Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 54 — Tuesday, November 25, 2014 (HTML)

Present: Dan Ashton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Gary Holman, MLA; Mike Morris, MLA; John Yap, MLA

2. Pursuant to its terms of reference, the Committee began its review of the three-year rolling service plans, annual reports and budget estimates of the statutory officers.

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES


CONTENTS
Page
Elections B.C.	1305
K. Archer
N. Western
Office of the Ombudsperson	1312
K. Carter

D. Ashton (Chair): Good morning. Thank you very much for coming so early. I do apologize for the little bit of a tardy start.

First up we have Elections B.C. — Dr. Archer and Ms. Western. Thank you again for coming. We’ll go to 8:50 to make up for the time if required. Please, Dr. Archer — I understand you have a plane to catch — the floor is yours.

K. Archer: Good morning, Mr. Chair, Madam Vice-Chair and members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Thanks for the invitation to meet with you this morning so that we can present our budget requirements for the 2015-16 fiscal year. Thanks also to the staff of the Legislative Assembly for scheduling our presentation for this time period. It’s much appreciated.

I’m joined this morning at the table by Nola Western, deputy chief electoral officer, funding and disclosure. Also with us in the gallery are Sherry Hyde, our comptroller; Don Main, the manager of communications; and Amie Foster, the manager of executive services.

As in my previous appearances before this committee, I’ll begin by turning straight to the numbers and identifying our budget requirements. I will then provide some context for our operations at this point in the election cycle and pay particular attention to the ongoing funding associated with administering the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. I’ll refer to that by its acronym, LECFA.

This is followed by a discussion of our event-funding requirements for 2015-16. Nola will walk you through the budget numbers in greater detail, after which we’ll be pleased to respond to your comments and questions.

Let me start with the big picture. The budget for Elections B.C. consists of three budget elements. The first is our operating budget, which is the amount of funding required each year to ensure we’re positioned to administer our responsibilities.

The second is our capital budget, which is the funding used to purchase capital goods. It’s amortized over three to five years, and thereby paid back through our operating budget.

The third element is our event budget, which is one-time funding required to administer our legislatively mandated periodic events.

Let’s begin with the operating budget. Our operating funding requirements for 2015-16 can be thought of as comprising two elements. For the last two years our operating budget has been $8.21 million. In May Elections B.C. was given a new mandate, through the passage of LECFA, to administer new disclosure and compliance requirements for local elections campaign financing.

I met with this committee in June to advise that our ongoing funding requirement to administer this new responsibility is $1.175 million, and this amount was recommended by the committee. Therefore, in the current year, our initial operating budget was supplemented by an additional operating allocation once the LECFA requirements came into effect.

In our current budget submission we’ve added these two items together but otherwise have left them unchanged, and thus our operating funding requirement is $9.385 million.

This represents a stand-pat budget for all of our operations that have remained unchanged since last year’s budget submission and a stand-pat budget for the operating costs associated with our new legislative responsibilities. I’m pleased to say that for the third consecutive year we’re bringing forward a stand-pat operating budget.

Second, our capital budget requirement for 2015-16 is $700,000. The table on page 17 of our budget submission indicates that all of this funding will be used on computer hardware, servers and related software. But in practice, it’s largely related to software development. There are a number of tools that are specific to election administration for which we invest capital funds to ensure that we have systems that are responsive to the needs of our stakeholders.

As one illustration, our capital requirement for 2015-16 includes $200,000 to develop an on-line electronic filing system for candidates, political parties and constituency associations to move us away from the current paper-based filing system.

Our third budget requirement is for event funding. The event funding varies from year to year, depending upon electoral events Elections B.C. is required to administer and according to where we are in the four-year election cycle. For 2015-16 our event-related funding requirement is $1.695 million. I will describe the four projects involved in this requirement in a few moments.

To summarize: the requirements overall include $9.385 million for operating, $700,000 for capital and $1.695 million for event-related funding.

Let me talk a bit about the election cycle. To understand the work of Elections B.C. and, thereby, our budget requirements, consider the four-year provincial electoral cycle. Although the dates don’t correspond precisely to fiscal year-ends, one can consider that a provincial election marks the end of one cycle and the start of another. We’re currently in year 2 of the four-year cycle, and our 2015-16 budget request is for year 3.

Year 1 activities include many close-out functions for the general election, including the closing of all dis-
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trict electoral offices and the return of all material to our warehouse in Victoria for inventory management. It includes resolution of all changes and updates to the voters list; completion of voting book reviews; follow-up on all suspected or alleged election irregularities; receipt of all financial reports from political parties, candidates and advertising sponsors and review of these reports to ensure compliance.

In addition, we undertake a variety of lessons-learned exercises in our efforts for continuous improvement, as well as research on electoral processes. We file a number of reports with the Legislative Assembly, documenting the experience in the election.

We use year 1 to renew our strategic planning efforts to begin to establish the context for our approach in subsequent general elections. There may be opportunities to undertake special projects of a strategic character. For much of year 1, for example, I chaired the Independent Panel on Internet Voting, which provided recommendations to the Legislative Assembly in February of this year. The panel was hosted by Elections B.C., and we provided all the administrative support to the panel.

At all times in the electoral cycle, we must be prepared to administer unplanned electoral events. In year 1 of the current cycle, for example, we administered a by-election in Westside-Kelowna and a citizens’ initiative on a proposal entitled the safe policing act. The latter petition did not satisfy the requirements to proceed and thus failed.

During year 2 of the election cycle, we continue with the fine detail of strategic planning for subsequent general elections. Our current planning involves the introduction of a number of administrative changes to the conduct of general elections — including, for example, a new electronic voter-lookup application that was successfully piloted in the Westside-Kelowna by-election. That will be adopted more generally in 2017.

This change, as well as others, involves bringing more technology into the voting place for provincial elections and is expected to provide wider application for the 2021 general election. The details on these and other innovations in the voting model are currently under review, and deputy chief electoral officer Anton Boegman is engaged in consultations with the political parties this week as part of that effort. You may be aware of that through your colleagues.

Year 2 activities also include a completion of the review of party, candidate, constituency association and election advertiser reports for the general election and deregistration of parties that fail to meet performance requirements. In addition, in every year of the four-year cycle, we receive and review annual financial disclosure by political parties and constituency associations. We also administer the registration and deregistration of parties and constituency associations either voluntarily or as a result of non-compliance.

To this activity in the current cycle was added a new mandate for Elections B.C. to oversee local elections campaign financing. This required hiring a new team of full-time staff; developing guides and forms for candidates, elector organizations and advertising sponsors; developing training materials both for new event-specific staff and for stakeholder groups; securing space for events staff; administering the new campaign financing rules; and reporting and monitoring to ensure compliance. This new responsibility is now embedded in its own four-year local election cycle aside the provincial election cycle.

The voters list continues to be maintained and updated in year 2 through data-exchange agreements and through the direct engagement with voters, either through the mail, via telephone or through our on-line voter registration application. We’re also continuing with the assessment of best practices for updating the voters list, particularly for young voters and others less likely to be on the voters list, and are preparing a revised voters list update plan for the 2017 general election.

Years 2 and 3 of the election cycle, following every second general election, typically involve the Chief Electoral Officer dedicating a substantial amount of time to the work of the Electoral Boundaries Commission.

In the current period, as you may know, Elections B.C. agreed to provide all administrative support to the commission, a point that I raised with this committee last year at this time. That involves hosting the commission at our offices in Victoria and providing most of the staffing for the commission. This is the first time this has happened with the Electoral Boundaries Commission.

To date this model has realized savings of more than $1 million, and our expectation is that these efficiencies will continue over the life of the commission, and the commission will extend until November of 2015.

Year 3 of the election cycle is characterized by the move from planning to implementation of our plans. In electoral finance we continue to receive and review annual financial reports, but we turn increasingly to reviewing our training materials for stakeholder groups — that is parties, candidates and constituency associations and their financial agents, as well as advertising sponsors — in preparation for the general election.

In electoral operations we prepare the many guides and forms required by election officials and, along with HR and finance and administration, prepare for the hiring and training of about 33,000 staff that we hire for the general election.

Our voter registration and boundaries group will be given the task of implementing the changes that result from the work of the Electoral Boundaries Commission, as well as preparing to implement the revised voters list update program implemented in advance of the 2013 general election.

In the interests of time, I won’t go into the activities of year 4 of the election cycle, as that will be next year’s
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story. But let me turn briefly to our event funding requirements for 2015-16.

Elections B.C. has a detailed and comprehensive event-planning methodology, based on standards and best practices endorsed by the Project Management Institute. We’re recognized as leaders in this by our colleagues in other Canadian provincial and federal electoral agencies.

The event funding requirements are described on page 12 of our submission, with details listed in table form on page 18. As stated, our current budget year for event-related activities is $1.719 million. This has provided event funding for the preparations for and the administration of campaign financing and third-party advertising provisions in local government elections on November 15, 2014.

From an event perspective, the next fiscal year will see both a continuation of the work on the local elections, as well as a commencement of the planning and preparations necessary to get ready for the 2017 provincial general election.

In ’15-16 Elections B.C. will have to begin work on the complete provincial electoral and voting area boundaries redistribution; planning for the 2017 voter list update improvement project, i.e. enumeration; and will be launching several key projects and activities as part of the first phase of work planned in support of the 2017 provincial general election.

The next fiscal year may also see Elections B.C. required to administer on-demand events, such as provincial by-elections, recall or initiative petitions, referendums or plebiscites, or administer the campaign financing provisions of local by-elections or assent votes.

Per our current protocol funding for these types of potential events is not included in this budget request. Rather, when such an event is known, I will write to this committee outlining the specific budget requirements for that event.

Let’s now look at the specifics of our event budget requirements for 2015-16, and this is the information detailed on page 18 of the budget proposal document. The budget requirements for continued administration of campaign financing provisions for the local government elections is $784,000.

This funding provides for the salaries and benefits of temporary staff and the supporting infrastructure — e-mail accounts, IT support, legal, audit, investigative fees — necessary to receive, review for compliance and publish the approximately 3,600 disclosure statements filed by candidates, elector organizations and third-party advertising participants in the November 15 local elections. Note for context that this funding works out to less than $250 per report submitted to us.

This activity is a continuation of the work completed this fiscal year and a result of Elections B.C.’s expanded mandate under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.

With the independent Electoral Boundaries Commission’s final report due in November of 2015, Elections B.C. will also need to begin preparations next year to complete a full provincial electoral district and voting area redistribution. With the adoption of new geography and mapping software and technologies, the overall redistribution process will be significantly less manual and labour-intensive than before, and I believe that, overall, Elections B.C. will realize significant efficiencies and cost savings over the boundary redistribution of 2007 and ’08 as a result of doing so much in-house in the current round.

Preparatory activity that must begin in 2015-16 includes the hiring and deployment of temporary GIS staff, computer system modifications and Shared Services information technology support. We’ll require a total of $300,000 for the redistribution in 2015-16, with further funding required for subsequent years.

Although the next provincial enumeration and election are not scheduled until May 2017, preparations must commence in 2015-16 in a number of key areas. In order to ensure that voter list improvement activities associated with the 2017 enumeration are comprehensive, effective and secure, planning for this event must begin in the next fiscal year. A total of $62,000 will be required to begin the enumeration planning process and complete a review of past enumeration materials and procedures. The funding will be used for temporary staff salaries and benefits.

In preparation for the 2017 provincial general election, Elections B.C. must recruit, appoint and equip 85 district and deputy district electoral officers in 2015-16, as their first training session will take place in April 2016 — so at the start of the subsequent fiscal year. Temporary HR and IT staff professional services as well as a recruitment advertising campaign will be required to support this project.

Elections B.C. must also develop and deploy a new DEO training system and content as well as a DEO SharePoint site for collaboration, communication and resource access. Elections B.C. requires $549,000 of event funding in 2015-16 for these initial general election preparations. I would note that this funding will be included in the overall cost of the 2017 enumeration and election, and reported in respective CEO reports.

With that, I’ll now turn to Nola, who can provide further details on our budget requirements.

N. Western: Good morning. I’m going to speak quite quickly so that you have enough time for your questions.

As Keith noted, Elections B.C. actually has several budgets: the ongoing operating budget, a capital budget and several event budgets. The requests for each of these budgets is shown separately in the document before you.

If you turn to page 13, you’ll find our core services operating budget request for the next fiscal year, which is 2015-16, and the following two years. The original 2014-
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15 ongoing operating budget is also shown. It’s in the first column. This $8.21 million was the budget originally approved by this committee last December. Since then our mandate and ongoing budget have changed.

In April the committee approved additional ongoing funding of $75,000 to prepare for and meet the new mandate under LECFA, and in June, after passage of that act, the committee recommended an additional $1.1 million for ongoing costs related to that new legislation. So our total ongoing operating budget for 2014-15, as recommended by this committee, is $9.385 million. And you can see that we’re not requesting any increase to that amount for the next three fiscal years. As Keith said, it’s a stand-pat budget.

Notes on the following pages provide further information about the types of expenses for each of those line items.

Although the overall budget will remain the same, there are always changes to the separate line items as we adjust, this time, to the new mandate and other changing circumstances and projects every year.

The increases to salaries and benefits, building occupancy charges, office expense and telecommunications and corporate information technology are largely due to the new mandate for local elections. Other factors include government-mandated salary increases for our non-management employees, who, while not members of the BCGEU, do receive the same wage increases. And we have a new contract for our outsourced information technology services.

Address and boundary maintenance costs will decrease significantly for the second year in a row next year because we’ve now moved our outsourced GIS work to the new contract under our general IT contract, and it’s at a much lower rate.

Voters list maintenance are those costs incurred to maintain the provincial voters list, and those costs always decrease the year after local elections. Many municipalities use our voters list and our voter registration forms, and now that those elections are over, Elections B.C. has already started to receive tens of thousands of new and updated voter registration documents, so they will be processed and added to the provincial voters list. That work will be largely completed by the end of this fiscal year, so next fiscal year you can see a decrease in costs.

Political entity reporting costs will decrease next fiscal year because we will have finished all of the post-2013 general election work, and so the temporary staff who have been doing that work will be reduced.

Voter education includes our ongoing public education programs, including Democracy Day programs and teacher resources that are used in grade 5 and grade 11 classrooms. In 2014-15 the budget was decreased as we focused on finalizing reports related to the 2013 enumeration and general election. For next fiscal year the budget will increase, but it will remain below its previous level of 2013-14.

At $9.385 million our ongoing core services budget request for 2015-16 is 6.3 percent less than the budget we had 14 years ago. This is despite the very major increase to our mandate and the increase in the number of voters and the number of electoral districts over that time. Elections B.C. is always aware that we rely on money from the taxpayers. We’re all taxpayers, and we will continue to be prudent in all of our spending.

The capital budget request is on page 17 of the budget document. The capital budget request of $700,000 is the same amount recommended by this committee last year. We always try to minimize our capital investments, but like any other modern business, as Keith told you, the election business is very reliant on technology. Next year we need to complete the electronic filing system for provincial candidates, and we hope to expand it to include political parties. For local election clients, we’ll enhance our existing financial reports and political contributions system to include campaign contributions to local candidates and elector organizations.

The inventory distribution system is used to manage receiving, storing, packing and distribution of election supplies to the 85 electoral districts. This time last year we’d planned to develop an entirely new inventory system. The existing one is over 20 years old. But since then, our analysis has indicated that we can modify the existing system to meet the business needs and save some money. That work will be done next fiscal year.

The resulting savings helped offset some of electoral information’s slow renovation work that has been going on for several years, and it continued into this year. And the savings allowed us to make some progress on the voting modernization work, such as the electronic voter lookup system that Keith just spoke about.

Finally, the statement of operations on the last page of the budget proposal is a backward-looking document. It presents our ongoing and event-related results for the last two fiscal years.

With that, I’m happy to turn the table back to Mr. Chair, and we’ll address your questions.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thank you very much for the presentation, and first names here if you don’t mind.

J. Yap: Thanks, Keith and Nola. A couple questions. With regard to the spending that you’re forecasting for the 2017 election over the next fiscal year, this budget year, is it consistent with the past cycles? So for ’15-16 what you’re doing with hiring district electoral officers and the training, etc., is consistent with the last cycle — so two years from ’09, the ’11-12.

K. Archer: So the idea of spending some event fund-
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ing for a general election two years in advance of the GE is consistent. The actual dollar figure is different than it was last time. I think we’re asking for about $300,000 more this time than was the case last time.

One of the big changes in the way that we’re planning on administering this event is increasing the role of technology and the equipment that our DEOs and the deputy DEOs have, both in their offices and in the voting place. As a result of that, there’s going to be a requirement for us to ensure that when we hire the DEOs and their deputies, which will take place in fiscal year 2015-16, we’re going to equip them with our equipment right away.

Part of this has to do with ensuring security of information. There’s a need to ensure, when DEOs are thinking about hiring practices, for example, and are looking at maintaining confidential information of potential hirees, that all of that information is secured on a device that is owned, maintained and serviced by Elections B.C.

In the past we’ve had a practice that when we’ve hired the DEOs and deputies, they’ve had their own e-mail accounts oftentimes and even their own hardware. We’ve gone through a privacy review in this past year and heightened our privacy practices as a result. That will result, in part, in greater technology being used this time around — in providing that information, that equipment, to what will be our new, kind of, term employees earlier on in the cycle.

You mentioned 85. As you know, the commission is looking at the potential of increasing it. I suppose if the recommendation is to increase it by one or two, to 86 or 87, and if it passes in the Legislature, then you would come back for an adjustment on the budget.

K. Archer: No. The maximum number of MLAs is going to be 87, and consequently, the maximum number of district electoral officers will be 87. Equipping two additional staff members — I guess, four, if you include their deputies — is the kind of adjustment that we can make within the budget proposal that’s in front of you.

J. Yap: Okay. My last question. You haven’t indicated the potential or, actually, the almost certainty of a referendum on TransLink. Are you waiting for the date to be identified and then you would come for an event budget?

K. Archer: Yeah, it’s a procedural matter for us. At this point we have not been directed to administer any other events within British Columbia, and until we are so directed, we don’t bring forward any budget requirements.

M. Morris: Just going back to some of the event funding. You’ve got boundaries redistribution, $300,000. You’re also talking about computer servers and software related in your capital part for another $700,000. Is there any kind of an overlap in there? That’s No. 1.

The second part of that question is…. You’re talking about cost saving by implementing some new GIS technology or something with respect to boundaries, the boundary changes and whatnot. What do those savings look like? You say you’re going to put them back into other areas, but I’m just curious to see what those savings would look like in year 2 and 3 out, after this is done.

K. Archer: Okay. So I’ll talk a bit about the connection between the Electoral Boundaries Commission and our work at the VA level. Perhaps Nola could talk about the capital requirement.

In the past when Electoral Boundary Commissions have been established, they have set up quite independent operations. They’ve hired their own staff, and they have maintained a separation between their activities and Elections B.C. So they may be using quite different software than the software that we use, for example, for administrative purposes.

At the end of the process — once the boundaries are recommended by the commission and the Legislative Assembly does its work — then the matter goes over to Elections B.C. In a sense, we almost start from scratch at implementing those changes within our IT systems to ensure that we’re prepared to deliver an event on those boundaries.

This time around, what’s happened is that all of the technical support for the commission is provided by people who are Elections B.C. employees. They’ve been seconded to work on the work of the commission, but they’re working in our facilities, using our infrastructure and using our IT systems generally.

There’s going to be a pretty seamless transition from the work that is completed by them as part of their duties with the commission and the work that’s completed by them as part of their work with Elections B.C. There are going to be a lot fewer person-hours, effectively, is the saving. It’s a staff saving in that transition period.

N. Western: I think I’ll talk a bit about the ongoing core services, where I talked about the GIS contract moving from one contractor to our general IT services contract, The decrease in line 7, “Address and boundary maintenance,” is over $100,000, but not all of that is savings. Some of it is savings, because it’s less expensive with our general IT services contract.

Some of that money has been moved from the address and boundary maintenance line to the corporate
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information systems line. Under the corporate information systems contract I can no longer pull out the GIS work separately and report it separately, so some of that is in there.

For capital, I don’t think that there’s really…. There’s a little bit, $50,000, of geography products and services included in the capital budget next fiscal year, which is just some new products to enhance some of the mapping software, mostly mapping software for both voting area redistribution and electoral district, to implement the boundaries that the commission and that the Legislative Assembly may pass.

G. Heyman: Could you describe for us what post-election performance evaluations you perform on DEOs and what training, if any, you have for DEOs and Elections B.C. staff in dealing with non-routine issues that emerge during voting days, such as challenges to eligibility, etc.?

In terms of the training of our DEOs, in the last event the training took place in four three-day training sessions. The first took place early in 2011. There was a training session in fall 2011, fall 2012 and spring 2013.

The model that we used for that general election was to bring all of the DEOs and the deputies together into a single conference venue. Typically it’s over in Richmond, although the last session usually is here in Victoria. They go through three days of quite detailed training on a variety of their functions.

For the current model, our expectation is that we’re going to replace some of that with a blended-learning model.

Some of it will be, I guess you could call it, distance education or remote-technology-facilitated training, whereby we will be developing modules that people can go through on their own in advance of a face-to-face. The current model, I believe — and Chair, you can correct me if I’m wrong — is three face-to-face, in-person training sessions, likely of three days in duration, and one set of training modules that are done by the DEO and their deputy at a distance. That’s correct. That’s the overall training.

In terms of evaluation, we did implement a performance review process for the DEOs and their deputies. The DEOs, for example, were asked to assess their deputy, and the deputy is asked to assess the DEO, confidentially, with that information sent back to us, as well as assessments of the performance of those district electoral offices by the headquarters staff. I would say that in the 2013 general election we had a more fulsome performance evaluation of the DEOs and their deputies than we’ve had in the past.

I would say, as well, that as we introduce more and more technology into the voting process and into the DEO offices, that does have a bearing on the ability of some types of people who’ve in the past served as DEOs and deputies to continue to perform to the standard that we’re expecting. In other words, there have been some real implications of some of that assessment process.

There may have been a third part of your question, George. No, that’s enough? Okay.

N. Western: : Can I just add that when the headquarters staff evaluates the DEOs, it’s evidence-based. Every time we touch base with a DEO, every time a DEO contacts us, a record is kept so that when it comes time to prepare the evaluations, we have evidence and records. It’s not just our memory.

Further, DEOs and deputies are all terminated. Their employment with us is terminated six months after general voting day, so they’re not automatically rehired. We re-evaluate them when it comes time to reappointing and appointing new ones every election.

G. Heyman: Sorry, there was sort of a third part, and that was specifically with respect to training. Now that you’ve described the training sessions, I can perhaps frame the question in a better way.

Within those training sessions, are there any modules that replicate or deal with high-pressure decision situations as opposed to the routine administration of what normally goes well during a voting day?

K. Archer: That’s a good question and a good probe as to how we want to potentially develop that experience for our DEOs. I don’t think we’ve done that. We certainly haven’t done role-playing in the way that I’m anticipating your question is leading.

There’s no doubt about it. Our DEOs and their deputies feel a lot of pressure as general voting day approaches. I’m happy to get back to you next year on that same question to see if it’s affected some of our planning for the training sessions.

G. Heyman: Just to further clarify, I’m thinking in particular of situations where representatives of different parties or candidates will disagree over an issue of, say, eligibility or anything associated with eligibility or behaviour within a voting precinct.

S. Gibson: How many employees do you have? Maybe it’s here. I couldn’t see it.

S. Gibson: You’re increasing the amount of money you’re spending on permanent employees over last year but dramatically dropping information technology. Why is that — as a percentage, according to the material that you’ve submitted here?
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S. Gibson: No. Employee expenses are from 52 to 54, and then you’ve got technology down from 20 percent to only 14 percent, as a percentage. I’m just curious about that.

N. Western: Yes. We have many new employees because of the change in mandate to local elections. As part of the new IT services contract, we moved part of that work to a new employee. Our help desk support had been contracted out under the old contract that we’ve had for almost two decades. We moved that position in-house, and it has saved us quite a bit of money, actually, on corporate information systems. So that’s part of it, but most of the increase in salaries is due to the new Local Election Campaign Financing Act.

S. Gibson: I come out of a local government background — as do many of the MLAs, as you know. This is my first term, so hopefully, I’m allowed to ask naive questions here.

The machines that many municipalities rent to operate their elections are rented from other jurisdictions. There’s almost a symbiosis between…. For example, in Abbotsford I think we rented our machine from someplace in Ontario. It’s my recollection.

Are there opportunities for you, as an organization with provincewide responsibilities in B.C., to engage in efficiencies by doing complementary work with other provinces? In other words, are there ways…?

The same way that municipalities do complementary, symbiotic things with other jurisdictions in other parts of the country, are there efficiencies that you can generate for the good of our taxpayers so that you do things symbiotically with other jurisdictions?

Is there something complementary you can do with Alberta or New Brunswick in such a way that you don’t have to have the same, maybe, hiring or some way of less capital expense as a way to be more efficient or more frugal with the limited resources? That’s my question.

K. Archer: Again, I’ll start, and Nola may have something to add to this. In terms of the efficiencies with the use of technology, the first thing you made reference to was the vote tabulators that are used by many local jurisdictions.

We continue at this stage to count ballots by hand. The ballot is quite different at the local level than at the provincial level, and there is less of a compelling business case for using tabulators, at this point in time, for the counting of the types of ballots that are used in provincial general elections. There hasn’t been a compelling reason to go in that direction of sharing that type of resource.

That said, I did mention that Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Anton Boegman is doing some stakeholder consultations on a revised voting model. We are in the process of developing some fairly significant changes to the voting model in British Columbia that we may well bring to the Legislative Assembly in due course.

Those invariably will involve a significant increase in the use of technology, and that would provided a much greater logic to sharing some resources with other jurisdictions. The changes that are anticipated in that model would require legislative change. Consequently, it would be important to bring them here.

We’re not considering those fundamental changes for the 2017 general election. All the changes that we’re anticipating introducing for the 2017 general election are changes that can be implemented with the current Election Act. We’re looking at significant changes to the voting model for 2021.

Again, the stakeholder consultations are ongoing, and they will include consultations with caucuses as well.

N. Western: We do share expertise. In fact, Keith is on his way to Ottawa to meet with his colleagues after this session. But the legislation across the country actually varies greatly. The differences and the details vary, so software is very hard to share.

With the candidate electronic filing system, we looked at systems across the country. We even looked at systems in detail in the United States, a couple of which we could’ve received for free. But they’re just so different, the details in the legislation, that we can’t often share that kind of work.

S. Gibson: I guess that’s kind of a segue to my last question, which may be more philosophical, and that maybe is not entirely what we’re engaged in here.

I looked on page 19 of your annual report, and you’ve got your values listed there. I always think, whenever I have done any work with any organization or done a little bit of work for folks in consulting, one of the first things you look at are values, because that’s what really is your foundation of what you do and how you measure success.

One of the things that I think we all lament is the growing cynicism of the political process, especially among young people. The universities students I taught were not interested in being engaged. So that’s a challenge we all have, whether we’re partisan like us here or neutral like you folks, in exercising a mandate to have free and democratic elections.

I don’t see anything here….This is not a criticism; I’m just new here. There’s nothing here that says: “We want to get people engaged. We want people to vote.”

I realize that you’re not the sort of an organization with a verve or energy; you’re an administrative thing. However, I sometimes look at, say, a list like this…. Other
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than perhaps service orientation, none of these say: “We’ve got to get people out. We’re going to be healthy as a democracy if we engage people and get younger people, in particular, voting.”

I’m just wondering, even though that’s not an overt part of your mandate: is there something here that we can engage in at some point, some kind of discussion about that? Just wondering. Again, it’s kind of a big broad philosophical question. But I worry that if we just keep on being good administrators, we may be missing out on a lot of folks who would otherwise vote, but they just go: “It’s just too complicated for me” or “I don’t understand, I just don’t want to be involved.”

D. Ashton (Chair): Simon, I just need a question. We only have five minutes left. I’m sorry.

S. Gibson: Quick comment, if you will. Again, it’s a big philosophical matter.

K. Archer: I love the question. I think election administration agencies have an important role to play in citizen engagement. I’ve recently written a paper on that topic. I’m happy to share it with you.

I see our role as one of removing barriers to participation. One of the most significant ways that we can remove barriers to participation is encouraging people to get on the voters list.

Our research has shown that the most likely determinant of whether you’re on the voters list is your age. Of people 18 to 24, only two-thirds of them are on the voters list, whereas of people our age, typically, about 97 or 98 percent of them are on the voters list. So I think there’s much we can do to encourage voter participation. I’d be delighted to have that further conversation with you or your colleagues.

J. Yap: To your knowledge, is there any jurisdiction that is using something other than a handwritten ballot and hand-counted?

K. Archer: They ran into some controversy on that in their recent general election. I think that’s the only province that uses….

Dr. Archer, travel safe. Just a favour, when you do get back, could I get a quick call from you? Just a couple things I’d like to talk about in the future and see….

Nola, thank you very much for coming today. We’ll have a chance to get back to you a.s.a.p. Thank you.

D. Ashton (Chair): Well, good morning. Thank you very much for coming this morning. We greatly appreciate you being here. If you don’t mind first names, so Kim and David, thank you.

The floor is yours. Presentation, approximately 20-ish minutes. I’m not so sure how long it is. You see there are lots of questions, and we have a sign-off time at 9:40 because of commitments that we all have.

K. Carter: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chair, Madam Deputy Chair and members of the committee. I know a number of you through visits and, in some cases, from previous years’ committee meetings.

I will endeavour to meet the time frame set out. Of course, it is difficult, since this is my only opportunity to present to a committee of the House, and the amount of time has decreased significantly from 90 minutes to 75 to 45 minutes. I will try and cut back on the explanation of the work of the office, but I think it is still critical to talk about that, because that’s really the only reason why we’re here before you to look for a budget.

D. Ashton (Chair): Kim, I concur. Unfortunately, we have to be somewhere, as you realize. If required, there is an opportunity in the future to come back, but for this morning I have to live within the time constraint.

K. Carter: What I intended to do is present in two parts: an overview of activities since the last committee meeting, which really builds on the foundation for our operating budget request — we really only have one budget, which is our operating budget — and then a summary of the request itself.

I do, even with the constraints, want to take a short moment to introduce some new people who are sitting here. We have, in our office, felt the results of what is described as a demographic effect — retirements, as were projected, particularly at the senior management level. Linda Carlson, our former deputy, retired, and I have with me the new Deputy Ombudsperson, David Paradiso.

David is a lawyer with extensive background in ombudsperson work. He’s worked in three other ombuds offices across Canada and came to us from Ottawa, where he was the interim chair of the RCMP external complaints committee. He and his wife and, you’ll be de-
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lighted to know, four daughters moved here in August.

I also need to introduce our new executive director of corporate Shared Services. When I say ours, it’s not just the Office of the Ombudsperson. Our corporate Shared Services agreement with three other offices means that Dave Van Swieten, who is to my right here and who has taken over from Shelley Forrester, is the director of corporate Shared Services for four officers of the Legislature.

Dave came to our office in June from his position as director of eHealth operations. He has broad experience working in finance in the provincial government, mainly in the Ministry of Health, for nearly 20 years. You’ll all be very happy to know he’s a certified professional accountant.

What has been going on since the report to the committee that I made last December 6? I’m going to focus, given the time constraints, on the work of core ombuds activities rather than corporate shared support. I have found in previous years the committee is just extremely happy to know that we have an efficient corporate shared support organization.

We have, as you know, a mandate to ensure people are treated fairly by provincial public authorities in this province. It’s the broadest mandate of any of the provincial and territorial ombuds offices, and we have been doing it for 35 years.

This week is actually Fairness Week, and it’s a celebration of the 35 years of service that the office has provided to the people in the province. Just to pick up on some of the comments made in the earlier presentation, I would say that an effective Ombudsperson office is one of the indications of a healthy democracy.

We have an accessible, integrated and efficient process. We serve the most vulnerable, but we also serve a number of different communities across the province. You may be surprised at the range and reach of our work.

In addition to our individual investigations, our systemic investigations produce excellent results. We’ve done one in the past year in the area of environmental protection, the riparian areas regulation, and we’re working on one at the current time which relates to the protection of students and adequate oversight in private career-training institutions. I add that so that you have some idea that we’re not doing the same thing again and again.

One of the things I want to highlight is that it’s very important to follow up on acceptance and implementation of recommendations. That can produce ongoing positive results.

Finally, that preventative ombudsmanship — through the use of focus materials, best practice reports, providing advice ahead of time on procedures and proposed policy changes — has the ability to take the knowledge and expertise of our office and apply it before problems occur.

I would be very happy to be able say to the committee that we can do all this with no change in budget, but you will see, as set out in our budget report, that I am asking for an increase in three parts.

Let me just give you some idea of what some of the activities in the last year are. If you look at our intake and early resolution, these are the people who deal with every incoming inquiry and complaint. It was, in fact, 7,688 last year, which was up from the year before, and those numbers are continuing to increase.

This small team is very efficient. We do most of our work by phone. We have some web-based complaints that come in, and we still have people who like to write us letters. These are all dealt with by that team, and they effectively deal with about 80 percent of those inquiries and complaints. The remainder of the inquiries and complaints come either to our early resolution or to our individual investigative teams.

There was a question as to how many people are in the office. In our office there are, really, two groups. We have 14 staff who are corporate Shared Services. We have 35 who are core ombudsperson services.

The key for us in the intake is to have a very responsive approach. You will see one of our key measures is what percentage of our calls can we respond to within 45 seconds. People are only calling to complain and express concern. They don’t become less concerned and have fewer complaints if we are unresponsive.

In our case, we achieve this: 80 percent of those calls are answered within 45 seconds. That, I think, goes a long way to resolving issues and to convincing people that they’re coming to the right place. With our individual investigations we did something, last year, in the range of 1,700.

You’ve had the opportunity to look at our annual report. What I would say is that 13 percent of investigations are redirected into early resolution, which is a great help. For the remainder, it’s one of three teams who deal with them. We have a health and local services team, a regulatory programs team and a social programs team.

I can only give you a quick overview of the kind of work the office does. I’ll select five cases. I can give you the page number references, if you want to look at them later in the annual report.

On page 37 there’s a case that involves a gentleman — we change the names because our investigations are confidential, so he’s identified as Fraser — who had been receiving disability benefits for four years from the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation. His advocate felt he was getting less than he should and brought this to the ministry. The ministry agreed and increased his payment but declined to look backwards to see when this problem had begun.

Fraser came to our office. We investigated. We reviewed the file. Often we find resolutions in us actually
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looking at the material that the ministries have and reviewing it with fresh eyes.

We reviewed the file, did our own calculations and looked at the applicable rules. We found documents on the file that established errors on the ministry’s part. As well, we challenged the ministry’s own interpretation of how much retroactivity it could actually approve — both of those successfully.

So this gentleman who is on disability benefits received the money he was entitled to, of $4,600, which made a significant positive impact on his life. But it also lets the ministry look at how they can do better to deliver the services that they should be delivering anyway.

From another approach, on page 52 you’ll see some work we did for a small business person. Bob was a small business operator whose engineering firm bid on a Ministry of Transportation contract. Due to the confusing wording and structure of the RFP, Bob’s firm felt it was at a disadvantage and that it hadn’t been fairly treated. He complained to our office about the fairness of the process, and we investigated.

After investigating, we were satisfied that the process had been run appropriately and fairly, but the clarity of the materials provided to the individuals and the firms was actually a discouragement to some smaller firms. In dealing with the ministry, the ministry agreed to make some changes so that all of the firms could have the adequate information they required and compete on an equal footing.

Another individual complaint that we investigated last year — and you’ll find it on page 23 — is one that involves StudentAid B.C. This student was perhaps not your average student. Rachel had four children and had fled an abusive relationship. She’d moved into a transition house, and in order to support her family, she went back to school. She went back and became a registered nurse.

She had, not surprisingly, a large student loan, amongst other things, to deal with. But she found out about a program that had been established by the government to attract medically trained people to underserved areas. She reviewed it carefully, determined that she met the qualifications and went out and found a position in an underserved area. She got hired, moved her family and applied.

She was denied the student loan remission that she had understood she qualified for. She was told that because she had declared bankruptcy, she was not eligible. That was even though the bankruptcy hadn’t affected, in any way, her student loan payments and even though this was not mentioned in any of the material that related to qualifying for the program.

So she ended up coming to our office. Again, we investigated. In her letter to us she said: “I’m 52, and I owe $72,000 in student loans.”

We investigated. We found that, in our view, there’d been some unfairness. We went back to StudentAid B.C. They reconsidered, and the results of the reconsideration were that she actually received a refund of principal and interest that she had paid for the year previously and that she was eligible for additional loan forgiveness over the next two years. The total value was in the range of about $50,000.

Now, again, just to give you an idea, I’ll mention a recent investigation that we did that actually related to somebody who had a woodlot licence, so it’s a forestry issue, and who needed an increase to his annual allowable cut. He made applications, a couple of applications. One was approved, but on the other one there was a request for more information. The whole process got bogged down in delay.

When the time came, in fact, the individual eventually got approval but was told that he had overcut. There were fines in the amount of over $300,000 that he had to pay. From his perspective, this was going to be fatal to his small business. Again, unable to work it out with the ministry, he came to us. We investigated. The ministry ended up relooking at the matter. They acknowledged that the delay was, in large part, their fault, and they reduced the penalty by over $250,000, which allowed him to continue to operate.

I’m going to finish with one that perhaps demonstrates how people come to us about one issue and it affects many people and perhaps engages other areas. A gentleman came to us. He lived in the country. He required regular medical treatment at a hospital in Kamloops. He could get to Kamloops, but he had to stay overnight because he couldn’t get home on the same day and have his treatment. So he wanted to use handyDART. But unfortunately, handyDART, as it turns out, is only eligible for people who were residents of Kamloops. He tried to work it out, unsuccessfully, then came to us.

Really, when we looked at it and when we talked to the city and to B.C. Transit, they acknowledged that this was a gap in services. Obviously, this gentleman wasn’t going to be a resident, but he had to be in Kamloops, and he needed handyDART. It was resolved for him, but B.C. Transit also told us that our investigation had alerted them to the fact that with an increasingly aging population, more people who do not live in communities with specialized medical facilities will need handyDART in other communities, and they’re going to look into addressing this.

For those who have a really significant interest in the most esoteric kinds of things, on page 26 of our annual report we have an interesting case summary on hunting bighorn sheep and what you can do when you run across Rocky Mountain bighorn ram horns. I throw that in only to say that our investigators never know what will be coming through the door.

In addition to the over 1,700 individual investigations, we do systemic investigations. In the past year since last coming to the committee there have been two reports
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that have come out. The first that I’ll talk about is on riparian area regulations. This is our report in the area of environmental protection. It actually originated, as all our systemic investigations do, in individual complaints that came to our office.

When we looked into and investigated the provincial government’s administration of this environmental protection program, we found a number of significant gaps — a lack of oversight, a lack of accessible information and reporting of the program, a lack of site visits in most areas of the province.

There was actually — and we reflect it in the report — one area of the province which was doing excellent work, but that really tied into the fact that they had one additional position — just a very small amount of resources but one additional position. That allowed them to do the job properly. Twenty-four of our 25 recommendations were accepted and are being implemented. As indicated in the report, there are, we believe, lessons here for other environmental protection programs that they could look at to improve their own oversight.

Time Matters was a report. It was a report that was done by one of our teams. We do have a systemic investigation team, but also, when our teams are fully staffed, we can have them do more in-depth and systemic investigations.

Time Matters was one of those reports. It, again, related to people who were applying for disability benefits, so the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation. These people were being adversely affected by the delays in the reconsideration process.

I really encourage you, if you have time, to read it, but I will summarize it by saying that all four of our recommendations were accepted. There was a change to regulations, and 900 people received, again, benefits of over $350,000 that they wouldn’t have received and which they were entitled to.

I talked briefly about the issue of follow-up, and there is one report where that has really produced significant positive benefits. That is The Best of Care, part 2 — our investigation into seniors, and home and community care. That was issued in February 2012. The initial response from the ministry was really one that did not deal with the 176 recommendations, most of which were directed to the ministry.

That has begun to change in the past year. Beginning in this past December, December 2013, the ministry has started to move to address — and accept, in a number of cases — those recommendations. That has only happened because of a detailed and continuing follow-up, by our office but also by other groups. I mention this because you will see one of my budget requests is to ensure that we can continue to do that kind of follow-up and expand on it, to make sure that recommendations are actually implemented.

Next week you’ll see some legislative and regulatory changes come into force, on December 1, that relate to adult guardianship in British Columbia. Those come out of our report No Longer Your Decision. Our changes have been made by the Ministry of Justice.

I have included but won’t talk about our Open Meetings report that you will find in the package. That is something that is devoted to our local government area of oversight and has really been very well received. That allows me to talk a little bit on outreach and education, because that’s how I know how well it’s been received.

I go out on tours across the province three times a year, for about a week, to open our office in different communities across the province. It’s not just people in Victoria or the Lower Mainland who receive in-person service; it’s people across the province.

The Open Meetings report, which focuses on meetings of local governments, produced a really positive result. I met with local governments which told me they had made changes just because we had sent the report to them. We didn’t actually have to go out. They didn’t actually have to have a problem. It really was a proactive way of dealing with issues.

Our current report, as I mentioned, is on the protection of students and oversight of private career training in British Columbia, which is a significant part of the industrial and post-secondary training in this province.

I will move now to the budget. Given the time frame, the key pages are probably pages 4 and 5, which I’m looking at. This is the budget request by STOB, and the notes. Let me perhaps just set out a context.

In our budget process we have to, and we will always have to, work with the idea of returning some money, about 1 or 2 percent, at the end of the year. We don’t have the ability to dip into other funds, to move things around, so without coming actually to the committee in February or March of the year, we always try to operate on a very prudent basis. But the money that we have that is unexpended is, of course, returned to the consolidated revenue fund. It doesn’t go anywhere else.

Our major costs are staffing, space and the money that is in the corporate Shared Services budget, and these are not discretionary costs. We also have amortization, hydro, phone costs and IT licensing costs. Most of these have gone up since April 1, 2013, 18 months ago. In fact, really, all of them have. I say “most” because our amortization will be declining shortly. Our current budget proposal, of course, is for 2015-16 and will take us forward another 18 months. So these are costs that have been accumulating and will accumulate over three years.

Our discretionary or semi-discretionary STOBs are small, and we cannot absorb increasing costs in those STOBs.

I’d like to set out why the $5.699 million planned and recommended by last year’s committee for the 2015-2016 fiscal year is not sufficient. Last year’s funding request for non-discretionary cost increases of $78,000 was not
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granted by the committee at that time, so we have absorbed those costs. They’re mainly pay and benefits, some utilities and some building costs. Building costs include things such as property taxes, hydro, earthquake insurance, etc., and also a reduction in external recoveries.

In addition, what has happened is that in the course of this year there have been other non-discretionary cost increases that we could not anticipate or request at that time. Those total about $134,000, which equals the $218,000, which is part 1 of the request. Those additional costs were — and you will see in the notes, note 1 — a 3 percent increase for management-level staff that came into effect on the 1st of April of this fiscal year. So we have absorbed for this fiscal year.

We also, looking forward, know that there is a scheduled increase for April 5, 2015, for our schedule A staff and that there will be increases in hydro and some increase in property tax. In all these cases, when we can offset these by recoveries or reductions — such as reductions in amortization costs, which more than offset our rent increases — we do so.

I know last year there was a seed planted that said: could we actually continue to absorb costs? Of course, to some degree, we’ve seen the flowering of that because we did absorb the costs that we asked for last year, and we’ve also absorbed additional costs.

As I said last year, there are really three effects. I think the first one is that there’s a cumulative adverse effect. You have to ensure that you’ve got this money from somewhere. We really only have one budget we can do that from, and that’s salary and benefits.

Secondly, there are often, I said last year, unanticipated and unplanned changes that actually increase costs. The 3 percent pay increase would certainly fall into that category. I’d just point out that a 3 percent salary increase is a 4 percent increase on our budget because there is, on top of that, 25 percent for benefits. When we talk about a 3 percent increase, it’s actually a 4 percent budgetary increase.

Thirdly, I said there is a tendency to overcompensate to ensure that non-discretionary costs are covered, and that has an effect on our initiatives.

This year the way we have dealt with this is through reduction in staffing. In many cases there is limited ability to reduce staffing. We have, for example, one person who is our outreach education and information person. Reducing that is zero. It’s not something where there’s much flexibility.

Really, it’s been in the investigative side that that has been done, both the systemic and the individual investigations. What that has done has not only delayed our systemic investigations but also increased the files awaiting assignment.

Last year in our annual report you will see that two years ago we had 75 on the list, last year it had risen to 256 and currently it stands at pretty close to 500. This doesn’t mean that we abandon these people. We review these files awaiting assignment so that we can ensure that those that are most urgent get moved forward, but it does mean that we spend more and more time administering and reviewing things and less and less time investigating them and coming to positive results and outcomes.

Part 2 of the budget request is for temporary funding for a position to reduce this file-awaiting-assignment list — to improve services to ensure that our office can actually meet the standards that we expect from all public service offices.

Part 3 of the request is really focused on the systemic investigations: the importance of following up on recommendations, the importance of developing the kinds of guides that you find in the open meetings to guide authorities on how to avoid problems rather than having them come to us with complaints and have to resolve them one by one. It is a modest increase of one position.

I realize that the committee itself has committed to a balanced budget in 2015-2016, and I think all of us share that. I also note, however, that does not mean that there is necessarily no change. I have reviewed, of course, your report that you issued on your consultations, and I do notice that the committee is satisfied that it’s necessary…. It’s open to changing taxes; allocating adequate resources; providing stable, predictable and adequate funding. Really, I think that my request falls into that category.

I’m going to, I think, close there because I have taken a little more time, Mr. Chair, than you offered. Let me thank you, Mr. Chair, Madam Deputy Chair and members of the committee.

I hope I’ve satisfied you that this budget request is reasonable in the context of the work of the Office of the Ombudsperson — both its core operations and its corporate service support — and the non-discretionary cost increases that have and will continue to accumulate over the three-year period that I have set out.

As well, I hope that you will see the plan to restore the timeliness of investigations as one that will benefit complainants and authorities and allow this office to model the administrative fairness principles it espouses.

Finally, the third part of the request, I hope, will be seen as a modest but thoughtful expansion that will improve public administration by building preventive and educational services.

Just quickly, before I go to any of the others — the 3 percent. Is that a cumulative total from last year to this year?

K. Carter: That was something that came up in the spring last year — a 3 percent pay increase for management-level staff — and was not part of our budget planning but is something that, obviously, we’re quite happy
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to pay. The B.C. Public Service doesn’t get to be on one of the 100 best employers lists if it doesn’t offer adequate salaries and benefits.

D. Ashton (Chair): But it says: “Schedule A — union-classified — and managers wage increase of 3 percent.”

K. Carter: Actually, it’s the managers wage increase of 3 percent. The schedule A increase was scheduled and was 1.5 in April of 2014. That was part of the $78,000 we asked for last year, so it was scheduled. We knew that was happening, and we had requested it. The 3 percent for managers was not scheduled. We didn’t ask for it.

There’s also a 1.5 percent that is scheduled for the fifth of April, 2015, for schedule A employees. So they both add up to 3 percent but in different time frames.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation and for your work. You mentioned a couple of different things around the issue of systemic investigations.

I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about the additional resources in part 3 — whether that’s related to more systemic reviews or whether that’s related, as you mentioned, to following up on recommendations with government and with ministries that we see, in some other independent officers, the need to do.

K. Carter: Thank you very much for that. It’s really both. It’s to assign it to the systemic investigation team. Our office, until 2012, didn’t actually have a very formal follow-up process, and we initiated it.

You will see in our annual reports and on our website that we evaluate. We don’t just accept a report; we evaluate the acceptance and implementation of our recommendations. We follow them for five years. In fact, sometimes we follow them for longer than that if we think there’s something productive that might come out of it. And we report out.

I have found that to be a really, really important tool to getting things done. It allows ministries to, each year, look at what they have and haven’t done and report out on it. It’s now an integral part of what we do. I really present The Best of Care, part 2, as a report where the initial response was not one of acceptance and implementation, and that has changed, in large part because of a persistent and rigorous follow-up.

It provides opportunities. Perhaps sometimes opportunities are not always desired. Nevertheless, opportunities, changes in priorities and changes in ministers and deputy ministers can sometimes lead to a new look and implementation. If we didn’t do the follow-up, it just wouldn’t be on the radar.

It takes time and energy. I’ve added that to the systemic investigation team. At the same time, in order to deal with absorbing costs, I’ve actually cut them by one position. Part 1 of the request will allow them to be restored to two investigators. If I have this, we’ll increase by, literally, a third of the capacity.

It is more investigations, and it is to allow us to continue that kind of follow-up and, hopefully, to expand, as I’ve said, into the area of providing lessons learned. We are getting more requests from ministries and other agencies to look at proposals they have for policies, for complaints processes, etc.

I would love to be able to do that, because it will avoid the problem as opposed to waiting for it to happen, but we are very limited.

S. Gibson: The work you do is very important, and we all value it, so I appreciate you being here.

My question is on, perhaps I would say, potential for overlapping. For example, you’ve got material here on…. I’ve looked at it here. It’s very interesting material, as I was reviewing it. But my question is: how do you decide what is done…? For example, the Auditor General studies material, and then we just had presentation from Elections B.C. So you’ve got material and have open meetings.

Naturally, coming out of local government, I would think this should be done by Elections B.C. or the Auditor General, but then, you folks are doing it. I’m not faulting that, but how do you decide…? Like, this material here is also very interesting. Why wouldn’t this be done by the Auditor General?

Just a quick question on how you decide. It seems to me, as a new person, that there’s a potential for a lot of unnecessary overlapping, but I could be wrong.

K. Carter: What I’d like to do is first of all address the overlapping, and then address how those decisions are made.

In fact, there really isn’t a potential for overlapping, because we have different mandates. In addition, we meet regularly to ensure that in fact we don’t investigate the same areas, though from a different perspective.

The Auditor General, if I can put it this way, is often focussed on whether or not policies and procedures are being followed, value for money.

They have, actually, a limitation that we don’t have. They don’t have the authority to recommend changes to regulations and legislation as we have in our act. But we meet on a quarterly basis with Auditor General’s staff to make sure we don’t turn up in the same area and that the work we do is complementary, both because it’s, I think, unnecessary, and it also can be quite demanding for an agency if you’ve got too much oversight at the same time.

I can give you an example. We received a complaint that related to the Coroners Service. Essentially, there
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were some issues there, but talking with the Auditor General…. They were already engaged in looking at something, so we were satisfied to raise some issues with them, and they dealt with it. So there isn’t an overlap there.

Another area with Elections. I think you’ll find their mandate is the election, not the operation of local government. We have a mandate, and we have since 1995, to receive complaints about local government. We have a team, as I’ve said, a health and local services team. Much of their work is dealing with complaints of, maybe, zoning, bylaws.

The issue of meetings being improperly closed was one that came to us regularly. There isn’t an overlap there, much in the same way as with the establishment of the Representative for Children and Youth. They do advocacy work. Our work in the area of the Ministry of Children and Family Development is still very active, but it’s a different work. It’s administrative fairness.

How do we choose? The Open Meetings guide is probably a good example. I actually have the power to self-initiate investigations. I haven’t used it in the eight years I’ve been Ombudsperson. I have always looked at what complaints we have received. What do those complaints demonstrate? Do they show an area that there’s a problem?

The Open Meetings guide came out of recurring complaints about meetings being improperly closed. In some cases it was just that people were confused and didn’t do it properly, and this was a way to produce something that would assist in that area.

The riparian area regulations. We had complaints from the people in different areas. We had complaints from people who were trying to develop property about how that process wasn’t working well. Although we deal with the individual complaints, they demonstrate an area where there’s underlying problems.

That’s how we do it. The work we do comes out of the complaints that come to us.

D. Ashton (Chair): Thanks, Kim. I have one from Gary, and we only have a couple of minutes left.

My understanding of the budget request…. Most of it is wage- and salary- and benefits-related.

G. Holman: Most of your budget is wages- and salaries- and benefits-related, so that’s perhaps not surprising. So ballpark, half of it is actual increases — like a quarter is an increase to deal with the backload, which looks like it’s quintupled over the last 75 to 500 files.

K. Carter: Yes, that’s over a longer period. In the past year, because we’ve been dealing with the constraints with not hiring and lags in hiring, it has doubled.

G. Holman: Okay. Part of it is to increase resources devoted to systemic, part of which is follow-up, which you have described as being very important to getting things done. But about half are the increases.

I thought you used the term “unrequested.” Did I hear that? I want to understand, particularly for management, how those increases come about. I should know this, but how were they negotiated? Did you use that word “unrequested”?

K. Carter: Well, for some of them. We have staff who fall into two categories: schedule A staff who are not union staff but who are tied very directly to the union contracts, and we have management level staff.

All of our staff are Public Service Agency staff. With the schedule A, they are tied into the contract negotiations. Once the union staff achieve certain contractual agreements, those are usually transferred directly to schedule A staff.

We find out about them. When there’s a longer-term contract, we know that…. As we did last December, we knew that there was going to be a 1.5 increase in April of 2014. We knew that there was going to be another increase in 2016. Those were scheduled.

For the management staff, a letter came out in the spring from the head of the public service, John Dyble, which said: “Good news. There’s a 3 percent increase for management staff.” They hadn’t had one since 2009. And that’s how that came about.

We said, “We’ve got management staff,” and we had a pretty happy bunch the day that that announcement came out.

D. Ashton (Chair): Kim, thank you very much for your presentation today. There won’t be any discussion today about the direction. We may have to get back to you if we do have any additional questions. Let us just kind of get through the input.

David, thank you; and Dave, thank you very much for coming; and the balance of staff that are in the back, thank you.

We will be in touch shortly. If we do have any questions, we’ll make sure it comes through the Clerk’s office to yourself.

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Chair:	Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
Members:	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal)
	Wm. Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
	George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)
	Gary Holman (Saanich North and the Islands NDP)
	Mike Morris (Prince George–Mackenzie BC Liberal)
	Jane Jae Kyung Shin (Burnaby-Lougheed NDP)
	John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES