Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills — Issue No. 3

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

Strategy Room 420, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue
580 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Present: John Martin, MLA (Chair); Leonard Eugene Krog, MLA (Deputy Chair); Harry Bains, MLA; Mable Elmore, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Don McRae, MLA; Dr. Moira Stilwell, MLA; Sam Sullivan, MLA; Jackie Tegart, MLA; Dr. Andrew Weaver, MLA

2. The following witnesses briefed the Committee on the revision to the Local Government Act [RSBC 1996] Chapter 323 pursuant to section 4 of the Statute Revision Act [RSBC 1996] Chapter 440, and answered questions:

• Stephen Russo, Senior Policy Analyst, Intergovernmental Relations and Planning Branch

3. Resolved, that pursuant to section 4 of the Statute Revision Act [RSBC 1996] Chapter 440, the Committee approve the revision of the Local Government Act [RSBC 1996] and recommend that it be brought into force and further, that the Committee authorize the Chair to endorse the Committee’s approval on the title page of the Local Government Act Statute Revision. (Don McRae, MLA)

4. Resolved, that the recommendation of the Committee be transmitted to the Lieutenant Governor and further, that the recommendation form the basis of the Committee’s report to the House which the Chair shall deposit with the Clerk of the House and present to the House at the earliest opportunity. (Don McRae, MLA)

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

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


CONTENTS
Page
Revision to Local Government Act	11
J. Erasmus
S. Russo

J. Martin (Chair): Good afternoon on a dark and stormy afternoon. My thanks to everybody for doing an awful lot of juggling to make this happen. We obviously were under some time constraints to schedule a meeting at probably one of the most difficult times of the year to do so. So thank you very much for all of the accommodation.

Harry, if we could start with you, we’ll just go around for a quick introduction.

J. Martin (Chair): John Martin. I’m the MLA for Chilliwack and Chair of this committee.

S. Russo: Stephen Russo, policy analyst, Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development.

J. Martin (Chair): Thank you very much. There’s been an awful lot of documentation circulating both in digital and printed format, so I think we’re all quite familiar with what’s before us today.

Perhaps, Janet, you could take a few moments and just give us some background on the matter before us, please.

A statute revision for the first time in a few years, and a revision of the largest act on our statute books, the Local Government Act. I know that this will be an act that is known to a number of members of the committee, as they’ve been on municipal councils and regional district boards. I hope you will be as enthusiastic as some of the participants in the consultation process have been about a revision.

From the size of the binders, yes, it is the largest act. Now, you should probably consider that those bylaws may be of value to friends you have that are still in local governments, because if the revision is approved, I imagine there are a few people who would like a copy of the clean version.

Work on this project began a year ago. Here we are delivering it. I was the lead legislative counsel reviser. Stephanie Weinhold, whose name was on the flags there, was the second reviser. When we’re doing a revision, there are always two lawyers from the office reviewing everything to make sure that we keep within the scope of what is authorized by statute revision.

Amanda Goertz is our revision coordinator — she’s not here, but she’s the person who put together all those really important tables of contents and delivered the final version of the statute revision for us — and we have Stephen Russo here from the ministry, who was coordinating. His role was reading the entire act, front to back, as we did revisions. There are very few people who can say that about the Local Government Act. He also was doing the consultations and arranging consultations with the UBCM and the Local Government Management Association on the organization of the revision.

What I was hoping, if this is acceptable, is that I would do just a brief review of what statute revisions are, their history, their purpose — short — then talk specifically, with some examples of the Local Government Act revision, and then see what questions you might have about it.

J. Erasmus: Statute revisions of all the public acts, as they are called, are general revisions. What you have…. Somebody on the phone will not have this photo, but they might have it electronically. This is actually the library of the office of legislative counsel. That is in my office. I sit beside this these days. It gives you a sense of how statute revisions have been part of B.C. legislation since the start. Our first one was 1897. We have had seven revisions since, every nine to 19 years, and this demonstrates where we are now.

We are now at 18 years, with more statute changes than we have ever had before between revisions. Each one of those was prepared under the authority of the Statute Revision Act, which sets out the powers in doing the revision and the process by which they become law. The one we’re operating under now is the one that was prepared in 1992 to be the authority for the 1996 statute revision, the most recent one we did.
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With all the past revisions, they’ve been general revisions of the entire statute book, all the public acts of British Columbia. But the one for 1996 took seven years to prepare, with one lawyer working full time, two support people and every other legislative counsel in the office working on it. They’re massive projects. They use resources. Every ministry in government is involved because every ministry’s acts are changed.

So in 1992, the British Columbia office of legislative counsel proposed a different approach: limited revision. It’s now been adopted by three other provinces, the idea being that instead of revising the entire statute book, we can choose to revise a single act at a time so that the resources can be targeted at the acts that have been subject to the most change and so are most in need of revision, and the acts that get the most public use and so would get the most benefit from revision.

When we looked at that, there was one act that came up at the top. That was the Local Government Act — the longest act. It’s the one that’s been through the most amendments since 1996, and there will be benefit across the entire province for doing it.

Why do we do statute revisions? Well, it’s because there are amendments. Amendments change the legal effect of the law, but they also change its structure. You’ve all seen it. You repeal sections, and you wind up with gaps. You add sections, and you wind up with decimal numbers. You do all these changes over time, and the structure of an act that made good sense when it was first enacted sort of loses that same structure. So from the very start in Canada, all across Canada, they’ve done statute revisions regularly.

It isn’t just the amendments. It’s also that the way legislation is written has changed over time. Back before there were electronic versions of legislation, if think about it, really, there were only printed versions. Those printed versions lived in the Parliament Buildings, they lived in the libraries, and they lived in lawyers’ offices. That’s where they lived. So in effect, statutes were written by lawyers for lawyers and lawmakers. That was it. Very few other people read them.

Now there’s electronic access. If you look at B.C. Laws, you can see…. If you look at the screen, on the right-hand side of the screen, there’s the most commonly accessed list of acts that have been recently accessed. It’s not going to be surprising, I think, to you that ones like…. The Family Law Act is up at the top. The wills-and-estates act goes through a phase. The Motor Vehicle Act. I think people are checking about the ticket they just got. The Local Government Act comes up pretty often too.

People are looking at the acts now when they never would have directly done it, when they wouldn’t have gone off to a library to find what the law is. People are accessing the law that much more. The nature of who’s looking at it means, because British Columbia has had a commitment to plain-language drafting for over 25 years, that you have to consider your audience when you’re writing the law. You write the law somewhat differently when you know the world is going to read it.

The Plain Language Association InterNational, which I’ve been a member of since it started…. Their approach is to say: “What is plain language?” It isn’t short sentences. It isn’t simple words. It’s that readers can find what they need and understand what they find as quickly as possible.

That’s been a commitment in our office of legislative counsel. For us, we articulate the goal of the legislative process. That’s not our personal vision and mission statement. It’s that the goal of the whole legislative process — we’re government drafters — is to give legal effect to government policy in a form that will be communicated to the people who are subject to its requirements, rules and restrictions and to the people who are administering it.

You all, as members of the assembly, I hope will appreciate that sometimes we don’t always get that goal, given the complexity of what we’re having to write and the time frame in which we write it, but revisions at least give us a chance to clean up what we’ve been working on.

Legislative counsel calls statute revisions…. We do. We call it “cleaning up the statute book.” Decades of us have called it this, because they’re the legal equivalent of a good housecleaning. We can dust everything. The books are going to go back on the shelf in the right order. We can’t replace the furniture. We are not authorized to change problems in the law, but we can get the floors polished very nicely. That’s what we’re doing here with the revision.

The process. Would you like me to walk through what the process is here for doing it? It’s what’s authorized by the Statute Revision Act. That was in your general guide. It was at the back of it.

Section 1 establishes the mandate for chief legislative counsel to prepare revisions. Now we have a choice between general revisions — the really expensive, multi-year projects — or limited revisions identifying the special ones.

Section 2 is the heart of it in terms of what revisions can do. They can fix the numbering so it’s like a new act. They can reorganize sections. They can separate long sections. Those sorts of powers.

Now, most of the authority that you’d find there, if you’re interested in history, goes back to the 1923 Statute Revision Act. Almost all the big powers we have there were there at the start — and for good reason. Even back then, there was authority to make such alterations in an act’s language “as are requisite in order to preserve a uniform mode of expression.” That’s now written in a slightly plainer version: “alter language and punctuation to achieve a clear, consistent and gender neutral style.” But it goes back that far.

Back then, there was authority for minor amendments “to bring out more clearly what is considered to have been
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the intention of the Legislature” — that is, make minor amendments to clarify the intent of the Legislature.

These are powers that have existed for a very long time. They’ve included, from the very beginning, the power to resolve apparent conflicts. I’d have to look for the specific language on it. It’s a lovely little one: “to reconcile inconsistent provisions.”

Why did that happen? Well, back in the old days, we didn’t have any electronic search things, so you could wind up with one act providing an exception to another act but without the drafter having any idea there was another act sitting in one of these long sets of books that had a conflict.

From the very beginning, there was authority to deal with conflicts without having to look to the courts for applying their general rule that says the specific overrides the general. So if you have an act that’s for the resort municipality of Whistler — of which there is one — and it sets a different rule than the Local Government Act, the one is specific, so it would override. Dealing with the conflicts, and they did arise over time, every revision since 1911 has authorized fixing that little problem. So they do go back a very, very long way.

That’s section 2. That’s the power to do the revision. There isn’t power to change the law except to that limited extent to bring out more clearly what is considered to have been the intention of the Legislature.

Once we get past section 2…. It’s here. Chief legislative counsel delivers a completed revision to the Clerk of the assembly. Then there’s the motion to assign it to one of the select standing committees for review.

This is section 4. If the committee recommends that the revision is brought into force, the LG will direct that a copy is deposited as the official. This is part of the process by which it is the assembly people who change the law, who make the law. This isn’t a regulation that’s going to bring revisions into force across the province.

It comes to a committee of the assembly, and then this is the Lieutenant-Governor acting on the consent, with the advice and consent of the assembly through your committee. But legislative counsel are pretty old school in having great care for the role of the assembly, the role of parliament in the making of law. You can probably hear that.

If you approve it today and make that motion, I will be taking away the copy that will be signed by the Chair. It will go to the Lieutenant-Governor, she will sign it, and then we will take it to the Clerk of the assembly, who will sign it and deposit it. Then it can be brought into force by regulation.

Our consultation group on this particular project has recommended that this revision come into force on January 1. That’s the same approach that was used for the Community Charter. When you’re going to change the world for local governments, they want to do it at an easy time of year, when it’s not going to interfere, when they’re doing all their financial plans and their references to the local government. This was the date that they highly recommended, and that’s the one that we are proposing for them.

That’s why I thank you, again, very much for finding time to do this so that we can do it for this January as opposed to next January or the next after.

I would like to move on to the Local Government Act — some specifics there — but this would be an opportunity if you have any general questions about statute revision or maybe the process we used in arranging consultation.

S. Russo: I can speak to consultations. Either I can do it now, or if people have questions later on, I can do that as well.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Firstly, thank you very much for the presentation. I’m not being too cheeky, I hope, when I say that you live up to your surname in terms of the intelligence of what you’ve delivered to the committee today.

Having said that and around the issue of consultation, I realize that what we’re looking at today will, as you pointed out, not be of great interest to the general public. But certainly to all of those folks who work in local government across this province, it is of great interest.

I’m just curious to know: what was the process in terms of consultation? Fairly specifically, are CEOs of various municipal governments or their counsel involved? Are the municipal law firms of the province involved? Are they consulted? In other words, just what does that look like? I suspect I’m going to get a fairly fulsome answer, but I think it behooves us to ask the question.

S. Russo: The process was that consultations were undertaken with a group of knowledgable local government practitioners. These practitioners provided feedback on the proposed organization of the act rather than getting into the editorial changes in the content of the act. It made a lot of sense, obviously, because these are the people who use this act on a regular basis, a daily basis.

In terms of involvement of organizations, the Union of British Columbia Municipalities supported this approach, as did the Local Government Management Association. For anyone who doesn’t know about the Local Government Management Association, or LGMA, it’s British Columbia’s organization of local government administrators. The LGMA’s board provided a list of knowledgable practitioners for the consultation group, so the folks that were in the group were recommended by the board.
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I can speak to particulars of who was involved, if that’s of interest. There was one municipal CAO; three regional district CAOs, or chief administrative officers; one other senior regional district official with a planning background; and then two long-standing, knowledgable municipal lawyers. The feedback they provided was incredibly helpful. I think Janet will speak more to some of the outcomes of the advice they provided.

It is fair to say that at the end of the consultation process, all the participants were supportive of the final organization that came out. A number, actually, expressed a lot of happiness with the prospect of a clean and revised act going forward.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): If I can just gild the lily a little bit, then, what you’re saying is that there is no one who was consulted or anyone else you’re aware of who has expressed any concern or has any protest to raise with respect to the rather remarkable list of changes that are set out in this massive volume.

J. Erasmus: I have not heard of any. These have been available now for over two weeks on the ministry’s website in a proposed revision form with the tables of concordance so that people are able to see that right away they will be able to do the tracking of where did it go and, when you’re in the new ones, the lawyer’s side, where did it come from. Those materials are there.

S. Russo: Yeah. It’s been in The Compass newsletter of UBCM. I did check this morning. I think there have been a few questions so far about the revision, but they’ve all, I think, focused on when it’s coming into force. We haven’t gotten any concern expressed at this point.

D. McRae: I really appreciate the intent and the work being done. It is a yeoman service in terms of looking for commas and cross-referencing and such.

However, if something is missed or perhaps a word…. Just as an example, replacing the word “quotient” with “whole number” or vice versa, I’m quite okay with, I think. But if it is determined that such a change has substantially changed the law, because I think what we’re doing here is doing housekeeping, to such a degree….

Just for clarity, assuming we do pass it and there is error, and there are a lot of changes, that’d behoove the Legislative Assembly, then, to look at those changes — I’m trying to remember as I’ve read things — and to do an amendment. Is that how it works? Or there’s a time frame. They have to the end of the next legislative session as well?

J. Erasmus: This was another innovation in 1992, because the book was getting so large.

When you’re dealing with 500 pages of text, we probably have maybe one or two. We really try on legislative counsel. This is my “Perfectionists Anonymous.” This is my personal book. It says: “That’s close enough.” There, I said it. We really try.

There is authority in the Statute Revision Act to do correction amendments. For the 1996 revision, there were very few done. There were a few done, but they were identified. People contacted our office. We were able to prepare a correction regulation, and then this is like the little fix corrections — like two paragraph A’s or whatever — that happens in the House acts.

This allows it to be fixed by regulation that can be retroactive to when the revision came into force. It would be changed back — if this one comes into force on January 1 — to be effective on that date. Then it does require confirmation by the Legislative Assembly, because that’s who should be changing the law in the session. You’ve got one extra session to catch up, to have that confirmed. So we can fix if we need to.

A. Weaver: First off, for the member’s benefit, I will correct him. I think he meant to say that "integer" was replaced by "whole number," not "quotient" by "whole number." As someone with a background in mathematics, that troubles me that a teacher might have mixed quotient with integer.

A. Weaver: I must confess to being very troubled by this for a number of reasons — the whole process — not the least of which was the debate we had in the fall session with respect to commas and the spelling of “wilful” in the context of something as substantive as what we’re seeing here today.

The question I have on consultation is: when did The Compass newsletter actually put out the information to members through the UBCM?

I have been contacted by at least one mayor who knew nothing of this, and I would argue that it behooves us to not pass this today, in light of the fact that consultation was not as widely sought. The avenues, UBCM, LGMA…. The Compass newsletter came out last week. There really has not been much time since Wednesday, literally, to read this and compare to that — I’m pointing to two binders — and have any substantive questions to ask.

I have numerous questions on the changes, some of which I did want to ask about, because I think there may be other meanings — not the least of which is integer to whole number. I had questions as a legislator that I would like see spoken about.

Frankly, with a piece of legislation of this magnitude being given to us with literally a couple of weeks to look
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at it — and we spend days in the Legislature debating the spelling of “wilful,” the inappropriate use of italics on a bracket and a few semicolons to commas — I think we would be utterly irresponsible to pass this today without bringing this to the Legislature or having a more substantive examination of this over the months ahead.

J. Erasmus: Statute revisions, the entire time, have never been done with public consultation, because they are not supposed to change the law. They’re supposed to make it more readable so that the amendments that have been made over time can be incorporated into the form of a new act.

The intention of myself and the other reviser, in revising it, was that there be no change in legal effect. The changes over time, here, particularly when you’re dealing with an act that has its origins in many, many decades past…. This was based on a 1957 act, and its changes have been by amendment and by revision since 1957.

The writing style back in 1957 was positively lawyers writing for lawyers and lawmakers, and that has changed. You’ll see that the bills that come before you now are written in a much more readable form, generally. The format is different. The length of sections will be shorter. They’ll be something that is more readable.

We still have old acts that are on the book and that haven’t been through a great deal of amendment. This is an opportunity, when it comes to a full statute revision, to restate it, without changing a gazillion words, into a form where people will be able to find the material and use it faster. There is no intention to change the law here.

A. Weaver: Now, I recognize that, and I appreciate all the hard work that has been done on this. But such legislation, or proposed changes under the statutes, require the public to have a look at them to determine that no changes are made.

I’ll give you one that I’ve seen. You’re switching eight weeks to 56 days. Now, eight weeks, 56 days — are those business days, or are they not business days? There are obvious questions that get raised, and I’ve got many. We can save that till later.

It’s coming back to my point that we need to have more substantive time for those who are affected by this so-called language getting simpler to have a time to reflect upon it and determine whether, in fact, there have been changes or questions have arisen. I don’t think, if it’s gone out in Compass last Wednesday — if it went out last Wednesday, people probably haven’t even opened their mail till this week — that people know what’s going on.

With respect, I really think this is being rushed. I think it’s being rushed when it doesn’t need to be rushed. I think that we should have had more time to reflect on it. I read this. I couldn’t read it as carefully as I wanted to, but even in reading it, many questions came up that I don’t….

I mean, I see questions about First Nations that have entered in here that I couldn’t see before. If I don’t understand this, I suspect there are others. And I would suggest that there are those in the municipalities across the province who may have some questions with this.

The obvious question on the consultation is: how did the UBCM, the LGMA and others — these regional district reps — engage their stakeholders to ensure that they’ve actually communicated with them as well? There are a lot of unanswered questions here that I still think need to be addressed.

J. Erasmus: Until now, this has not been a public process. This took a year to prepare as it was. If this is not approved, then we will be looking to another full year. Whether we, legislative counsel, can actually engage in a public process….

We are government lawyers, which means our work has to be specific to the solicitor-client privilege. So instead of being able to prepare — and it is legislative counsel who have this responsibility — a revision to make something better for the users, it would have to be the ministry responsible for the act.

Having had the advice of legislative counsel about how to give effect to that act in a revised form, who would then have to do the consultations? We could not go outside and do it. So the scope of this is going to change the process. Perhaps we’ll never do statute revisions again.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): If I can ask this, and perhaps you can give some examples if any examples exist. This statutory authority to refer matters of this nature to this committee has existed, I think you said, since 1923.

J. Erasmus: They did go to a select standing committee, which usually looked at the completed form — I’d have to look at my history notes — of a role, they called it, the revision up to that point. That committee approved it, and then there was authority for the revision commissioner or the legislative counsel, whichever was responsible at that time, to add in revisions in relation to the amendments that were in that year’s sessions.

There would be an initial phase 1 of the revision that would be reviewed, and then there would be the phase 2 to add in the changes that came along in the course of the year.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): How long have you been legislative counsel now? A delicate question, forgive me.

I was here for the 1996 revision. I brought the 15 volumes to this committee with Vance Gardner, and they were already bound and sitting there.
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L. Krog (Deputy Chair): I appreciate the concern raised by the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head with respect to this. But I guess what I’m getting at is: this process is one that is authorized by statute. It is a responsibility given to this committee, and I agree that we can’t exercise that responsibility lightly.

Having said that, of the times that this process has been used in your legislative experience, let alone historical precedent — in other words, in the last 26 years — has there ever been any objection or court case or problem or issue that has arisen from this committee doing what it’s being asked to do today or something like what we’re being asked to do today?

J. Erasmus: We have one Court of Appeal decision — Mr. Justice Lambert, who, long before he was on the B.C. Court of Appeal, was a legislative counsel in Ottawa. But the court decisions in British Columbia go out of their way to determine that what the revision did does not change the law. That’s the nature of the decisions that have come from the courts. They will read it to make sure that it hasn’t changed the law. And then we have the correction.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): I’m sorry. Just so I can understand, there have been court cases that determined that it’s appropriate to do this, that it is lawful to do this. But what I’m asking more specifically is: has there ever been an occasion where this committee or its predecessor has made a mistake in approving it, where the courts have said, “Oh my goodness. That’s not what the Legislature intended”?

J. Erasmus: No, but I wouldn’t expect the court to say anything about the quality of a decision made by a committee of the Legislative Assembly.

D. McRae: For clarity — and yes, I am just a social studies teacher — you were saying that the changes made here are, by statute, not allowed to change the principle of the law. So if, hypothetically, an error is made by this committee — regardless, a comma or wordage — the challenge will be, then, to say that challenge is inappropriate because this committee was only charged with changing the ease of access of this law or the use of this law, not the intent of it. Is that how it would work? My apologies if I’m not asking the question correctly.

J. Erasmus: My challenge is imagining a case that would come before the court that would be articulated in that way. There’s been nothing I know of in that experience, because it’s a process where a commissioner or a legislative counsel, depending where you were in the history line here, prepared this, presented it, and it was approved.

I’ll admit I feel that it’s my responsibility to explain to you that the purpose of this is not to change the law. It’s very deliberately not to change the law. It’s to make the law more readable. If we had any concerns being expressed at this point…. If there’d been any contact, like from the municipal law bar — and I do have connections there — that they’d identified something, I would have hoped somebody would have contacted me, and we would have considered the issue.

As I say, there are always at least two legislative counsel looking over one of these. The planning and land use part had three legislative counsel looking at it. That’s the part that all the developers use. So far, I have not heard any negatives about it.

The days and years — the Interpretation Act has a special rule about how you calculate time in a statute. It’s easier to go by days than weeks. Most people now have a calendar that will give them how many days between. That is an easier and more precise way to count time for people. Again, that’s a plain-language choice. Now we would not be drafting in six weeks terms; we’d be drafting in a number of days terms, because it’s more precise and the Interpretation Act rules about how you count days works better.

H. Bains: Just still trying to understand the process and purpose of this exercise. Thank you. You did a pretty good job of trying to explain what we’re doing here. I still have a couple of questions on that.

As I understand, the legislation made changes over time. Let’s talk about this particular act, the Local Government Act. There were a number of changes made over the years. The purpose of this revision is to reflect those changes that were passed in the Legislature to amend the existing Local Government Act, and those changes will reflect in this revision, right? So that’s the case. The legislation has certain language when we have a debate and we argue back and forth, and that’s the legislation which is passed.

A couple of questions. Why, then, would there be any question about what the legislation passed and what’s reflected here, if there’s any difference? That’s one question. The second question would be…. You also said that the revisions are made here, but in case there are one or two mistakes, then it goes back to the legislation to make those amendments. Is that correct?

J. Erasmus: Maybe the easy one is…. I’ll deal with the one that we just talked about. It gets done by regulation. This is a regulation of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. It can be done right away, as soon as there’s been a problem identified. I can remember moving an adjective, because it had gotten on the wrong side of the noun
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somehow. This is in the 1996 revision. We could fix that. Somebody found a comma that was added that shouldn’t have been added — recently — so we’ve got a fix on that.

That’s the nature of it. That amendment done by regulation, that correction amendment done by regulation…. That’s when you see, usually in the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act for a particular session, something that says: “Such and such a regulation…. The statute revision correction regulation, 1998” — right? — “is hereby confirmed and continued.” That’s it. There has been that consideration.

That’s part of the process that is structured for this that says the changes should be reviewed by the Legislative Assembly. In this case, it’s being reviewed by a committee of the Legislative Assembly.

H. Bains: So when one lawyer, two support staff went through — I don’t know how many here you said — to put this together…. They have legislation language sitting in front of them, and they are making changes to the existing act. Is it just a mere mistake that the comma was added, or is it something that they think the legislation…?

H. Bains: They made a mistake? It was just a pure mistake that they added. So it’s pretty well a typo, then. Then why would they…? In this situation, how could somebody turn from weeks to days if that wasn’t discussed in the legislation and that language wasn’t part of their legislation?

J. Erasmus: Because a number of weeks translates to a number of days directly. There are no gaps. You don’t say it only as business days. When we’re drafting legislation, it really is a number of days or a number of weeks. But why use weeks in one place and days in the other? It’s easier to be more precise for people to keep track of changes with months with different lengths. It’s a plain-language thing. People understand the days better, and it’s easier for them to determine it, than to talk about weeks.

H. Bains: Therefore, the person who was making changes, based on looking at the legislation, making changes here…. That person took upon himself or herself to change the wording from weeks to days…

Who gave them the authorization to change that, other than the legislation? That’s where the changes were made. If they felt that these were more readable, they would have done that. Why would somebody take it upon themselves and say, “Well, this is easier for the public,” rather than going back to the legislation and saying: “Look, you know, you folks missed this one and it’s causing problems here, so we need to change that”?

J. Erasmus: Again, this is not changing the effect of the law. It’s lawyers doing this — drafting to the current drafting style — so it’s consistent with how a bill would be done now, and the changes in the words are not intended to have any change in legal effect.

Who authorizes us to do that? It’s the Statute Revision Act that tells legislative counsel. That’s why they want us to do it and have wanted us to do it for a very long time. The current language is to make changes to “language and punctuation to achieve a clear, consistent and gender neutral style.”

That style of the law that dates back to 1957…. It’s going on 50 years, coming up on 50 years. The way it was written back then used different terms, and this is an opportunity to use that authority. It was first deeply engaged in the 1979 revision, where some acts had what we’d call the deep revision of modernizing the language across the board.

We did a few targeted acts in 1996, and, as we come upon doing revisions now, in 2015, we’re looking to provide that same quality of modernizing the language without changing the effect. And that’s the wonder of the English language. You can say different things in different ways and still get the same legal effect.

It’s very important that it’s lawyers who are trained in this that do that — that we are sensitive, one word at a time, that different words mean different things, but not always in context — to deliver something that is more readable but doesn’t change the law.

For example, in this revision, some of the older language, older acts, would talk about a sum that’s needed to do something, right? The municipal council needs to collect a sum to do something. But they didn’t mean it as a “this plus this.” In this revision, if you see the word “sum,” it means a total. It doesn’t mean an amount. Any time that “sum” just meant an amount needed to deliver a particular service, it now uses — at least, it will use — “amount.” That’s the nature of those changes.

Sometimes — and I can take you through an example — where you split a really long sentence into two sentences, you have to add some extra words so you can connect them, but that’s just meaning that people can read the different elements of the rule separately.

If you have a sentence that goes along: “If this, that and the other thing happens, and a person does this third, then, in these circumstances, this happens, and in that circumstance….” Sorry, let me put the alphabet list on the right side, and these happen on the other side.

That winds up being an “if” clause at the top, two conditions and then tracking down at the bottom. Whereas if you start that same sentence by saying: “This section applies if….” Okay. You separate all the rest under the section, and your reader can look at that and go, “Oh, that
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doesn’t apply to my circumstance” and skip that section.

These are language readability techniques that we use when we’re drafting the legislation now, but when we’re dealing with the older legislation, they didn’t have that same approach. It’s not to change, at all, the content of what’s in the law but to separate the elements so that people can see them, understand what they find and use what they understand.

H. Bains: I guess, you know, you answered my question. I just want to make sure of that. So you do have the statutory authority to restructure the sentence to reflect the same intent, and if later, the courts or some lawyer find that the actual intent got changed or a word or a comma got added or deleted, it goes back to the legislation through regulations and will be changed and the original intent will be implemented?

A. Weaver: Again, I appreciate all the work that’s done. It’s very thorough, and I can only imagine how many hours were spent on this.

I’m struggling, again, with the context of a bill that we debated, about commas and italicized parentheses and stuff relative to the magnitude of the changes we’re dealing with here. One of the ones I’m struggling with, in particular, right early on, is a change that is supposed to make it more readable. We changed the title — part 1, “Purposes, Principles and Interpretation.” We removed the word “principles” in the title.

Now, I’m not a lawyer, but when I see a title, “Purposes, Principles and Interpretation,” and I remove the word “principle,” it’s suggestive to me that there is a change in interpretation. If I’m reading this for the first time, because I picked up my issue of Compass just yesterday, I might have these questions, and I wouldn’t have had a chance to deal with them. There’s many like this, but there’s another one.

Maybe you could take me through how a principled decision could be made to remove the word “principle” in a title, because I couldn’t see how that could be done.

J. Erasmus: Certainly. Part 1 right now goes from sections 1 to 6. What this revision is doing is taking sections that are currently in part 1 that relate only to regional districts and creating a set of regional district parts. So the principles you will find in part 5. This is what used to be sections 2, 3, 4 and 6.1 of the current act — what is currently scattered for regional districts. The purposes of regional districts, principles for regional district provincial relationship and broad interpretation now would be in part 5.

A. Weaver: So there were no other principles other than the regional district principles.

The biggest part of the change here is organizational. There were some very big amendment packages over time. Between 1997 and 2000, there was a Municipal Act reform that rewrote service structures for regional districts and redid municipal governance.

In 2003, there was the Community Charter. The Community Charter came with consequential amendments to the Local Government Act, because municipalities were, by and large, moving out of the Local Government Act into their own new act.

Before that time, all regional district provisions were in part 24. They knew where their home base was. In that part, there would be cross-references to other sections that made municipal rules apply. Then along come the Community Charter consequential amendments, and the municipalities have — what’s the poem? — packed up their tents and have quietly sneaked away.

Our poor regional districts then had, instead of pointers to other parts…. Those parts were rewritten as if they only applied — in fact, rewritten to only apply — to regional districts. Regional districts used to have one coherent part that pointed to where they could use the municipal services authority. They are now spread in nine different parts, and related provisions can be hundreds of sections apart. That’s what the amendments have done.

What this is going to do is it’s going to bring together the regional district parts into a package that is going to look very, very simple to the Community Charter organization.

In the revised act, parts 1 to 4 in their current location…. It’s after that that the regional district parts take over and reorganize. They have parts 5 to 12. Each part deals with a different aspect of regional districts, like board powers and service delivery and establishing bylaws and financial management — separate components there.

Then parts 13, 14, 15 are the planning and land use parts. Part 16 is the municipal provisions that didn’t move to the charter. Those are currently scattered over parts 6, 8, 10, 11 and 20. They’re being combined into one part so you can find them. The improvement districts part is moving further back in the municipal pro-
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visions, and then the final part, “General Matters,” is collecting the last few provisions of the act that haven’t had another location.

This is about the reorganization, and it didn’t intend to change the law at all — the principles. The principles went to part 5.

M. Stilwell: I just have a question around the concepts of the consultation. I do, at least from a political perspective, take the point that informing someone ten days before anything meaningful would be a relatively short period — not speaking directly to my organizational abilities or work ethic. I’m just curious.

You pointed out that this is not a public process, which makes sense, and you consulted experts in the field, which makes sense. But then you did post it and send out a notice. I’m wondering. I don’t see that as being required. Is that a FYI nicety? What is the practical expectation of that? Even a lawyer who works in this field in December might not get around to looking at it, understanding that the point of it is not to change the law. I would think most lawyers with any history of working with this kind of legislation, I’d expect, completely accept and understand that.

J. Erasmus: If we had been able to deliver this earlier to the committee, it would have been public earlier.

In this case…. I’ve worked in the local government legislation framework for most of my many years. I’ve done many other projects. You’ve probably seen me in on those. I was the one who wrote the Community Charter. I know these, and I know the people who work in local government and the processes — and totally understand and appreciated all the way along that we want people to have that information as soon as possible.

The municipal subsection was advised in May that there would be a revision coming. That was spoken of at…. The UBCM convention was mentioned?

S. Russo: I’m not sure about UBCM, but there’s an annual regional district chief administrative officers and chair forum where there was a presentation about that.

M. Stilwell: So people intimately working in the field in fact had more than ten days to kind of….

J. Erasmus: They would know it was coming. They wouldn’t have known what the organization would be.

M. Elmore: I just want to say thank you for the presentation. I found it very fascinating, also, in terms of the historical perspective of the evolution of statute revisions.

I certainly appreciate the challenge of bringing it into our current modern day, in terms of language, and the process of, I guess, wrangling the many amendments and changes that we bring and present to you on your desks in terms of changes to various aspects of legislation. It’s been a very interesting insight into that.

I just wanted to thank you for your efforts and also, I think, just make it clear in terms of how that comes together and certainly that process of how our legislation is updated.

Can you talk a little bit — not so much in terms of the revision in front of us with respect to the Local Government Act…. Is there a time frame with respect to…? You mentioned there were others. It’s an ongoing effort in terms of updating the various acts. You did outline a few of them where there were major amendments. Is there a timeline? What’s the general plan moving forward?

J. Erasmus: The plan would be — because we are so far along in the growth of the statute book without having had a revision — that the office of legislative counsel would continue to consider and identify that…. It’s the same two criteria: acts that have been subject to the most amendment, and so are in need of revision — there’ve been repeals; there’ve been additions; and the organization, the readability, has been lost — and those that would provide the most public benefit. The ones that are really subject to significant public use.

Chief legislative counsel authorized me to say that we would have in our sights, for example, the School Act, the Workers Compensation Act and the Police Act, which are all ones that since 1996 have been through major change and are used around the province all the time.

That is the nature of it. Instead of trying to bring everything, it would be going through acts that are most in need and coming back to this committee. So far it has always been this particular standing committee that has been assigned to the review of revisions. We are hoping to do this more regularly. Maybe the intro discussion won’t need to be as long.

J. Martin (Chair): I’d like to ask the Committee Clerk to give us our next direction.

A. Weaver: Are we going to be taken through the actual changes or not? Or is this all the question time we’re having right now? Are there two motions before us or just the one?

S. Sourial (Committee Clerk): Once committee members have asked any additional questions regarding
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other changes, there are two motions that will be before the committee. The one motion is to approve the revision of the Local Government Act pursuant to section 4 and that the committee authorize the Chair to endorse the committee’s approval on the title page of the bill.

The second motion is that the recommendation of the committee be transmitted to the Lieutenant-Governor and that the recommendation form the basis of a report — which is essentially a letter — to the Legislative Assembly, and that the Chair present that to the House.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): Well, hearing that explanation from the Clerk — and I appreciate that — then to follow on what the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head has had to raise, perhaps…. I guess your witnesses officially speaking before the committee — or presenters; I’m not sure what the language would be — could give us some examples from this that, how shall I say, would be the most impressive or significant changes.

As you pointed out earlier in response to questions, you’re bringing in pieces from all over — pardon the expression — hell’s half acre to put this thing in order. Candidly — I don’t say this in a snotty sort of way — as a lawyer, I’m well familiar with how things get to look pretty ugly in a statute after a number of years when it’s been revised. All you worry about is your professional negligence insurance. I suspect that this is why this will be welcomed by lawyers who practise in this area.

Can you just go through some of the examples? In fairness, we have to do our due diligence. But I think it might explain on the record, as in theory, the dozen-plus British Columbians who might actually read the transcript of this, notwithstanding the hard work of Hansard…. I’d like them to be able to see and understand and hear from your lips exactly what this looks like.

J. Erasmus: I could give you some very specific examples. It will just be flipping through the book and finding it. Then I would take you up on that one big example to show, really, what the scope of revision powers can do.

Splitting long sections. What is currently section 866, which is regional context statements in relation to regional growth strategies, which is the regional planning concept document, is now in part 13. That one section becomes division 5.

J. Erasmus: Oh, binder 2 is the one that will let you see the changes. This is the non-public version. This is the one that shows it — where lawyers call it red line. That’s because, in the old days, lawyers would trade…. Lawyers, two sides to a contract, would pass back and forth the contract, writing in red ink the proposed changes. That’s why we call it red line.

J. Erasmus: Legislative counsel also have these as red lines. That’s a redline draft. I hope that was time enough to discover the table of contents for what would be part 13. If you look down to division 5, regional context statements, it’s been split.

This one long section is now in four pieces so that readers can find the elements that went into what was this very long section: the requirement for regional context statements, which is the requirement for municipalities to include them so that they can match up to the regional growth strategy for the region; the content of the statement; the board acceptance process; and the settlement of it. So instead of a long one, they can find the elements.

A. Weaver: Section 260, services to treaty First Nation members. In 260, now section 2, there’s a whole inclusion to include the treaty First Nation. I didn’t understand where that….

A. Weaver: I’m in part 7 — page 9 of section 7, section 260. It used to be 795.41. It says there to include the treaty First Nation as participating in that service. There’s addition of new language there, and I didn’t know where that came from. That seems like new language. I’m not sure where it came from.

J. Erasmus: It’s because what used to be a single sentence of: “If “— da-da-da. The opening is: “…the treaty first nation will participate in specified…district services.” This is one where it’s separated into an application statement. So the opening part of what was this single sentence had been “the treaty First Nation will participate” in the service.

To separate those, to separate the big sentence into two, you have to provide a reference. So this is: “If….” Instead of “the service,” because we’ve split the sentence, it’s turned “a specified service” — right? — “is provided under letters patent.” Those letters patent are deemed to be amended to include as participating.

This doesn’t change the legal effect. It’s because you have to get the participating concept into each of the sentences. There was one sentence. It had a participating concept at the start, and then you could just run on
[ Page 21 ]
for two paragraphs. To separate them, you have to have the “participating” there operating again.

Truly, we’re changing the words, but…. You picked a very good one, which is the challenge to deliver more readable legislation, being careful about the grammar and the structure but having to repeat a reference because you’re separating the sentences. It used to be one great, long run-on sentence that those letters patent were deemed amended. Deemed amended how?

I’ll try it another way. If you look at the proposed subsection (b), the back end of that, now its own sentence, says that bylaw is deemed amended to include the treaty First Nation as participating. Those used to be structured as an “and,” so the “deemed to be participating” applied in relation to one big sentence. Because we’re separating the two elements out, each of them, it’s like….

I’m trying to imagine something that says: “The dogs and the cats are entitled to live in the house.” If you’re separating them, then you have to go: “The dog is entitled to live in the house, and the cat is entitled to live in the house.” Doing the split means you have to say it twice, because otherwise, your dog may not be able to live there. You have to say it again.

What it’s doing in that particular section is repeating that part because it’s been separated from the back part of the sentence. I hope this makes sense. I haven’t tried to teach grammar since I was a high school teacher.

A. Weaver: I have another example. LGA part 9, page 7, the words “church, theatre, hall, school or other building used for public meetings, or as a place of public resort or amusement” have been struck out, and the words “public building” are included. That suggests that a definition has been added, and that definition I could not find in the list of definitions.

J. Erasmus: It’s in section 301(1). In this section, “public building” means a “church, theatre, hall, or other place of public resort or amusement.”

A. Weaver: I looked in the wrong place. Yeah, I see. My apologies on that. I looked to the definitions.

J. Erasmus: If there’s a particular term that’s used only in one section, often the definition will be put there, because why make someone go off and look 400 pages further back if it’s just in that section?

Definitions are very useful, and there are a number of new definitions in the schedule to the act. What they allow you to do is use shorter terminology with legal precision. But somebody knows, then, that a development variance permit…. You can just, through the act, write “development variance permit,” instead of saying “a development variance permit under section….” By providing the definition, people will know where they are, but you can be shorter.

This was so that one didn’t have to repeat in a bunch of places in what is proposed for section 301. You could just use the term and not the long string.

In part 14, division 12, page 48, you’ve struck out the definition of “phased development agreement.” Is it just because the definition made no sense?

A. Weaver: It says a “phased development agreement” means a phased development agreement under this section.

J. Erasmus: That’s right. This is another example of where a single section is being split into definitions in relation to this division — phased development agreements, terms. It goes on. The important part of this one is that phased development agreements are actually used in other parts of the act. There are references to them. So you will find phased development agreements in the schedule.

It must be in the front end of part 14. It’s used in different parts of part 14. Now we’re in part 14, the first definition, page 7: “‘phased development agreement’ means a phased development agreement under section 516.” We’ve moved where the definitions are located, to improve. People who were seeing it in another place in this part can find out the meaning of it quickly. That’s what that one was doing.

A. Weaver: My final one would be, then, on section 480, page 23, same part 14, where it says: “an official community plan, a zoning bylaw or bylaw under section 914.2” is struck, and just the zoning bylaw…. Is that another…?

J. Erasmus: Define terms: “zoning bylaw.” Zoning bylaws are used in many places. Zoning bylaws are and have been in the definitions section for the Community Charter, currently section 5. In the schedule, page 10, the last definition — it is a Z: “‘zoning bylaw’ means a bylaw under section 479.”

A. Weaver: There you go. My comfort levels have increased rather dramatically since you’ve been able to do this.

A. Weaver: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. There were other questions, but you’ve put all my reservations at ease.

D. McRae: I had a feeling you would have answers to most of these questions, as I went through it. But there was one on my electronic version that was presented
[ Page 22 ]
slightly differently than the other version. So I was just going to ask. If we were to look at part 2, page 14…. It is section 22. I’m assuming that you’ve caught a typo here or something and that it just hasn’t been officially corrected yet. I’m in LGA, part 2, page 14.

I guess the new section would be section 22. It starts off, “Transfer of assets and obligations….” When I looked at this, according to my version, though — the printed version here doesn’t have it the same way — first of all, the grammar doesn’t look very good, but I see two yellow marks, one before “dissolved” and one after the word “municipality.” Is that because there is a grammar error there? Or is that because of some other great answer you’re going to give me in a second?

J. Erasmus: Yes. My printed one has the yellow in it too. The revision coordinator caught that, and the headnotes are considered to have been added editorially. This is under the Interpretation Act. All the headnotes in there are added editorially for ease of reference and understanding. They are not to be used — at least that’s what the Interpretation Act says — by courts to interpret what the thing is. We now have this noted, and the finalized one will be fixed.

The other wonderful thing that you may have noticed all through the revision is the addition of cross-reference descriptors. Again, that’s something that’s authorized under the Interpretation Act — so that if you say “section 214” and you’re reading in section 5, you can actually see what 214 is about. You don’t have to flip or click on a number of different links through B.C. Laws to find the electronic equivalent.

It was the Local Government Act that was the first act in British Columbia that used those descriptors, the first in Canada that used those descriptors. After the Local Government Act had an amendment that authorized them, then a few years later there was an amendment to the Statute Revision to allow them generally so that people don’t have to open the other act to know what the cross-reference is about.

L. Krog (Deputy Chair): I just want to extend my thanks to our angel of the enlightenment here today for taking us into the place where others might fear to tread. Having satisfied the members of the committee that this is a highly complex and technical area, the facility with which it’s been explained, I think, has been most satisfactory to the committee, and I just want to express everyone’s thanks.

D. McRae: I move that pursuant to section 4 of the Statute Revision Act, 1996, the committee approve the revision of the Local Government Act, 1996, and recommend that it be brought into force and, further, that the committee authorize the Chair to endorse the committee’s approval on the title page of the Local Government Act statute revision.

D. McRae: I move that the recommendation of the committee be transmitted to the Lieutenant-Governor and, further, that the recommendation form the basis of the committee’s report to the House, which the Chair shall deposit with the Clerk of the House and present to the House at the earliest opportunity.

Thank you, everybody, so much for coming down. Even though we don’t have Donna here, we’re going to ask for a motion to adjourn.

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Chair:	John Martin (Chilliwack BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Leonard Eugene Krog (Nanaimo NDP)
Members:	Harry Bains (Surrey-Newton NDP)
	Mable Elmore (Vancouver-Kensington NDP)
	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	Don McRae (Comox Valley BC Liberal)
	Dr. Moira Stilwell (Vancouver-Langara BC Liberal)
	Sam Sullivan (Vancouver–False Creek BC Liberal)
	Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
	Dr. Andrew Weaver (Oak Bay–Gordon Head Ind.)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

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