the organizations that I worked in. I'm pleased to see them come forward, and I'm pleased to hear about some of the responses.

I do have a couple of questions for the Auditor General, however. Recommendation 4 is a recommendation that's really about training staff. In terms of doing training, it's not the same as measuring skill set. I wanted to hear from the Auditor General's office. You can provide all the training you want. It doesn't mean that people, in terms of an outcome, understand the training or are able to then have developed a skill set.

I'm going to assume that the intention — maybe I'm just checking it out — is that people develop skill sets and not just participate in training.

L. Hatt: Yes, that would be the outcome of ensuring that there's training. I think one of the things that it's important to recognize about the way that the services are delivered, and I think the ministry sort of made you aware of it, is that there are queues. People don't necessarily have one caseworker that they work with all the time. So it's really important in that kind of system that every single person who has contact with clients has that skill set and that training to deal with people who may be coming in with vulnerable issues and concerns.

We wanted to highlight that in particular to ensure that anyone who's having direct contact with clients would have that range of training.

S. Robinson: If I could continue with this line of questioning a little bit, just being exposed to training doesn't ensure a skill set, is I guess what I'm just trying to flag — that because training is offered doesn't necessarily mean that it's been transmitted to actually demonstrating the skill set. I would really appreciate sort of a stronger rec-
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ommendation that speaks to people actually having demonstrated skill sets rather than just participating in training.

You can deliver all the training you want. It doesn't mean that people now can do active listening or now have a certain understanding about accessibility. It just means that their name is on a sheet — that they have attended training. I would hope that the ministry would recognize the distinction.

I have one other question for the Auditor General if I might, Chair. Recommendation 8 talks about implementing "a risk-based approach for reviewing initial and ongoing client eligibility…to better ensure the program is serving only those clients who are eligible for benefits and supports." In the presentation that we heard, there was mention that sometimes people actually deteriorate while they're on, and they need additional supports. But that's not included in the recommendation. This is only about identifying those who are no longer eligible. But the other group — which needs, actually, more support — isn't included in this recommendation. Is there any particular reason why?

L. Hatt: When we made the recommendation, when they do the adjudication of the PWD designation, it's the checking of health status. Some people may not be permanently disabled. It may be for one or two years. But there's no ongoing check of that. If they were to check those people, they would identify both. They would identify people who may be deteriorating as part of that process as well as people who may no longer be eligible.

I think it's really important to point out that we spoke to the ministry quite a bit about this because we recognize there's a lot of sensitivity for people who are on this program to feel concerned about having their health status checked by the ministry, and that's why the recommendation is really focused on a risk-based approach. The ministry does have processes in place where they flag files to say: "This person is suggesting that their disability is not permanent, that it may be a temporary thing." We're just suggesting that, yes, they follow up with those flags to check in.

C. Bellringer: If I'm understanding the question correctly, I think it's accurate to say that our intention was for that recommendation to cover going both ways. Most certainly, the risk-based approach and the review on an ongoing basis would uncover things going both ways. Our explanation of it after the comma in the recommendation really only reflected the one side, but it wasn't intended to mean that we would only be looking for it to only cover that side.

If I'm understanding the question correctly, then no, we were not intending it to be limited in the resolution of it.

S. Robinson: My only suggestion is that, if I could be crass, if we're only looking for cheaters, or those who are taking advantage, I think it's important to recognize that it goes both ways. The recommendation only qualifies one side and not the other. A more balanced perspective would be to recognize that there are two sides of that.

K. Corrigan: To me, one of the key findings was in the sidebar on page 29, where it said:

"We reviewed several evaluations done by agencies external to the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation, including those found in academic papers and other groups' papers and proposals advocating for a specific policy change."

"…the evaluations taken together do indicate that the shelter and support amounts provided by the ministry do not allow clients — without the support of other programs, e.g. long-term care, community organizations or family support — to meet their basic needs."

Then on the next page, on page 30, it talks about the measures the ministry uses to determine whether clients' basic needs are being met.

The fourth bullet down says that persons with disabilities average 65 percent of the after-tax low-income cutoff. Then next to that it says that people can end up in what are called "straitened conditions."

To me that's pretty important information that the Auditor General has included in the report. I know there's talk now of working with the Michael Smith Foundation and taking a look at the range of supports there are and whether or not people's basic needs are being met. But I think the Auditor General has been able, after taking a good look at this area, to come to the conclusion that basic needs are not being met for many people with disabilities who are receiving support.

I think every single one of us, every MLA at this table, has staff in their offices who have people coming in, looking for assistance and looking for assistance with filling out the forms, and so on. Every one of us or our staff certainly could say, without going much farther than what they know now, what is available and isn't available and the fact that many, many people are in really tough shape — possibly particularly in large urban areas where housing is very expensive.

It's an observation, but I'm just wondering whether the ministry has any response to that. I don't want a policy comment. I guess that's not appropriate. But is there not a recognition that people's basic needs are not being met, as pointed out by the Auditor General?

M. Harrington: I'll leave it to the Auditor General to comment on whether there was a conclusion in the report that basic needs were being met.
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I think the conclusion was that there was more evaluation that needed to be done to confirm that basic needs were being met.

L. Hatt: Yes, I think it's important, though, to point out that yeah, there is definitely a risk that people are not having their basic needs met and that it would be some people on the caseload, based on the information that we have available.

However, we didn't come to the conclusion that the caseload is not having its basic needs met. But there is definitely a risk, given the amount of support and shelter amount that's provided.

K. Corrigan: Can I just follow up on that? Well, I'm reading from the report that the evaluations taken together — now, I know there are other evaluations — "do indicate that the shelter and support amounts provided by the ministry do not allow clients — without the support of other programs…community organizations or family support — to meet their basic needs."

So I guess there are some people who do have other supports, but there are many who do not. So I guess what you're saying is yes, there will be a certain portion of people whose basic needs are not being met because there are many people who don't have those other supports — either access to them, or they simply don't exist in their life.

To me that's a finding, and I think it's also from the people who walk in our doors. That is their reality. I'll leave it at that.

L. Throness: Several questions from page 16 for the ministry, if I could. Following up on what my colleague was just talking about, I was looking at some numbers on page 16. The ministry spent $975 million on shelter and support and $290 million on supplementary benefits.

Would it be fair to say that in addition to the $905 that a person on disability could get, if they are able to get all of their supplementary benefits, they would be able to get, on average, about $1,175 a month? When you add to that the $800 a month of possible earnings, they could have a possible income of nearly $2,000. Am I incorrect on that?

M. Harrington: There are over 70 in-kind and cash supplements available to disability assistance clients. There are a range of diet supplements available, which range from a monthly amount of $10 to $200. As well, there are transportation supplements that range from…. It's basically a bus pass that costs the client $45 a year, but allows them the equivalent of $50 to $60 a month in transportation. Or they can get a special transportation subsidy, which gives them $893 a year. And the earnings exemptions have been shifted. We're on the brink of them being annualized, but they're equivalent to $800. So if you add that up, you do get above the LICO, yeah, which is $20,000 a year.

L. Throness: I wanted to ask about the $800 exemption, because I believe that's an innovation. It hasn't been around for very long. I was wondering how that's going, and how much does it cost the government to raise that bar?

M. Harrington: We have had the exemption change in place since 2012. I know we had updated the participation rates, and the Auditor is aware of that from the fieldwork period.

In the fieldwork period prior to the change, about 14 percent of the caseload was participating in earnings exemption. Because of the policy change to $800 a month as well as annualizing the earnings, the participation rate in working has risen dramatically, to 16.5 percent. So it's about a 25 percent increase.

The average amount that a client earns has gone up considerably. It went up 30 percent, from average earnings of $398 to $516 a month. The average exemption amount went up, obviously, as part of that. Over the last 12 months the changes in the earnings exemption have resulted in clients earning $26 million more a year.

M. Harrington: Yeah. The cost to government is considerable from that policy change.

L. Throness: Okay. Now I want to go to the graph at the bottom of the page, if I can, Chair — a few more little questions.

There's a dramatic change, obviously, in that graph on the bottom of page 16. In about 1993 it began to rise. Does that reflect the demography of B.C.? What is the major impact, the reason for that rise?

M. Harrington: It's a combination of demographics, and it's a combination of policy changes. So there are a number of quite significant shifts that happen at different points in time that are policy-driven, as well as an across-the-board shift in increases in British Columbia in the percentage of the population that has a severe disability.

B.C. stands out among the other provinces as having the largest increase in severe disability of all the provinces. Anecdotally, that could be attributable to…. It's actually a more accessible physical built environment, and the disability community would convey to us that B.C. does have the most accessible built environment. So we have some sense of in-migration. We also have, obviously, an increase in the older end of the working-age population that is migrating here, as well as a greater incidence of back injury, etc.

The other thing that's much more dramatic is the shifts
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in policy. The most dramatic shift in policy happened in 2000. It was starting to happen in the late '90s, and it happened most explicitly with the change to the legislation in 2002. It opened up, for the first time, mental health as a condition that would be eligible for designation for disability assistance. What we've seen is that over that period of time, the number of cases has effectively doubled, and the investment by government has increased by 150 percent on an annual basis.

L. Throness: When you project for the next ten years, to 2024, what do you project?

M. Harrington: Yeah, and it would compound, right? So it would be more than 40 percent, because it would be 4 percent over each year. It would compound.

V. Huntington: I don't think there's anybody around the table that doesn't comprehend the complexity of what you're trying to deal with and the difficulty in trying to achieve your goals. Although, as we've noted through the report, some of the goals aren't defined in an appropriate manner, it sounds like you're trying to go in that direction. Therefore, it's difficult to say much of what I want to say here without it sounding terribly critical of the system.

I think it's really important — and I'm following up on something Kathy said — that you really comprehend what our offices do understand about what hits the pavement ultimately. If I look at…. I can understand the direction Laurie is going in, but I also want to bring his inferences and comments back to the report itself, which discusses the level of complexity that these individuals face in trying to access some of these services.

Where I see the bulk of the problem lying is not in the initial intake and the definition of eligibility. People can be defined and be taken in as PWD. Where we seem to be getting into the bulk of the problem, from my perspective and my office's perspective, are all the secondary services and definitions that they have to cope with.

Your answer, for instance, to Laurie's question about additional benefits. You say: "Well, they have 70 additional benefits." Just think about that answer for one minute, in terms of the complexity of accessing those additional benefits, the time taken to define whether they're eligible, even beginning to understand that you might be able to access some of these additional benefits. The complexity of your system has to be reviewed in terms of: what are you trying to do in terms of making those additional benefits available? Are they part of the initial goal in the first place? You really ought to be looking at that.

I'd like to just go through, if I can take a minute, Mr. Chair, what I mean with regard to some of them — and not just the bus passes. Those, I am supposing, somebody…. You must have criteria for that. How difficult are those?

Let's take a look at your definitions of, then, what you call annualized earning exemptions. A situation in my office where an individual absolutely desperate on the basic, hadn't accessed these additional benefits, thought: "Well, I've got an RRSP. I somehow, if I'm going to put a roof over my head, have to access more money. I can't work." And I'll come back to that.

"I have a small RRSP, and I'm going to try and start taking money out of the RRSP." Clawed back. I said: "Well, why would they claw back an RRSP? It's earned income. You're paying the taxes on it when you…." "No." It went to appeal — refused. It was clawed back. And I thought: "Well, what kind of definition of earned income doesn't include an RRSP?" That was one.

Two, employment and your definition of employability and employment supports. He wasn't on EI, therefore wasn't unemployed, therefore wasn't eligible for supports. Now, this may be a federal issue, but it's also something that is absolutely tied into your recognition of an individual's inability to support themselves. There's an issue there that you've got to deal with and reduce the complexity of obtaining….

This individual said: "I can no longer do the profession, and I never will be able to again. I need to be retrained into a" — as he called it — "static profession." But there was nothing there that enabled him to access that retraining.

The additional benefits and the appeal processes are very difficult, take time, and leave these people with a real sense of fear.

I want you to understand that we watch these individuals trying to navigate your system and all of those additional benefits, all those appeal processes. You can literally see the grooming deteriorate, the weight deteriorate, the mental health deteriorate. Fear and rage grow. These people are afraid because they cannot survive, and there's only so much money we'll pull out of our pocket to help them do it. All of it seems to relate to your secondary level of supports.

That's why I would really take a very, very good look, in my respectful opinion, at defining the issues that the Auditor General has uncovered in terms of the goals and making sure that those secondary levels of support are not as complex and difficult to achieve. That's where you're able to feed yourself. Those levels of support are absolutely critical to the survival of some of these individuals.
[ Page 480 ]

M. Harrington: I think we take that very much to heart — the focus of those comments.

I think you can see the difference between the supplements that are just straightforward, based on PWD eligibility — which are the bus pass and dental and optical — and then the ones that have to go through a much more complex process, and our stats show that.

We take it to heart — the comment you've said. Thank you very much for that feedback.

V. Huntington: Good. I think it's a real issue. I think it has to be part of your goals. I think you have to find a way through the complexities of them.

M. Harrington: The feedback in the white paper process was very helpful and, as you can imagine, reflected very clearly to us that the system is too complex.

The one thing I would say is we've been trying to…. Data will tell us so much, but it's the qualitative research that tells us the story that you've been telling us. We've been working hand in hand with the Disability Without Poverty Network, which is the coalition of disability and poverty groups.

It's co-chaired by myself and Jane Dyson, who's the executive director of Disability Alliance B.C. It has Bev Gutray from the Canadian Mental Health Association, Kendra Milne from the Community Legal Assistance Society, Lorraine Copas from SPARC and Neil Belanger from the B.C. Aboriginal Network on Disability Society.

We have been finally able, through that coalition, to do some focus groups with clients. One thing that has historically been a barrier is to have the conversation with clients face to face because of the fear factor that you identified. It's been very helpful for getting much more qualitative feedback on the program, both on the policy side and, as David has indicated, on the service delivery side — having focus groups with clients in a safe environment to give us specific feedback.

V. Huntington: You might include constituency assistants. I know there's a desire to stay completely away from our offices in determining it, but I doubt whether there are very many people on the ground that know more about this issue than some of the people in our offices.

D. Eby: Mr. Chair, we've heard a lot today from the ministry about their efforts to improve access. I've had reports, though, that the ministry is actually reducing hours at rural offices and in fact has plans, potentially, to close some offices. Can the ministry comment on what office hours have been reduced and what plans are for closing offices, if any?

D. Galbraith: With regard to changing of hours, there are 11 offices that we have moved to half-days. That takes into account the number of clients that they have there, the ability to backfill staff when they're away and a number of staff moving to virtual work versus what we call front-office work.

The intention is to ensure that all the clients in those communities are served. One of the things with our clients is that they tend to be able to adjust where they're going and when they're going. We work with them and make sure that they're notified of any changes that we're going to do.

We did have some office closures that were the result of amalgamating a contact centre into the new site that I mentioned, which opened in Surrey. At this point, there are no other plans to close offices.

D. Eby: I wonder if the ministry could provide a list of offices with closed or reduced hours. I suspect they target, particularly, rural jurisdictions, where accessibility may be more of a challenge with the Internet, and so on. It's a matter of concern for me.

D. Galbraith: Sure. I believe we release those sites. I don't have the list with me, but I can get it for you.

B. Ralston (Chair): If you could through the Clerk on that, that'll be circulated to all members of the committee.

D. Eby: My next question. It's more of a surprise in that I had assumed that the intent of this program is to protect the dignity of people with disabilities to ensure, at base, that they have food, shelter and clothing necessities, let alone the next level, which I would hope we would get to, which is to help people to be accommodated in order to fully function as best they can in our society.

I was very surprised to read recommendation 10, which recommended the ministry track whether clients can access appropriate shelter, food and necessities. I've heard many reports that the shelter allowance, of course, is inadequate to cover rent.

Can the ministry clarify, in fact, that they are not tracking whether clients can access shelter, food and necessities — that there's currently no measurement? That's something that is not currently happening?

M. Harrington: I'm just trying to find where it says that we don't, just so I'm addressing your question entirely.
[ Page 481 ]

M. Harrington: As you can see, flipping the page over, on page 30…. Again, we don't have full data. The data we track…. These are the things that we do track. It's the second bullet from the bottom. We pay careful attention to whether people are housed, because people have to report their rent to us and their shelter status.

One thing that we keep careful track of and have on a long-term basis is the number of clients who indicate they have no fixed address. It's an indicator that indicates a couple of things. Sometimes people are in transition, right, or sometimes they're in a situation where their shelter is being paid, either at an emergency shelter or a transition house, etc. But there is a subset of clients that are homeless within that. We keep a…. That's carefully looked at. There is outreach work that is focused on bringing people that are homeless into the caseload. Quite often they would be coming onto PWD. That is carefully monitored.

In terms of payment for rents, you can see that indicator at the top there is basically the percentage of clients that are paying over the $375. We keep careful accounts on that and have measured that over a long period of time to ensure that we understand what's happening there.

The surrogate indicators, really… With the caveat that's been brought up before about access to supplementary benefits, there is the range of diet supplements. Obviously, that's based on people working with an advocate or coming forward to access those. We carefully monitor the use of diet and nutritional supplements as well.

The fullness of the evaluation framework is something that we're committed to. That's what we're tracking at this point in time.

D. Eby: One more question. I was impressed, as MLA Throness was, by the chart on page 16, which I find incredibly alarming. It's the continuing escalation in access to disability benefits in British Columbia without end, and no projected end, and 4 percent compounding increases into the future.

