Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills — Issue No. 1

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, ETHICAL CONDUCT, STANDING ORDERS AND PRIVATE BILLS

Present: John Martin, MLA (Chair); Dr. Andrew Weaver, MLA (Deputy Chair); Harry Bains, MLA; Mable Elmore, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; John Horgan, MLA; Darryl Plecas, MLA; Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA; Ralph Sultan, MLA; Laurie Throness, MLA

1. There not yet being a Chair elected to serve the Committee, the meeting was called to order at 8:38 a.m. by the Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees.

2. Resolved, that John Martin, MLA, be elected Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills. (Ralph Sultan, MLA)

3. The Chair called for nominations for the position of Deputy Chair. Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA nominated Dr. Andrew Weaver, MLA to be Deputy Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Order and Private Bills. John Horgan, MLA nominated Mable Elmore, MLA to be Deputy Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Order and Private Bills.

4. There being two nominations, the Chair put the question to the Committee on the first nomination.

Resolved, that Dr. Andrew Weaver be elected Deputy Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills. (Moira Stilwell, MLA)

5. The Committee considered Private Bill, Pr 401, Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association (Corporate Restoration) Act, 2014.

Don Blakely, Solicitor and Parliamentary Agent acting on behalf of Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association, appeared before the Committee, via telephone conference call, and answered questions.

6. Resolved, that the Committee recommend to the House that Bill Pr 401: Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association (Corporate Restoration) Act, 2014 proceed to Second Reading. (Eric Foster, MLA)

7. Resolved, that the Committee approve and adopt the report as presented today, and further that the Chair present the report to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest opportunity. (Dr. Moira Stilwell, 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
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, ETHICAL CONDUCT, STANDING ORDERS AND PRIVATE BILLS


CONTENTS
Page
Election of Chair and Deputy Chair	1
Bill Pr401 — Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association (Corporate Restoration) Act, 2014	1
D. Blakely
Committee Report to the House	3

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good morning, Members. As there has not yet been a meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform for the current second session of this parliament, the first item on your agenda this morning is the election of Chair. I would like to hereby open the call for nominations to that position.

R. Sultan: I would like to nominate John Martin, distinguished politician, academician and expert on all matters of reform, ethical conduct and private bills, to be Chairman of this committee.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Okay. Are there any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

J. Martin (Chair): Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to the sessions, however frequent or infrequent they may be down the road.

Obviously, the first thing we need to do now is the election of a Deputy Chair. Do we have any nominations?

We'll put to a vote those that will support Andrew Weaver in this election as Deputy Chair.

J. Martin (Chair): Congratulations, Andrew Weaver, declared Deputy Chair of the select standing committee.

As you may have seen from the package that was distributed electronically — and I believe you have hard-copy packages now as well — our first and only order of business right now is the consideration of a private bill. That's Bill Pr401, the Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association (Corporate Restoration) Act, 2014.

The member who brought this forward, Greg Kyllo, is not with us today. But we do have on the phone the solicitor and parliamentary agent acting on behalf of the Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association — that being Don Blakely. I'll give Don Blakely an opportunity to brief the members of the committee on the issue before us.

Bill Pr401 — Armstrong-Spallumcheen
Student Assistance Association
(Corporate Restoration) Act, 2014

D. Blakely: Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to this matter. I'd like to begin by thanking the legislative Clerk's office. It's a rather arcane process to get to this point, and there's not a lot of guidance. So the legislative Clerk's office provided yeoman's service in providing us with ample materials and holding our hand, and I'm greatly indebted to them.

The petition before you today relates to the Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association. It has been a registered society. The phrase Armstrong-Spallumcheen refers to both the city of Armstrong and the township of Spallumcheen. This was incorporated as a society in 1965. The purpose of the organization was to collect moneys from a local service club and provide non-interest-bearing loans to graduating high school students from both of those municipalities, who were registered to take post-secondary education. It carried on for many years very successfully.

Unfortunately, in 2002 it was struck off the corporate registry for failure to file its annual reports. That's an unfortunate thing that sometimes happens to charitable organizations if their board changes and the new secretary isn't aware of the process. In any event, having been struck and without realizing it had been struck, the organization continued to carry on, blissfully unaware that they were no longer in existence.

It recently came to their attention that they had been struck, and so what they're seeking to do is to be restored
[ Page 2 ]
to the corporate registry. The Society Act does contain a process which permits this to happen by a routine process, as long as it has been struck for less than ten years. In this particular case, it was struck for more than ten years, and the only avenue open to us is by bringing a private member's bill in the Legislature, which is what brings us here today.

The intent of the restoration is to restore the society for a period of one year. That's because the society's intent is to transfer its funds in the approximate amount of $65,000 to the Pleasant Valley Secondary School located here in Armstrong for them to continue to manage the program. After that year, it's intended that the society will then be dissolved voluntarily.

Essentially, the society is going to be handing off the funds. Unfortunately, it is required for it to be restored in order for that to happen, because the process of transferring the money has to be legitimized by its restoration.

R. Sultan: As a matter of clarification for the record, I take it this is a private bill, not a private member's bill.

L. Throness: I have a question. In our background note it said that the organization had a number with Revenue Canada, a charitable number. I looked on Revenue Canada's list, and indeed, it's still listed there, as late as 2013. So I gather that you are undertaking the activities of the society in an unbroken way — on the federal side, at least.

Is this relevant to the provincial side, and what will happen to the Revenue Canada charitable listing once this is done?

D. Blakely: It's not relevant to the provincial side. Despite its failure to file its annual reports with the corporate registry here in B.C., it did continue to file its appropriate reports with Revenue Canada and maintained its charitable status. Ultimately, in the end, once the society is voluntarily dissolved approximately a year from now, it will cancel that charitable number as well.

H. Bains: My question would be…. During the time since 2002, when I believe it was struck off the register, are we aware of any activity of this organization that may come back and might embarrass us if we go and put them back as a company again?

D. Blakely: No, I think there's little, if any, possibility of that. The reason I say that is that the activity of the society as it carried on past 2002 was simply its original intent of providing non-interest-bearing loans to students and then receiving payments as the students repaid those loans.

One of the very first acts that will be done by the board of the society after it's restored is to ratify all of those previous acts back to 2002. They will come under the umbrella of having been officially dealt with by a standing board.

H. Bains: Just for further clarification, I want to make sure that although they were not registered as a society, they did actually comply with all of the requirements as if they were registered as a society.

D. Blakely: That is correct. They were unaware that they had been struck. The only requirement they did not meet was the filing of their annual return with the corporate registry. And because they were blissfully unaware they had been struck, they continued to carry on as if they were still a registered society. They did their filings with Revenue Canada, they'd have board meetings, they'd pass motions, and they'd have elections for officers — all the usual steps of a full-standing society.

A. Weaver (Deputy Chair): I'm just wondering if there are any liabilities associated with this society that'll also come up.

D. Blakely: Well, the only real liabilities that are incurred by the society are things like the minimal costs paid for the fee to file its annual report with the corporate registry and preparing its annual tax returns. Basically, we're talking about very routine types of liabilities, and all of those liabilities were paid in due course.

L. Throness: Is it an offence not to file an annual return, and could there by penalties associated with that?

D. Blakely: It's not actually an offence. The consequence of not filing your annual return — by annual return, we're talking about the corporate registry return, not the Canada Revenue Agency return; those were done — is that your society is struck from the register.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): We have prepared two draft motions for the consideration of the committee today. The first one is to transmit the recommendation of this committee to the House that the private bill proceed to the second reading stage.
[ Page 3 ]

Then, attached behind that motion is a draft report, which would simply be a summary of the brief meeting this morning, and a second motion to have that transmitted to the Legislature by the Chair, Mr. Martin, at the earliest opportunity.

My thanks to my colleague Rod for distributing those. If members have any questions about the format of that, please don't hesitate to let us know.

L. Throness: On page 3: "The preamble has been proved." Perhaps that should be "approved."

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you, Laurie. The format of this report does mirror the practice that has been undertaken previously. I appreciate your interest in modernizing the language and procedures of this committee, and we'll take that forward.

R. MacArthur (Sessional Law Clerk): And it's in keeping with the standing orders.

M. Stilwell: I was interested in the questions about the society's behaviour in the duration and previously. Is that relevant to this committee? I don't see it in the requirements. I don't know that this committee cares what they do. I mean, it's interesting, but I just wondered if it's relevant to the private bill.

R. MacArthur (Sessional Law Clerk): Sure. Well, I think the committee would have some interest in that you're proceeding properly and that no person's rights are being trammelled or trampled upon. The affidavits that were filed, the petitions that were filed, all attest to certain facts, and you can rely on the face of that. It's a sworn affidavit.

It's a quintessential private bill, in my mind. I could not think of a purer or better one for consideration.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): They're included at the back of the binder. They will provide you with much of the summary background information that has already been discussed this morning. And they do, as Rod suggested, comply with the administrative procedures that have been laid out in the standing orders which apply to private bills.

The applicant must come forward and make a petition and go through all of the administrative and legal requirements in order to have the bill prepared.

The bill is reviewed by leg. counsel. When it returns in a final form, it's introduced, as you know, by a member sponsoring the bill — in this case, Mr. Kyllo. Then upon introduction in the House, it is referred to your committee for consideration, with the benefit of a representative of the association.

M. Stilwell: Right. And just getting to what Mr. MacArthur said, the only thing in the affidavit that might be interpreted, I think, as being relevant to the behaviour of the society is that I know of no person who will be prejudiced.

J. Martin (Chair): If there's no further discussion or questions, could we perhaps ask if there's a member prepared to bring forward the motion?

E. Foster: I would move that the committee recommend to the House that Bill Pr401, Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association (Corporate Restoration) Act, 2014, proceed to second reading.

J. Martin (Chair): Do we have a member prepared to move forward with the next draft motion?

M. Stilwell: I move that the committee approve and adopt the report as presented today and, further, that the Chair present the report to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest opportunity.

There being no other business, does anyone have any further questions or discussion? Do I have a motion to adjourn?

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Chair:	* John Martin (Chilliwack BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	* Dr. Andrew Weaver (Oak Bay–Gordon Head Ind.)
Members:	* Harry Bains (Surrey-Newton NDP)
	* Mable Elmore (Vancouver-Kensington NDP)
	* Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	* John Horgan (Juan de Fuca NDP)
	* Darryl Plecas (Abbotsford South BC Liberal)
	* Dr. Moira Stilwell (Vancouver-Langara BC Liberal)
	* Ralph Sultan (West Vancouver–Capilano BC Liberal)
	* Laurie Throness (Chilliwack-Hope BC Liberal)
	* denotes member present
Clerks:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd
	Rod MacArthur
Committee Staff:	Byron Plant (Committee Research Analyst)

Witness:	Don Blakely (Armstrong-Spallumcheen Student Assistance Association)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, ETHICAL CONDUCT, STANDING ORDERS AND PRIVATE BILLS

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, ETHICAL CONDUCT, STANDING ORDERS AND PRIVATE BILLS