Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 63 — Wednesday, May 27, 2015 (HTML)

Present: Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Dan Ashton, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Mike Morris, MLA; Jane Jae Kyung Shin, MLA; John Yap, MLA

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

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

• Bill Naughton, Chief Investigator and Associate Deputy Representative, CID and Monitoring

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

• Marc Lefebvre, Executive Director, Human Resources and Organizational Design

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
Office of the Merit Commissioner	1405
F. Spencer
Office of the Representative for Children and Youth	1410
M. Turpel-Lafond
B. Naughton
D. Thomas-Wightman
Office of the Auditor General	1424
C. Bellringer
M. Lefebvre
R. Jones
K. Hall

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the committee on Finance and Government Services. Welcome.

This meeting has been put together for you, actually, more than for this committee. It’s an opportunity for you to sort of touch base with us more often than just once a year and let us know how things are going, how you’re budgets are running, how everything is proceeding in your offices — essentially, an opportunity for you to let us know if you have any concerns going forward so that when we meet again later in the fall, there are no surprises.

I’ll get the meeting started by maybe deferring to Carole. I know you have to leave a little early, but maybe we’ll go around and introduce ourselves. Then you can introduce yourself and the staff you’ve brought, and we’ll go from there.

My apologies. The Children and Youth standing committee is also meeting, so I’m ducking out there at 9:30.

R. Wall: I’m Ron Wall. I’m the researcher and am joined by Lisa Hill, one of our research staff as well.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good morning. Kate Ryan-Lloyd, Clerk to the committee.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good morning. I’m Scott Hamilton, Chair and MLA for Delta North.

D. Van Swieten: Good morning. Dave Van Swieten, corporate shared services, with the Merit Commissioner today.

Once again, the floor is yours for whatever you want to talk about. After you have provided us with the information, we’ll go around the table and have some opportunity to ask questions.

F. Spencer: Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Madam Deputy Chair, Members. I do appreciate this opportunity to give you an update on the work of our office and just to speak a bit about our budget and how we’re making progress on our service plan.

On May 19, I deposited with the Speaker our 2014-15 annual report. I think you all have a copy of that. It contains a synopsis of our work completed in the last fiscal year and work underway. I thought I would refer you to that document as I go through my remarks today.

As a place to start, I’d like to touch briefly on our budget and how we ended the last fiscal year. I haven’t provided you with all the details, but there is a summary at the back of the report, on page 17. There you’ll see the highlights of our expenditures, and you’ll note that we finished our fiscal year with a surplus of about $25,000, or just over 2 percent of our budget.

You’ll also note that we spent about 12 percent of our budget on professional services or in hiring contractors. This is due to the cyclical and specialized nature of our audit activity, which requires that we supplement our public service workforce with a number of contracted auditors who engage on an as-and-when-required basis. This has proven to be the most cost-effective means of carrying out our responsibilities.

Thank you for approving our request for funds last November that I put before this committee. I don’t, at this point, foresee any financial pressures that may require any adjustments to that overall budget.

Turning to our work and how we are progressing with the priorities established in our service plan. There are two aspects to my mandate, or two lines of business, that are outlined in the Public Service Act: conducting random audits of appointments to and within the B.C. public service and responding to requests received from unsuccessful employee applicants for review of specific selection processes.

I’d like to just take this opportunity to give you a bit more detail about the work that we do and then give you a status report and, of course, respond to any of your questions.

First, I’d like to speak about what constitutes the major focus of our work — the merit performance audits. The type of audit we conduct is a retrospective examination of a selection process in its entirety to determine two things. Was a qualified individual appointed, and
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was the process that was conducted to appoint that individual merit-based? We identify issues and flaws and categorize findings.

These determinations allow us to provide learning opportunities for those engaged in the hiring process, to draw conclusions about the overall state of merit-based hiring in the public service and to make recommendations for improvement and determine if improvements are being observed.

When we commence an audit, we have in mind a number of administrative principles: first, that the results of the audit should be communicated to those responsible in as timely a fashion as possible to ensure that practices which may have led to issues or flaws are not repeated; second, that the audit sample should be robust enough that the results can be considered representative and can be generalized to a broader population of appointments made across the public service; finally, that certain methodology and process be maintained such that the audit results can be compared to previous audits to provide a measure of where improvements are being realized or observed.

I think it’s important that this audit activity be carried out regularly and routinely, not only as a means of monitoring the state of merit-based hiring in the public service but, as importantly, to promote good practice through the active demonstration of independent oversight. Also, we’ve been told that the possibility of audit encourages attention to principled hiring.

Following the establishment of the Office of the Merit Commissioner in 2005, audits have been conducted annually since 2006, except with respect to appointments in 2008. It was delayed due to workload issues.

B.C. Stats assists us in selecting a random sample of appointments for audit. If the audit is to be robust enough to provide valid results, it can be generalized and compared. B.C. Stats tells us that a certain sample size is necessary. Currently, it’s 6 percent, although we are reviewing this with B.C. Stats to see if that can be reduced.

If we accept that it’s important that the results are considered valid and generalizable and accept B.C. Stats’ recommendation, you’ll easily determine that our workload is driven directly by the appointment activity that occurs across the public service, something that’s clearly beyond our control and difficult to accurately predict. The unpredictability of the workload is one of the primary reasons we maintain auditors on contract rather than as part of our permanent workforce.

As each audit does require a significant amount of staff time to conduct quality control and to ensure consistency in findings, we are always introducing and examining ways of increasing the efficiency of the work that is carried out in my office in an effort to shorten the time between appointments made and the results of the audit to relieve workload pressure and allow for the possibility of conducting other special audits or studies.

I’d just like to turn to the status of our audit work in relation to our service plan. At the time I came before the committee last November, we had just released the report of our 2013-14 merit performance audit. For administrative reasons, we had conducted just a seven-month audit rather than an audit of appointments that had taken place over the full year.

If you turn to pages 8 and 9 of the annual report, you’ll see the timelines that were associated with this work. During this time period, we examined 150 appointments that had occurred between September 1, 2013 and March 31, 2014. With respect to the qualifications of those appointed, we found no evidence that unqualified individuals were being appointed.

With respect to the appointment processes themselves, if you turn to page 11, you’ll see that we found issues or flaws in 47 percent of appointments. The types of flaws we identified, which are listed to the side of that pie chart, ranged from incomplete documentation of an appointment decision to a more serious flaw which may have resulted in the incorrect appointment of an individual.

You’ll note that the most frequently found issues were in relation to how applicants were evaluated in accordance with the factors of merit, or what we refer to as the assessment process.

When we compared the results of this audit to previous years, we did not find overall improvement in merit-based hiring. In fact, in the 2013-14 audit we found a higher percentage of appointments that were not considered to be based on merit than in any previous audit — 9.3 percent. In 2012 the number was 6.1 percent. In 2011 it was 8.5.

While this may seem somewhat discouraging, I believe that many of the issues identified can be addressed through training, change to practice, communication and attention to detail. The B.C. Public Service Agency is committed to such action, and we are starting to see some improvements in the audits that are underway.

The audit that is underway is of appointments made in the 2014-15 fiscal year. B.C. Stats drew four samples of appointments for audit. The first two totalled 130 appointments, which was close to last year’s overall total. Results from these audits were distributed to managers in February 2015. The final two samples have totalled another 110 appointments, and we’re actively auditing these files. We expect these results to be provided to hiring managers in September and the overall results and analysis to be concluded by November.

Given the high volume of appointment activity for the past fiscal year and what we anticipate may continue this year and coming years, I’m meeting with my staff next month to discuss ways we can change our operations without compromising our principles or the integrity of the audit. We’ll be considering the implications of reducing our sampling rate, reducing the frequency or type of audit we conduct. We’re changing our approach to audit.

Now to give you some background on my other pri-
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mary line of business — the conduct of employee-requested reviews of staffing processes. On the one hand, reviews are similar to audits in that the number of requests I receive is unpredictable and in the past few years has ranged from four to 21. On the other hand, a staffing review is different from an audit in that it relates to a competition which is not concluded and is usually being held in abeyance until our review of the process and determination as to whether the process is in keeping with merit-based selection is complete.

As such, conducting a review and issuing a decision is somewhat time sensitive. Although there’s no legislated time frame associated or during which I must issue a decision, in the interest of fairness to all involved, we have set a 30-day standard for ourselves which on average we have met. To meet this standard often requires that one of my two program managers shift focus to give priority to the investigation and the consideration it warrants.

We tried linking the number of requests for review to appointment activity, to the results of workplace surveys and to other workplace factors, such as hiring restrictions. Some would say that at less than 1 percent of appointments made, the number of requests for review I receive in any one year is very low. But there’s no basis for such a determination, and we really can’t say whether or not that’s a high or low figure. Therefore, predicting workload in this particular line of business is both impossible and uncontrollable.

Since meeting with you in November, we’ve been experiencing a bit of a workload increase in the area of such requests. In 2013-14 I received four requests. In 2013-14 the number was ten, and in 2014-15 it jumped to 19.

We’re currently working on the analysis and report of staffing reviews conducted last year. However, we were able to identify some of the most frequent grounds put forward in review requests, and they’re described for you on page 15 of the annual report. You’ll see that there are common concerns employees have raised, which relate mostly to various aspects of the assessment process.

We’ve also been noting an increase in the number of issues being brought forward related to policy matters, such as eligibility for an internal inquiry or access to information provided by a reference. These can require research and sometimes legal advice before deciding if a review can take place.

We also note that a number of employees have felt the need to come to my office as they feel that information related to their performance had been withheld or incorrectly provided. Although I continue to stress the importance of open, honest and timely communication with respect to selection process outcomes, we still see cases where employees are surprised by information they should have received much earlier in the process. You’ll appreciate that such circumstances build mistrust, perhaps leading to inquiries that could have been avoided.

That gives you an overview and update on our major activities. But I’d just like to mention that, as time and workload permit, we do carry out some special audits and studies of specific appointment types. The opportunity for a more in-depth look at things enables us to potentially uncover systemic problems not easily detectable through random audits and problems which may adversely affect merit-based hiring.

This past year we concluded a study of the use of self-assessment questionnaires as a means of screening applicants in a competition. The prevalent use of this tool raised some questions for us as to whether its use was resulting in the routine elimination of qualified candidates at too early a stage in the selection process or was allowing unqualified candidates to proceed.

We found that, generally, the tool is being used correctly. Improvements are being made where issues were identified. Although there may be some areas of risk due to misapplication, these risks are mitigated through monitoring and training.

Currently we’re scoping out a special audit of auxiliary appointments, which we expect to commence this fiscal year. This audit will be a follow-up to our audit of 2010, when we examined auxiliary appointments to see if they were being used appropriately.

Auxiliary employees are intended to perform work which is not of a continuous nature, such as seasonal work. But at the time of our last audit, we found a significant number of auxiliary appointments were in fact carrying on for long terms, with the majority exceeding two years and a couple even going up to 25 years.

Due to the nature of the work normally associated with these types of appointments, the act does not require a merit-based process to be completed. Our concern was that misuse was, in fact, a circumvention of the act. The planned audit that we have will determine if improvements have been made in this area in the last five years.

I think I’ll just end here to leave time for questions. I hope I’ve left you with a better understanding of the work of the Office of the Merit Commissioner and some assurance that we’re cognizant of the need to manage with fiscal prudence and probity.

If I could, I always take every opportunity I can to say that I believe that merit-based hiring is a cornerstone of the foundation of a strong and non-partisan public service. I think the fact that B.C. has established a model of which we should be proud shows a commitment to merit-based hiring that undoubtedly has contributed to B.C.’s public service being one of Canada’s top employers. I’m very proud of that.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. I’m not sure how we compare to other provinces. I know others may not have a Merit Commissioner. This may be a unique model. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about comparison to other provinces and whether anyone else goes through the process of doing a merit review of hiring and how our numbers — our 53 percent and the other numbers — would compare to other provinces, if there’s any comparison at all.

F. Spencer: Yeah. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information that we can give you in terms of comparisons. As I say, we are a model, and people do come to us and ask how we conduct our processes. Last year Catherine and I visited Ontario to talk to them about their process. They basically audit appointments as part of their internal audit activity, and it’s very few and far between that actually come up.

The federal public service also has some audit activity, but again, not on the scale that we do and to the in-depth extent.

So I really can’t compare how we’re doing to other jurisdictions, but I do want to say that we are considered a good example. In fact, the federal public service are coming to us next month to get some more information about how we do things.

S. Gibson: I notice that the number of staffing review requests is increasing dramatically, from seven to 12 to 19. I guess that’s a bit ominous. I don’t know.

On page 13 you say that there were ten eligible staffing reviews done, but then earlier you say there were 12. I presume that two had dropped off. Is that right? They weren’t eligible?

S. Gibson: The figure of 12 just means those were applications, but they weren’t processed.

F. Spencer: Well, two were ineligible, which means they could have been out of time. Or it could be that they were…. I think that’s the general reason. They were received in an untimely fashion. There were ten eligible in 2013-14.

S. Gibson: What’s your comment on the trend of seven, 12, 19? That seems problematic.

F. Spencer: Well, it’s problematic for us in terms of just the unpredictability of the workload and the staff time it takes to conduct a good review of staffing processes.

As I’ve said, we’re unable — we’ve done some work; we’ve done a little bit of research — to link the number of review requests that we receive in any one year to any factor. Sometimes we think: “Well, maybe the higher number of appointments that are being made, the more review requests we should expect.” On the other hand, sometimes if there are fewer appointments being made, people have more to complain about because their opportunities are limited, so we might expect more.

We can’t seem to link the numbers that we’re receiving to any one factor, either in the workplace or through the workplace…. There doesn’t seem to be a link to workplace surveys. People are generally satisfied with staffing activity in the public service.

S. Gibson: I think if I worked in a little office and the complaints — I’m oversimplifying it to make the point — went from seven to 19, I guess I’d be worried about it a little bit. But I understand….

F. Spencer: Well, overall, the numbers are small. I mean, we’re talking about less than 1 percent of all appointments that are made.

F. Spencer: A small number in relation to the appointments that are made in the public service in any one year. Is less than 1 percent good? Does that mean the morale is good, or is it bad? Some would say: “Well, employees are fearful about bringing their concerns forward.” There are two sides to every argument there. As I say, we’ve been unable to make any determination as to the reason.

S. Gibson: Another quick question, if I may. Sometimes what’ll happen is somebody will complain and get their issue addressed, so you have to reconcile. You work with them, and perhaps they’re assigned a position that they otherwise wouldn’t have received.

Often that’s only the beginning of the problem. The employee is imposed in a department where he or she wasn’t particularly wanted. The person is in the position. Then you back off and move on to your next assignment, only to find out that that employee is not necessarily accepted in that position, if you know what I mean. How do you address that more covert issue, I guess?

F. Spencer: Well, my authority doesn’t extend to imposing an appointment. What I can do is one of two things.

The review process is a three-step process. One, the employee requests feedback. The second step is that the deputy minister conducts an internal inquiry. If the em-
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ployee is unhappy with that inquiry, then they can come to me.

What I do is, from an independent perspective, look at the process in its entirety, and I can do one of two things. I can uphold the deputy minister’s original decision, which means that the appointment goes ahead as originally planned, or I can direct a reconsideration. If I direct a reconsideration, it’s to the deputy minister. That reconsideration takes place. That could mean that the whole competition is conducted again. If I found an error, say, in the final stages of the process, they may just repeat that.

At the end of the day, it could be that the person that was originally successful in that competition is still successful. But the issues that the employee that came forward was concerned about hopefully would have been addressed. It could mean that they receive an appointment, but if they do, others and that employee can be confident that it was a result of a merit-based process, not a direct result of the fact that they made a complaint.

S. Gibson: Do you track systemic problems? There’s no mention here. Do you track things that are systemic?

F. Spencer: The numbers are so small, it might be difficult to do that. Also, responsibilities change within the ministry, so it’s very difficult, and employees move around. With small numbers we try not to do that. I would say, in all fairness, we haven’t really seen a trend that these things are connected with any one ministry.

M. Morris: A bunch of the answers that you just provided…. Simon answered some of the questions I had.

I’m just wondering. The relationship or the interaction that you have with the Public Service Agency and whether they’ve got an internal per audit system that they use to pick five or six of their high-risk appointments, or whatever, that they review to make sure that it was merit-based…. I’m just looking at some of the structure that is already in place prior to it getting to your level.

F. Spencer: I would characterize our relationship with the Public Service Agency as a good working relationship. What we do is we meet with them. I meet with the Deputy Minister of the Public Service Agency on a regular basis, probably at least once a quarter. Then my staff also meet with her staff if there are particular issues around practice that they want to discuss with them.

We don’t characterize our relationship as one of working together but more working towards a common goal. I certainly feel free to express to her any concerns that I may have about merit-based hiring and whether or not there are policy or systemic issues that I’m seeing that I would like them to consider addressing. I feel that she feels very comfortable in coming to me, if there’s something or if she doesn’t agree with what I’m saying.

Whether or not they have an internal audit activity…. I don’t believe they do because they rely on the results of our audit to address any concerns they may have about audit. They do have, of course, that second step in the review process I was telling you about, the deputy minister’s inquiry. The agency assists the deputy minister in those investigations of individual reports.

The other thing I would say is they’re very mindful and respectful of the recommendations that we make in audit. When we finish a merit performance audit…. If things come up as we’re progressing through an audit that we think they should address, if we’re seeing that perhaps there’s a policy being introduced that is having a negative effect, we’ll raise it with them at the time.

When we’re finished the audit, we do a report, and we share that report with the agency before we make it public to get their feedback, just like any management report in an audit. We also make recommendations as to where they could be making changes or improvements. They are always very respectful of those and do what they can to address those. I would say that in the audit that’s currently underway we have seen some improvement, and we’re encouraged by that.

How many of the review requests that you get would be from the affected individuals themselves versus the deputy or the manager of the particular agency?

F. Spencer: The only person that can bring forward a request for a review is an unsuccessful employee applicant in a competition. If it’s somebody from outside the public service, they can’t come to me. Their rights of recourse end within the ministry. So unsuccessful employee applicants only.

G. Heyman: If my memory serves me correctly, in 2001, when the Office of the Merit Commissioner was established, the office was a dual office held by the deputy minister responsible for the public service. I’m wondering if you can comment on what was workable or not workable about that model.

F. Spencer: I’m not sure I can comment entirely. The independent Office of the Merit Commissioner was established in 2005. I believe one of the reasons for that was
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the fact that when it was combined in the Public Service Agency, there wasn’t necessarily the same sense of that independence and oversight. The combination of the organization that develops the policy and carries out the work also being responsible for the oversight audit and review, I think, had raised some concerns among managers but also, I think, through employee surveys that there wasn’t an independence there.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Seeing no further questions, thank you very much for your presentation.

Obviously, our offices are always available to you if there’s anything else that you’d like to follow up with, any other information you’d like to impart to us later. You can go through Kate or the Clerk’s office. By all means, we’re always available.

F. Spencer: I appreciate you taking the time as well. It’s great to be able to come before you, and I look forward to seeing you in November.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good morning again, and welcome, Mary Ellen, to the committee. I look forward to hearing your presentation. This is an opportunity for you to check in with us rather than just us seeing you every year in November. Let us know how your budgeting and your business plans are going — you know, as a checkpoint throughout the year.

Maybe if you wouldn’t mind starting by introducing the folks that you’re with, and then I’ll go around the table and introduce the committee members and staff.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Yes, this morning I’m joined by three of my senior staff members. A few others are sitting in the gallery here. To my left, your right, is Dianne Buljat, who is my director of finance. To my immediate left, your right, is my deputy representative, Dawn Thomas-Wightman. And to my right, your left, is the chief investigator and associate deputy representative for monitoring and investigations, Bill Naughton.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Good morning. Kate Ryan-Lloyd, Clerk to the committee.

R. Wall: Ron Wall, the researcher, joined by Lisa Hill, also a researcher in Kate’s office.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Welcome again. I do apologize for the sparseness of our committee. Wednesday mornings are pretty popular for other committee meetings. We’ve lost Carole to downstairs.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Are there? Okay. Anyway, hopefully, in the fall you’re going to see everyone again. But we’ll make sure that we impart whatever information to them that you want to make sure they hear about. We’ll make sure they get it.

M. Turpel-Lafond: My apologies. I should have introduced, from my office, Jeff Rud, who is director of communications with the RCY, and Carissa Matheson, who’s the executive coordinator with our office.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you again. We’ll just go straight to whatever you have to present to the committee, and then I’ll go around and give them the opportunity to ask questions of you, if that works.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you again, Mr. Chair, for the invitation. My office is quite pleased to have this opportunity to come back again and give an update. I’ll give a high-level update, and then I want to talk about some of the pressures I’m experiencing and some areas where I need some support or response from the committee with respect to being able to effectively address the issues in my office.
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As you know, the representative’s office is responsible for supporting children, youth and their families to access services within the system. We do that by supporting and informing and advocating for children and youth. In that capacity, the representative’s office has dealt with approximately 14,000 individual advocacy cases, again, from all of the constituencies of the members here and, more broadly, throughout British Columbia.

We also provide oversight of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, and we assess whether they’re effective and responsive in dealing with service delivery responsibilities. We also deal with a few other ministries, as well, where services for children and families are either co-located or also located in, for instance, the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and elsewhere — services such as special needs, mental health and a few other areas.

The tools that we use in our office in that regard include research, monitoring the effectiveness of programs and services and promoting accountability in that regard. Also, we have an audit function, and we do audit.

The organization also has a third policy mandate, which is to review and investigate critical injuries and deaths of children who, in the year prior to their injury or a fatality, received or their family received services from the Ministry for Children and Families or other designated service providers within British Columbia. The purpose of that is to provide independent accountability around what happens in the lives of children but with a lens to promote learning from those instances and improvement in the system so we can prevent future harm to children, particularly those children where there may be systemic patterns of vulnerability.

In terms of the basic information about RCY, or the Representative for Children and Youth, we have 56 FTEs working in three locations. I think I’m the only independent officer that has a beachhead of sorts outside of the beltway here in Vancouver.

Here in Victoria we have 39 FTEs. In Burnaby I’ve 10.4, which is primarily a very focused advocacy staff that serves the entire province, although we have some advocates here. And we have an office in Prince George, with seven FTEs working in that office. Again, because we have a provincial mandate it’s extremely important that we be available to directly meet with children and families all over the province. The staff in Burnaby is sent out quite a bit.

I’ve indicated to this committee in the past, and I’ll indicate again, that I feel a significant challenge about not having an on-the-ground presence in the interior of the province. Should the situation be such that I would be able to expand effectively, I would like to see the representative’s office expand into the interior at some point. I’m not asking for that today. I’m just noting that there are significant issues there that require more dedicated, focused staff with more accessible service for those children and families that are vulnerable in that region and for whom seeing an advocate periodically or using the telephone and so forth is just not appropriate.

Our operating budget for 2014-2015 was $7.917 million. Our actual operating costs were about $106,409 less, so there was a small variance there. We reported a very small surplus, and we have done that year after year, come in through very careful management of that budget. Again, I’d like to thank my staff for their dedication on that front.

The operating budget for the current fiscal year is $8.138 million. There was an increase of $221,000 to cover the salary and benefits lifts approved by your committee for all the officers in November, and we appreciate that.

As you will know, I deal with children and young people up the age of 19, with the exception of one category, which is young people who are transitioning from special needs supports at age 19 to Community Living B.C. supports at age 24. That was an expansion of the mandate of my office approximately 17 months ago, so that’s a new area. We received a small lift for that, which has been valuable, but we’ve been quite pressured to be able to meet the needs in that area.

As you can imagine, in many of those instances we are advocating year in and year out with those young people as they transition to CLBC and work through what is a pretty dramatic change for them. If they have intact families it tends to be a little bit easier, because the families are still providing a lot of backfill and support for them. Where they don’t have families — for instance, they’re aging out of care — they’re quite precarious. I can talk a little bit about what that involves for our office, the intensity of that.

I’m working right now with a young person who will age out of care next week. She will age out of care to CLBC, although we don’t yet have a plan in place. She is the eldest of six children, all of whom are in foster care. It’s very important that she does well, because if she doesn’t do well, there are five other kids that probably won’t be doing very well in British Columbia. The intensity of supports on some of these cases….

It’s daily check-in and quite sensitive right to the day that they age out of foster care, if they go into CLBC, including things like meeting with a foster parent, asking the foster parent, “Would you please keep this child for a period of time,” because, for instance, they’re developmentally disabled but they don’t have a placement and they’re not finished school, and so on and so forth.

I just say that to say we are dealing with some very vulnerable children who require an intense degree of support on a daily basis. Today, again, I’ll be checking in on that case and watching it every single day, probably up to her 24th birthday.

As well as that advocacy, which is very intensive for some kids, we also have a very strong sense of public accountability in the representative’s office. We have
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the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, which we’re delighted to have. We’ve appeared before them 32 times. In total, my office has produced 37 reports since we were created. They range on all manner of issues. Most recently, significant work we’ve undertaken is in the area of adoptions, to try and change some of the outcomes in terms of the 1,000 children who are waiting for adoption and the challenges within British Columbia to improve the performance of the adoptions program. When you have 1,000 waiting children, and you’re only having between 200 and 250 children adopted a year, there’s a concern. We need to change that.

We also recently issued a report in the case of a 19-year-old girl named Paige who died by a drug overdose in the Downtown Eastside. That report is an example of an effort that took approximately two and a half years in our office. More than 100 interviews were conducted, really examining 19 years of a young person’s life and the multiple opportunities along her pathway that could be present to change the outcomes for a young person like her, a young aboriginal girl in the Downtown Eastside, and how we can understand their experience.

That involved investigating the child welfare services. There were significant issues around policing. She was in more than 40 police files, so we had to look at all of those and examine them carefully. More than 17 times she showed up intoxicated in a hospital room or was found in a park, everywhere from Merritt, B.C., to Vancouver. We had to look at all of those and see how she was treated in the health care system.

Of course, she moved 50 times in SROs, shelters, and was homeless in the Downtown Eastside, so we had to carefully do work in the Downtown Eastside at those said shelters, SROs and others to understand how it is that a child would be living in British Columbia in the Downtown Eastside and move 50 times during her adolescence while involved with the Ministry of Children and Families.

That investigation, as I said, is the product of about two years of work. My chief investigator can speak to that more in questions if you’re interested. I did try and develop, with my finance officer, an understanding of what it costs to do that work for the public. It’s a pretty intensive report. We can break that down for you to give you an idea of what is involved in that. I’d be happy to do that today.

Of course, the reports that I make contain recommendations that try to be very focused on how we can improve systems in British Columbia. Really, I take a very strong lens, as does my office, on issues around fiscal responsibility.

For instance, in the Paige report, as an example…. The government of British Columbia spends approximately $400 million a year on that postal code alone — the Downtown Eastside. The health authority alone spends $70 million a year in that area. Yet we have a child that had really poor health outcomes and, in fact, received no meaningful service other than an emergency room, a police cell or an SRO or shelter.

I really am mindful in my reports, as you’ll see, that there is a significant economic burden in British Columbia when children have very poor outcomes and will be dependent on cost-intensive services that do not necessarily change their pathway. Certainly, I’m not making recommendations about massive public expenditure where it’s not needed.

My office got very strong focus on: what is the value for what we have? I just raised the Paige report as an example because we spend at least $1 million a day there, and we have some of the worst outcomes. Obviously, my office’s oversight is really focused on what’s actually happening on the ground. Are high-quality services being delivered to children who require them? If they are not, where is the accountability to change that system of service delivery and get it more focused on outcomes and performance in a way that supports children?

That can be a very challenging role, as you know, because it means challenging a number of people to look at outcomes and what has happened in the real experience of children’s lives. As opposed to high-level statements, we look at actual children.

Again, I would just say that that also requires us to support families who can often be in a very delicate situation, like Paige’s family, who shared the story. We investigate. We have to tell the story — a very difficult story in that family because Paige died in the Downtown Eastside, her mother died 18 months after she died in the Downtown Eastside by an overdose and her grandmother died before her by a drug overdose.

We’re looking at intergenerational failures to respond to significant health needs, a poor functioning mental health system, physical health, education and so on. These are challenging issues that touch upon a lot of areas, but I think that there’s some very valuable work that comes out of that in terms of promoting not only more effective social programs but more cost-effective approaches in this area.

A major concern to us is the fact — for instance, in the Paige investigation recently — that we are still seeing in British Columbia significant challenges around reporting child abuse, still challenged with, despite some of the work of my office, identifying children that are in need of protection, reporting that appropriately to the ministry and the ministry responding effectively.

We’re seeing particularly vulnerable cohorts of children, particularly aboriginal children, so we really have to step up our efforts in those regions where we’re seeing a problem where’s there’s no reporting. In the Paige case, as an example, even though she was in an emergency room 17 times, police files 40 times and had multiple child protection intakes, we only got a reportable of an injury on her once prior to the investigation.
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We’ve got to strengthen just the surveillance and examination of that. We do that across all the program areas. Our advocates will be very tuned into that. Is there a region that needs support? Our critical injury and death staff will be looking at other patterns similar to Paige’s experience, because I would say that there are probably 150 to 200 children like her in the Downtown Eastside who are experiencing similar hectic and chaotic poor service within our systems of care.

Then in our monitoring, research and evaluation side we will be looking at maybe doing a piece of work, for instance, on school. You know, Paige went to 17 schools. Why didn’t she stay in school? What’s happening with kids that are vulnerable in this cohort in our schools in B.C.? We may look at the education information, the health care information, the child welfare information and promote better-informed and more cost-effective approaches to education change.

That gives you a bit of a high-level summary of how these matters are divided in our office, the type of engaged work we do. Again, I always have to give a strong recognition to the staff in my office that work very, very hard on these issues and work in some very complex situations, including sometimes situations of danger. They work very effectively, including with traumatized families.

We’ve been involved in a few other matters. You may know that two years ago I started a bit of a campaign to get tuition waivers for children who leave care so that they could attend post-secondary education. I’m delighted that now of the 25 post-secondary institutions in B.C., ten have signed on.

Whereas before we had maybe as many students as I could count on one hand in one year, we now have 85 children who have aged out of foster care who are attending post-secondary education. I’m in an active campaign with a few of the presidents of those institutions who have signed on to try and persuade the other 15 to do likewise. I also initiated a fund campaign to attract some private sector funding and, I hope, government funding so that the living expenses, not just the tuition, would be able to be covered, so we remove the barriers for these young people to attend post-secondary.

Again, it’s very important in my work at the advocacy that we show young people, like kids in care in grades 3 and 4, that they have a future other than leaving school, not completing and having just that same intergenerational pathway of living in entrenched poverty and in a situation where their own children may be removed by child welfare. We have to create a different path, but the only way you create a different path is by showing people a different path. In British Columbia we’ve really not done a good enough job on that. So that’s one of the key initiatives that we’re also involved in. We partner quite a bit on that, and I’d like to see all 25 do that.

We recently brought together the youth who are in school, some of them, to talk about: “How is it going? What are you seeing? How are you managing as you transition out into post-secondary?” They had a lot of very interesting insights into their experiences, which allows me to bring information back into government, into post-secondary, social assistance and other areas around small things that quite cost-effectively could be done to make sure that young people can be successful — like we would want any of our young people who maybe are in college or university to be successful.

I just want to address the pressures in terms of our office and where I feel a particular concern that is really weighing on me as representative. It’s really weighing on my staff, and we’re quite uncertain about what to do. I have a proposal that I can share with you, and I’m seeking some direction from this committee. That is, again, back to the issue of adoptions.

A bit more than a year ago — June 14, I believe it was — I released a pretty comprehensive examination of adoptions, looking at a number of families who came forward and wanted to adopt and how long it took for them to get approved and move forward. In some instances, I looked at a six-year period. Some of the families may never have been approved within six years, even though they stepped forward and said: “We’d like to open our home for adoption.”

Then I looked at a cohort of children who were waiting to be adopted and how long they waited to get matched with a family. Well, the short story — and you can read the report — is that it really wasn’t working effectively, by any means. We were quite stalled out — in fact, going backwards — in terms of placements in British Columbia.

That really evidence-based examination led to a very strong commitment from the Minister of Children and Families and myself to jointly work together on adoptions. We’ve started that. There’s been a massive public information campaign that has doubled the requests by families to be considered as adoptive families, which is a great deal. Fantastic news. We’ve been able to increase that.

I pushed the government very hard to set targets, reasonable targets that they could achieve and be responsible for outcomes, because we have 1,000 waiting children. “Set a target,” I said to the minister. “Meet the target. Tell me what you can do. You know, I don’t mind what you’re going to do. Just tell me what you’re going to do, and meet the target.” So the target was 300, and I was told that this was a target that we will likely exceed, because it’s a modest target.

Well, we went through a year. They got one-time only money to do that. I partnered with them very actively, using a lot of resources in my office to do advocacy and so forth, and they did not make the target — 265 children were placed. It was a small bump up from the previous year, but it was not the modest target that they said they could meet or possibly exceed.

I’ve had some intensive discussions with the minister
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and the ministry staff about: “Why is it you can’t meet the target?” I have a very strong philosophy in this work, which is that success can come from failure. There’s no question about it. Some of the greatest successes in life come from failure, but it requires you to step back and examine: “Why did you fail to make that target, and what will you do differently to make the target this year?” The minister has said to me: “We’re going to make up that 35, and we will have 335 this year. So it will be 600 over two years.” And I’m like: “Okay. But how and where?”

We’re in a very interesting situation at the moment, where I’m not entirely confident that the one-time only money that they’re receiving is going into places where it will effectively make that target. I’d like to support them, and I am supporting them actively.

The request I’d like to bring forward at this point is this. I’m somewhat uncomfortable about how they would like to move forward. I’m comfortable in the sense that we’re working very closely together in the interests of those 1,000 waiting children.

The ministry has offered, for instance, to transfer some staff to my office so I can be more intensely involved in advocacy for some of those 1,000 children who are waiting — 400, actually, are literally waiting for the family to be matched. But I’m not entirely comfortable with having a transfer of a staff member into an independent office, because the families might say: “Well, last week you were in MCFD. Now you’re in the independent office. Where are you going to be next week?” It needs to be a properly structured system.

What I’d like to do today is to basically say that I think if I’m going to be able to support this ministry to get these adoptions targets where they have be, there’s going to have to be some more intensive work in my office. I’m anticipating that I’m going to have to hire some people for maybe a one- to three-year period to partner with them to get that advocacy completed, to get those cases to a point where the families have the match, the child is placed for adoption and that can go forward.

The reason why that’s needed in my office as opposed to somewhere else is because we have access to all the information about what the status of the child is, what the circumstances are. Third-party organizations can be very valuable. Community-serving organizations are great, but they often don’t see what’s actually going on with the children.

In terms of my budget and the work that I can do around adoptions, I will be giving you a bit of a proposal to reflect upon. I’m suggesting that I expand my advocacy services around adoptions inside RCY by hiring eight staff — that would be a time-limited proposal — so one senior advocate; five advocates, one in each region of the province; a research analyst and an administrative clerk. I’m proposing that I do that on a three-year basis. My suggestion would be that while these advocates will travel extensively in each region, they will be making direct contact with children, foster parents and permanency planning professionals to promote timely adoptions.

Some of this is underway. As I’ve said, I’ve got some cases I can speak to, but I’m maxed out. There is no way I’m going to be able to get that work done in addition to all of the other work and get those adoption numbers up unless I have some additional resources to draw upon.

In terms of a request for dollars, I would see that as being, in this fiscal year, a lift of about $570,000. I have some details I can share with you, for you to look at. I wasn’t contemplating I would be getting a response today. I just wanted to explain the circumstance and table it with you.

Overall, for three years, for each of the following years it would be a lift of about $958,000 to do that adoption work. I put this forward because I want to also be very clear to this committee that I do not make this kind of request lightly. In the past fiscal years we’ve had a stand-pat budget, and I’ve engaged in a number of cost-cutting initiatives, including reducing transcription services, printing our own reports, discontinuing a lot of things that we could to try and have better bottom-line management of our budget and continue to provide our service.

But I am quite stuck with respect to adoptions. I don’t think we’re going to make those numbers unless an office like mine actually engages more actively, and — point of fact — I’ve been asked by the ministry to do that work. But I have to do that appropriately. My deputy can speak more about that. I have to do that more effectively, and I have to support success. I want this ministry to be successful, and I want these kids to be placed.

One of the challenges we face when we look at a young person like Paige, who we reported on recently, is that these kids in foster care drift a lot. They move from place to place. As they become adolescents, they tend to go into a group home environment, which is not a family environment. They tend to be, then, aging out of care — more than half of them to social assistance or life on the street.

Adoption is not appropriate for all 8,200 children in care or all of the 5,000 that are permanently in care. But for at least 1,000 of them, it is a very important option. It’s quite a savings, I think, in terms of getting them connected to a family and in that family placement and getting that work done. I see the need for a push, and I see the role for our office.

I’ll stop there. I’ll entertain any questions you have, and I will provide you with further details or information on that as the case may be.

J. Shin: Thank you so much for sharing that. My question is on the point that you raised about the problem that was identified in the adoption process — that it was taking six years and upwards. In some instances, some of
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those cases would not even go through in that time period. Were you able to identify specific barriers or challenges that caused that delay?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I did. I was able to identify a number of barriers, the bottlenecks. There are a couple of bottlenecks there. What I saw when I looked from 2007 to 2013: adoptions were dropping every year. In 2012-2013 we were down to 205 adoptions. We went from a high of about 400, and I saw it consistently drop every single year. We were looking at the why. The ministry itself was not analyzing this, so we had to get in there and do lots of data interviews, working with prospective adoptive parents, working with youth.

On the adult parent side, the British Columbians who are stepping forward to say, “We want to adopt,” the concern there was the bottleneck that they called in and said, “Look, I’d like to be considered. I’ll do whatever program is needed. Please do the home study,” but then the home studies never got done. Or the home studies would be contracted out to a private agency, one of the four regulated private agencies in B.C., they would do the home study, and then the ministry would say: “Well, that’s not acceptable for our home study.”

So we have four different home studies. We’ve had families sitting for months, years, including members of the Legislative Assembly who want to adopt children, on both sides of the House, that I’ve worked with. The bottleneck was not giving good public service to families that step forward and are willing to adopt. So they leave the process. They say: “It’s taking too long. We can’t possibly wait six years. What’s going on?”

The other side was the children, not planning well for the children and staying really focused on: this child has a right to be raised in a family environment. Their birth family is not available to them, for whatever reason. Is there a substitute member of their own family that can become the adoptive family, or is there another family? That piece wasn’t done for the children.

Both of these tracks were extremely delayed and behind, so we pushed very hard. The ministry got $2 million, one-time money, last fiscal and this fiscal to get the private adoption agencies to clear the home studies. They contracted for, I believe, 198 home studies that were backlogged. No, they contracted for 138 home studies. They got 16. Again, it’s good to contract out, but sometimes you’ve got to really have someone like myself saying: “Hey, you were contracted for 138 home studies. How come you only got 13 done, and how are you going to get the others done for next year?”

This is the level of detail that we go into, very granular detail. This person has stepped forward. They are opening their home to adoption. Let’s treat them well. Let’s get the home study done. Let’s be respectful to them. And oh, by the way, there are these waiting children. Let’s get the match going.

From an advocacy viewpoint, I’m impatient, and I can push. I am not inside a ministry where there are thousands of reasons why you can’t do anything. I am on the side of: “You can do something. What are you going to do about it, and what is the issue?”

Your question is a good one. We are actually in this situation right now where I’m not getting good answers about why we aren’t meeting those targets, and I expect to push harder to get those answers.

J. Shin: Just a quick follow-up question to that. Thanks for the clarification. From what you see, it’s not so much a problem in the existing protocol in the adoptive process. Do you recognize that perhaps it really is the lack of resources that’s causing this delay?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, there are resourcing issues inside those systems in different ways, and I guess, again, it’s the lens. The resourcing around post-adoption assistance needs to be there, because families do need post-adoption assistance. We need to clarify how that works, because a family that adopts will receive assistance.

Let me give you an idea of that. A child in foster care may be a level child with special needs. A foster parent might be receiving up to, say, $3,000 a month to care for that child. There are very significant needs there for shelter, for support. Post-adoption assistance is capped. It’s means-tested now, and it’s capped at about $700 a month for a child under 12 and just over $800 a month for a child over 12.

So there is assistance provided to those families who come forward to adopt. It’s significant. But you can also see that there’s an incentive to leave the child in foster care because it costs money to raise children. But nevertheless, leaving all of that aside, we have families who step forward and say, “We are prepared to adopt,” and they are sitting, waiting, sometimes for six years, not getting approved, including, as I said, Members of the Legislative Assembly. Every one of you knows that Members of the Legislative Assembly tend to have very strong, supportive families, to do the work you do. And my position as an advocate is: “For heaven’s sake, please allow them to adopt some of those waiting children.”

The barriers are numerous. The financial aspect of that, I think, is important. When we looked at the issue of drift in foster care…. What is the cost risk of drift in foster care? This is something that I speak about more broadly with the minister.

Anybody who is on Treasury Board will know that there are some cases — I believe there is a recent case, an individual case where the ministry admitted liability with respect to maltreatment of a child in foster care — where a single settlement and the administration of that settlement will be $10 million for one case.
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Well, there are confidentiality agreements. You’re never going to learn about what went wrong, what we could change. That’s all over here. But we will spend money when things don’t work well, and I want it spent to get good public service and things to work well. These are the types of conversations we have, and these are the challenges that need to be brought forward around change.

D. Ashton: Fascinating presentation. A quick comment off the top of my head. There’s no panacea. I mean, there are going to be kids and adults and whoever that are going to fall through the cracks. Where the responsibility lies…. I was brought up that sometimes you have to look in the mirror.

To be very frank, you seem to have an idea that you feel works. Why don’t you take more on with the adoptions? Why wouldn’t government take a look at you and say: “If you can fix the issue, why don’t you fix it, and we’ll fund you to do it”?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, that’s exactly what they’re doing, in point of fact. It’s a good point, but the challenge is this. I have a budget. I’m monitoring a $1.3 billion ministry and other ministries — just that one. I could ask my chief investigator to speak to this. I still have to run the investigations of injuries and deaths. I’m providing advocacy. I have 14,000 advocacy cases, and I’m doing research, monitoring and auditing.

I’m an $8 million shop, so coming to me to sort of say, “Can you take on more…?” Yes, I can take on more, but I guess my issue here is to say that if I’m going to be a partner with them on adoptions and get those numbers up, I have a bit of an idea of…. I’m going to need at least eight people over three years to give it a go and see what we can do.

The ministry is saying to me: “Well, can I TA people to you?” But the issue is that I’m an independent office. I need to maintain that integrity that I don’t have staff where the families are confused, like: “Who’s working in this office?” We need arm’s length from the ministry, but we need to work closely and positively with them. That’s a big concern, so we have to do things appropriately through funding processes and so forth with this process that we’re at today.

D. Ashton: Wouldn’t an independent office have a better opportunity to examine all the requirements and all the needs and do that placement other than maybe somebody that’s tainted on the other side, on the government side? I find it incomprehensible that you can wait. You have the demand. You have to wait six years for it. We have a ministry, an agency involved in this, that can’t deliver. If they’re not delivering, why aren’t they delivering?

I’m not advocating for you or condoning the ministry, but something is not working here. Let’s make it work. Is it collectively with switching your programs over or giving you additional resources to make the connections and connect the dots? Is that a viable alternative to what’s happening right now?

M. Turpel-Lafond: I think you’re absolutely right. If we want to create a Crown agency that’s going to handle adoption and take it out of MCFD, for instance, and have it done at arm’s length…. Basically, on the home study process they’ve contracted out the backlogs to the agencies who do with international adoptions. There are four accredited agencies in B.C. that do that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: The only challenge with the adoption…. The private agencies are funded to help clear the backlog. But what happens…. In some of the cases we’ve had, an individual has gone through the MCFD process. They haven’t had a home study. They are in a backlog.

They go to the private agency, where they say: “We’re going to do your home study.” But then they say: “But we’re also going to charge you an amount of money for that.” So they’re charging someone that’s coming forward, saying: “We’ll adopt.” It’s going to be another $1,000. We’ve contracted out for them to do that. Why are we charging a British Columbian family another $1,000 in the private agency? Because they’re saying: “Well, we have costs over and above.”

Then they finish that home study, and then they’re told: “Well, that doesn’t meet our quality in MCFD, so we can’t match you with a child. You’re going to have to have another home study.” You can see how that family — a reasonable, intelligent working family in British Columbia — is going to say: “This process is…. One day they want this. Now they want me to pay $1,000 when I’m stepping forward to adopt.”

You’re right. We need to clarify this. I’m pushing with the minister continually, saying: “This isn’t right. This barrier should be eliminated.” If we’re going to contract out an agency to do these home studies, don’t charge people for it. If we’re going to do it in-house, do it in-house with accountability. I create options for the minister and say: “The option of doing nothing isn’t an option. Here are the options. Which one will you pick?”

Meantime, I have 1,000 waiting children, 400 who are saying to me regularly: “How come I’m not getting my forever family? I need my forever family.” I’m watching kids like the girl I mentioned earlier aging out of care at 19, and there’s no forever family for her. She’s aging out to I don’t know what, actually, in point of fact. I hope her foster mom will keep her for at least a year in some arrangement with CLBC.

These are really time-pressured. My idea for my organization is that right now I can expand my advocacy staff and help with the adoptions process shoulder to
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shoulder with MCFD until they work out those options. The minister will have to go to her cabinet, will have to present options. Government will have to make choices about what to do. That’s not my view. I will give her suggestions, and I have given her suggestions.

My accountability piece is that I’ll go to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth and say: “Here are the numbers. They contracted 138 home studies. They got 13.” You’re entitled to know what you get for what you spend your money on. I believe that type of actual, detailed accounting is going to be needed.

What I really want is the system to be improved, and I want to see those kids placed. I think we all want that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: But it requires a very challenging conversation. Obviously, we have to…. Sometimes people do not want that information to come out, as you can imagine. It’s like: “Well, no. Things are going to be better next year.” Well, how? We need to…. Like I say, success can come from failure, but you need to look at: what is it in the failure? And what, incrementally, do you change to get that success?

M. Morris: I’m just curious. Good presentation. I’ve got a daughter-in-law who is a social worker and married to a police officer, so there have been some interesting discussions and dynamics there.

You talk about adding more to your staff and more to your budget. The figures were $500,000 and then, for three years after that, $900,000 a year. Would that money, if it was redirected into the ministry specifically for adoption…? Would that be another option to look at, as well, so that they’ve got the staff and the resources dedicated to adoption?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, that’s a good point. I have to tell you that this is exactly what I think about all the time.

I am not interested in having some big expanded office. If anything, my goal would be: let’s contract this office. The ministry’s functioning more effectively, and let’s just get this work done. I don’t want a bigger office. I mean, it’s incredibly challenging to do this kind of work, to attract people to be engaged in it. Obviously, we want good service.

I don’t think that that is an option — to go into government — because the one-time-only money for adoption last year…. For instance, one agency received $639,000. I don’t think they had a single file. They did work. I’m sure they did thinking about what they’re going to do later, but they didn’t have a single case. If you get $639,000, I expect you to have a case or maybe ten or maybe 15 or maybe 100.

The money that’s going out there is not…. I’m not saying it’s poorly spent. It’s spent on having a conversation about the issue. My point is: okay, let’s have those conversations, but let’s get the service. Commit to numbers. Commit to outcome.

We have 23 delegated aboriginal agencies. Really, there’s only one or two that have actually set targets in this area. We brought all of them together recently in Nanaimo to say: “We need targets set.” My piece is around that.

I look at the $2 million one-time money last year and this year. My concern is that. If I thought it would go in there and it would lead to that, yes. The minister should — and I’ve encouraged her to — bring forward proposals to improve their ability to do guardianship planning for kids.

The single biggest area in MCFD that has increased around FTEs in the last number of years…. They’ve had some serious budget pressures, of course. Their only single category of HR FTEs that have increased is the IT FTEs. We’ve added about 70. I think it’s been about a 4 percent increase around IT because they’ve had their issues with their ICM system. They haven’t had an increase in people doing this type of work. They can be pretty slow to roll things out, but they haven’t asked.

Choices have to be made. This committee, Treasury Board, government have to make choices about where to spend the money. Government has come to me and said: “We need you to be more engaged in adoptions to help us get success.” I’ve been out there on the ground with the minster extensively. I’m saying to you: I’d like to respond to that, but here’s what I think I’m going to need for three years to be able to do it, and I’m going to have to see how it works. It’s going to take some resources.

I’m very nervous to say, “Oh, the Ministry of Children and Families will just journal-voucher me people,” because then it doesn’t appear that my office is independent, and it needs to be independent.

G. Heyman: I think I have three questions, and two of them are going to be a bit prospective, because at some point it sounds like you will be coming to us with a proposal for additional funding. I think I want to clarify the possibilities around that a little bit.

My first question is: on the continuum of you suggesting to the minister what actions need to be taken to more efficiently spend money to get the desired result, and just pointing the minister to problems that need to be fixed, where do you try to fit along that spectrum? Do you try to stay more: “Here’s the problem. What are you going to do to fix it?” Or when you think you know the answer, do you see your role as to say: “Here’s what I think will do it; here’s the problem; here’s the fix” or “Here are the two choices to fix”?

M. Turpel-Lafond: The tools that I use are the following: first of all, actually analyze the situation in detail. Adoptions are an example of $28.9 million of expenditure in MCFD. Then I will look at: what does that go to? The
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one time only money outside…. What are they spending the money on?

I will go to the leadership in the ministry regionally and in headquarters and say: “What’s happening in this? Where is your plan? Where is your accountability? Has there been thoughtful consideration to what you’re doing here?” Again, a minister can commit to something, but they need to have the support and the work to get it done. It’s a two-way conversation. So my discussion with senior officials is one discussion, which is: “I want to see what’s going on. I want to see what choices you’ve made and how you’re going to accomplish something with your $29 million budget in adoption.”

Then I’ll come back and say: “Well, I notice that you have XYZ as a problem, Minister. What will you do about it?” She’ll be either, “My officials have informed me,” or “They have not informed you.” I’d say: “I encourage you to become informed by them.” Then: “Are you satisfied with what you’ve learned, that you’re going to be able to do something? If not, you’d better get some new ideas and get moving. If you’re looking at new ideas, here are three ideas that have worked in every other jurisdiction to increase it. I’ve got evidence to demonstrate that, and would you consider this?” And we have that discussion.

Then we come to the issue of what it will cost and what it will take, but, of course, always guided by the best interests of the child and thinking about, in the case of adoption, the 1,000 children that are waiting. Meantime, I also have the opportunity to go to the minister and say: “Minister, here’s the family. They’ve been waiting two years, and they still don’t have an adoption. Like, what’s going on with this actual family? I’d like you to know their case.” That type of process is a very important process.

Then sometimes I will say to the minister: “Progress is not going forward. I’m going to go public and report on this, and I’m going to say ‘X amount of money and this result or this not result.’” Then sometimes there’s a different urgency around the conversation and change.

It’s a process. There are different tools. Persuasion, analysis, thoughtful collaboration — those are the key tools. They’ve been quite strong in adoption, but again, we didn’t make a target. So the why…. I’m not saying we have the same view about the why and what it is going to take to make it happen. But I know one thing is that they have said: “We need you to be involved in this.” Okay, I can be, but I have to have a budget to do that. I can’t ask my staff to work on a volunteer basis. I actually need staff that are paid to do this work.

Clearly the ministry has asked you do a lot of work to help move this along. I think everybody around this table believes in good planning before taking actions, especially actions that involve money. But I think we all share frustration when a lot of good money is put into endless process with no results.

You’ve pointed to, I think it was, $600,000 spent, not with nothing happening, but with no result that can be measured. You’ve explained why simply seconding staff from the ministry doesn’t work for you because it compromises your independence.

I’m going to assume that one of the reasons may also be that you don’t think the best way to solve the problem with staff in your office is with staff who’ve been part of a system that has been less than fully functional. So my follow-up question is…. You may come to us to ask for money. Is it an option to have the money come from the ministry directly to you, or is that also compromising the independence of your office, in your opinion?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. My view of it is this. As you know, the statutory foundation of our office requires independence for a number of reasons, including financial autonomy. We’re audited every year by the provincial Auditor General, which is fine, and I welcome that. We want to have high levels of accountability.

But we do not want to have the perception or a concern that staff just walk from the Ministry of Children and Families to the representative’s office, because families and children and youth need to feel confident to come forward. We have a lot of confidentiality requirements. As you can imagine, people in the front lines of systems — whether it’s a teacher, whether it’s a doctor, whether it’s a social worker, whether it’s a foster family — call us directly, and they talk to us. They need to have that protection, to know we’re independent and that’s confidential.

If they thought it was the community service manager from the Fraser region in our office answering the phone, they may not say: “Oh, by the way, I’m a foster parent, and I think I might lose my contract if I tell you what’s going on here.” So we need independence, and we need that ability to say: “No, you’re here in the….”

Some of our staff may go into the ministry later. They may work somewhere else. But when you’re in the representative’s office, you have an independent role. You need to serve children and families in that perspective, and that has to go all the way through to financial accounting and responsibility. We’re not in the Ministry of Children and Families for a reason. The recommendation was there had to be independence and it had to be out there.

On the issue of the sort of proposal, what I will do today is leave with you a proposal for you to consider, particularly for this fiscal year. I’ve looked at it for the next three years to give you a heads-up for what will be coming if we are going to do this work. But for this fiscal year, we do have an ask if we’re going to get on that work.

I think I’m inclined to tell the ministry that I’m not going to accept taking their staff into my office, because I don’t think it’s appropriate in terms of the role. At the same time, I don’t want to pass up on the opportunity. I’m not trying to put you in a difficult position. I’m
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happy to come back and talk about it again. But I’m in a quagmire in terms of my operations on this. So I’ll table it, and I’ll leave it with you for your decision or direction or further questions.

G. Heyman: Just to follow up and to sort of segue from the specific back to the general…. I’m sure we will want to speak to you again about the specific proposal. I don’t want to speak for others, but I’m relatively sure that we all think this is a pretty important issue and that there’s something wrong when there are families that want children and children that need families and they’re not being put together.

I will say, for myself, that my observation, in your previous presentation and this one, is that you wield one of the sharpest pencils around, and you’ve obviously taken great effort to stretch every dollar you have. So I take your comments seriously.

S. Gibson: Maybe just a big-picture question, kind of on maybe just a slightly different tangent. A friend of mine is a high school counsellor. All day long she works with teenagers, students. I was having lunch with her a while ago. She almost started to cry, and she said, “There’s so much brokenness in the world,” which, of course, is something you can tell me right away. You’ll say that to me right away: “Simon, there’s so much brokenness in the world.”

My question is…. You’re coming in at the end, to some extent. Do you see your role — and I know you have the word “advocate” — as being prescriptive as well? Tell me a bit about that.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Right. I think this is really an important discussion. Sometimes we have the crisis. It’s good to step back. I see a few things, and I think I’ll ask my chief investigator to weigh in because he deals with some of the toughest cases.

We have some serious challenges in British Columbia, where frequently the children with the greatest needs get the least service. Most children and many families are well organized and can meet their children’s needs. The ones where parents are not well organized or they’re dealing with addictions, family violence — situations become very grim. Schools, counsellors — these are people in the front line, and they’re doing fantastic work to try and keep that child going. They frequently call my office and say: “But we are not enough.”

A child may have a very significant downturn in their mental health, for instance, and be at risk of harm — self-harm or hurting someone else. As you know, in British Columbia we really don’t have good in-patient emergency support for a teenager that goes downhill. We actually don’t have any in-patient addiction beds right now in British Columbia for an adolescent unless you pay for it. There is no in-patient bed. The last resource has been shut down. Nothing’s there.

If you’re a parent of a child that suddenly has said, “I have this terrible trauma in my life. I’m turning to drugs,” they’re in a jail or they’re on the street. The parents and the guidance counsellor are like: “Well, can’t we get some drug, alcohol treatment?”

My view, as representative, is that there is a small number of youth — they’re not the majority — that need secure care. They need good, quality support. You need to intervene. You need strong mental health services where they’re not capable, cognitively, of making good choices and their life’s literally in peril — kids like Paige and others.

Those guidance counsellors and others in schools frequently say to me: “This is the child.” I’m like: “You’re absolutely right.” There’s the emergency need for an intensive system of support. We’ve stripped down some of those. That’s a concern. We’ve got to rebuild those, and we’ve got to intervene more directly and immediately.

The other piece, though, on the broader issue about prevention. We need to have a cross-government…. Not a ceiling of a nirvana situation, because we’re not going to get there, but we need a floor of: what are at least the minimal outcomes for cognitive, social and emotional development for children in B.C.? What are the minimal standards for physical and mental health? What are the minimal standards for at least preventing and responding to maltreatment, physical and sexual abuse? And neglect is something we really need to talk about.

We do tolerate a certain amount of neglect. The question is how much. I see too much neglect, where kids are not in school; parents are active drug users. A certain amount of neglect will happen. Families will go through hard times. A parent becomes sick. Kids can weather that. Chronic neglect — no.

I’d like a floor in B.C., a clear floor. We work toward that, and we prevent. We sometimes do these high-level statements: “Every child will reach their fullest possible potential.” I want that to happen, but I am not so naive as to think that’s how you work the system. We need that school to know there are minimal social, emotional and cognitive outcomes and that we are going to work to that. Nobody just gets shown the door.

Your concern is a very big one, which is: are we getting there? In some places we are. We have very good people who somehow manage to keep some of those kids through when their families fall apart, but we do not have an integrated, coordinated response. We are still mostly ringing the fire alarm and trying to get out there. But we don’t even necessarily have a fire truck to leave the station.

M. Turpel-Lafond: I’ll tell you a good example, and I’ll ask my chief investigator to speak to this.

After the Paige investigation…. We have some 150 kids just like Paige — a 14-year-old using heroin, in the sex trade in Vancouver. What can we do? They won’t do anything, because we don’t have secure care here.

What we’re thinking is: let’s send them to Alberta. In Alberta, if we get them across the border, maybe we can get the British Columbian child into a secure care setting where they can be detoxed and start to be put back together on the path to health. We’ve got to get them over the Rocky Mountains, but I don’t think that’s a very good response.

Bill can speak a little bit more about Alberta as, at least, a neighbouring jurisdiction, or Washington state as a neighbouring jurisdiction.

B. Naughton: I think one of the observations I’ve had the opportunity to make since I’ve joined the representative’s office is: we often say that the highest-needs children get, often, the very lowest-skilled caregivers. A lot of that is based on the residential care models that we have set up in British Columbia.

For example, in the case we looked at in Prince George — the young man who was tasered while he was in residential care there — you go back to interview his care workers, and you discover that in their previous lives they were working in the local mill. They were cable TV installers. These are people with backgrounds completely unsuited…. Good-hearted people, in many cases, but people with backgrounds completely unsuited to dealing with an enormously complex child.

What you see is a child who is living in a situation where his needs in no way meet the capacity of the caregivers. These are residential placements that are enormously expensive. These are not cheap placements. These are placements that can cost, in some cases, over $1 million a year.

We’re talking about a very significant expenditure of funds for this cohort of children with very, very poor outcomes, and these are predictable. You know it’s going to happen. You know the cable TV repairman with the best will in the world is unlikely to be able to get a good outcome for a child like this. One of the frustrations I think we see constantly is this inability to match the needs of the child to the capacity of the system.

The other thing that drives, I think, a lot of the work that we do and that we hear constantly from front-line staff is the issue of the tyranny of the urgent. I’m just going to talk about that in the context of adoptions for a moment. What we see, for example, is workers who are actually formally tasked, on paper, with managing the adoption of children in different offices who complain constantly to us that they are constantly being diverted from their work in adoptions to go to deal with front-line, urgent child protection situations.

Obviously no one is saying that the ministry shouldn’t be responding to those in an appropriate way, but what you see is that inability to focus, an inability for these workers to stay on time, on task, and to keep the focus down.

Our office has success. One of the greatest things we’re able to do…. We’re a very small operation. We are the flea on the back of the elephant. We’re able, oftentimes, to focus the attention of the elephant on some of these issues with some success.

Since the inception of our office our CID team — our investigations team — has looked at over 2,700 child injuries and deaths in the system. I think that’s a lot of material and a lot of work to be done out of a team of ten. I’m pretty impressed, and I’m pretty proud of the work we’ve been able to do. I think we’ve been able to punch above our weight on those issues. But I will say we see these continuing systemic issues, and it classically — if I can go from the old battery commercial — it’s a pay-me-now or pay-me-later situation with these, as the representative has just highlighted.

D. Ashton: What is the alternative, though? You’ve given me the scenario. What is the alternative? Where do those people come from where you’re not going to have a cable guy or you’re not going to have a millwright that’s trying to do their best to look after it? Where are you going to find the people to look after it? The child. I apologize. The issue — look after the issue, I meant to say.

B. Naughton: I think what you have to do is look at a model of residential care that truly is professionalized — that has real standards, that’s child-focused and outcome-focused for that child. Alberta has done, I think, a significantly superior job in terms of being able to provide for the most complex children.

This is not necessarily a large cohort of children. This is certainly not the entire adoptable population. But there are cohorts of children — a thousand, perhaps; maybe slightly less — who do require really high levels of care. Because we’ve moved away from the institutional model over time, because the philosophy has changed around that, a lot of the professional care options that may have been previously available are no longer.

What you see is these balkanized one-off scenarios created to solve the immediate problem. Without a long-term view on how you are going to get a better outcome for this particular child…. How are you going to get a child who is functioning, able to cope in society and potentially independent?

B. Naughton: I’m just a humble ex–police officer trying to make my way in the world. But I think that there’s….

B. Naughton: I know the representative is going to want to chime in here, but I think this is something that we need to take a significant look at.

M. Turpel-Lafond: You know, in the reports that we’ve done…. Like we did a report last year called Who Cares? about kids in group homes. We do talk about having that system — the kid that needs to be in secure care. So they have a short period of time. It’s not just detox or addictions, although we really don’t have a lot of that either. We have no in-patient addictions, as I say.

But you need those systems. They have to be there. They’re like an emergency room. You need them. Not a lot of children necessarily will go through there, but you do need them.

Sometimes we have a fantasy in British Columbia that we don’t need things, and we shut them down. Then you still have the kids, and where do they go?

An example would be this. In Victoria we shut down the Youth Custody Centre. Okay, we’re going to shut it down. But no police agency in south Vancouver Island will keep a child in their cells because they’re not equipped to keep children.

We’ve shut down a youth correctional centre, but we still had 71 youth at an empty youth correctional centre. But they’re in one room, and they’re not really with the staff.

You still have the kids. You may not hear about it, but we still have 71 kids going to youth correctional centre, but apparently, it was shut down. But we have a centre where we could maybe have addictions treatment and a more intensive, qualified staff that is trained to work with kids.

We had a complement of people well trained and coordinated to work with kids. Some of them are doing property management now, or some of them have been moved into other positions in public service. It’s just that thinking — that bigger-picture thinking — about those intensive needs, qualified staff, focused.

On the group home issue in particular, as the chief investigator notes, when we have these reports and these cases, sometimes we will bring to the ministry cases that say: “Look, there’s something going on in these group homes. The person working there has a criminal record. The kids are exposed to pornography. The staff is fighting. They’re swearing at the kids. This can’t continue. The kids don’t have food.”

Then, all of a sudden, we have a situation: “Well, let’s move a bunch of kids. We’ll move them out of these group homes into another set of group homes.” My issue is that that’s cost. We pay someone. We sometimes pay for empty beds.

The entire piece has to be looked at consistently. There are approaches. It’s clear. Our reports speak to those approaches.

It’s the pressure to make some choices around that. The pressure builds when you have situations that become public, like Paige, where, yes, you can live in 50 places in the Downtown Eastside in shelters, like the United Church shelter, you can live in SROs like the Balmoral Hotel or the Regent Hotel, or you can live in a caring environment and then you have a fighting chance.

I think that these are difficult issues that our office has to bring forward, but we bring them forward because we want to learn, and we want to do something different.

M. Morris: Good discussion here. Of course, being a former police officer, I’ve seen lots as well.

One of the deficiencies that I’ve seen in my work as a police officer — and of course, I’ve got two boys that are police officers as well — is deficiencies in the law. There’s frustration in the policing world where there’s no authority to do things that we think should be done with respect to residential care for youth at risk, for example.

We live in a free and democratic society where these people are capable of making their own decisions, and they make the wrong decisions, and there’s no way to direct them, I guess, into a facility that will provide them with the care they need.

Have you identified the deficiencies that we have in our current legal system and made recommendations — I’ve read some of your reports; I haven’t read them all — to the respective ministries for legislative change, to provide the teeth for the social workers and for the police officers and for the health care workers?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes, I have, and I really take that very seriously. I’m fortunate. I do meet regularly with the chiefs of police and look at the policing issues and also look at the changes that are needed. I think the challenge I see….

Again, I just come back to the Paige report, because we’re dealing with that vulnerable cohort, and I think you’ll be familiar with this in terms of your professional background in the region that you served.

Aboriginal girl. She’s in the Downtown Eastside. At one point there’s a 911 call. A neighbour calls 911. She’s in a basement suite in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver with a 14-year-old girl in a bed covered in blood. She’s half-clothed. They’re both severely intoxicated. There’s a 23-year-old male there. What do they do? Release
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them to the 14-year-old’s guardian. They don’t notify the Ministry of Children and Families. There are no charges. Nobody speaks to her about it. Nothing goes forward.

Well, people have to realize this happens regularly. If you’re not working in child welfare or policing, people have a fantasy that these things don’t happen. This does happen to a particular cohort of kids regularly.

What happened in Paige’s life that that wouldn’t be looked at? People can become pretty used to seeing that. You can be sure that that 23-year-old male that was there is hustling those girls. You can be sure that they’re administering alcohol and/or drugs to those girls or those girls are doing minor drug debt collection for that 23-year-old and his friends. You can be sure that a girl like Paige probably will not be taking a complaint to the police because she will fear retribution on the street, because she’s homeless in Vancouver. So where are you going to go? You’re going to side with your bros, and you’re not going to be really engaging with police who could help you.

We know that’s a child welfare crisis, that aboriginal children are on that pathway, that they frequently are the ones that are found in that suite or whatever. But that’s where you actually need to get in. Instead of throwing your hands up and saying, “We can’t do anything,” you have to get in there. What the police officer is saying is pretty significant. This child is in the sex trade, is at risk. They need to get out.

What are the legislative tools in British Columbia? It needs to be secure care. We have the Secure Care Act on the books in B.C. It’s never been proclaimed. That means you take the child, you place her with appropriate legal protections in secure care because she’s in danger and she’s in a very bad situation of physical and mental health. Not to mention the police know well, because 40 times Paige shows up on their files, passed out in parks with her bros, shall we say.

People from a policing environment and the child protection side know what happens in British Columbia. It’s shocking to others who don’t do this work. It’s a very important skill set. The wrong thing to do is to leave the child. In the case of Paige, that’s what happened. She’s just left there or has an hour in a police cell to sober up, whatever, and is sent back out the next day to the very same thing.

Those are the pathways we’re trying to disrupt. They’re hard. They take services. They take work. They take visibility. But they take having this difficult conversation, and our office frequently has to raise it, to say to British Columbians: “Here’s a child. This is what happened to her. We need to address it.” And we can. There are ways to address it. It’s not all for naught. We can change that pathway for any of those children if we allow the police and others to have tools to intervene appropriately.

J. Shin: I can’t speak for the whole committee, but I’m certainly encouraged by your initiative and commitment to deliver measurable improvements to our adoption process. I’m sure with this budget proposal you’ve probably attached preliminary target outcomes and measurable performance indicators. If there are any that you’ll be comfortable sharing with us today, I would appreciate hearing some of those.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yes. I’ll ask my deputy representative to speak to that. We have attached to this budget…. This is the ask for us to do certain work. I’ll ask Dawn to speak to it more clearly, but it involves the following: the ministry meeting its target — making sure that the ministry meets the target so that within two years we’ll have 600. That’s number one — working shoulder to shoulder with them. That’s what this would support.

Also, support engaging the 200 First Nations directly in terms of making them more informed about where their children are and what family-finding can be done inside that work. That’s an intensive piece of work with the First Nations, to really say, “Where is the family-finding,” and get the families matched.

Consistently, we see where aboriginal families are not included. They’re passed over. The ministry can’t always work with them. But we really have tried hard to say: “No, we have a grandma. She can do this. Let’s get this together.” I’ll ask Dawn to speak to a bit more of the deliverables that we see with that proposal.

D. Thomas-Wightman: One of the things that the ministry has clearly said to us when we’ve gone to talk to them about “What’s happening, and why aren’t you meeting your targets?” is that, specifically around the First Nations work: “We can’t get into the community because of the historical relationship we have with First Nations communities.”

Adoption can be considered a dirty word in a First Nations community because of the history, right? So they’ve asked us, as RCY and our staff: “Could you partner with us and go into those communities? Because you have relationships with those communities.”

Part of the deliverable on that ask is to have one of our staff in each region to go to those 206 First Nations and, exactly like Mary Ellen said: “You have 20 kids here. They may be connected to a delegated agency, where maybe 5 percent have a plan of care. We want to increase that to 100 percent. Let’s look at those 20 kids. Let’s work together. Let’s find the family — who are the family? — and make the connection with the ministry and try to make a placement.”

In some cases there will have to be a non-aboriginal placement. As aboriginal people, we over-caregive, overrepresent as caregivers for those 53 percent of kids that are in care. In those cases there needs to be a cultural plan. Our staff can work with the community and with the MCFD to develop a cultural plan. Specifically, getting the plans of care up to date would be one of the targets
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and meeting with all 206 First Nations to do that difficult work and have those conversations.

We have a plan. Then we’ll go to each region. This is the First Nations in this region that we’ll meet with, with the ministry staff. These are the number of kids. This is what we’ll do, at the end of the day — just to get in there, have the conversation and talk about what adoption looks like today, with inclusion of family, inclusion of community and connection.

J. Shin: This is besides what we are immediately discussing here, but I was curious to get your thoughts on the foster age, the limit. Ontario has pushed it up. They’re now talking about 25. What are your thoughts on that?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, my reports have been really clear. I’ve asked the government to extend foster care, change the law so that foster care can be extended up to 24 on a case-by-case basis. Eight hundred kids age out each year — pretty stable, in and out, with 8,200 kids in care. Sometimes I think there should be more, but in any event…. Sometimes they’re in those hotels and places, not being seen. But 800 kids age out of care. Some of them might be ready.

What I’m finding on a case-by-case basis is that we should keep them. I talked about the girl that will turn 19 next week and will go into, I hope, CLBC. She’s not ready. There’s no way she’s ready. She’s not emotionally ready. She’s not going to be finished high school. She is vulnerable to ending up on the street.

We’ve cobbled together something, but even in my advocacy with the director of child welfare and the minister, they’re like: “We have no legal authority to extend her foster care, even though we also know she’s not going to make it, and she’s the oldest of six kids.” She is the family for those five younger siblings, so we have to get her to make it. I want the government to change that, have it case by case. Keep the stability. Just like any of us would not necessarily turn our child with special needs out at age 19 to the curb, we don’t want that to happen in the foster care system. That’s a to-do.

The government has said to me that if economic times improve, they’ll look at it. My view is that you can’t afford not to look at it. What’s the cost of those…? As I say, 40 police files, 17 visits to the emergency room, not getting a high school education, not getting employment — those are all economic burdens to British Columbians that I’d like to see us not have. A different outcome is what I really want to be part of.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Just to conclude, it makes me wonder how much of that goes back to what Mr. Naughton was talking about a few minutes ago in terms of the quality of the homes these children are being placed in and their motivation for wanting to take foster children in the first place. That’s rhetorical.

Anyhow, I do have one quick, easy question, I think. And it’s probably a silly one. You talked about your staffing numbers: Victoria, 39; Burnaby, 10.4; Prince George, 7.

I’m curious. I know there are duties to the Legislature here, so your head office is in…. That speaks for itself. But with the Lower Mainland with a population of nearly three million people by itself, it seems to me there’s a certain disparity with 39 people located…. I assume these are advocates. These are people that work with children as well, being located centrally here in Victoria as opposed to distributed a little more around the province, particularly Burnaby and Prince George.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yeah. What we do is we have an advocacy staff in all three offices. We have quite a group there that are mostly assigned to the Lower Mainland. But, absolutely, the issue about where we are….

Like, this is the seat of government, obviously, and the ministry’s headquarters are here. For our research evaluation and audit team, they’re largely here. Investigation in deaths are here for a variety of reasons also. Advocacy is here, there and in Prince George, so you’re right. We have that.

Now, if we are to move forward on, for instance, the adoptions advocates, that’s a situation where, again, I may have to think about it. If you approve that sort of idea of a year’s or a couple of years’ project — coming back to my issue that we have five regions — I would probably be looking at getting five advocates in each region specifically dedicated.

Where would I connect them to? I might have to look at a bit more of a remote model to get out there. The north is quite underserved. Parts of northern Vancouver Island are not very well served. There are places I really think where we can do work. Geographically, I’d like to shuffle that as an EB. But again, I’m a very small office, right? We’ve got to figure out how we can best….

Your concern, previously, with the officers of the Legislative Assembly. I need to sit with those officers — you know, the octet of officers — and say: “What can we do together? How can we share resources?” We’ve always got to think of that. From an efficiency perspective, that’s how we’re designed. But is it a model of population service? No. We’re doing it from a perspective of efficiency, and that’s okay.

Like, I feel a financial responsibility, but I am very burdened by the fact that our advocates do need to get out there and see actual children and families, and the telephone and e-mail is not enough. You’re expressing a concern that I’m extremely mindful of.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Not necessarily. Just more curious about how the resources are distributed.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Anyway, thank you very much. I do appreciate you coming. If there’s any other information you feel is pertinent to our meeting today, if you would run it through Kate’s office, then she’ll make sure all the committee members get it, and we’ll make sure that the ones who are absent are apprised of your visit as well. I appreciate that.

S. Hamilton (Chair): My Clerk says the auditors seem to be in a good mood today. For a bunch of accountants, that doesn’t happen very often.

Anyway, welcome to the committee. This is an opportunity for your office to let our committee know how things are going, an opportunity to chime in on issues around your budgets, your projections, your business plans, how it’s been going for the year. Rather than just sort of jamming everything in November, we thought it was a good chance for us to get together and have a discussion as to how things are operating, your challenges, your successes.

I’ll turn the floor over to you. We’ll start with some introductions — yourself and the staff you brought with you — and then I’ll go around with the rest of the committee, and we’ll let you know who we are.

C. Bellringer: Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for this opportunity. It was a good follow-up from the last meeting, and we’re looking forward to presenting some information.

I’m joined by Russ Jones, the Deputy Auditor General, whom you all know, and Cornell Dover, who’s one of the assistant Auditors General. He has recently been moved over to take control of our whole corporate services area. He’s new to that position but not new to the office.

Marc Lefebvre is in charge of our whole human resources area in the office. He probably has a much more official title than that — director of human resources? — but I may get it wrong, so I thought I would just identify his sphere of influence.

Katrina Hall was with us at the last meeting and is our comptroller and keeps all of our money intact as well as all the processes around that.

I’ll go over to Simon. I’ll get you to kick us off with introductions of the committee.

Carol, please accept my apologies. I have to scoot at 20 after. To yourself and the team, thanks for coming. I’ll pick up with my peers, but I have another meeting at 11:30.

S. Hamilton (Chair): That means if you want to target Dan for anything specifically, you’d better do it early.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Terrific. Well, thank you again very much for being here. I will turn the floor over to you, Carol.

When we did the presentation to the committee last year, I had just joined the office, so a lot of it was still new to me. I’m much more familiar with the detail now.

We did want to start with the follow-up to the recommendation of the committee that had come out of that last presentation as a review of our budget request. We had provided you with a letter. I did want to run through some of the main points in that letter, just to make sure there’s a full understanding and a common understanding of where we see one complication. If you have questions around that, then I think this is a good time for us to have that dialogue.

Your recommendation to us. It was a recommendation…. I only say that because I appreciate you bring your recommendation forward for approval. If my language slips, I appreciate the process.

The annual appropriation was approved at $16.945 million in each of the next three fiscal years. It was $385,000 less than our budget request, and there was an acknowledgment in the recommendation that the committee was prepared to fund the mandated increases to salaries and benefits that we had projected but not prepared to grant the increased occupancy costs. I’ll say a few more words about that in a second.
[ Page 1425 ]

The capital expenditures were approved at $100,000, which was $115,000 less than our request.

There was a recommendation that we re-examine joining the independent officers corporate shared services arrangements or move towards other service-sharing options, explore new efficiencies and savings, and then an offer to return to the committee in the future to discuss options to address any cost pressures.

In the letter that we sent, we did point out a few more facts around the lease itself. The lease extends to November 2034, so we’re talking obviously about a very long-term arrangement. We are the sole tenants in the building, except for the street-level retail space, which is accessed from the outside. When you go in the front door of our building, we are the sole tenants in the building.

Permission had been given previously to proceed. At the time we had previously met with the committee most recently prior to the one in November, the square footage had been estimated at 30,000 square feet, and the actual came through at 33,368. The actual lease was $300,000 more than expected; $135,000 of that for that increased square footage, which was in effect the shared space that then gets allocated to our lease. That’s like the boiler room and all kinds of stuff in the basement as well as some around the elevator shaft and that kind of thing. The other remaining $165,000 for estimated increases to property taxes and operating costs. That number today is still not entirely known because there is a clause in the lease that we can go in and audit the other costs that are attached to the lease, and we haven’t reached that point yet.

We have a concern, not actually with the decision or the recommendation of the committee to overall reduce our budget, because we do have some good news on that front. We were able to find savings. The allocation of it to the occupancy costs is the problematic piece because of the long-term nature of the lease.

Without a complete redesign of the building, it would not be something where we can just bring people in and have them fit into nooks and crannies within the office. That’s where we still have a concern with the recommendation not to fund our increased occupancy costs — so something we’ll need to talk about.

We did look for all possible savings in order to balance the budget with the amount that we were given in total. The majority of our costs are salaries, so in order to find the savings, it comes out of the payroll line of our budget. We currently have six vacancies. We are going to fill them now, but we held them open. We postponed some information technology, IT, spending. We should be okay moving that forward. We don’t have any funds remaining in the budget for contingencies such as wage increases.

We do traditionally have turnover in the office. I’ll say a few more words about our turnover situation. People do leave during the year and so on, so even with this, we still have some ups and downs. We think we’re good regardless of where that turnover lands for the current year.

For ’15-16 we’re then currently projecting a balanced budget. We expect to issue all of the financial statement audit opinions that we committed to in our annual coverage plan. We do a coverage plan. A little more than half of our work is putting opinions on financial statements. The plan for that is approved by the Public Accounts Committee. We’re good with meeting the commitments in that plan.

We have a list of 20 public reports that are primarily performance audit reports and further discussion on public accounts, for example. We have the list, and we anticipate they will all be released within ’15-16. It’s about average for the office, a little bit higher than most recent years, but not all years. I go back to ’10-11 — 20 such reports were issued; ’11-12, 19; ’12-13, 24; ’13-14, 17. In ’14-15, low, eight, but you have to kind of average it off, because some get issued sooner than others and so on.

For me, it’s an acceptable volume of performance audit work that we’re doing. I don’t see any complication from the reduced funding in terms of getting our work done.

We’ve now completed our strategic plan. We’re looking out eight years. We’ve developed a coverage plan on that other work. That covers three years. We’ll be releasing that publicly fairly soon. We do that through tabling it to the Speaker. Then it’ll be available to the Public Accounts Committee for further discussion.

It’s similar to the coverage plan for financial statement audits, but the financial statement audit plan must be approved by the Public Accounts Committee. The performance audit plan we’re just choosing to provide to the committee. There’s no requirement for the committee to approve it.

We also have a process in the office of responding to citizen concerns. We’ve got the financial audit stuff. We’ve got the performance audit work. Then we do receive several hundred concerns that come our way through the year from public servants, from members of the public and, in fact, additionally, from Members of the Legislative Assembly.

It’s the one area that certainly I — I’ll say “we,” but we haven’t had a fulsome discussion within the office — am considering recommending that we put more resources into. For most of those concerns, we will consider whether or not there’s a large enough systemic issue to look at a large audit. I would like us to consider doing a much smaller, more precise audit of the precise concern to make sure that someone somewhere in the system has taken care of the individual’s issue — but for the moment, not for the current year.

Balancing the budget, we’ve delayed about $100,000 in IT costs to next year. We’ve assumed no lapsed funds nor any unusual items. We don’t plan them. We’re not expecting them. There were some significant ones two and three years ago in our office. We had some large accruals for the previous Auditor General’s pension and some
[ Page 1426 ]
organizational restructuring. We don’t anticipate any of that currently. We do, however, not have any funds in the budget for any wage increases for the rest of this year.

Our biggest challenge is staff retention. I shouldn’t say our biggest challenge. We’ve got lots. It’s not a problem, but it is a challenge, because it is the cost driver in our budget. It’s the salaries for people.

We did have an increase in turnover to 16 percent from 9 percent last year. The majority of last year’s departures were to jobs that became available after the easing of government’s managed staffing strategy. Currently the vacancies we have — we are working to fill them. I don’t actually have any immediate concern that we won’t be able to, but it is always a risk for our office because of all the considerations.

Regarding service-sharing options, there’s no large, overall ability to do it in terms of the way some of the other independent officers are housed in the same building. But we are looking for as many opportunities as we can find. They may sound a little unusual because they’re not really in the corporate services area, but they are ways that we can save the system some money.

We are planning a very specific collaborative audit at the moment with the Privacy Commissioner. The nature of that audit hasn’t been…. The ministry is not aware, and we haven’t made it public yet, so I can’t tell you which one right now. We look for those opportunities often. We have collaborated with the other independent officers and assisted on some specific issues that came forward, both in IT and human resource areas.

We have a training space on the main floor of our new building, and we are opening it up to government organizations to use it. We don’t actually charge them, but it saves the system money. At the moment it’s booked out. Ministry of Justice is using it for something. We’ll keep tracking that to determine the extent to which we’re able to save funds for everybody.

I will say that with a vengeance, we are looking at every individual expenditure that we make in the office and ensuring that it’s absolutely needed and that it’s being done in the most cost-effective way, all the way down to questioning whether we even need subscriptions to certain news items and so on. We found some duplicates.

We do have a big enough budget that it is something you have to monitor on an ongoing basis, and we did find that we felt we were overpaying for access to some of the professional handbook material from the institute of chartered accountants. We’ve been able to reduce some expenditures, for example, in that area. It’s a little bit here, a little bit there but always worth looking at.

G. Heyman: My question has to do with retention and salaries, so it’s sort of threefold. Do you think that your salaries are under-market? Have they been restrained by tracking general public sector wage increases? When you said you aren’t budgeting for any salary increases, does that mean breaking with some pattern — following either the public service grid increases or general wage increases in the public sector — that has been customary?

M. Lefebvre: For the increases: we have some union-equivalent staff. We have about 15 staff who get the same wage increases as the BCGEU, so the 5½ percent over the next four years. Those we have been giving. Most of our staff are classified in the management classification and compensation framework. Those are still under the wage freeze, we understand.

In terms of the pressures, we are starting to experience some pressures in terms of under-market. I’d say our salaries compared to the private sector are probably about the 30th percentile. Nonetheless, we still have a good benefit package, and we’re still able to attract talent. Our offer declines have increased, especially with the newly qualified level for accountants. We’re finding more people rejecting our offers because they’re a little under-market. It’s a little bit under pressure, but we’re still able to manage, as I said. We’re optimistic that we can still hire. We’re watching it carefully.

J. Yap: Carol, the majority of your professional staff, I gather, are chartered accountants. With the transition to Chartered Professional Accountants, CPA, designation, has that added any complexity or additional processes or costs to the operation?

C. Bellringer: I made the error in my opening remarks to refer to the institute of chartered accountants. You’re absolutely correct. There’s been the merger of the three accounting streams, and it’s now CPA.

My first reaction, just as a general comment in managing, is that it simplifies things in that you don’t have to decide whether or not you can choose one over the other, and there’s no bias introduced in any way. We are still a training office for the profession and now for CPAs, and we will continue to do so. It’s an important part of what we do.

M. Lefebvre: It’s nice to have them merged. It makes it a little more efficient. Unfortunately, their fees are going up for the student training by about 10 percent, so it is costing us more to train people.

J. Yap: So it’s like professional development costs or student training?
[ Page 1427 ]

C. Bellringer: The period before they actually write the uniform final examination is a period they’ll be working with us, and we assist in their education requirements, cost-wise.

M. Lefebvre: They’ve cancelled some…. Our students were able to do most of their courses in Victoria, but recently we had to send our latest cohort to Vancouver for our insurance module, which cost us travel fees.

C. Bellringer: Russ is closest to the financial auditors in the office. I don’t know if there are any further observations that you’ve seen from the merger. It’s still early years — not even years; early months — for that merger, and I don’t know that we’ve actually seen exactly what’s going to shake out of it. I don’t know where the numbers are going to go in terms of the number of professionals that will go through the system, whether it will in fact reduce and therefore make it harder to find people.

R. Jones: I don’t think it’s going to have that much of an impact. What is happening now is there’s…. It used to be when CAs went to try and qualify, you wrote every October. Now there are two times a year that you can write, June and in the fall. Of course, June is our busiest time, so we’re going to have to push everybody to the fall.

I think it opens up the ability for us to get additional staff in to train in different areas of the office. So the merger’s a good thing, I think.

G. Heyman: I just wanted to follow up to my earlier questions. My memory or my assumption is that within the ministries there are people employed with accounting designations. Are the salaries in the Auditor General’s office set separately, or do they track those salary arrangements?

M. Lefebvre: If you compare our salaries and classifications, for instance, to the comptroller general, they’re almost similar. An IT auditor in our office would make the same as they would in internal audit.

G. Heyman: Presumably, then, the challenges for recruitment and retention would be the same in the ministries as for the Auditor General’s office, and at some point, if it hits critical mass, something may happen there.

M. Lefebvre: It’s a little different. We’ve been, actually, very successful at predicting our departures. This year it did go up, but our assumptions were based on the hiring freeze still being in place. Because we’re the only office that trains accountants, our qualified people have become very attractive to government jobs. We actually have contracted pretty well. Of the 17 departures, the vast majority of those were promotions to finance jobs in government.

S. Gibson: A few years ago in my community of Abbotsford, there were a lot of financial pressures in the police department. As you know, policing is incredibly expensive. It takes up a huge portion of our budget. The police chief…. Council asked, as the financial body…. He reports to some other board. “How can you cut costs?” One of the things he did was civilianize a number of positions that were being held by police officers.

I’m taking that paradigm and saying that you’ve got, overwhelmingly, management positions. How many have you got? You just mentioned, sir, just a few.

My question is: could you emulate that model that APD did, where they said, “You know, we’ve got just too many people in these management jobs. Why don’t we take, say, 10 percent and, as they become vacant, make them, instead of requiring a CA, require a diploma in accounting,” or that kind of thing? You still get work done, but some of the entry-level work doesn’t have to be done by people with these super-duper credentials. I’m just wondering if that’s something you could look at.

C. Bellringer: I’ll just make a quick comment, an overall description of the way that we’re structured.

We are certainly…. I appreciate what you’re saying around — there’s a possibility of people in a completely different area who, in effect…. And their salary expectations may be lower.

Marc can speak more to the details of this, but within the structure of the chartered accountant, now the CPA, coming into our organization, they are coming in straight out of university. They are junior level. The actual categorization of them is called “management excluded,” but the band is very low and starts at a low salary level for what…. They will go develop and then get their credentials and move up the ladder.

But if you look at the overall complement of our office, it ranges from entry level all the way through to the assistant Auditor General level. They’re not all managers, even though that’s the terminology used in the classification.

M. Lefebvre: The majority of our people in the management classification are in what we call the applied band, which is the lowest. If you were to look at the salaries in the union, you’d find that most of those would actually be lower. And they’re excluded, so they’re not entitled to overtime. There’s another sort of efficiency there.
[ Page 1428 ]

S. Gibson: I get that. However, you just told us that you’re having a problem keeping people. If you hired people more junior, with less expectation of promotions — they’ve got a diploma or certificate in accounting, or whatever — they’re not going to immediately turn around and bail on you, creating the problem you have right now of trying to keep filling positions. I’m just wondering about that.

In the financial statement area they do have to allow us to meet our professional standards. When we sign the audit opinion, we go through a quality assurance process internally as well as externally. We would not be permitted to train students if we had too many people who were in….

There’s a large number of the accounting firms, for example, that will hire technicians to do things like tax returns and bookkeeping and so on. That isn’t the nature of the work that we’re doing.

On the financial statement side it’s a verification of the financial statements. It does have to be a bit of a…. I don’t want anyone listening to this who’s a technician to think it’s a low thing. But it is at a higher level, if you will, so they do have to have the professional qualifications.

On the performance audit side it’s a whole different mix of personnel. We don’t hire accountants, primarily, to do the performance audits. We are hiring people with different backgrounds, but a lot of them do have a master’s in whatever their discipline is in order for us to have the expertise to go in and do something meaningful that is going to influence change and be valuable to the ministry.

Again, we even have a challenge with the more junior but still professionally trained people in performance audit to find enough work to delegate to them so that it is at that, if you will, wise level. It is an issue in the office.

Also, we have corporate services, where we are able to…. We do hire in corporate services people with the technical background to get the work done to support the office. But they would not be professionally qualified in the same sense as a CPA.

In the performance audits…. We’ve been seeing many of those, and they’ve been very interesting. In a number of them that I looked at, the overall recommendations are general, kind of philosophical feelings. They’re not very…. It’s not a criticism. I understand the paradigm. They’re not particularly prescriptive.

There was one in particular that I looked at from my own community. You recognize some concerns, but it was fairly gentle and wasn’t particularly critical. Fair enough. I think that’s good.

My question is: can you focus, in terms of efficiency and using the dollars more wisely, perhaps…? I’m just wondering about this — that the performance audits would be done in those cases where it appears there are definitely problems that need to be addressed as opposed to more gentle analyses that may or may not offer any advice to decision-makers. Do you know what I’m saying?

I don’t hear that as a criticism. But there was a number that I looked at, and the recommendations — I’m not saying they were fluffy; that would be cruel — were gentle. I’m thinking: “Okay, a lot of money has gone into doing this. Should we be more focused on more prescriptive, a little more edgier stuff that could be more useful for decision-makers to help them in better governance?” That’s my question.

C. Bellringer: Definitely our aim is to have meaningful recommendations. We recognize there’s a value to the entire process of the audit, as well. It’s less well measured. Just our being on site and participating in it and pointing out things as we go along, for example.

We do training, and we continually try to up our game in our ability to deliver meaningful performance audits. It’s something right across the country that we share methodology with the other legislative auditors. We do some conferences and so on.

There’s always a conversation around: how do we make sure the recommendation isn’t, basically, “Well, go fix it,” and provides enough guidance to not be so prescriptive that we’re telling ministries who are responsible for something exactly how to do it? That is the balance we are always trying to find.

When we’re picking audits, we do look for risks, significance, in what way we believe there’s an interest in the topic, and that it’s meaningful — that we have the legal access to go in and access documents and conduct interviews and derive additional information that members of the Legislature don’t have the ability to get. We’re looking for those things where we can add to the dialogue in a meaningful way.

The recommendations are definitely a part of it, but they aren’t the sole purpose of getting the performance audit done. We are always trying to do it better.

That’s one of the reasons why we are making the coverage plan a public document, and we’re going to set up meetings with the caucus offices, with the Public Accounts Committee and so on, to talk through: are we picking the right things? There is a value to providing assurance as well as finding problem areas where you go to get it fixed, because there is as much value to government to be able to say: “Well, we’re actually glad to know that at the detailed level you’re not finding that this isn’t what we found.”

Likewise, we often will find that at the deputy minister level, a senior management level, they’ll say: “Yes, that’s the direction that we’re looking for.” We go in at a much
[ Page 1429 ]
more detailed level and all the way through to the working ranks, when you say: “Well, that may be what you’re guiding them to do, but that’s not what their understanding of it is.”

We’re hoping that that information to management is useful. Management’s information to the Legislature and the public is also useful.

S. Gibson: Thank you. The only other thing I would like to see recommended…. Russ knows. I was chatting with Russ a bit, because I’m getting to know Russ here. It would be nice to have a little bit of a lexicon of what you mean by your terms, right? Like, if something is — what’s the expression, Russ? — “fully or partially implemented.”

In my short term here I’ve never seen anybody “fully implemented.” And also the term “adequate.” Russ and I were chatting a bit about this. Sometimes the phrases that you use — the public, or even elected officials, don’t fully understand the meaning.

C. Bellringer: We’ll do our best to do that. The terms you just indicated there are associated with our follow-up work primarily. You have a Public Accounts Committee meeting that we’ll be attending next week. One of the agenda items that I’ll look forward to is potentially a change to shift the type of follow-up we’ve been doing where we get self-assessments and then we determine whether or not we consider that to be fully implemented and so on, shifting it to action plans where the ministries will provide to you their action plan as to how they’ll address the recommendations, who will do it, what’s the timeline.

M. Morris: Another term that comes to mind is “in whole or in part.” I’ve seen that so many times too.

Most of my questions have been answered, so just a couple of comments. I appreciate the work you guys have been doing in balancing the budget, number one. But the other one — you’ve sort of alluded to it. You’ve got an internal audit process or quality assurance process that you use extensively, which I think is great, because you’re the Auditor General. But I think that demonstrates to some of the other government agencies that the Office of the Auditor General is doing and conducting internal audits to see how they can balance their budget and whatnot.

It’s something that…. I don’t know what your findings are when you’ve been conducting audits with the different government departments. Are we rigorous enough with our internal audit program with all the other different ministries and agencies that we have, or is that something that maybe needs to be looked at?

C. Bellringer: We have not done an audit of internal audit, but I will just say anecdotally from what I’ve already observed since I got here that there’s not enough emphasis on internal audit within central government. I’ve seen much larger shops in much smaller provinces, and there’s an opportunity there to really use it as a preventative measure — not just driving cost savings, but all kinds of other improvements as well.

R. Jones: Carol has hit it right on the head. There are internal audit shops out there, but, for instance, in the health authorities you might have a head of internal audit looking at three health authorities with two or three staff. You’re talking $6 billion or $7 billion in three health authorities that you’ve got internal audit looking at — not a lot of resources to look at a lot of the issues that health authorities need to have looked at. That’s just an example. It’s always a question. Where do you put your resources?

J. Yap: I can’t remember. Are you able to recover costs or bill your auditees? If so, is there an opportunity, especially outside of central government, for the Crowns and maybe other agencies to use your services? I mean, they would have to pay for an outside auditor firm’s fees, and if they are using your service, they should pay you as well, right?

C. Bellringer: I’ll give you the quick answer and then look to the experts to explain it. The quick answer is yes, we can bill, but all of the revenues that we collect as a result of that go into general revenue, and we’re not able to use them in any way ourselves. We do bill.

K. Hall: Yes, we do bill, and it’s strictly on behalf of the province. Last year we took in about $2 million, that we received, and it went into general revenue.

In 2009 our funding model switched, where we were partially funded and partially generated the revenue and kept it, to our full appropriation model that we have now.

C. Bellringer: So everything that is in the budget that’s approved for our office is approved by this committee. Any revenues…

J. Yap: Fairly stable. How do you feel about this model? If you had your druthers, would you want to have the opportunity to be more of a profit centre?

C. Bellringer: I’ve seen it work both ways. There are pros and cons to both. I don’t have a preference, as long as we understand what the rules of the game are up front. It works for us this way. I mean, obviously, if we had our own bank account, and we collected the revenues and then we had the permission to then use it as we wish, it would give us more control, but I don’t think it’s control we need to have. I feel safer having to come to the committee and describe what we do. I don’t want to be accused of doing something behind the scenes that someone is later going to go and question. I think it’s a better accountability model to have us come here.

R. Jones: I was just going to add that one of the concerns that we run into, John, is…. For instance, we’re the auditor of Columbia Power Corporation.

In order to do that audit, it probably costs us about $40,000 to $45,000 in travel a year, whereas if the CPC were to hire a local firm, that wouldn’t be charged to them. With us billing for absolutely everything and trying to recover it to fit into our budget, it sometimes will disadvantage some of the organizations that we audit. It’s the same thing with school districts, where, if we decide to do one in the Shuswap area, we would have to charge them travel, which really isn’t fair in the overall scheme of what the various Crowns get charged by the CA firms.

What we do, do, though, is that when we’re charging them, we try and mirror our charge to what a CA firm would charge if they were doing the audit so that they’re not disadvantaged in terms of what they’re paying in fees.

All I have to question you about is going back to your staff retention issues and the challenges you’re facing with regards to staff turnover. Can I, then, assume that…?

You’ve talked about yourself as being a training ground to a certain extent. We have younger people coming in off the profession. You’re training them up. Of course, they’re getting trained to the extent where they now have marketable skills that they can apply elsewhere and probably for more money. They’re running through your system, and they’re going to work somewhere else, be it the public or the private sector.

That’s a good thing. These people are coming in, and you’re teaching them skills. They’re learning lots, and they’re moving on, and they’re continuing to contribute, hopefully, to the public sector. But there’s a real, tangible cost associated with that.

Every time you steward someone through a training program, you’re drawing resources to their benefit, obviously. But you’re drawing resources from other areas of your varying departments in order to provide them with the training they need to ultimately do the job that they’re going to do for a while and then leave, right?

I don’t know how to address that. You’re working internally to the best of your ability, obviously. Understanding those challenges the way I’m understanding them, how do you perceive…? We can throw more money at things and get more people, but how do you work around that? It probably fluctuates.

I guess my question is: without divulging personal information, what do you say the average age of a new recruit might be? How long do they stay, just on average — ballpark?

C. Bellringer: The largest implication in the office is with the financial audits, not with the performance audits. The training and the process of training students is by our people who work in the financial audit area.

One of things that we do is hire contractors in the busy season. We’re hiring external firms. We’re hiring, again, qualified CPAs who are working for one of the large accounting firms. We use, say, ten of them in the busy season so that we’re not having to hire up for the busy part of the year and then find them things to do in the lower season.

That’s one way we work around it. It’s a tricky balance to know exactly how many to hire on contract versus should you be hiring and having them on staff. We do a calculation of that, and it goes up and down a little bit. I think we’re at an optimal point right now with the contractors. Marc, you can speak to the numbers.

M. Lefebvre: Sure. The majority of our staff are actually under 35. Compared to the rest of the public service, our age is quite young. Our retirements occurred early. Most of them occurred about five or six years ago in terms of a spike. We’re going to have another spike in mid-term, in Carol’s term. We have an average one to two retirements a year. That will go up to about four in three years.

Actually, we’ve been pretty good on our analytics, as an executive meeting together to decide how we’re going to address, for instance, the student program. We had some pretty large numbers in the past. Our intake is down slightly. We still have a good cohort, but we’re trying to see if that will reduce our turnover as well.

The average student does stay with us for about 4½ years, which is not bad. It would be nice to get them longer, considering the investment. But as you say, they do come to other jobs in government, so it’s not a complete loss. There’s an intrinsic value to training people. If we go to an audit at a college, and one of our former em-
[ Page 1431 ]
ployees is there, it makes the audit more efficient, probably, and the government more efficient too.

C. Bellringer: One of the budget challenges becomes…. At the beginning of the year, when we submit our budget, if we were to have all our positions full, say on April 1, we then have turnover during the year. You can’t fill the positions fast enough to not have some vacancy during the year.

Do we anticipate what that vacancy is going to be and budget accordingly? But then what happens if nobody leaves? Then all of a sudden we’re over budget. That’s the one piece that we’ll pay more…. Therefore, we’ve had a lapse of funds for several years, and it got quite large in years where the turnover was larger than expected, because you just can’t fill them fast enough. We have to play around a little bit with an educated guess of what that number is going to be going into the year. We’re cautious. We’re probably overly cautious with it. I think we can push that, take a little bit more of a risk.

We’ll be very open with that calculation when we submit our next year’s budget. But I think that’s the one place we have some room to say, “We can get a few more people in than we actually think we need,” because we anticipate the turnover.

S. Gibson: A super quick question. I know we want to get going. Do you have to have everybody working in the office? For example, I know people in Abbotsford that are consultants, like guys that do architectural drawings for people in Chicago, but they’re based in Abbotsford. They don’t have to go to Chicago. Can you have people doing work out of their homes? Like you said, you want to send people to the Shuswap. Can you have people already working in the Shuswap for you, part-timers or something, so that you don’t have to fill up hundreds of offices? I was just wondering about that.

C. Bellringer: There’s certainly opportunity both ways. Many of the auditors are working in the field, if you will, at the client location. I was trained the old-fashioned way. To me, that’s the best way to audit, because you learn more by being out there and hearing what’s going on than you do by doing a paper-based audit. Certainly, the closer you are to it, the better the audit. That’s just my own bias.

We do offer some flexible work arrangements, but the majority of the staff are not able to do that. We also see a benefit to them being…. The interrelationship within the office itself is important as well.

We do a little bit of working from home — I’d say more so in, say, Vancouver. There are a few of the people working for us who are primarily based in Vancouver. Again, they would be expected to be mostly on the job to do the work as opposed to being at home. But they don’t come to our Victoria office.

R. Jones: I was just going to add that in two or three of the audits that we do, we contract with a CA firm — for instance, at WorkSafe B.C. When we did that audit and Liquor Distribution Branch, we had PwC from Vancouver doing the work for us. We oversee it, but we do use their resources.

I’m from the same, I guess, old school that Carol is. It’s very difficult, to me, to add value to your clients, which would be the Crown corporations or the ministries, if you’re not out in the field asking the people on the job how they’re doing the stuff and getting firsthand experience with them. I’m sure you’re all quite aware of that in your roles. It’s not as easy to do an audit by e-mail or over the computer as talking to people face to face. You get the real stuff then. There are pros and cons. I still prefer the personal approach, which is seeing them face to face.

C. Bellringer: We do accept that…. Some of the audit evidence that the auditors are getting via e-mail astounds me, because we used to have to go out and get it ourselves. There’s a bit of a culture shift accepting that there are some new ways of doing business. We get that. But certainly, some of that old-fashioned stuff still works.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you for all your fulsome answers and the opportunity to present to us. If you have any other material, any other information you want to impart to the committee, if you could run it through Susan’s office. By all means, forward it off to us. Once again, thank you very much for being here, on behalf of the committee. I look forward to continuing to work together. Have a good day.

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Chair:	Wm. Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
Members:	Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)
	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission 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

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