My question is first to the Auditor and then to the ministry. The question is: what, if any, programs did you find during your audit that addressed what you described on page 17 as improved outcomes for clients, which might include shifting people off disability and back to work through various programs?

This isn't sort of an idea without a framework. I know that in the United Kingdom they've had a great deal of success, in particular with mental health, shifting people off disability back to work through a program they have, which has been studied by the London School of Economics, where they provide cognitive behavioural therapy. They have actually paid for and exceeded the cost of the program by shifting people off disability.

My question to the Auditor and to the ministry: what, if anything, is being done to look at controlling this escalation, especially given that B.C. apparently appears to be singular in the growth of severe disabilities in Canada?

D. Eby: I was hoping you would address what you saw in British Columbia to shift people off disability and back to health.

L. Hatt: As we pointed out, we looked at the employment programs in terms of the evaluation, whether the ministry can demonstrate that their employment programs are indeed supporting people with disabilities. As we pointed out, at the time of our audit the ministry hadn't evaluated the effectiveness of that program. That would be one of the key programs the ministry currently has in place. In terms of any other additional programs, I think the ministry is probably in a better position to answer that.

M. Harrington: The evaluation of the employment programs, some of the early information…. If I'm misquoting the statistics here — we believe we've got the right statistics — we will correct the record and bring that back.

B. Ralston (Chair): You can't amend Hansard, but you could supplement your answer. We don't permit that kind of editing. You're kind of stuck with what you say. Sometimes that's good; sometimes that's bad.

M. Harrington: Okay, thank you very much, Chair. I'm just acknowledging the fact that I might speak erroneously for the record.

B. Ralston (Chair): None of us on this side are prepared to make that acknowledgment. [Laughter.]

M. Harrington: What the member has spoken to is indeed of significant concern to us. I think it's noted in the audit. We had, I think, actually quite productive discussions with the Auditor about the sense of well-being that comes from a life that is not entirely or indeed based on benefits, and true inclusion.

The early results that we've seen from the employment program, as they pulled their statistics for clients with disabilities, is that they are managing about a 32 percent employment and community attachment success rate. They will report out on that in a fulsome way as part of the evaluation. There's a dual commitment to both of those outcomes.

D. Eby: Just a quick follow-up. The British program has seen 43 percent of the people treated — with ten ses-
[ Page 482 ]
sions costing £750 — return to work and leave disability.

I just want to clarify that I'm not talking about an accommodation program to help people get into work and deal with their disability. I'm talking about identifying people on disability who, with an additional intervention, could leave the disability system. Is there a program currently looking at those opportunities for British Columbia?

M. Harrington: I think one thing that's important to acknowledge is that there's actually, within the temporary assistance caseload, another category that's called persons with persistent multiple barriers. As well, within the temporary assistance caseload, there are a number of people that would self-identify as having a mental health or another level of impediment to their ability to carry out daily living activities.

There's a lot of focus there on avoiding people having to come onto disability assistance, and with the supports of the employment program. Although I don't think we've actually moved to take advantage — and the B.C. mental health association has brought it to our attention too — of some of the cognitive behaviour supportive employment interventions that seem to be quite promising.

I think there's a sense that when the assessment is done for coming onto the PWD caseload, there's a very…. That form, which is 28 pages, is completely vexatious to people. I understand that, but a huge amount of the effort in filling out that form and going through that assessment is not just to assess the person's health status. It's actually to assess that they have severe impediments to daily living and that they actually, truly indeed, do need the disability assistance benefits. There's a significant attempt to ensure that the people that are coming into the disability assistance caseload are truly and indeed the people that will need some level of benefit.

Many of them will enjoy a life that has some part-time employment and some access to disability assistance. But there's a huge amount of effort that goes into ensuring that people that potentially would have the ability to rebound with a short-term intervention get the supports they need in the temporary assistance caseload.

That said, I don't think we're there yet, but that's what the policy intention is.

S. Sullivan (Deputy Chair): As someone who spent several years on a benefits program, I just want to acknowledge how far the system has come. It's light-years ahead of what it was, so thank you for what you're doing. Also, I think it's important to note how far B.C. is ahead. It's quite recognized around the country that we have some of the most innovative people. So I thank you for what you're doing.

I was trying to get a sense of the audit period, whether it included the consultation that went on. There were some credible consultations. I went to a few of the meetings. I remember one that was at least a couple of hundred people who were deaf and hard of hearing. It was quite an amazing process to watch the consultation that went on and the stuff that came out, the comments. I know the minister himself went to a number of meetings around the province.

Did the audit take into consideration the consultations that went on with the white paper?

L. Hatt: We didn't. Our audit was going on in parallel with the consultations of the white paper. In part, we wanted to conduct our work independently of that of the ministry. However, we made sure that we met with the ministry on a regular basis, so they were well aware of our findings in time to be able to understand them in relation to the white paper.

As an aside, as an audit group, as those consultation were going on, we were able to see the ministry's website and, as Molly had mentioned, some of the comments that were coming through. So we had an idea that our findings were consistent with some of themes that were coming through that white paper. However, we did do our work independently.

S. Sullivan (Deputy Chair): I guess the other point was that if the supports to people with disabilities is $5 billion ultimately and $1 billion is in this ministry, were you able to take into consideration the other supports and how that relates to the well-being of people with disabilities?

L. Hatt: Yeah, that's a great question. Our focus really was on the PWD program. As we point out, in terms of our recommendation around the evaluation framework and being able to collect information on this vulnerable population, it's really important that the ministry does, in fact, work with those other agencies. It's not only this ministry's responsibilities in terms of social and health outcomes. That's why we're making that recommendation.

B. Ralston (Chair): I have some questioners who've already asked questions, so I'm going first to people who haven't asked a question yet. Then we'll come back to those who have already asked one question.

M. Dalton: Just going back to the remarks of David and Laura about exhibit 3 on page 16. I noticed the climb from the year 2000 to present, from 30,000 to 95,000 plus.

We're looking at about 2½ to three times the increase. You'd mentioned that now mental health is considered with PWD. I think it's really important that we capture this.
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Also, a 4 percent increase per year — that's four times the rate of the population increase in British Columbia. In some ways I think it's good that maybe we're capturing people we never were beforehand. But it's actually extremely disconcerting — as in, what's happening in British Columbia? I can't see it just as far as an increase in age, the change in our society.

If you can make some more remarks about that. As far as the increase, it just seems to be really out of whack. Is it because we're discovering a lot more people, or the needs are there? Can you explain that more? You did explain, going back, some of the changes. But why is this continuing on into the future — the rate of change compared to the population?

M. Harrington: It's not just British Columbia. I'm just checking with our statistician back here, so again, I'm speaking accurately. Our growth rates are consistent with all other Canadian jurisdictions and international jurisdictions and the United States.

It's basically a policy discussion and a policy issue that is faced by all jurisdictions. I think it's driven by policy changes that happened across the board that were similar to the change that happened in British Columbia in 2002. It's basically a social policy topic of discussion that's happened at the Council of the Federation among Premiers. It's happened in the OECD reports. It's happened at the American federal government level, which delivers the disability program in the United States. I think it's basically just a common public policy topic of discussion.

I think it's a shift that's happened in policy and a shift that's happened in terms of people's willingness to acknowledge issues that perhaps they didn't before. It's a shift in medical practice. I think it's a combination of a variety of matters. The one thing that we measure very carefully is B.C.'s population stats as they're correlated to B.C.'s disability populations statistics from the federal government and our participation rate on a disability assistance caseload. We are very much comparable.

There is that one factor that I discussed previously. I think primarily because we have a huge portion of our metropolitan area that's largely snow-free and a modern-built environment, we do have a more hospitable environment for people that have mobility issues. That's acknowledged, and I think it's just a larger percentage of the population in Canada that has a severe disability. But it's not a problem that's specific…. I wouldn't describe it as that. It's not an issue that is common or unique to British Columbia.

M. Dalton: It seems contrary to what you were saying a little earlier. You were saying that we're consistent with all the other jurisdictions. You were saying that British Columbia is more so because we're attracting some of…. I don't understand that as far as the rates, so maybe clarify that.

Also, with some of the comments you're saying, you seem to be indicating that it's not societal, but it's actually that we're broadening the parameters of allowing people to come on board with the PWD designation. Is that what you're saying, or are you saying that there's really some challenges, that there's an increased amount of people that are actually having the needs that deserve the designation? I'm not quite sure. Is it because you're saying there's a broadening of supporting people with needs, or is it because there's actually more people like this that need PWD support?

M. Harrington: I think it's both. There were huge shifts in welfare policy across all jurisdictions in the '90s and the 2000s. The big shifts started in the United States with the Clinton era, and they eventually migrated up to the Canadian provinces. The big shift was supporting more low-income people that traditionally had been on welfare, to go back to work. The second shift that happened at the same time was there was more support for people that had disabilities to come on disability assistance.

So you see dramatic shifts, in that traditional welfare caseloads went down and disability assistance caseloads went up. That is across the board in all jurisdictions. There's a broad, across-the-board public policy shift. That affected all jurisdictions, and they all have quite similar growth rates to British Columbia.

I'm just saying that when we look and we compare ourselves across jurisdictions, we correct for the slight statistical difference that is in British Columbia, that we have a higher growth rate in the severe to very severe disability population, and it's not statistically significant enough to say that. When I'm saying 4 percent is consistent, it's corrected for the difference in the other jurisdictions.

M. Dalton: One last comment. You mentioned that there are 1,500 employees. Is that specifically for people with disabilities, or is that across the ministry and with CLBC and other aspects of service?

D. Galbraith: There are approximately 1,500 employees within the regional services division. Approximately 1,200 of those are people who are what I'd call "on the ground" front-line workers, and there are other people that work on compliance and enforcement, and then there are people that work at headquarters. So the division is comprised of 1,500 people. That's my division.

M. Dalton: Your division — is that primarily with people with disabilities, or is that right across the board, with the CLBC also?

D. Galbraith: No. That's working with people that are there for income assistance or are there for PWD.
[ Page 484 ]

L. Reimer: My question is for the ministry. I had a conversation with my constituency assistant two days ago about the ministry and the difficulties with access to the system. I just wanted to ask you to please consider speaking to our constituency assistants. As MLA Huntington indicated, they can shed an awful lot of light.

I'm really pleased that the Auditor General has done the review, which will build on your good work that you've been doing as well, especially recently. But I think that speaking to our constituency assistants would just build the information that you already have. I just wanted to ask that question of you.

S. Simpson: I guess just before I start I'd like to reinforce the comment of MLA Reimer. I know that my constituency assistants…. I probably get more information and better understanding of the real complexity of the challenges people face in the real world from my discussion with them, because they're dealing with these things every day. So I'd reinforce that.

I think the constituency assistants of all members have become a very good source of information. They really deal with the people who are facing challenges and difficulties, who are coming in the doors of our offices. That's where the conversations are, and that's where you find out what the issues are for the people, where the system isn't going smoothly and might be helped.

I would reinforce those comments that they are a very good source. I'm sure all of them would be happy if you found a way to access their input. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to provide any positive input that might help with the work that you're doing.

I want to ask a little about the employment option and about employment. One of the things that I've heard over time around PWD, of course, is that the bar to get PWD and to become eligible for PWD can be pretty high at times. Most people say: "Well, we generally get turned down, and then we appeal, and then we're successful on appeal."

It seems to be a pretty standard process that people kind of view it that way, and advocates view it that way. They tell people not to be discouraged when they get turned down, because pretty much everybody gets turned down the first time out. Then you correct it later, and often that's successful.

The problem is that for a number of people…. They do want to get back to work as much as they can. They want not just some additional income but the personal value of getting back to work and being productive and all of that.

Their concern, though, as they look at those options…. They may not include the option "It may be I can go back to work for a period of time, but because of the nature of my disability, I then am going to be back off for a period of time" because of energy, because of whatever — any of a variety of things. Their concern, of course, is that they lose their status on PWD if they go back and are employed for a period of time.

How is the ministry dealing with that to encourage people back to work, to encourage people to look at taking opportunities that might be in front of them but where there's a pretty good sense these are not going to be necessarily a permanent solution? Maybe it's a mix of things that have to happen.

Is there a discussion about how that could work and about how you might be able to encourage that kind of innovation on the part of people around their options and still leave the door open for them? Otherwise, there's a disincentive, because they say: "Look, I'm worried that if I lose my PWD and I go back to income assistance, my income gets cut by several hundred dollars a month. I don't want that to happen, so I'm going to take less chance if I don't think this work option's going to work for me. I don't want to put my status at PWD at risk." Do you have that conversation much?

M. Harrington: Sure. Yeah, it's something that we're keenly sensitive to, so there are a couple of things that we've done. Two of them are longstanding. One is, obviously, earnings exemption, where you can blend earnings and being on disability assistance. The expansion of the earnings exemption from $500 to $800 a month meant a lot more people. We've increased the number of people that are trying work by 25 percent.

The other thing — we work closely with the B.C. Disability Alliance and the group on this — is the annualization of the earnings exemption. We wanted in particular to recognize a concern that the mental health community brought forward to us, that people who have episodic conditions will work for a couple of months and then just take some time off.

M. Harrington: Yeah. So the annualized earnings exemption. We got lots of positive feedback, and the results are very, very positive, so we're expanding that to the entire caseload.

The other thing that's longstanding and really important is…. Somehow, as much as we've tried to communicate this, we haven't been effective, so maybe this could be something that the constituency assistants could help us with, potentially, to reinforce. It's that when you do leave the caseload and you've got a PWD designation, you don't lose that PWD designation. It's automatically reinstated when you come back. You have to go through the income and asset test again, but you don't have to go through the process of getting the designation again.
[ Page 485 ]

Then, secondly, when you do leave, unless you earn above the premium assistance income test level, which is about $35,000 a year, you get to keep a significant portion — almost all — of your medical benefits, and you go on something called medical services only.

We've done those two things to try to create as positive an environment as possible for people to try employment and know that if it doesn't work, they can come back.

S. Simpson: That's helpful. It would be helpful if that information could be generated out to our offices, with the regulation around that. It would be helpful, certainly, for my assistants if somebody comes in and has that anxiety to be able to say: "Well, here are a couple of pieces of information that might help to calm you down about your concern that you're putting everything at risk when that's not in fact what you're doing."

S. Simpson: The second question. I've heard this discussion from people in the sector — whereas PWD and disability assistance is an income assistance program — and the debate about whether it makes sense to move it and make it a pension. Of course, the devil's always in the details about what the difference is other than the name. But pensions are inherently different than income assistance, generally.

Has there been a discussion about whether a pension model is a more respectful and appropriate model to look at for people who have been designated with a disability, rather than income assistance?

We made a commitment in Accessibility 2024 to commit to policy reforms to address income assistance issues raised in the consultation, including separating disability assistance from income assistance, and the first step that we've made in that regard is the annualization of the earnings exemptions. So it's to recognize that people, rather than being in a temporary system on a month-to-month eligibility basis, are really effectively on an annual basis. It's the first step in policy considerations in that regard.

S. Simpson: As those discussions go on, do you have any sense about when you're hoping to kind of be able to draw some conclusions around that? Or are you not there yet?

B. Ralston (Chair): Just arising out of that, could the Auditor General comment? If it were to be restructured as a pension as opposed to a monthly payment, would that take it off-book in the sense that it would no longer be part of the government's annual operating budget, or not?

B. Ralston (Chair): I mean, I'm thinking of the pension system that's already in existence, administered by the….

I'm just wondering, if it were totally restructured in that way, if that would be the result.

S. Newton: The difference between this and what we have as the pension that you would get for retiring is that this would be funded by government for a very specific purpose. The pensions that we contribute to are joint trustee pensions, where there are trustees on behalf of the employees earning and contributing, as well as the employer. So it sits as a separate entity, and that joint trusteeship is what manages the pension and makes the decisions. It's a unique characteristic which puts it off-book.

There are a variety of ways to structure pensions, and depending on the way you structure it, they will be on- or off-book. In this case, this is an expenditure for a regular stipend that occurs on a regular basis. It would be part of annual operating income. There wouldn't be a way to avoid it or an ability to create it off-book.

M. Morris: Further to some of the comments that Marc made and Laurie and some of my other colleagues here at the table…. The graph on page 16 — pretty graphic. You were mentioning earlier that a lot of the changes that we see from the late 1990s and early 2000s is attributable to the inward migration from other provinces and whatnot, as well as other issues there.

Then, when I look at exhibit 6 down at the bottom, the comparison of the rates in B.C. with other provinces, we have B.C. at $906 a year, Alberta at $1,500 and Saskatchewan at $1,200. You have mentioned the great weather that we have in the Lower Mainland and Victoria and whatnot as one of the drawing cards. But there must be other contributions that we make as a province to persons with disabilities to attract the inward migration that we're seeing that are possibly causing these numbers to go up.
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In some of your comments earlier, you mention that there are 70 in-kind and monetary supplements that we have in addition to the basic needs criteria that we have for people here.

Are the 70 in-kind and monetary supplements enough to…? Are they the things that are drawing people in, in addition to the good weather that we have here? I'm just curious as to what this increase is all about.

M. Harrington: I think it may have sounded like I was overstating. Member Dalton mentioned that too. I might have been slightly overstating the difference in the percentage for a population that's very severe. Ours is growing at a slightly higher rate than the other provinces.

I can't really comment on that difference in the rates between provinces and whether that's attracting people or not. Your comment probably speaks for itself. But the range of supplements is significant.

The one thing that probably is somewhat different between British Columbia and the other provinces is that our transportation supports are much more robust. We're the only province that has a provincial transit system. In turn, we're the only province that has an across-the-board bus pass or transportation supplement.

We keep a careful eye on how comparable our regime is to the other provinces, and it's pretty comparable otherwise. That's the one thing that I think is over and above the assistance provided by the other provinces.

M. Morris: Slightly. One of the other things mentioned in here as well in that exhibit 6 is that the comparisons "do not account for the differences in the cost of living in each province." Of course, at $906 in B.C. versus $1,500 in Alberta, and the cost of living in Vancouver compared to some of the regions in Alberta….

I guess what I'm getting at is…. We've got transportation supplements. We have the 70 in-kind and monetary supplements that you talk about. Is that increasing it up enough to attract all these people to B.C.? Are we in such a position here in B.C. with these supplements that that's a drawing card to British Columbia? I guess that's the crux of my question.

M. Harrington: The supplements, apart from the transportation supplements, are comparable to the other provinces, yeah.

B. Ralston (Chair): We're now going to go to second-time questions. I'm going suggest we just take a recess for five minutes. We've been at it for two hours, so maybe we'll take five minutes, and then we'll start again.

B. Ralston (Chair): We're going to resume our consideration of the Disability Assistance report. I have noted with staff who may have had to make some alternate arrangements that judging from the number of questioners and the detail of both the questions and the answers — and I'm not making any criticism — we may continue to deal with this report after our lunch adjournment at one o'clock and go into the afternoon with this report for some period of time.

I still have a number of questioners, and we only have a fairly limited time to continue this morning. With that comment, I'll turn it over to a beginning round of second-time questioners.

K. Corrigan: My question relates to recommendation No. 2, the recommendation that the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation "ensure that its on-line information on people-with-disabilities designation eligibility is clear and easy to find."

The response was that "the on-line resource provides extensive transparency regarding policy and legislation and augments several other information options," and a bit more. I know the ministry is looking at the functionality of the tool. But the answer does not seem to address, to me, the real concern about how difficult the process is.

The report also points out, on page 22, that "the service delivery model requires that an applicant have a high level of functioning and understanding of the eligibility rules and application process to access services," which many people with disabilities do. But there are also a large number of people, I would say, who don't.

So two things, I guess. I'm wondering if the Auditor General's office has any feedback on that response and whether they're satisfied with the response and where we're going in terms of accessibility, through the process.

Also, I guess, a question for the ministry. Can somebody who is seeking to be designated as having a disability walk into a government office and, basically, be given the help through the process — through that one door — in order that they can go through a complex number of steps that includes telephones and mail and on line, and so on? Can somebody walk into a government office and be assured that they can be taken through that process from beginning to end?

I guess that would be for the ministry, but also just a response perhaps from the Auditor General's office in terms of your level of satisfaction with the response on recommendation 2.

L. Hatt: We haven't actually done the follow-up on this audit. So until we've really looked at what they've done and where they're going, it's difficult for me to comment. However, from just what they've said, I think it's going
[ Page 487 ]
in the right direction.

I think it's really important to emphasize, again, the direction the ministry has gone. People do sort of navigate the system on their own. They do have options to ask for assistance, and the ministry can speak to those.

Having that information simple, clear, well understood and transparent is really important not only for the clients but, as you mentioned, constituency assistants or advocates who support those people working through the system.

D. Galbraith: I think the short answer is yes. If someone goes into our office, our employment assistance workers are great at walking clients through the system, so that service is available.

K. Corrigan: Without an advocate, then, somebody could walk into a government office — Service B.C. or one of the ministry offices that have been spoken about — and work their way through the system and get the help they need to make it through all those steps. Is that correct?

Could I just ask, perhaps…. Just a couple of stats. There is increased reliance on the telephone service, the toll-free telephone service. Do you know how long it takes, on average, for somebody to make contact? I don't mean, like, you're put on hold or whatever, but to actually make contact with somebody. How long does it take on that telephone service, on average? Do we know?

D. Galbraith: It varies, depending on the time of the month and the time of day. But on average…. Part of the issue is that it includes time for the callback function, but depending on the time of day, it can be within two minutes, or it can be, unfortunately, within 20 minutes. Those are the types of stats that….

We're starting, now that we've implemented the ICE system, to get robust stats on how we're doing. That then enables us to ensure that we can monitor the peak flows of when people are calling and be able to manage that with how we allocate our staff.

K. Corrigan: But we don't have a number. We don't have a number of the average amount of time it takes for somebody to reach somebody that can help them.

Then a couple of more stats — through you, Chair, if that's okay. I'm wondering what the rejection rate is on applications — or acceptance rate, I guess.

M. Harrington: For people at the original decision stage, when they first come in to apply, 72 percent of those applications are approved. When they go forward to the next level of appeal — it's called the reconsideration level — 66 percent of those applications are approved.

Then, when it goes to the final level of appeal, which is at the tribunal, only 8 percent of the refusals are overturned.

K. Corrigan: So it would end up being about 80 percent, if I'm doing my math right. A little over 80 percent from beginning to end are accepted?

M. Harrington: You'd have to forgive me. I have to do the math. About 80 percent — that's correct.

M. Harrington: Rob will happily work with you, but you both got to the same number at exactly the same time.

K. Corrigan: Okay. What is the most common reason for people not being approved?

M. Harrington: We did a whole bunch of process improvements in response to a review of the Ombudsperson in 2008. The biggest change we did was that when people get refused — the 28 percent who are refused — they're given in writing the reasons for the refusal.

The vast majority of the time the difference between the first application and the second application is that they use those reasons for refusal to go get additional documentation, and they bring that forward. That resolves almost all of the cases. That results in the resolution of almost all of the decisions. As I said, therefore, at the final stage there are very few decisions that are overturned.

It's the information that's given to somebody about the deficiencies in their first application and what they have to do, and then providing the additional documentation to address that.

K. Corrigan: Just one clarification. There's about 20 percent, at the end of the day, that are not in any way approved. I'm wondering what the most common reason would be for that.

M. Harrington: I could look up and see if we've got any detail and if there's any trend. But the short answer to the question is that they wouldn't meet the functional…. It's basically like a functional needs assessment. Do they meet the test for their basic ability to carry out daily
[ Page 488 ]
living activities? So the medical practitioner and assessor would not be able to provide evidence that they have a high enough level of impairment that their daily living activities preclude them from carrying out those daily living activities.

K. Corrigan: Finally, do you have a system to check the accuracy of the reports — the consistency of the reports — with your process, I guess, to make sure that, basically, the physician reports are accurate and appropriate and that you don't have differentiation between different physicians?

M. Harrington: We've never tracked back to physician numbers or done a match like that.

J. Yap: I have a couple of questions. First of all, you mentioned tribunals. I wonder if you can expand further the nature of the appeal tribunal. Is it staffed with tribunal people from within, or is it an external tribunal? Are their decisions binding and precedent-setting?

M. Harrington: There are two stages to the appeal process. There's the original decision that's made by a staff group in David's division. Then somebody has a right to a first level of appeal, and it's called the reconsideration. It's actually a group in my division, so we have a separation of duties and a segregation of duties. They would review the application upon the first level of appeal. That's an in-ministry staff group. They're both done at the ministry level.

Then there's a third level of appeal that's entirely arm's length. It's an arm's-length adjudicative tribunal called the Employment and Assistance Appeal Tribunal, and it has no relationship to the ministry. It's completely at arm's length. There's a chair and a small group of staff in Victoria. They hire and assess adjudicators around the province, and they convene panels. The appellant and a ministry staff person would go, and the appeal would be heard.

It's an appeal on the record. There's no precedent-setting step in any way throughout those three processes. It's strictly based on an interpretation of the statute and regulations.

M. Harrington: That's correct. It has the final say, and then a small handful…. Somebody obviously has recourse to the courts, as any citizen would. There's a very small number of matters that go to judicial review after that, like a handful a year.

M. Harrington: It's appointed by the…. The chair makes a recommendation, and it's a ministerial order.

J. Yap: So it goes through the board resourcing process. Nothing to do with the ministry.

M. Harrington: That's correct. Nothing to do with the ministry. It's completely separate from the ministry.

My other question is in regards to recommendation No. 7 and the reference to work with trusted third parties. I have no idea who these might be. Can you give an example of who would be trusted third parties and what the terminology may mean?

D. Galbraith: It depends whether the province owns the facility or a third party owns the facility — where we're renting the space, basically.

D. Galbraith: There are also third-party advocates who work on behalf of our clients. But this is with regard to facilities.

S. Robinson: I'm actually very interested in the role of these advocates. When I think about the government's goal about having the most progressive program in place, and then we think about the role of advocates…. Having been involved in an organization that looked for funding to hire advocates, and one of my friends actually is an advocate for one of the disability-serving organizations….

Would the goal then be to not require advocates so that the system itself would be navigable by anybody who needed to access it — so that you don't need advocates to help identify which of the 70 additional supports are needed, how to fill out a 28-page form? Is that part of the goal?

S. Taylor: I don't think that is part of the goal. I think we're always going to have specific circumstances or specific individuals that do need some additional assistance.

S. Robinson: One of the reasons I ask this is that I don't remember — maybe I can ask — the year that it went to a 28-page form. It was within the last ten years, if my memory serves me correctly.

M. Harrington: In 2002. I'm not sure how much shorter the form was before that. There was always a pretty onerous process. But it is indeed a 28-page form as of 2002.
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S. Robinson: I do recall the challenge that arose out of that, where the social service agencies that serve the community in general then had to go and find funds to hire advocates to help these folks manage a 28-page form and liaise. That created a whole other level, I guess, of bureaucracy and expense that was borne by communities.

Just trying to see…. As you move forward to promote accessibility, will there be less of a need, perhaps, for advocates so that some of these organizations won't need to hire these other folks who would help navigate?

M. Harrington: I think the whole goal to streamline and reduce the complexity in the system, both at the original application and subsequent application for supplements, is meant to ease that burden.

I have another question that has to do with the channel strategy — the four accessibility goals that were listed on page 19. It talks about broadening on-line and telephone access, maximizing efficiency and integrating service delivery formats — the government priorities.

Then the fourth one is: "Continuously improve to ensure effectiveness." I just want to hear from the ministry: what tools or strategies will you be using for this goal in terms of continual improvement, continual assessment? What plans are in place to bring that to fruition?

D. Galbraith: Sure. The first thing I mentioned is with the new systems that we're bringing in, we have much more reporting capabilities. We have much more metrics that we're able to follow — whether it be through the phone, through the Net, through tracking how what we call our virtual workers are doing with regard to intake and profiling. So we can start to see where we're getting improvements or where we're not getting improvements.

There's also been…. I mentioned it earlier. We're implementing a new — for lack of a better word — accountability matrix so that each of the heads of the various streams of delivery have metrics that they can track and that their supervisors are aware of.

The intention of the first step is having good metrics. The second step is monitoring those metrics. The third step is then beginning the analysis of those and just starting that good reporting loop.

We have a monthly meeting between all of the heads of the various streams. One of the things we go through is our actual performance and ways that we can improve on it.

The last question that's a follow-up to that is this idea of continuous improvement. Is that something that we can expect to see throughout all of these changes around monitoring, tracking, feeding it back into the system and continuously improving that? Are there other strategies for other areas that we'll be looking at — those kinds of tools and strategies to feed back?

L. Throness: I just have a few quick questions here. Is there a residency requirement in B.C. before you can apply for PWD?

M. Harrington: It may be a moral hazard, but it is a legal requirement. The income assistance system is partially funded through the Canada social transfer. There is only one base across-the-board policy requirement that all of the provinces face as a condition of receiving that funding — that they don't refuse to serve on the basis of residency and that they automatically deem somebody eligible as they move in.

L. Throness: Understood. Are those who receive benefits from Community Living B.C. also on PWD?

M. Harrington: Eighty or 90 percent of CLBC clients are in receipt of income assistance. Due to privacy considerations, we have to do a data match. The last time we did a data match, it was close to 90 percent.

M. Harrington: You can — the caveat being that if you receive more Canada pension, CPPD, than the $906, then you will basically not be eligible because you won't meet the income test. So if you receive $907 worth of CPPD, you cannot receive a dollar of disability assistance. But there are 15,000 to 20,000 clients that are joint CPPD–disability assistance clients.

L. Throness: So the PWD is deducted dollar for dollar from the CPP?
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M. Harrington: Our data on condition is difficult to use in that the way the form is set up and the way our data is subsequently recorded is that a physician can identify up to five medical conditions.

The data that we pulled most recently indicates that 50 percent of the caseload have a mental health condition of some sort. The vast majority of them would also have other concurrent issues. Some would only have a mental health impairment.

M. Harrington: The best stat I have is that 50 percent of the caseload have a mental health impairment of some sort. We could try to pull data. The data is quite messy.

L. Throness: Finally, the white paper resulted in calls for more employment for people on disability.

L. Throness: Are there special steps the ministry is taking to help people find work?

M. Harrington: There definitely are. There's a range of policy, program and engagement activities. In terms of policy, the biggest shift that we will make is allowing everybody to go on annualized earnings exemption, which was heartily recommended in terms of feedback from constituents in the stakeholder community.

Secondly, we will, at the program level, sharpen the focus of our Work B.C. programs to provide improved supports to persons with disability. There's a commitment in Accessibility 2024 to provide $3 million, on an annualized basis, worth of assistive technology for people to make transitions to employment. We also declared September to be Disability Employment Month, and we will do that on an annual basis. So we've done a lot of engagement work through that month.

We struck a committee of CEOs in the province that's co-chaired by Tamara Vrooman, the CEO of Vancity, and Wynne Powell, the former CEO of London Drugs. It has 15 CEOs to work with us to basically shift the private sector around to employ more people with disabilities. They're very committed to that.

B. Ralston (Chair): I just had a question arising out of Laurie's series of questions. Is a person who's a long-term drug addict considered a potential candidate for PWD, or is that classified in another way?

M. Harrington: Addiction is an allowable impairment. It would just, obviously, depend on the level of functional impact that that has on their daily living activities. So somebody could live with an addiction in a variety of ways.

D. Eby: Just one question following up on MLA Throness's and then one other question.

The follow-up question is…. We've heard a lot of speculation about disability tourism, essentially, and people coming to Vancouver because it has this built environment that's more accessible, and maybe it's too easy to apply as soon as you get here. I think that was the implication I heard in some of the questions.

I guess what I'd like to know is: do you have any statistics behind the increase that we see on page 16, actual numbers that show people who came from other provinces and who were upgraded from basic social assistance — any sort of statistical information — or are we purely speculating here?

M. Harrington: We don't track that. We could see if we could backcast it somehow. But we don't have any statistics in that regard.

D. Eby: I mean, can we say with any certainty what the cause is in the increase on page 16? It's just that chart that shows the escalation.

M. Harrington: Oh yeah. I think, again, it's a combination of things. I think the in-migration is a very minor factor in that. It could include a variety of circumstances. For instance, a family that is in retirement mode that's moving to Victoria and that has responsibility for a developmentally disabled child could be moving into the province because it's easier to live here. But statistically, that is in no way the predominant factor.

The predominant factor is the policy change in 2002 that explicitly allowed for mental health as a condition. That is across the board in all provinces and has been identified as a contributing factor to the significant growth in disability assistance caseload. So it's very much….

The other thing is just a variety of things that are impacting the health system as well as the disability assistance system — longer survivorship rates for people that have debilitating conditions. Therefore, people are living longer, post-19, and then people are living longer into their 40s and 50s because of medical advances.

I think it's a combination of those two things that would be the predominant drivers for the caseload growth.

D. Eby: I just note that it would be useful to have, wherever possible, some sort of basis on which to understand this increase. It seems really important.

D. Eby: The second question I have is…. I know that some of my colleagues have had complaints about the new phone system. We heard a little bit about it today from the ministry. In particular, there's an understanding that there's some kind of a notification for staff at the call centre that once they go past 11 minutes, they get a notice that they're over time, that the call is taking too long.

Can you confirm that there is some kind of a flag or message that comes up for staff that the phone call should be of a certain length of time, and if so, what that length of time is?

D. Galbraith: Sure. I don't have the exact number, what the number of minutes is, but there is a target time that is based on metrics of a contact centre type of operation. There are a number of things. We also looked at the length of time that people are on the phones in general. We want to ensure we don't have staff burnout, for instance. So yes, there is.

There are a number of metrics that are attached to how long the call occurs, how many calls a person takes in a day, how long they're actually on the phone. A lot of it is based on the context and the centre industry but on also ensuring that those people on the phone are looking after themselves.

D. Eby: I wonder if the ministry might provide this committee with the length of time a phone call takes before a staff member is notified that they're over time on the phone call. Certainly, from my perspective, people with disabilities calling up may take longer than 11 minutes to communicate their concerns and to make an application. To impose call centre standards on a phone line intended for people with disabilities seems unusual to me. If there is any sort of a basis that the ministry would like to provide for that guideline, I would welcome that as well.

B. Ralston (Chair): Perhaps I can just ask a question of clarification. The metric that's being referred to — does that mean that the call is actually ended? Is there a notice that you should wrap it up or that you have some justification for continuing on the call? Or is it simply ended at that point?

D. Galbraith: No, the call is not ended. It's just an indication of the length of time that people are spending on the phone dealing with issues.

D. Eby: I guess if I were an employee and I were getting a flag on my computer that said that I was going over time on a phone call, I would understand that my job responsibility would be to end that phone call as soon as possible and that my performance would be judged on the length of the phone calls that I was undertaking, that this time was being tracked. My priorities might shift from addressing the client's need to addressing the metric that has been imposed.

That's my concern in relation to this flag — the basis for it, the length of it and any impact it's having on the service that's being provided — especially in light of the Auditor's report that states that access is an issue and there are all these different steps that are being imposed on people with disabilities. And the fact that people are getting forced into the phone system by reduced office hours and closed offices through the ministry's actions. It seems like the window is closing, not opening, from my perspective.

B. Ralston (Chair): The ministry will provide that to the Clerk of Committees, then. Thank you.

S. Simpson: Two questions, two items. The first one is: could you just give me an idea of how the annual exemption works in terms of when the determination is made, what the amounts look like, when somebody does not collect their assistance and how that formula works? It's just not clear to me how the annual exemption works.

M. Harrington: Sure. We've been in two years of piloting it, so the change that happened in January is that it will apply to the whole caseload. In those two years of piloting it, the way it worked was that you would shift from an $800-a-month benefit if you're a single person, right? If you're a couple, it's more, obviously. It's $9,600 — 12 times $800.

Starting January 1 and through that 12-month period, you would be able to accumulate $9,600 in earnings before it would start to impact your disability assistance.

You have to report still on a monthly basis. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is just so you can get
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a running tally, and also so that the ministry can send you some notification as you're starting to get close to the $9,600.

Then if you do — it's sort of in the back end of the year — breach the $9,600…. First of all, you've been given notice by the ministry. So you would go on to the medical services only — the regime that I described to you previously, where you would still have your designation if you wanted to reapply. You would go on to the medical services only. Then you could come back on the next January.

S. Simpson: So I'm on that. I get a chance to do some work, and I make a couple of thousand bucks a month. I work for a couple of months and make $4,000 or whatever. At some point here I get to some combination where I get my 9,600 bucks used up by November or whatever. Then dollar for dollar after that — the clawback is then dollar for dollar because I've got my annual thing. Okay, that makes sense.

My second question. I just want to go back to, I think, a question that MLA Morris raised, which again is about the page 16 graph. I think the question was…. We in British Columbia pay 900-and-whatever dollars a month for PWD for a single person. In Alberta, for example, it's $1,500-and-something a month for somebody. So a little more than $600 is the difference on a monthly basis.

Now, I think we know that the one benefit we have here that they don't have is a bus pass. I believe they don't do that. There was reference made to a series of other benefits. Are those benefits that are distinctly different from benefits that Alberta might offer over and above the $1,500?

S. Simpson: So the other benefit packages, excepting a bus pass, are pretty much the same in both jurisdictions, or close.

M. Harrington: Yeah. The one thing that's different about Alberta is that the eligibility criteria is stricter.

S. Simpson: Obviously, the other issue, when you talk about sort of what incentivizes people to decide where they're going to come, is housing costs — always a big issue. Do we provide any additional assistance around housing costs for people on disability here? Do we make them eligible for a SAFER program or anything? Do they provide any additional assistance in a place like Alberta?

M. Harrington: I'm not 100 percent familiar with the housing benefit scheme in Alberta. But ours is…. I think you're familiar with our benefits now in British Columbia. But I'm just not familiar enough with the Alberta scheme to really answer that question in any meaningful way.

S. Simpson: Fair enough. In the B.C. situation, though, there is not a supplement here for somebody collecting assistance?

S. Simpson: I mean, if you can qualify for a non-market unit, then you can take benefit of that.

S. Simpson: My sense of that is there isn't, apparent to the ministry, any kind of incentive that is getting people to come to British Columbia — other than it's a fabulous place to live and the weather's nice compared to most places — if you face a disability, other than to be in another jurisdiction, like an Alberta. In fact, they're going to give you a little bit more money, so if you can qualify there, there may be an incentive to be there because of a pretty significant difference in the rate.

S. Simpson: Sorry for putting you in that spot. Fair enough. We'll call it a rhetorical question.

We're at 12 o'clock, so I'm going to suggest we recess and reconvene at one. We'll continue consideration of this report at that time.

B. Ralston (Chair): Good afternoon, delegates. We'll continue our consideration of the Auditor General's report Disability Assistance.

S. Robinson: I have some questions about exhibit 6, which is on page 30, providing us with a sample of the
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measures that the ministry is currently using to determine whether clients' basic needs are being met. The first two bullets are the ones that I have some questions on.

One of the measurements is the number of clients paying more for shelter than their shelter maximum, and 69 percent of the clients are paying more. There's no mention of quality of housing under this measurement, and I want to, I guess, get a sense of: is that something that the ministry does look at or is planning to look at?

M. Harrington: We had that discussion with the Auditor as well. I think that's where we're going to have to work in partnership with the rest of government. The part of government that's responsible for making assessments about the quality of housing is in the Ministry of Natural Gas, and it would be a combination of the housing policy branch, B.C. Housing and the residential tenancy branch. We'd have to work hand in hand with them because we don't have the capacity to make any assessment about the quality of housing.

S. Robinson: So the intention is to move in that direction so that we could get some information back in the future that would give us a sense of (a) the number of clients that are paying more for shelter than their shelter portion and (b) what that is buying them. We would have a sense.

M. Harrington: Yeah. And then there's a range of…. We'd also have to work with the Ministry of Health, because some clients are in long-term care and some clients are in Community Living B.C. In that sense, the evaluation framework in having to work with those multiple agencies….

In the second bullet point, which speaks to the percentage of market housing that can be purchased with the shelter amounts across all B.C. regions, there's no number. It just describes sort of what the calculation would be, but there's nothing that answers the question of the percentage of market housing that can be purchased with the shelter amounts across all B.C. regions. The ministry's reported results don't actually provide a number.

M. Harrington: Yeah. The data that's available there just tells us the percentage of units. It doesn't tell us how many units are…. That's what the data tells us. That's the limitation of that particular data.

S. Robinson: Well, maybe you can point out what the answer is to the question. The measurement question says: "The percentage of market housing that can be purchased with the shelter amounts across all B.C. regions." Then it just gives a description of what you look at, but it doesn't actually answer the question about the percentage.

M. Harrington: We're working with that data, so it will be forthcoming. But there are limitations to the data. It only gives us a sense. It's just a broad survey. It just gives us a sense of the percentage of the units that are in different percentiles. We're working with that data to see what we can do with that data.

S. Robinson: It would be helpful to know what the percentage is, of course. You don't have the data. You're just telling us that….

M. Harrington: No, we don't have the data at hand. That's the data that we're trying to work with.

S. Robinson: My last comment I'd like to make is directed to Mr. Galbraith around the idea of this phone flag process. He mentioned that one of the reasons they have it is to protect staff from burnout. I'd be interested to find out from staff if this actually does help with burnout or if it actually contributes to burnout. I don't know what the process is for looking at outcome data around how it impacts on staff, but I would certainly be interested to hear a little bit more about how that decision was made that that would protect staff from burnout.

D. Galbraith: Sure. To be clear, what we track is the utilization of staff, how long they're on the phone, which is separate from the length of time that a phone call takes. That's the measure that we track to ensure that…. To be clear, I was saying that we track a number of measures, including how long people are on the phone. That helps to alleviate the chance of burnout. If I wasn't clear there, I apologize.

V. Huntington: Just two remaining comments. Firstly, I'd like to, with apologies to Mr. Galbraith, just put on record some comments regarding the review of the accessibility of the program on pages 18 and 19 of the report, in particular referencing the sidebar comments with arrangements for providing clients with face-to-face services.

I've spoken very briefly to Mr. Galbraith. I understand completely the government interest in efficiencies and in reducing administrative overhead and complexity by consolidating office services throughout the regions. However, in doing so, they have left some municipalities or areas orphaned and unable to access services, particularly if you're disabled, particularly if you're elderly.

In the case I would like to just put on the record, in the case of south Delta, south Delta and North Delta are per-
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ceived by the government as being a single basic physical entity. Therefore, because it's adjacent to Surrey, the offices are generally moved to the Surrey area. South Delta has, for all intents and purposes, absolutely no transportation links to Surrey or to North Delta. It is basically impossible to access services in either North Delta or Surrey. We look to Richmond, and even there the transportation links are very poor.

I have to almost admonish, but I am hoping officials will listen to the issues surrounding orphaning the various areas just on the assumption that all efficiencies are good. You cannot deliver access to programs if you've orphaned a community, and that is what is happening in the case of my riding in particular.

I just ask if you will take into account the comments of this report in that regard because it is and has been a very serious issue in my riding for some time now, from a health perspective, from a disability perspective, from accessing mental health assistance, employment assistance. Everything's been moved to Surrey and Richmond, and I would like that to be looked into.

Lastly, I'd just like to say to the Auditor General that I think this has been an extremely well done piece of work, and I think it's been an important piece of work. In that regard, I'd like to thank the Auditor General's office.

I'd also like to comment to the ministry that you have an incredibly difficult job. The nature of the work means that there can be a tendency to look at numbers. I think that in that regard, for me, the nub of the issue is recommendation No. 10. If you're going to avoid a numbers game in its entirety, you have to pay attention to those recommendations.

I think you've heard enough from many of us here that it isn't just a numbers game. There are goals that have to be met and have to be shared and that we're all interested in. I really urge you to seriously continue your reforms in that regard.

I had a quick question about, I think, the first level of appeal, which was reconsideration. You said the statistic was that 66 percent of the people who applied at that level were successful. In an appeal system, that's a pretty high rate of success. Is the policy then to deny at the first level and let it be sorted out at that level, knowing that it's likely to be successful? Is that a refusal of people to make a hard decision at the first level?

It seemed to me, with that level of success, you might want to review the initial decision and see if you could eliminate unnecessary appeals. I understand it does have the financial benefit of deferring payment, maybe into the next fiscal year, and that may be considered to be a good thing. But it is just a very striking level of success at that level and suggests to me that it needs a rethink. So I wonder if you have any comment on that.

M. Harrington: Yeah, this has been looked at quite extensively, in particular by the Ombudsperson, who issued a report on reconsiderations in January of this year. She also previously issued a report in 2008 about administrative fairness of the whole system. As a result, we've made lots of improvements.

I think the first context is that at the original decision 76 percent of the applications are approved. So three-quarters are approved. What we did, based on advice from the Ombudsperson, is we enhanced the administrative fairness of that step so that if you're in that 24 percent that are declined, you instantly get a letter — I think it's within a week at the most — that details the reasons for why your application was turned down. So it's put in writing.

Then the reconsideration process starts, and the ministry has ten days to turn around the reconsideration decision. It meets that standard that David was outlining 95 percent of the time, so people don't have to wait.

The reason that the majority of the decisions turn around — so the 66 percent approval rate — is that people work with the feedback that they get from the ministry about the original application. They get additional documentation, and they bring forward their appeal to reconsideration. Then two-thirds of those get approved.

Then after that the statutory limit for hearing at the tribunal is an additional ten days. Again, it happens quite quickly, unless…. At both stages, the client can ask for additional time. At that point, 92 percent of the ministry's reconsideration of decisions get approved by the tribunal.

We've been trying to improve that all along. That said, I think your comment resonates with the feedback that we got from the Ombudsperson that we need to improve the original decision process so that it's more straightforward and clearer for people.

We're moving to do that — both to streamline administratively how it happens and then to follow up on the Auditor's recommendations to improve the access to the system and make it easier and more straightforward for people to apply, to add nurse practitioners to the practitioner mix and to come up with a smoother process at the front end.

In addition, on the flip side of it, the Auditor suggested that we have to have a better risk management of the initial approach to make sure that the part of the 76 percent that is approved doesn't include some false-positive approvals. We'll look at that.

B. Ralston (Chair): Further on this topic, then, on page 23 in the report. This is on the issue of access. It's the second bullet down, beginning: "As shown in exhibit 4 earlier."

"Clients can access the on-line application anytime by computer over the Internet. However, the application is available in English
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only" — I'll have a question about that — "requires that the applicant have access to and the ability to use a computer and e-mail, and is long and redundant in places. There is also limited information detailing the eligibility rules for disability assistance, such as the higher level of asset and earnings exemptions allowed for individuals intending to apply for the PWD designation. This increases the risk that applicants do not understand the rules for allowable assets and could deplete financial resources unnecessarily."

This is part of recommendation No. 4. Your response was: "The ministry will continue to provide and build on its training regime that is in place for front-line staff." I think the recommendation addresses, in that, a little bit more than training.

First of all, in a lot of government services it's not mandatory, but particularly in a case where you're making an application for something as important as this designation — which may give you an income that you wouldn't otherwise have and that you are justified to by the statute — is there any thought to assistance in languages other than English? Or is that something where the individual has to seek out an advocate who speaks another language in order to navigate them through the complexities of the form and the policy?

D. Galbraith: With regard to different languages, yes, sometimes clients have to access third-party advisers. Sometimes we have staff that are able to interact with them in their language. I believe we're reviewing what we can do with regard to other languages on line, but given the large number of different languages, I think that's going to be an area that we're going to have to continue to work on.

B. Ralston (Chair): Generally, I think some agencies…. I mean, aside from French, which is the other official language of Canada, there are other languages which are certainly not majority languages but that significant populations speak. I know other government documents are translated into written Chinese or Punjabi or Tagalog, for example — being some of the biggest groups.

Is that an issue that arises, or is it something that you're not able to address just by virtue of budget?

D. Galbraith: We have some materials that are translated. We do not have all our materials that are translated. I think it's something that we'll need to look at going forward in the services we provide and from what we've heard on the consultation with regard to our response on the white paper. At this point it'll be something that we'll have to look at.

B. Ralston (Chair): Do you have any statistics on language preference of applicants or language preference of those who ultimately are successful in navigating through the process and getting the designation?

B. Ralston (Chair): There's no anecdotal evidence? I represent a riding in Surrey, and I know other members will represent, certainly in the Lower Mainland, ridings where other languages are commonly used in many, many contexts. It seems counterintuitive that you wouldn't have encountered, at least anecdotally from your staff, this as an issue.

B. Ralston (Chair): Okay. Well, that's maybe something I'll take up in another forum, then.

The other comment that's made here is that…. It says in the passage I read that the form is long and redundant in places. You did mention that it's 20 pages.

B. Ralston (Chair): It's 28. Pardon me. I understand that it's long and complex because you're engaged in a functional assessment, and that's important to make a fair judgment of whether the person should receive the designation or not.

Has there been any external review or any assistance in looking at the form to make it…? While it still achieves the same purposes, it's not long and redundant in places, as the Auditor General describes it?

M. Harrington: It has definitely been a topic of discussion at that Supporting Increased Participation table that we have that's co-chaired with the Disability Alliance of B.C. We've gone through the form together as an initial step, and we know that we need to move forward on that. Having the ability now to bring the nurse practitioners in as assessors will help us as well.

I wasn't here, but my understanding is that when the initial form was put together and the definition was changed in 2002, there was basically a consultation process around putting that together. We look to the rehab and occupational health and nurse practitioner community as well as working with the disability community to revise it in a way that both makes sure that we can continue to do the functional assessment but simplifies things for people.

The same questions are asked because different people are doing the same functional assessment. I think there are things that we've identified that we can do to streamline that. Not just having an MD sign it off will help, I think.
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B. Ralston (Chair): I understand the need for consistency, but sometimes some judicious editing can improve intelligibility, in my experience — thinking mainly, sometimes, of my own correspondence.

The last question I had just related to the bullet above. There was an example that was given where…. Reference has been made to the callback system as an improvement.

Apparently, what happened in this example was…. I'll just read it. "We found in one community that clients using a telephone from a trusted third-party site were unable to complete their service request over the telephone because of the ministry's callback protocol. As a result, at this site there was a regular trend of clients not receiving the benefits or services for which they may be eligible for."

Can you explain why that happened and what remedies, if any, have been taken? Can the Auditor General provide a comment as well?

L. Hatt: One of the things when we went to…. We did some regional visits, so we looked at a trusted third-party site in one of the regions. These trusted third-party sites tend to be a non-profit, and they deliver a certain amount of services for the ministry. In this case, I think it was things like crisis supplements or food vouchers, that kind of thing — a very basic level of service.

Clients would often come into these non-profits because they didn't actually have a phone themselves. They would use the phone at the non-profit to be in contact with the ministry, but if the ministry wasn't able to give them an exact time when they would call back…. It could be a day later or two days later, in which case, if the client wasn't at the site, the worker on the other end could not validate that that person actually could get the supplements. So people were actually potentially missing out if they were eligible for a crisis supplement in that case.

It was just us pointing out that although the ministry has worked and the callback process can be valuable for people who don't have access to long minutes on a cell phone or something, for people who are using these community sites there needs to be a little bit more clarity in terms of providing an exact time when they would be able to call back. So those people can go to those sites and connect with the ministry at that point.

D. Galbraith: Yes. One of the things that we try to do is when someone is talking to a person and if they do have a really complex issue on the telephone and it's going to take some time to deal with it, a really complex issue, then we try to line up with that client a time when we can connect with them.

The callback function is an automated function. Unfortunately, if it says, "We'll call you back in 19 minutes," and you call back in 19 minutes and you can't verify the person's there, then you can't complete whatever that issue might be. But what we try to do when we are on the line with someone is ensure that we can set up a time that's mutually agreeable when we can connect with them again.

B. Ralston (Chair): So this situation was an anomaly that's been corrected. Is that what you're saying? Or is this going to continue to happen?

D. Galbraith: Sometimes you can't correct it, given freedom of information. We need to ensure that we're dealing with our clients when we talk to them or we're dealing with their trusted third party who's gotten approval to act on their behalf.

D. Galbraith: Sometimes, if we can't talk to the actual person…. The short answer, I guess, is no. We can just talk about that some time.

D. Eby: Earlier this afternoon I asked a question about access in relation to reduced hours and closing offices, and I understood the answer that I got back was that there were no offices that were currently planned to be closed.

I relayed that during the break to my colleague Michelle Mungall, who was greatly relieved to hear that, because she received an e-mail from the Nelson Committee on Homelessness, and they said that they were told that in March 2015 the ministry intends to entirely close the local office in Nelson and that the Castlegar and Trail income assistance offices would also be closing at that time.

Now, I understand, Mr. Chair, that this is a big ministry, so I wonder whether the ministry wants to look into that or whether they can tell us with some level of certainty that in fact there are no planned closures in March 2015 or in the near future for Nelson, Castlegar and Trail or any other offices.

D. Eby: And I trust that if that's not correct, the ministry will advise the committee.

The following question relates to the decision to allow nurse practitioners to sign off on applications. I'm curious about why the decision was made to go with nurse practitioners rather than registered nurses.

I understand that at least in January of 2013 there were 252 nurse practitioners in B.C., whereas the College of Registered Nurses in B.C. says there are 36,000 nurses. So if you're concerned about access and having people with
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medical training sign off, why was the decision made to go with nurse practitioners, a very limited bump in the number of people who can sign off, versus registered nurses?

M. Harrington: The change that was made was basically in partnership and led by the Ministry of Health's review of the scope of practice of nurse practitioners and allowing the scope to include this assessment.

Obviously, we will move forward to do that, and then, as we work on a go-forward basis with the Ministry of Health and when there is a review of the scope of practice of nurses, that would be something that we would work with them on as well. Basically, all the changes were made to the scope of practice of nurse practitioners. That change, the expansion to do income assistance assessment and disability assistance assessment, was part of that review by the Ministry of Health of the scope of practice of that particular group.

D. Eby: Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. I hope I understood correctly that the next time registered nurse scope of practice is open for discussion, the ministry will be working to do a similar thing with registered nurses.

D. Eby: I know they can enter into that discussion. But is that your plan — to do that?

M. Harrington: We haven't talked to the Ministry of Health about it. This is the first time that's been brought up. So we'll take it forward.

D. Eby: I have one final question, and that is in relation to an issue that has been certainly in the media, which is the clawback of child support payments. I think the answer is probably one I can intuit, based on the answers so far.

Has there been any monitoring in line with the recommendation made by the Auditor General's Office to monitor the necessities? Has there been any monitoring of this policy and the impact on children who are unable to access child support payments as a result of the clawback where their child support is deducted from the parent's disability support payment? Has the ministry examined that at all to determine the outcomes of that policy on children and families?

M. Harrington: We haven't done any research that's specific to that particular topic. The one thing there is, to move forward on that, is there's a commitment to consult on family maintenance payments for families receiving disability income assistance. It basically opens up the discussion with people such as First Call and the coalition to have the conversation. Obviously, asking them to bring forward what the impact is will be part of that consultation. That's the next step.

K. Corrigan: There was a short discussion earlier that relates to the audit finding that there is a risk that some individuals may be in receipt of persons-with-disabilities benefits that do not qualify and a recommendation that a risk-based approach be applied to the initial and ongoing client eligibility. My recollection is that the ministry response was that, looking at continued eligibility, the last time that there had been a review had been in 2002, but only 0.2 percent of those that were receiving benefits were found to incorrectly be receiving benefits.

I'm wondering if the Auditor, having made…. I assume that the Auditor General's Office would have been aware of that or have been given that information when this was being put together. I'm trying to get a sense of why that recommendation would continue on with regard to ongoing client eligibility. But also from the ministry, I'm concerned about….

That's 12 years ago. Is there a concern that there could be changes? Perhaps there needs to be a relook at that and at least some kind of spot-checking or something — I would have thought on an ongoing basis — to make sure that the original designation was either correct or continues to be correct.

I think one of the things to remember is that back in 2002 there were half as many people in the PWD program as there are today. It's always good on a risk-approach basis to take a look at whether eligibility is still being met, but also from the other point of view, which we were trying to make in that recommendation, as to some may not be receiving as much as they should be as well. It is a cost benefit that you have to take a look at on an ongoing basis, but we still think it's an appropriate recommendation.

M. Harrington: To be honest, I'm just not sure exactly what you're asking the ministry.

K. Corrigan: What I'm asking is the response earlier on this issue of continued eligibility — again, both whether somebody is not getting the full benefits that they should be getting but also that they would be ineligible for if they were checked later or became ineligible for some reason.

The response we got was that the last time a check like that was done was in 2002. Because there were only 0.2 percent that were found to be ineligible who were receiving benefits, it was felt that that didn't need to be done again.

I guess the question is…. It's 12 years later, and as Mr.
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Jones has pointed out, we have twice as many people that are collecting benefits. I'm just wondering whether that's something that should be looked at. Is that something that should be looked at, or do you just continue to assume that only 0.2 percent of people are incorrectly designated?

M. Harrington: I think what was meant was that it provided some caution that it was such a small number. To be honest, and I think the Auditor would echo that, it was quite a traumatic experience to go through for many clients.

So there's a huge amount of caution about embarking on that review. The first step we wanted to take was to ensure that the initial eligibility didn't have what the Auditor has characterized as "false positive" decisions being made, as the primary focus. That would be the first thing that we would do.

K. Corrigan: Okay. I have another question. I am interested in the timelines. On page 27, exhibit 5, the service standard for PWD designation is 90 business days. I just wanted to get some clarity on that. So 90 business days — would that be the same as what I think you were referencing earlier, that this standard would be met if 95 percent of cases were determined? Is that an average, or is that aspirational? What is that, the 90 business days?

D. Galbraith: That's the time from receiving the application through to the decision point.

K. Corrigan: Right. So to have met that service standard, what has to happen — everybody has to have been dealt with; or 95 percent have to be dealt with; or, on average, it has to be 90 days? What does it mean?

D. Galbraith: Our results show that on average we're underneath the 90 days. We may have situations that go beyond the 90 days. If one person out of all the people that apply is over, that's not seen as not meeting the measure, so it's based on an average.

K. Corrigan: But it's an average. I mean, that is far different than saying that the standard is that you have to be dealt with in 90 days. If you have somebody that could be, for some reason — particularly because there's a triage system used — designated in ten days, then it means that somebody else might be designated in 170 days, and the average would be 90.

D. Galbraith: The target for an individual is 90 days. As I referenced earlier, we've achieved, on average, 60 days.

K. Corrigan: Okay, so you've achieved, on average, 60 days. Do you know what percentage of the applicants fall within the 90 days?

B. Ralston (Chair): I've come to the end of my list of questioners, unless there's anyone who wants to dive in once more.

Thank you very much. I think that was a thorough and valuable discussion. We'll take a brief adjournment, then, to set up for the next report.

B. Ralston (Chair): We're continuing our consideration of the Auditor General report entitled Information Technology Compendium. We were last considering that on Wednesday, June 25.

Given the passage of time, I've asked Cornell Dover, who had presented on behalf of the Auditor General's office last time, to briefly review his slides. I think it will help focus the discussion. Mr. Bailey, if he chooses, can do the same thing or, if he wishes, make some brief, I guess, reintroductory comments. Given the passage of time, I think members will probably be assisted by a quick review of what's before us.

With that, perhaps Mr. Dover and Mr. Andersen…. I should probably give your formal titles. I've got Cornell Dover as the assistant Auditor General, Stan Andersen as the manager of the IT audit and, of course, the Auditor General and the Deputy Auditor General. Then on behalf of the government, Stuart Newton is comptroller general; and Ian Bailey is the assistant deputy minister, technology solutions, office of the chief information officer.

Welcome to everyone. With that, perhaps Mr. Dover and Mr. Andersen, you can begin.

B. Ralston (Chair): Oh, pardon me. I was assuming that since this one antedated your arrival here, you would not want to say anything, but sure.

I did go through the reports and, in a different way, I thought I'd take just a second to reflect on the value of the different approaches we took with these three reports
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that are included in the compendium. It's more of a general comment, as opposed to just reflecting on this case.

The first of the three is providing information. I'm looking at that in terms of our office playing an important role in the education world, in pointing out interesting facts or providing information that legislators are unable to easily access. That's sort of what's behind the first report.

The second was done using a self-assessment tool. When we request feedback from management, we generally don't then audit any of that information, but it does help us in the office stretch our resources further. So if you look at the work we do, there's a continuum in terms of how our work can provide you with some assurance.

Even asking for feedback increases the probability that an organization will pay attention to the questions we ask. So it can go anywhere from a self-assessment that we then report to, at the other end of the continuum, a full verification or audit. It's more time-consuming. It's also, therefore, more expensive in terms of the work that we do. The third report is an example of that. It is indeed an audit.

Those were just my opening comments. You can launch right into the presentation.

S. Andersen: In the essence of time, I'll attempt to summarize the slides as I go through, and we'll go from there.

The IT Compendium report is three separate pieces of work. The first is An Overview of the B.C. Government's Capital Spending in Information Technology. The second report is The Status of General Information Technology Controls in the Government of British Columbia. The third report is Web Application Security Audit.

This report reveals how investing in IT is an essential part of the government of British Columbia's fiscal plan. For this one we figure…. Well, about $500 million has been spent annually on information technology infrastructure and systems since 2008-2009. We list three examples here, and details are on pages 8 and 9 of the report.

For the alternate IT procurement arrangement, implementing new IT systems is complex and costly. Government traditionally invests in IT infrastructure and systems through capital spending. Since early 2000 government shifted its procurement approach for large IT projects to one that undertakes a joint solution approach with the private sector.

Looking ahead, government has invested a significant amount of public money in large IT system projects in recent years. This is an important area where our office plans to focus our future work.

The second report in the compendium is The Status of General IT Controls in the Government of British Columbia. Here, on the background: information technology is critical, delivering key government services such as health care, education and in processing billions of dollars in transactions each year. This involves handling sensitive information that impacts the daily lives of British Columbians.

British Columbians expect government to have controls in place to ensure that sensitive information that they collect is protected, transactions are processed correctly and systems are free from lengthy interruption — in other words, that government services are available when they need them. General IT or computer controls help ensure proper development and implementation of systems and help maintain the integrity of systems, data and operations. This report informs British Columbians about the health of government's general IT controls.

The purpose of this project was to determine the health of general IT controls expressed in terms of a maturity level that each entity in the B.C. government has attained for their computing systems and IT environment. The entities covered in this project include ministries, Crown corporations, universities, colleges, school districts and health authorities.

This was not an audit, and we did not provide an opinion on the fairness of the information published. However, we conducted the project in accordance with the office's internal quality standards and processes.

Our approach. We asked 138 B.C. government entities to complete a self-assessment questionnaire adopted from the maturity model defined in the COBIT 4.1 framework, which is an internationally accepted framework for IT governance, management control and assurance. We compiled the results of the completed self-assessment forms and sent a management report to each entity showing a comparison of their result with similar entities. We also sent a copy of the report to the government's chief information officer, summarizing the result by general IT controls area and type of entity.

We focused on nine general IT controls areas in COBIT 4.1 which are critical to maintaining confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and systems. These nine areas are explained in detail on page 12 of our report.

This is exhibit 2 from the report. It shows the number of entities that assess themselves at each level per general IT control area. Using a rating of zero, nonexistent, to 5, optimized, we observed that the average maturity rating for all nine general IT control areas is 2.9.

Each year our office, along with a number of private accounting firms, audits the financial statements of every entity in the provincial government. It is the largest finan-
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cial audit in B.C. At the end of these financial statement audits, internal control weaknesses, including general IT controls, are communicated in a management letter to each government entity through senior management boards and audit committees.

We analyzed the IT-related findings from audits of financial statements and compared them with the result from self-assessments. The analysis indicated that 70 percent of the IT-related findings relate to ensuring system security. This is consistent with the results of the self-assessments in exhibit 2, which show that the same general IT control area has a below-average maturity rating of 2.8.

Given our knowledge of the structure and complexity of certain entities from our annual financial and IT audit work, we noted that certain government entities likely rated themselves too high or too low in certain areas. We plan to conduct further work in this area. We encourage each entity to take six steps, shown here and in the report. We also encourage the office of the chief information officer to continue assisting government entities in achieving and/or improving the maturity levels for their general IT controls.

Looking ahead. We look forward to conducting this assessment project annually to keep British Columbians informed about the health of government's IT controls. The information in this report will serve as a foundation for our work in succeeding years.

Starting fiscal year 2014, we will selectively review and validate completed self-assessment questionnaires. This will involve examining supporting documents and processes to corroborate the self-assessed maturity levels.

This report is the third and final report in the Information Technology Compendium report.

A little bit of background here. The government of British Columbia uses its websites to interact with its citizens, provide program information and offer on-line services. On-line services include, but are not limited to, applying for Medical Services Plan, social assistance, permits and licences, and legal services, or completing a land title search and researching property assessments.

In here there are two parts of a modern website: web applications and web browser. We focused this audit on web applications. The web applications are programs embedded in a website designed to perform specific tasks. Because web applications can capture confidential and sensitive user information, it is imperative that government have appropriate security measures to protect web applications from cybersecurity threats.

The purpose of this audit was to determine whether government is effectively managing and securing public-facing web applications from cybersecurity threats. This audit focused on the overall governance function of the OCIO and, to some extent, the operational relationships between the OCIO and ministries. The government of British Columbia has approximately 1,500 web applications, of which 437 are public-facing.

We scanned 80 of the public-facing web applications, which was approximately 20 percent. We carried out our work between September 2012 and July 2013. We conducted this audit in accordance with the assurance standards recommended by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. We used traditional audit techniques for assessing the overall IT governance and management areas.

We selected public-facing web applications hosted within the government network that were identified as business- and mission-critical; had a high or moderate impact to the health, safety, security or economic well-being of British Columbians; and had a high or moderate impact of disruption to a department's service levels.

We observed that the OCIO developed and implemented policies and standards for the development of web applications in late 2012. Of the 80 public-facing web applications scanned, 56 percent had one or more critical, high or medium vulnerabilities. We determined that public-facing web applications are not adequately protected from cybersecurity threats. These vulnerabilities could allow cybercriminals to access confidential information or cause malicious activity.

Since the release of the report, the OCIO has taken steps to address the security of web applications. We provided many recommendations to specific ministries to correct vulnerabilities noted in our website scanning.

We also made four recommendations through the OCIO: incorporate a compliance review of web application development policies and standards as part of its annual review of ministry self-assessments; establish a process to ensure the accuracy and completeness of its web application master inventory list; work with ministries to facilitate regular vulnerability scans for all public-facing web applications; and establish a formal process to promptly investigate and follow up on results of vulnerability scans for all public-facing web applications.

This concludes our presentation on the Information Technology Compendium report.

B. Ralston (Chair): Thank you. Mr. Bailey, did you want to provide some introductory remarks?

I note in your slides, which members have access to, that there is a formal response to the third item in the compendium, which is a formal audit. Maybe, if you choose, you might want to review those, or we can simply go to questions. It's up to you.

I. Bailey: I'll just repeat, I think, what I said when I was here in June — that we have accepted the four recommendations, and we're busy implementing those recommendations. We'll have those complete this year. We've made the progress that we thought we were going to make. We're on track to complete that work.
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B. Ralston (Chair): Okay. And in the intervening three or four months you've continued to make progress towards implementation, then, I would assume.

I. Bailey: That's correct. In the original presentation there were some deadlines, and we are on track for those.

K. Corrigan: My first question may partially have been answered, so I appreciate the government response. My understanding from reading the report is that JUSTIN was not included. None of the justice websites were included. That would mean CORNET and JUSTIN were both not…. None of the justice websites were included, right?

Those numbers, though — over 1,000 vulnerabilities for each of the security levels — and then the comment that "based on the high number of critical, high and medium vulnerabilities found per web application, we determined that public-facing web applications are not adequately protected from cybersecurity threats. As a result, there is a high risk for loss of confidential information and service availability" are very troubling.

I was going to ask government whether…. I know there is progress being made, but is there confidence at this point, particularly given that we've been dealing with web application vulnerabilities — real concerns about safety, particularly in the health care system and also in the justice system? I think those reports go back three or four years now.

Are we confident that the problems, essentially, are being solved? I guess that's just sort of a general question, apart from the specific things that government is doing. Can the public be confident that they think their information is safe and they are safe when they're using these websites or when government employees are using them?

I. Bailey: We have worked closely with the ministries where these vulnerabilities were detected to resolve all of those vulnerabilities. We engaged with private sector companies that can provide services to help ministries with that. That's all in progress.

I think most of us know that this will be a continuing effort to resolve issues as they are uncovered. There have been some recent security vulnerabilities that have been detected within the computer industry. It is a constant and continuing vigil to remediate those issues as they're discovered — by industry, primarily.

As well, are we different than the rest of the world? No, we're not different than the rest of the world. All of industry and governments around the world will continue to have to stay on top of these issues as they come up.

K. Corrigan: The master inventory list. The new operational system is to be in place in April of 2015. Are we still on track for that to be the case?

I. Bailey: We are. Just to clarify that, over the summer we completed all the requirements. A business case was developed and submitted. So we expect to stay on track for that.

K. Corrigan: Just a quick follow-up on that. I'm wondering if the Auditor General's office has any comment on how…. I appreciate that this is an ongoing quest as technology changes and those that would attack the technology, get into the technology or hack or whatever it is, are constantly evolving as well. Does the Auditor General's office have any comment on how B.C. is doing compared to other jurisdictions?

C. Dover: That's a very good question. Unfortunately, no we don't. We don't evaluate ourselves against other jurisdictions. We know that most of them have the same issue that we have, and we do have some communication with other legislative offices, but we haven't sat down and looked at a rating that could be comparable across jurisdictions, so we can't say whether we're better or worse off than them.

K. Corrigan: And there will be a follow-up? This is one where it seems that it's very important to have a follow-up. What will be the nature of the follow-up? Will it be a self-assessment — or I guess we're almost there, actually, aren't we?

L. Throness: Just a few questions. The e-health initiative to the ministry was to be completed in 2013. What's the status of that? Has that actually been finished?

The costs for it were about $262 million. I'm always staggered by the cost of these IT initiatives. I think of the
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Obamacare website, which is over $2 billion.

What are the categories of expenditure that these IT initiatives take that are the major cost drivers?

I. Bailey: I would say there are really three components. One is all of the analysis-design work — all of the work to determine what is required, what's needed, and the design work all around that to ensure that the system is going to meet the business needs. The second is all the software and hardware that goes into it. That might be developing custom software, purchasing software from industry. The third is building the actual computer hardware and infrastructure and then operating that.

I. Bailey: I think it's typically the first that is the most expensive — ensuring that it meets the business need.

Your latest budget was about $500 million. Is that going to be your budget in the foreseeable future as well? Is that an ongoing thing? Is there IT infrastructure that you've built that you can rely on now in years to come, or does it all have to be changed every year?

I. Bailey: It doesn't all have to be changed every year. It's a continuing renewal cycle. It's a shorter time frame than for buildings and roads, but with computer systems, the hardware component will tend to be replaced every four to five years. The software component will tend to be updated on an annual or semi-annual basis and may be completely replaced every five to 30 years.

L. Throness: The final question is about security. There are a number of vulnerabilities that you have identified. Do we keep track of how many actual penetrations of web apps there have been, actual breaches in security, and could you share something about that? Maybe you're not allowed to share that.

I. Bailey: We do keep that information. I don't have the numbers with me to report on that. I wouldn't say it's a common occurrence, but they do happen, and we have a security investigations team that works with ministries to resolve those when they come up.

L. Throness: Can you tell me if the situation is getting better with regard to those breaches, or is it becoming more problematic?

S. Simpson: I've got a couple of areas, so maybe I'll deal with one and I'll come back to another one after some other people get some opportunity for questions.

The systems we have — and my question is to Mr. Bailey at this point…. He'll know that in the spring we had a number of instances, mainly around the ICM systems related to Social Development, and Children and Families, where there were some problems over the spring. It lasted for a couple of weeks. There were some glitches in that.

Could you explain a little bit about what that was all about, now that you've probably had some time to assess it and determine what caused that? What's that all about?

The cost of that, the cost of repairing or fixing those problems — we're paying a half-billion-plus dollars to put this system in place and make it all work. Is somebody else picking up those costs, or are those additional costs that we pay on top of having produced these systems that are in place? Maybe you could just enlighten me a little bit about: how did that happen with a system worth a couple of hundred million dollars, and who pays for the fix?

I. Bailey: Yeah, I'm happy to. You'll all be happy to know that the system is stable and working as designed. During that two-week period we're not aware of any data loss or anything going amiss during that time.

There were two things that were really, I would say, at the heart of the matter. One was that we had an unusual amount of network traffic in the data centre that caused the firewall system to go beyond its capacity.

In addition to that, we had what's called a network switch. Now, a network switch in the data centre — that's what connects all the computers together onto the network and allows them to communicate. We had a failure on one of the two switches that ICM runs behind. The result of that was that ICM was at a reduced capacity.

Out of an abundance of caution, we were concerned — I think it was on a Monday — that we could have some data integrity problems if we continued to operate with that reduced capacity, given that we were seeing these sessions drop. So we brought the system down, and then we brought it back up, and we methodically reviewed all the components of the system. That was that two-week period.

We did identify some improvements that were needed. They were not the cause of the problem, but they were
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needed. We remediated those. We had an unfortunate situation in the data centre that we have resolved, and we've made improvements.

The new system that's going into place — on release for, I think, the third weekend of November — is going into a new infrastructure, new servers and greater capacity. We're confident that we'll continue to be in this stable situation and working as designed.

S. Simpson: Again on the question of where — I don't want to use the term — fault lies for the system, the switch, etc., can you give us some indication of what the costs were to the supplier, to the vendor or to us, to be able to identify and correct the problems? Who's liable for that cost?

I. Bailey: The costs were, I would say, not material. All of the work is covered under service contracts. There were some exceptions to that, but they're not significant. There was some staff overtime. But again, it's not outside of the budget that we expect for computer systems of this magnitude. Many of our suppliers do not charge us because it's within the service contract that we have with them.

S. Simpson: A question for the Auditor in relation to this. In the work that's being done, as you look at these systems and, I guess, the first report around costs of these systems, are you looking at those aspects — not just of installation or the putting in place of the systems and the reasonable recycling of systems or of software and what's reasonable around that? As Mr. Bailey says about needing to upgrade — hardware, software, etc. — what's reasonable about that?

Are you looking at what happens in these kinds of instances where there are challenges or problems? They may be of no fault to anybody, or they may be a glitch that legitimately lands in somebody's responsibility.

Are those matters that you'll be looking at in the future, being as I think we all understand that these IT systems are going to be part of our lives from here on in, no matter what we think about them?

R. Jones: Currently, we are looking at the ICM system. We have a performance audit that's underway right at this point in time.

We look at a number of different things when we're looking at these systems. We look at access. We look at data reliability. And we look at cost — comparing what was originally budgeted for versus what was gotten. We're doing a look at ICM right at this point in time.

R. Jones: We're hopefully going to release something in the new year, probably January-February.

S. Simpson: I have some other questions, but I'll wait and see if there are others.

V. Huntington: I'd just like to go over a couple of the statements that were in place regarding the timing of the policies and standards for web application and development that were in place.

I think I read that the office of the chief information officer has the overall responsibilities to ensure leading security practices are in place and to provide overall direction and standards for the IT environment across government. Is that correct?

V. Huntington: And that within each ministry, the chief information officer of the ministry is responsible for compliance with those standards.

Could I ask: given that the security standards for web application and development weren't issued until December 2012…? That was a number of months after the audit itself was started. How was the office of the chief information officer or the chief information officers of the ministries able to…? How could they ensure compliance with standards when there effectively were none in place?

I. Bailey: Well, I will add that we have had comprehensive security policy in place that, really, at a high level, deals with all of these issues. And a standard provides more detail about how to do that.

You're right. How can a ministry's CIO ensure they're compliant with a standard that does not exist? That's fair. We worked for, I would say, two or three years on that standard. It was started long before the audit was done. We worked closely with ministries and with industry standards to develop those standards. We have to be careful when we develop these standards that we don't inadvertently cause issues and costs that aren't appropriate.

It's helpful for ministries to have this standard, but I think it was standard practice to do most of the elements in the standard.

V. Huntington: Could I then ask the Auditor General's office: what is your attitude with regard to the difference between a policy that might be in place versus a standard that is the measurable component of compliance? Why was that important within your report?

C. Dover: Normally, we would look for the existence of standards when we do an audit and also the existence of a policy. But when it comes to IT, there are some basic expectations that we have around what normal practice should be.

Generally, when we do our evaluations, we base it on that. If there are not standards, we would default to the
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policy, but we'd also look at the industry best practices and then evaluate whether the organization has those processes and controls in place.

In the case that they were developing good standards, that was a step in the right direction. That gave us something additional to look at, as well as just their security policies.

V. Huntington: I do note that you mention in a couple of places that the standards weren't in place until late 2012. Is it industry best practice to have standards in place, then?

V. Huntington: One other issue I'd just like to canvass is the comments with regard to web application vulnerability. I notice that, if my math — and it's not great — is right, the Auditor General found the inventory of applications was wanting by approximately 25 percent of the applications out there. Is that right? You use a number. But I transposed it to a….

V. Huntington: And you found that about 56 percent of the applications you examined at least — I wasn't quite clear whether it was the ones you looked at or overall — were vulnerable. So 56 percent were vulnerable.

C. Dover: The 56 percent relates to the 80 web applications that we actually tested — yeah.

V. Huntington: Do you think that that would be a number that would reflect the — what was it? — about 480-something…?

C. Dover: I believe 437 for the public-facing web applications, out of about 1,500 web applications that exist in government.

V. Huntington: Would it be fair to say 56 to 60 percent of the 430 might, in fact, be vulnerable?

C. Dover: I think it would be fair to say that. We took a sample based on what we thought was representative across government and used that sample to determine what the extent of the issues were. It could be plus or minus, depending on certain entities. Some could be much better than others.

V. Huntington: And you found that across those medium, high and critical, there were 1,000 vulnerabilities in the 56 percent you looked at.

C. Dover: In each category — over 1,000 medium, over 1,000 high and over 1,000 critical.

V. Huntington: Okay. One of your recommendations immediately…. You said that you found it so concerning that you immediately approached…. Was it the chief information officer or the office of the chief information officer?

C. Dover: There were two points of contact that we had. One was with the ministry chief information officer, because they're the ones that initially are responsible for making sure that those gaps are fixed, and then, also, the office of the chief information officer.

V. Huntington: You immediately approached them with your concern and suggested that they what — do a thorough vulnerability assessment across the board?

C. Dover: What we did is we provided them with the results of the vulnerability scan so that they could see what it was that we had found and they could do two things. They could follow up on it and make sure that it was an actual vulnerability, and if it was, then fix it. So as soon as we found them, we provided it to the people that could do something about it.

V. Huntington: I note that as of, I guess, January 2014, as of the time of the report, that scan had not yet taken place. Or the — what is it? — reported results for immediate correction. And as of January they had not established a formal process to assess and follow up the vulnerability status. Have they done so now or subsequent to the report?

I. Bailey: Well, I will point out that we do have a formal process for all information incidents, which these would fall into.

I. Bailey: We do have that, and we follow up and have a very formal process for that to resolve those issues. Specific to scanning, which isn't really about an incident…. This is about the fact that you have done a scan. There may be potential issues in the software. Then, do we have a formal process? That was one of the four recommendations, and we're in the process of doing that. We'll have that in place by January.

V. Huntington: So if I quote…. "During our audit we
[ Page 505 ]
reported the results of our scans to the OCIO and commended the office for taking immediate corrective action…. However, the OCIO had not established a formal process to assess and follow up on the vulnerability status for all public-facing web applications." You're saying that you will have done that by the end of this year.

I. Bailey: There are two parts to that. We did follow up and assist ministries in resolving those issues. What we did not have is a repeatable formal process that's documented to do that, and that will be in place in January.

V. Huntington: I think there was another question that asked whether you're keeping numbers of incidents, and you said you were not. Will you be keeping numbers? Will you have a formal process…?

Mr. Bailey, you said in response to a previous questioner that the vulnerability of systems in the British Columbian government was not different from anyone else and that you relied on industry to bring forward new threats. I think people understand that new threats are evolved through the creativity of hackers and other people who would choose to target vulnerabilities in cyberspace.

Surely the point of particularly the audit here is that…. One would expect, for garden variety web applications, that there would be a standard level of security. If I understand the audit correctly, when this scan was done, that did not appear to exist. So I don't think it's a question of assurance that, along with everyone else, you're monitoring new threats. I think the question is: what's the policy framework to deal with the system as it is, and routine web applications and their vulnerability?

I think I'm correct in drawing that distinction. So I wonder if you have a comment.

I. Bailey: Well, I think this is one aspect of many different parts of the security practice that's required — for example, the security policy, the security training, the security awareness. There are many different parts to the security practice that we follow. This is one area where we needed some improvements. Fortunately, the Auditor General has provided us with these four recommendations, and we're actively working on those to improve so that we do have continual scanning, for example, of our web applications. That's an area where we needed to improve, and we are.

B. Ralston (Chair): One of the initiatives that the government has taken — I think we debated it in legislation a year ago — is what's called data linking. That is, to take the databases of two very different, disparate public bodies and link them for some policy reason. One can think of some obvious examples. I'm not saying that this is going to be done, just so that it's clear for the record. But you could link some health databases with, say, the motor vehicle branch and drivers' licences. There might be some way of triggering some interaction between those two databases. There are a number of others that one can readily imagine.

This was heralded by the minister as a forward-looking policy, and I think that's right. But it obviously raises serious questions about data security because, by virtue of the linkage, you may, by gaining access to one system, get access to multiple systems. So the issue of security becomes even more important.

What assurance can you provide that in light of the comments of this particular audit, that particular challenge is being addressed by your policy development?

I. Bailey: The specific vulnerabilities that were identified…. I think it's a bit of a stretch to think that somehow that is going to result in being able to take advantage of some approved proper data-linking capability. It's possible, I suppose, but I don't draw a straight line between those two things.

I think if you…. If there's a vulnerability in a system and you were able to compromise that system and perhaps then use that as a beachhead to attack other servers, that's possible. I don't think that really has anything to do with data linking. I think that just has to do with the fact that servers are co-located within a facility.

C. Dover: Mr. Chair, the only comment that I would have is that if you're talking about linking two systems — one from health and, say, one from motor vehicles — one of the things that we've found in the past, in our JUSTIN report and, I believe, in the CORNET report as well — is the fact of making sure that the right people have access to the information, so using the premise of need to know and also the premise of least privilege.

That's where I think most of the difficulty comes from — that some organizations have difficulty in making sure that only those that need to have access to the information have access to the information. That was one of the things that had come out in our JUSTIN report, that there was too much access to the information.

B. Ralston (Chair): I remember that report very well. That's an issue of personnel and internal management as
[ Page 506 ]
opposed to external threats. That's the main distinction that you're drawing?

K. Corrigan: I wanted to ask a question about the overview report on capital spending in information technology. The Ministry of Education procuring the student information system as a service — that is on page 10.

My first question is…. BCeSIS is being replaced. Can I be reminded, if that information is available today: when was BCeSIS started up? Can anybody recall? I'm just trying to think of how long a life it had.

K. Corrigan: Was it that early? That was just a preliminary question. It's 2001? Is that what people are thinking? Was it that far back?

K. Corrigan: I don't think it was either, actually, because I remember I was a school trustee at the time.

I. Bailey: I would guess something like 2003-2004 maybe. That would be my recollection.

K. Corrigan: Okay, that's great. Thanks. That's fine. I just was trying to get a sense.

What is happening now is that…. I assume BCeSIS was owned by the government, the Ministry of Education, correct? It wasn't done by a private vendor, right?

K. Corrigan: Oh, okay. It sounds like, from reading the report, the procurement approach is to provide schools with a new one:

"…to provide schools with a student information system that is hosted by a private vendor. The vendor would provide, maintain and operate the platform that runs the new system and provide users with secure access to the information service. With this approach, government would not own the software licence or require upfront capital investment for the implementation of the system. Instead, the system would be financed through the ministry's annual operating budget for the term of the vendor contract."

You're telling me that that is no different than the arrangement for BCeSIS? There's no change?

I. Bailey: No. I can't answer that. I don't know the details of the old or new service contract as to what is included or not. I do know that the old BCeSIS system was run by a third party on their third-party system.

K. Corrigan: Okay. I guess the reason why I'm asking is I'm trying to figure out whether or not this is a change. I'm particularly interested in whether or not it's going to be a change in terms of funding. If it was a capital expenditure where the system was bought previously, that would have been a capital expenditure by government. It doesn't look like there's a major…. It says that there's not a major capital expenditure. Instead, there's essentially an operating expenditure.

My concern is that what's going to happen is that the ministry is not going to be paying up front for a large capital expenditure. Instead, if it's going to be financed through the annual operating budget, my concern is about who is going to be paying for that. Is that going to mean that because we've potentially changed from a huge capital expenditure to just an operating expenditure every year that individual school boards are going to be taking up the slack on that? They're going to be paying more? I'm just trying to get a sense.

B. Ralston (Chair): Mr. Bailey is nodding his agreement, so put that on the record, and we'll get that answered.

S. Simpson: Questions that relate, again, to the security of information. I know there's been some discussion about this before. We know there's a significant amount of interest, I think, within government to be able to use some of the foreign-based services, particularly some of the cloud-based services, to manage data and handle data.

Of course, it's a challenge, because the freedom-of-information and protection-of-privacy commissioner has been very clear in their standards about ensuring that that information stays essentially in Canada and that it's housed in Canada. I think that was probably motivated by discussion around the U.S. Patriot Act.

I know that that discussion is ongoing. It's my understanding, on the question of data residency, that there now are propositions around some new innovation — something called tokenization, I think. I believe that the province has in fact signed a contract with one of the companies that do that work. Last year they signed a contract to start to think about the ability to do that and how that could be used. I'd ask Mr. Bailey to see if I'm correct
[ Page 507 ]
on this and then to comment on it.

Now, my understanding of tokenization is that it's a system that essentially creates a whole other…. It kind of takes word by word and just changes what it is so that it's pretty much encrypted in a way that's very, very hard to break in any way.

Could you tell us where that is all at as you move forward? Has there been any practical application of this tokenization use within any of our data systems yet?

I. Bailey: There has been. One project, as a proof-of-concept, is using the technology. It is not encryption. You were on the right track to start off.

I. Bailey: Random, so random-based. There's really no way to crack this. You just don't have the personal information. That remains in Canada. Any of the information that is not personal information — you have to be very careful about how you do that so that you don't inadvertently disclose information. You may think that the piece of information is not personal information, but if it can be linked to another source…. So you have to be careful about that.

We have that in place for one application. It's working very well. We worked very closely with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to do that project, and we are now looking at a few other projects that could make use of that.

S. Simpson: When I looked at this and when I heard about this…. I had the opportunity to read a memo that was sent — I think you were a recipient of this — from Bette-Jo Hughes. It talked about this in an October 2013 memo. It said that we're starting to look at this and explore this.

My understanding, having looked at this…. It looked kind of interesting. I mean, you take a word, you take my name, and all of a sudden my name just becomes some combination of letters or numbers that seem to make no sense, and they will be specific to that one application. It doesn't mean every Shane is going to be the same.

I was told, when I asked somebody about this who understands this system…. They said that it's a very good system for putting data in a place that you want to store it, but it's very hard to manage. If you want to look up all the Shanes, you have a problem if every one is going to have a different code, in terms of management. And if you deal with that by going to a uniform system, you lose much of the value of the tokenization.

I. Bailey: You're right about the fact that…. In fact, you, Shane, if you were in the system multiple times, your name actually may be represented by different tokens.

I. Bailey: Every time, right. The software vendors that provide this kind of software have provided a solution for that so that the cloud-based system that might be housed, let's say, in the United States can actually make API calls back to the tokenization system to create a solution set of tokens that then comes back to the system in the United States. The tokens come back as a report, and then all of the report information is substituted back in Canada with the original information.

The trouble with that is that it's creating a very complex system, and it's a lot of work. It's starting to erode the business case from originally doing that. It works, but it comes at a cost of complexity.

S. Simpson: I understand that it may also mean that you have probably two or three times the volume of information, because you have to keep it a few different places at different times to have it talk to each other.

What's the cost implication of this in terms of that versus what has been a more conventional system? How much are we paying to be able to essentially store information in the United States, for example — it might not be there; it might be France; I don't know — or store it somewhere else and still have it protected to the satisfaction of the commissioner?

S. Simpson: So then my question would be to the Auditor. Would ICM be one of these systems, potentially, that would use that?

S. Simpson: Okay. I guess, then, my question would be…. This system potentially opens the doors to all kinds of information being used elsewhere. As I said, I'm told by people who know about these things — I certainly don't understand them very well — that the devil really is in the details as to what this random system is and whether it will achieve the objective of the very high standard of security that the commissioner wants or not, depending on how you have to adjust it to make it a management system that works.

Is that something that the Auditor could look at down the road to see whether the effectiveness of that made sense?

C. Dover: I think if that's the way government is going, it's going be something that we'll have to look at down
[ Page 508 ]
the road. Right now we've been fortunate that we haven't had to spend much time in cloud-based technologies.

C. Dover: Absolutely. If government moves there, then we're going to have to hone our skills and make sure we understand what all the risks are with that.

S. Simpson: I guess the point that I would make is that we know there's a lot of concern, warranted or not. But it was enough concern for the Privacy Commissioner to put in place fairly stringent standards. We are now talking about systems that take us to that place that everybody is concerned about but saying we're doing this in a way that is very secure and solves the problem of security.

I certainly hope somebody is taking a second look at this. I'm sure the Privacy Commissioner is looking at it as their responsibility. I would hope somebody is taking a second look. Otherwise, we may create a situation. It will certainly create a heck of a lot of anxiety, even if it's not warranted, and people are going to start worrying about this and saying: "I don't know if I trust that you're telling me some computer system developed by some U.S. vendors and proponents is the one that I should trust."

I would hope this would be a consideration to determine whether this, in fact, is meeting the objectives that we have.

R. Jones: Thank you, Member. I was just going to add that Cornell and the Information and Privacy Commissioner's office get together on a regular basis to talk about these things, so I'm sure it will be top of mind.

B. Ralston (Chair): Just before we leave the topic, from the basis of the discussion, I think I got a sense of what you were talking about. But I wonder if you, Mr. Bailey, could just define "tokenization" just a little bit more for the non-initiate, like myself.

I. Bailey: Yeah, I'm happy to, Chair. Tokenization is a technology that you can place in front of a cloud-based system. So with a cloud-based system like Amazon.com or Salesforce.com that are operating in the United States, you can put a tokenization technology in front on the network in a Canadian data centre — and, in our case, in our data centre.

All of the users of the system think that our tokenization system is the system. But in fact, the information that is going to the cloud-based system is going through the tokenizer to the United States or France or wherever it may be stored and then back again. When it comes back, those tokens are then reconstituted into the personal information. Then the users…. We see the information, and the user can't tell that this is going on.

But it adds complexity, and it is not the direction…. This is not a long-term direction that we favour. It is really about the fact that the Canadian marketplace has not matured anywhere near as quickly as it has in places like the United States. But fortunately, we're seeing some positive movement recently in Canada. Our preference, and I believe we're going to get there, is that we'll be using in-Canada services.

V. Huntington: I'd just like to explore the maturity ratings a little bit and the Auditor General's judgment of them. There was a self-assessment by 138 government reporting entities who assessed themselves across nine different categories of IT controls. The maturity rating, on average, you found was about 2.9 out of five. Did you find any low or average maturity ratings in entities that you would consider had high risk factors?

C. Dover: I'm going to be careful how I answer this question. It was a self-assessment that was done, so the entities provided their assessment of what their maturity level was, correct? When we received them back…. Some of them we will be going back to this year and having another look at them.

We're going to select a sample of the self-assessments and go back and verify that how they actually assessed themselves is correct. That will give us a better understanding of whether they have identified all the risk that they should be dealing with in that organization, that they have the proper controls to deal with those risks and that they're at the right maturity level.

V. Huntington: Now, did any of the organizations that had a 2.9 or less cause you any concern because of what you would perceive as higher risk factors? Would you have anticipated one agency should have been up at four and five because of the potential risk factors, yet you found them self-assessing at 2½?

C. Dover: We didn't do enough work to be able to do that. It would require us to go out there to each individual entity and spend the time there to understand what types of risk they were facing. That's something that we're prepared to do this year, but we didn't really do that last year, so I can't really answer that question.

I. Bailey: My focus is core government. That's where
[ Page 509 ]
I'm focusing. We're continually improving our security posture and our security controls — we intend to work to do that.

Am I concerned? Well, not overly concerned, but it is part of my job and my team's job to continually improve in the security management of IM/IT. This didn't change my level of concern. I am concerned, and that is my job.

V. Huntington: I appreciate that, but if the office is setting a set of policies and standards against which IT controls should be measured, yet you have your entities coming in at an average of 2.9 on their own self-assessment of how they're meeting those controls, does that not lead you to want to deal with their assessments in a more robust fashion? Are you not concerned about that low maturity level?

I. Bailey: I think it gets to what Cornell has said. These are self-assessments. One organization could rate themselves very high when it's not right, and another organization that's doing a good job could have rated themselves low. I can't really comment on that. That's not my area of responsibility.

V. Huntington: Do you, then, do what the Auditor General's office is going to do, which is selectively look at some of those entities and determine whether their self-assessments are meeting your….

I. Bailey: Our entities are core government. We are doing, I think, two or three ministries each year, and we are reviewing their IT controls to make sure that they are reporting correctly. If we do find areas where they need to improve, then we'll help them do that.

V. Huntington: And you have standards in place to assist them in the correct reporting. You do.

I. Bailey: Do we have standards on everything? We don't have standards on everything. We have policies, comprehensive policies that address all of the security control.

V. Huntington: But again, standards enable you to measure improvement or otherwise, not policy.

I. Bailey: I don't think that's correct. I think some policies are very measurable.

B. Ralston (Chair): Just before we go to Cornell, Mr. Newton wanted to say something.

S. Newton: A point of clarification. I know this came up when we were doing a summary of management letter response points on the report on public accounts as well.

When we're dealing with Crown entities, a number of the Crown entities are accountable to their boards, and the board is accountable to the chair and back to the minister for anything that's found. In a number of these the information would have been provided back to those Crowns, and the expectation would be at the Crown level — because they are separate entities — that the boards would hold the Crown accountable for information that the auditor provided.

So a government CIO is responsible for core government, and that's the appropriate role. It's similar to my role with financial, in that a number of the financial issues that you would have in a Crown would be the responsibility of that board to hold the Crown to account.

V. Huntington: Okay, but my comments, then, can deal specifically with core government values.

C. Dover: Just one additional thing to add. On page 16 of our report we gave a list of six steps that the entity could do, which was: review the results of their self assessment, establish a process to determine the target maturity level for each IT control area, assess the gaps between the current and target maturity level, develop an action plan to address the gaps, implement and monitor the action plan and then perform steps 1 to 5 on a periodic basis.

We have encouraged them to do that, and then they can determine the best way to improve the controls and improve their assessments.

C. Bellringer: Just another element to the question that the member has asked. I think it also points to a challenge that we see in governments all across the country today, where 80 percent of the services are being delivered outside of core, and we get into a situation where oversight has changed. It's changed over the years from something that was more controlled centrally. Now it's very much decentralized within all of these various entities.

It worries me a lot. I don't know the answer to it. That's something I think we continually are challenged to figure out — how to get that balance between allowing the entities to operate independently but at the same time to get some oversight happening in a central way. Otherwise, something can be going on, and you're never going to figure it out.

V. Huntington: I think that's where I'm concerned. I'm just worried. If we're talking core government here, are we on top of these issues according to those six recommendations on how to proceed or aren't we? Presumably, you'll take a look at the other entities at some point to see whether they're moving in that direction. We can only hope.

K. Corrigan: Just following up on MLA Huntington's question, who is doing the work, if anybody, to determine
[ Page 510 ]
that a particular type of business that is being done by an entity is one where the risks are high and, therefore, that the aspiration should be to be closer to a five than a 2½? Is that work being done? Is that kind of evaluation risk assessment done? And if so, who does that?

R. Jones: In the Crown sector it would be the auditors, basically, of that organization. Because whenever we go into an organization, we look at the IT general controls to see if they're adequate. It would be the same if KPMG or anybody else was.

Where we find weaknesses, of course, then we do more audit work and provide management letter points to those organizations on how to strengthen those controls.

K. Corrigan: Then within government, core government — who would be doing that?

R. Jones: Within core government we do similar work around IT general controls and provide management letter points to the OCIO.

I. Bailey: It's a joint responsibility, I would say, between the office of the CIO and a ministry CIO. The ministry is responsible for following the policy and standards that we define. They report to us on an annual basis their progress against those controls. We audit, I think, two or three per year to ensure that they're following best practice in doing that assessment. Then we work with them where they need assistance in improving.

K. Corrigan: So you're saying that your office would be aware of the types of business in government — health care, justice — where there is a high risk and would be making sure that in those areas where there is a high risk, the standards are particularly high, and be watching those areas more closely in a sort of systematic way. Is that correct?

I. Bailey: No, that's the role of the ministry CIO, I would say, in doing that. They know their business. We can assist them in that, but that's their responsibility to know their business and apply the right level of control.

K. Corrigan: Is there any accountability for that at all? You're saying that those individual chief information officers for the ministers would be aware of where the sensitivities are. But there's no kind of coordinated plan, or there's no kind of coordinated information that somebody could take a look at and say: "Oh yeah. They recognize that this health information or this justice information" — or whatever it is — "is sensitive, and therefore that the standards are higher."

I'm just wondering who's sort of overall responsible. But you say it's within individual ministries.

B. Ralston (Chair): I suppose in a parliamentary system, ultimately the minister is responsible.

R. Jones: Just a quick follow-up on that. When I was talking about us looking at controls, it's around financial systems mainly.

You also have internal audit in a lot of the Crown corporations that would probably look, I would hope, at very significant non-financial systems. One that might come to mind is the gaming system at Lottery Corp.

And as you well know, we do some performance audits on systems that we think are critical as well, such as ICM. We do take into account some of the higher-risk areas, as well, when we're coming up with our performance audit plan.

I. Bailey: Also, just to clarify, the office of the CIO provides all of the underlying IT infrastructure that ministries rely on. So we're responsible for all of the IT controls around the infrastructure — workstations, networks, the data centre, some of the common systems like e-mail.

In 2011, I believe, Deloitte came in and did a review for the government around costs versus industry standards in relation to industry standards on workstation support services and on web and data hosting. I believe they found that in British Columbia, we were paying about 17 percent more than the industry standard for workstation support services and as much as 59 percent more than industry standards for web and data hosting. You put those together, and that's about $50 million of costs.

I'm wondering if we could get some comment on that, whether that's something that was looked at by the Auditor General and what the state of our costs is now in relation to industry standards.

C. Dover: I'll start, I guess. We didn't look at the cost. We focused just on the cybersecurity aspect of the web applications. Cost was not a component of our audit.

S. Simpson: So you haven't reviewed that or looked at those matters of this report from Deloitte, I understand, which was prepared in 2011?

S. Simpson: Mr. Bailey, was that report looked at from your shop? I believe it was done for Citizens' Services.
[ Page 511 ]

I. Bailey: We actioned the recommendations in that report. For example, we extended the refresh cycle, I believe. It was before my time with the group, but they extended it from three to four years. We're also in progress of improving our use of printer technology. That's in progress right now.

My recollections of the improvements that we've made were a 23 percent reduction in support costs and a 30 percent reduction in hardware costs as a result of the work that we had with our supplier.

S. Simpson: With that work having been done to try to adjust those costs and get them more in line with what would be industry standard — in particular, the 59 percent, I believe it was, around web and data hosting — is the intention, as you make those adjustments, to bring Deloitte or bring somebody back in to take a look and say: "Okay, how have we done in terms of getting this in line"?

Obviously, you were setting a standard to know what your baseline was, and you got that from the work that Deloitte did in 2011. Is there an intention to now come back any time in the future to say: "Okay, how have we done, based on taking that information and going back and trying to tighten this thing up so that we're more in line with what the industry standard is"?

I. Bailey: Well, I think where we're at in that contract, for example, is that it expires in 2017. So we're now starting the process of thinking about how we're going to go forward — what decisions we need to make, what benchmarking we need to do and understand how we can go forward and get a better deal in the future.

S. Simpson: Right. That being the case — and I appreciate that — I think it's back to the Auditor General.

What role, with those kinds of numbers…? I understand and appreciate you've not looked at the Deloitte work to see what they've done and to do your own assessment of that. But is that an appropriate piece of work for the Auditor General to look at to see whether our costs…?

We know the phenomenal kinds of numbers that are tied to IT, and they're just going to continue to grow as it becomes so much more critical and as we do more and more with technology and less and less with people, quite honestly. Helping to figure out what those benchmarks and those standards should be so that as we move forward and more contracts are signed and more complexities got at, we're kind of in the ballpark with where industry should be…? Those numbers are pretty significant — 17 percent, 59 percent over industry standards. Those are pretty big numbers.

We talk about $550 million for three technology systems. They're complex, and they're not always working quite as well as we might like. That may or may not be okay. It just seems to me that it's a critical piece of where we're at and what we have to do going forward. But it's very easily a black hole, too, to throw money down, and I worry about that.

R. Jones: Thank you, Member. Yes, so noted. We shall definitely put it into our mix.

B. Ralston (Chair): Mr. Bailey, just before we move on to the next questioner, you used the expression "extend the refresh cycle." Now, I take it you're not referring to laundry. So could you just explain that term?

B. Ralston (Chair): I always like to have the jargon interpreted just so someone — there might be a rare individual — who reads the transcript or wants to know what it means would have your crisp, clear definition there on the record.

I. Bailey: So how many years do we keep a computer before we replace it? You know, our desktop computer — do we keep that computer for three years or four years?

K. Corrigan: One more clarification about who is responsible for what. You had said, Mr. Bailey, that at the end of the day, it's essentially a ministry — the chief information officer in a ministry and therefore the ministry itself — that would identify areas that are particularly risky, where you would have to be more careful about security of the systems, I believe.

But then you also said that it is your office that is responsible for essentially setting up those securities — the firewalls and the systems. Is that correct? So your office would not take a look at the risk profile of a particular system. It would be the ministry, and you would simply do what they asked you to do.

How would you determine what level of security was appropriate and what oversight was appropriate for a particular system?

We do have a formal process called the security threat and risk assessment that is done for every application that goes through a major renovation or change. We have a formal process. We use a computer tool to do that assessment that addresses all of the security threats, risks. It takes into account the criticality of the business information that is going to be contained in that system. For the more significant systems, our office reviews those,
[ Page 512 ]
and we provide comment back as to whether we agree or do not agree or whether we believe there are additional controls needed.

Ultimately it is their decision, I suppose, but I'm not aware of any case where we have disagreed.

B. Ralston (Chair): I think that's it, so thank you for the discussion. Thank you, Mr. Bailey and Mr. Dover and Mr. Anderson, for coming back. We're concluded on that report.

We have one more item, which we'll get to, and I think we can deal with it relatively quickly, although I've been wrong on this item a number of times before. Then we will be able to adjourn slightly early. I'm sure that members won't object to that.

There's a request to recess for five minutes, so let's do that, and then we'll start.

B. Ralston (Chair): Good afternoon, members. We have one remaining item on the agenda, which is further consideration of the Riverview Hospital historical documents, retention and disposal. This has been before the committee a couple of times, and I understand it's here, hopefully, with a resolution of the concerns that have been expressed several times at the committee before.

With us here is Alex Wright. He's the senior director of the government records service, information access operations. I'll turn it over to Mr. Wright, and perhaps he can just report on where we're at.

The box of records that we're talking about in particular here is part of a larger record series which comes form the Provincial Health Services Authority, and these records all relate to Riverview. Of the larger group of records, there are 34 boxes of records which are proposed for transfer to the Provincial Archives, where they would join the other extensive collection of records that the Royal B.C. Museum has relating to Riverview.

There are also 22 boxes of records which are proposed to go to the Coquitlam archives. This was an arrangement that has been discussed with Coquitlam archives and which they are happy about. Those records are records of primarily local interest, so they are more records around staff events, social activities. There are some library materials that are contained there. There are no records which have sensitive personal information that are slated to go to the Coquitlam archives.

Then there is the other box, which is the box that you've talked about so much before, which is a box of rolls of intake photographs. These are clients arriving at Riverview. Their photographs were taken. These negatives are now contained…. It's roughly one box's worth of these. They are dated largely from the '70s and '80s, so many of the people in these photographs will still be around.

They are not in very good shape. The film is degrading rapidly. In order to maintain them, it would require a fair expense. In the meantime, these photographs are all unlabelled, so we're not able to individually identify who they are without going through all the rolls of film and comparing them to their case files. The positive images of these photographs are in the client files. Those client files are with the Royal B.C. Museum.

Our recommendation on this is that that one box of records be destroyed, based on a few different things. One is their condition and the cost that it would take to restore these to a usable condition.

Second of all, because of the fact that they're not labelled, it's hard to imagine any possible legitimate academic research that could take place involving these. If somebody is looking for a particular individual, they would go to their case file rather than looking through these reels and reels of negatives, which would be hard to look at.

The other thing that we've discovered in this process is that there are limitations within the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act that would not authorize us to provide these to the historical society that was suggested to us at the informal meeting of this committee some time ago. We looked into that and discovered advice from elsewhere in government that there really is no provision within FOIPPA to permit us to give those records to that particular facility or one like it.

S. Robinson: I certainly appreciate the extent to determine sort of what to do with this box of negatives. I do have a question — I don't know if it got asked — about the FOIPPA legislation. Would it apply to the archives, as well, or is it different when it's a non-profit society versus a city archive?

A. Wright: There is a fundamental difference in that the city archives are covered by FOIPPA, whereas the Port Coquitlam historical society that was suggested earlier is not covered by FOIPPA. That was what originally alerted us to delving deeper into that. That does not necessarily mean that there won't be issues with providing it to the Coquitlam archives. It still has to be provided for under FOIPPA, so we still need to look for the authority there to do that.
[ Page 513 ]

As I pointed out earlier, the other records that are going to the Coquitlam archives are not of a highly personal and sensitive nature.

If we did find an ability under FOIPPA to give these to the Coquitlam archives, there would still be large concerns around the appropriateness of doing that, partly because of the cost that would be passed on to the Coquitlam archives to be able to use the records and partly because the potential for a breach of privacy here far outweighs any potential usefulness in terms of using those photographs for research, particularly given that there are other materials elsewhere that are far more usable than these unlabelled photographs.

D. Eby: I am surprised that we're dealing with this again. It was, I thought, the unambiguous message of this committee, a group of elected representatives, that if this box of negatives — and it seems so trivial now — could be saved, it should be saved. We provided a couple of options in that regard, and here we are again being told that no, it can't be saved.

I guess my frustration is that our goal here was to try to save the negatives if possible. We're being told that the negatives are duplicates that are on other files, but simultaneously we're being told that we can't tell who's in the pictures, so I don't know how we would know that they were duplicates.

We know that there is interest in the community in preserving everything possible from Riverview, even at the risk of duplication. I don't understand why this committee would be concerned about the cost to the city of Coquitlam if they were prepared to take that on because they believed that it was of sufficient interest to them to have them. I don't understand why a full patient record going to the museum is less of a privacy risk than sending a negative photograph. The rationale escapes me on a lot of this.

I wonder whether we're not going at this backwards and trying to come up with solutions instead of just asking: "Can you go and come back with a way that you might be able to save these negatives?" I think we can come up with several more suggestions that may address the issues that have been raised here today. But I worry that in two months' time we'll have another report coming back that those don't work either.

Is it not just enough for us to say that we want to save these negatives if you can? If it's impossible, then it's impossible. I just don't believe that it's impossible, given that the records have been handed over to the museum and that those records are being preserved.

L. Reimer: My question was just around the photographs compared to the negatives. We know — is that correct? — that the photographs are in the client files, which have been sent to the Royal B.C. Museum. We know that all of the negatives and the originals match up. Is that correct?

A. Wright: What we have done is we have looked at the client files that are at the Royal B.C. Museum, and there are intake photographs on those files. What we have not done is we have not gone through the 2,500 unlabelled photographs and tried to match up photographs, because that would take hours and hours of time to try to do that. But we have enough knowledge of the case files to be very sure that the intake photographs are on the case files.

L. Throness: I didn't realize all of the conditions that you'd said: they're in bad shape, FOIPPA concerns, there are duplicates that are labelled. I think we should destroy them, obviously, and not spend any more time in this committee or of this good gentleman's time, coming here at great expense to share with us.

M. Dalton: Yeah, I concur with MLA Throness's comments there. For one thing, we don't need to have the negatives, like we did years ago. You can just go directly from the print itself and get a lot better copy. So I don't see the rationale for keeping them and going to the expense.

K. Corrigan: I tend to agree that they should either be destroyed or go to the Provincial Archives.

I have concerns about privacy issues. These were individuals who…. I think this is highly sensitive information, and the question is whether we're sure whether the originals…. I guess that's the issue to me: are all these negatives that are in this box — do they match a file? If we're sure of that, then I'm happy to have them destroyed. I've got concerns about them going to the Coquitlam archives for privacy reasons — serious privacy reasons, as far as I'm concerned.

I just think that when you're looking at the Provincial Archives, the safeguarding and the rules around it are probably more stringent — I may be wrong, but that would just be my gut feeling — than going to a local archives, to the Coquitlam archives. I'm not sure what that means, how they would be used and how that protection would be ensured of those individuals who might not want to have their pictures in a local archives.

I would tend to either get rid of them or say: "No, send them to the Provincial Archives with the rest and let the Provincial Archives figure out what the appropriate use or disposition of them is."

A. Wright: I would just like to add to that that part of the privacy concern here is the way the records would have to be used in order to find a photograph that was relevant to whatever one was looking for, which would have to be flipping through photograph after photograph of people.
[ Page 514 ]

These are largely from the '70s and '80s, so many of these people are still alive. Many of them, I'm sure, would consider this to be quite a breach of their privacy if somebody saw their photograph there because they were looking through these photographs for somebody else.

I think that the fact that these records are not labelled effectively in the way that they would have to be used puts into question what kinds of privacy concerns there would be, even if these were in a facility that was, I guess, fully concerned with and fully compliant with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

L. Reimer: I have a hypothetical question. If law enforcement, as an example…. Say one of these people went missing — and they're older now, obviously — and they needed an old photograph…. They knew that this person was a client at Riverview.

They could then go to the Royal B.C. Museum and get an up-to-date photo — well, the photo for Riverview at the time — that way, correct?

A. Wright: Yes, and it would be much faster than going through approximately 2,500 photographs that are unlabelled.

L. Reimer: So you would never go through those duplicate intake photos in those sorts of circumstances?

B. Ralston (Chair): Just so I'm clear, I understood the box to be a box of negatives…

B. Ralston (Chair): …and that on each client file is a print, a photograph. Is that correct?

B. Ralston (Chair): You personally know as a fact that on the client files there's…. The argument is that the negatives are of the individual photographs that are on the client files.

B. Ralston (Chair): So if someone wanted an individual photograph, it's there and it can be reproduced without going to the negative.

D. Eby: I guess the question is — and this gets back to MLA Corrigan's question — how do you know that the negatives are duplicates of what are on the files? I think that if you can answer that to some level of certainty for this committee, that would be great.

I think the core concern I have is that we will inadvertently destroy a number of rolls of negatives — photographs of people that have no other photographs; there are no other photographs of them in existence — because we believed them to be duplicates, but they were not. We're told that the negatives are in poor condition, they're difficult to open, they would require a process, etc. How can you know that these are in fact duplicates?

A. Wright: One of the things that our archivists do when they're appraising records is they look at the related records. In this case, there are clearly related records in the Royal B.C. Museum, so the archivists went and physically looked at those records and what their contents were.

We did not go back and check every one of the negatives on the microfilm reels because that would have taken thousands of hours of effort and a huge cost. But we've seen enough of the case files to know that they have the intake photos on them, so we can presume that those negatives have positive copies in the case files. We have not verified every one, but we've seen enough of a sample to be quite confident that this is the appropriate action.

S. Robinson: I just want to put this into a bit of context, because I think it's important to understand why there is a bit of a vociferous compulsion to protect these records.

Over the years, as Riverview was decommissioned, a lot of stuff just disappeared. There were a number of volunteers who worked at or around Riverview who have protected some of this stuff that sort of gathered dust in corners and that was just being tossed. They actually went into garbage bags and garbage cans and pulled out stuff that was relevant to the history of this place. Because they live in Coquitlam or Port Coquitlam, they're very, very familiar with some of the challenges that these people have had.

When yet again we're decommissioning or getting rid of files and information from Riverview and it is destined to be destroyed, I'm grateful to Mr. Eby for saying: "Wait a minute. There are some Riverview historical records here that might have some value."

Again, we are still pulling stuff out of the garbage pile. In many ways, this box of negatives that appears to be of no value, that is being sent to the garbage pile, is sort of representative of everything that has happened with the decommissioning of Riverview.

If there is a bit of edginess from those of us who are pretty passionate about it, it's because we're still going into the garbage cans and pulling stuff out that has value.

I guess the question that I have leading up to all of that is: when it's time to look at records that the province no longer sees have any value to itself, is there effort made
[ Page 515 ]
to go and seek out if there are groups in the community who would value those records that are not of a sensitive nature, or are they just destroyed because we have no use for them?

A. Wright: I would have to answer that by saying that that's going to depend on the circumstances. Typically, what the archivists within government are doing is looking at the value of records for potential historical research. They're looking for the long-term values to government as an organization. They're looking at long-term legal values.

They're trained, highly trained. Most of them have master's degrees. They are looking at the multitude of potential values that records could have over the long term.

Do we frequently ask that records be transferred to local organizations? Not frequently. It does happen, and this is one of those situations where that is happening.

S. Simpson: They don't want the box. Does anybody want the box? Have you found anybody who says: "We want the box"?

S. Simpson: We need to find somebody to give the box to if we're not going to destroy it.

B. Ralston (Chair): I thought there was a legal objection to the act of doing that.

B. Ralston (Chair): I'd hoped to have a resolution of this. It doesn't sound like we have one. I'm not sure I want to put….

B. Ralston (Chair): There's a motion here which would…. Perhaps the Deputy Chair could move it. Perhaps he can just read it.

S. Sullivan (Deputy Chair): I move that having examined the retention and disposal applications made by the Public Documents Committee, the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts recommends resolution 1 to the Legislative Assembly, pursuant to section 3 of the Document Disposal Act.

B. Ralston (Chair): Then, just for clarity, that would dispose of the records in the manner that's suggested to the provincial archives, to Coquitlam archives, and the single box that's the subject of discussion would be destroyed. Is that correct, Madam Clerk?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Yes, that's what I understand.

K. Corrigan: I have one more question. I'm sorry, but if I'm going to vote on this, I do have one more question.

I just want to be clear. Sorry, it wasn't really clear, when you were answering Mr. Eby's question, about your level of assuredness that the photographs, the negatives, are duplicated in the provincial archives.

I just want to get the level of assuredness you have and what percentage you're talking about, because you're saying that there are 1,500 or 2,000 of these negatives. You've basically done a sample, gone back and taken a random sample or something like that — gone back and checked them against case files and found that…? You took 20 out and then went and found them and said that all 20 of them had a case file attached?

I'm sorry to be so picky on this, but it's important. These are people's identities. If they're all reproduced, then I don't have a problem with getting rid of them. I need to be clear on that issue.

A. Wright: What we've found is that the case files have intake photographs in them. That has been checked with quite a number of files. What we haven't done is taken the photographs that are unlabelled — so we don't know what names to associate with them, and we don't have any kind of number to associate with a file — and gone through all the case files in the archives looking for a match. That would take thousands of hours.

K. Corrigan: Are there any pictures from that box that have been matched to any case files, or is this an assumption? I mean, how do you even know that those are pictures that are associated with the case files?

A. Wright: Because the similar photographs are on the case files. We haven't matched them.

K. Corrigan: How do you know that if you haven't matched them? You said you hadn't done that.
[ Page 516 ]

K. Corrigan: I don't understand. You've said that there has been no matching, yet you said they are on the same file. How do you even know that those photographs in the box are pictures that were used on the case files? How do you know that? And how do you know that it's exhaustive, that they're all in there?

The first question is: do you even know for sure that those are pictures that go with case files?

A. Wright: We know that they are intake photographs, and we know that they are intake photographs on case files. What we haven't done, again, is…. We have not gone and taken the unnamed intake photographs and gone through the thousands of case files that are at the Royal B.C. Museum to see which ones match. Again, it would take thousands of hours.

Do you have even one photograph from that box that has been matched with a case file?

L. Reimer: My question has to do with the photos that are in the client files at the museum. Do we have client files for every client in Riverview?

A. Wright: I believe so. As far as I know, those file series are complete. All of the records from Riverview relating to the case files have gone to the Royal B.C. Museum. It's been a complete file series. It hasn't been a sample.

S. Simpson: Just quickly on this, based on this exchange here, if Mr. Wright had been able to tell me that "we took 50 of those 2,500 photos and we matched them, and all 50 of them matched," I'd be in to say: "Destroy them."

But when you tell me that not one of those photos has been matched and that this is an assumption without a single match…. I can't support destroying them based on some assumption when not one single photo, not one negative, has been matched.

I know it will take time, and I respect that. And it's probably a pain, but I'd rather go back and tell the museum, "You go match 50" — or whatever an appropriate number is. Come back, and tell us, "We matched up that number" — 20, 50, something that's a sample. I don't know what the right number is. Come back, and say: "We matched them, and we found them all." Then I'd say: "Destroy the box."

But when you haven't matched a single one, then I don't accept that we have that level of confidence.

B. Ralston (Chair): Well, I'm sensing that this debate is interminable, so I suggest…. I don't think there's any urgency to destroying the photographs, so what I would ask, respectfully, is if the mover of the motion would consider adjourning debate.

Perhaps we can endeavour…. I think members are going to have to apply themselves to this in a little bit more concerted way, in the sense of satisfying themselves before they come to the committee, so that we don't waste any further time with our committee. I mean, as important as deliberations are, I'd prefer that this come to the committee as a resolved item with an agreement and be dealt with in an expeditious way.

K. Corrigan: So that we don't come back with another unsatisfactory solution, I'd like to know what is going to be done, exactly what the next steps are, so that….

B. Ralston (Chair): Rather than occupy the time of the committee here, I'll have a discussion with Mr. Wright, and we'll circulate something through the Clerk. People can put their suggestions into an e-mail, and maybe we can deal with it that way.

B. Ralston (Chair): I don't know if there is any other business. Is there any other business? No.

Access to on-line versions of the report of proceedings (Hansard)
and webcasts of committee proceedings is available on the Internet.

Chair:	* Bruce Ralston (Surrey-Whalley NDP)
Deputy Chair:	* Sam Sullivan (Vancouver–False Creek BC Liberal)
Members:	* Kathy Corrigan (Burnaby–Deer Lake NDP)
	* Marc Dalton (Maple Ridge–Mission BC Liberal)
	* David Eby (Vancouver–Point Grey NDP)
	Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal)
	George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)
	* Vicki Huntington (Delta South Ind.)
	* Greg Kyllo (Shuswap BC Liberal)
	* Mike Morris (Prince George–Mackenzie BC Liberal)
	* Linda Reimer (Port Moody–Coquitlam BC Liberal)
	* Selina Robinson (Coquitlam-Maillardville NDP)
	* Shane Simpson (Vancouver-Hastings NDP)
	* Laurie Throness (Chilliwack-Hope BC Liberal)
	* John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Committee Staff:	Ron Wall (Manager, Committee Research Services)

Witnesses:	Stan Andersen (Office of the Auditor General)
	Ian Bailey (Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens' Services)
	Carol Bellringer (Auditor General)
	Cornell Dover (Office of the Auditor General)
	David Galbraith (Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation)
	Molly Harrington (Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation)
	Laura Hatt (Office of the Auditor General)
	Russ Jones (Deputy Auditor General)
	Stuart Newton (Comptroller General)
	Sheila Taylor (Deputy Minister, Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation)
	Alex Wright (Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens' Services)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS