Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 93 — Wednesday, April 13, 2016 (HTML)

Present: Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Jennifer Rice, MLA; Jackie Tegart, MLA; John Yap, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA (Chair); Dan Ashton, MLA; Robin Austin, MLA

1. Due to the unavoidable absence of the Chair, Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA, the meeting was called to order by the Deputy Chair at 8:02 a.m.

2. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions regarding financial and operational updates.

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

4. The Committee agreed to give further consideration to the proposed Representative for Children and Youth adoption advocacy Initiative.

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
Adoption of Agenda	2149
Office of the Chief Electoral Officer	2149
K. Archer
N. Western
A. Boegman
Office of the Representative for Children and Youth	2155
M. Turpel-Lafond
Committee Meeting Schedule	2162

C. James (Deputy Chair): Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. You’ll see there’s been a change in the chair — for today’s meeting only, the other side will be happy to know.

Scott is away, so I’ll start the meeting off. We’re not sure if he’s going to arrive later. Okay. Scott’s away for the day?

C. James (Deputy Chair): You have an agenda in front of you. You’ll remember, at committee, that we had suggested that we have the independent officers come to us during the spring to be able to just receive updates — both a financial update as well as an operational update on how things were going at the office so we’d be better prepared when it came to making decisions around budget.

You’ll see from the agenda today that we have Elections B.C. and the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, and then just a place for any other business.

Does anyone have anything they want to add to the agenda? Could I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved.

Welcome, Dr. Archer. I’ll let you introduce your guests and then turn it over to you.

Thank you, Madam Vice-Chair and members of this committee, for scheduling this meeting this morning. I’m joined by my two deputies — Nola Western, deputy CEO for funding and disclosure; and Anton Boegman, deputy CEO for electoral operations.

I’ll make a number of comments to begin our meeting, and then following those, the three of us are available to respond to your questions or any comments.

My comments will focus on the following items: an update on the two recent by-elections, in Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and Coquitlam–Burke Mountain; preparations for the 41st provincial general election; and preparations for the enumeration that will proceed the general election.

In the context of election enumeration preparation, I’ll also provide comments on the way in which Elections B.C. is looking to modernize the voting process. I also wish to discuss briefly the implementation of Bill 5, preparations for the implementation of Bill 17 and the request I received recently to consider various aspects related to the disclosure of political contributions.

Finally, my understanding of this committee’s desire to meet with the legislative officers in the period between our regular budget presentations is to provide an opportunity to raise issues of interest with members. One issue I wish to highlight is the report of the Independent Panel on Internet Voting.

I’ll begin with the recent provincial by-elections. The provincial by-elections were held on February 2. My office had proposed, and this committee recommended, funding of $1.3 million to conduct the by-elections. The final budget account will be presented in the CEO report on the by-elections. That is not quite complete. However, our projection at this point is that the by-elections were conducted under budget by about $190,000, or about 14½ percent of the budget.

A number of significant changes were introduced in these by-elections, and most of these will carry over into the general election. From our perspective, the most significant change was the successful introduction of technology into the voting place to automate administrative aspects of advance and absentee voting. This innovation was a complete success. Our voter-lookup application was used to find voters and print out labels for the voting books and other voting documents, replacing manual entries, and as advance voters voted, they were struck off the voters list.

These changes had several significant results. First, by automating decisions, such as whether a voter is registered or not, and printing labels, we virtually eliminated errors on absentee certification envelopes.

I’ll just give you a sense of how significant that change is. The percentage of certification envelopes that had to be set aside and not considered at final count for the by-elections was 0.8 percent. So less than 1 percent of all those certification envelopes were set aside. That compares to an average of 6.9 percent of certification envelopes set aside and, thus, not counted in the 2013 provincial general election. That’s a decrease of 88 percent from the 6.9 percent starting point.

Second, the average time to process voters at advance voting was significantly decreased. For example, the service time for advance voters who had to update or register when they voted was reduced, on average, by 35 percent. This will result in improved voter service and reduced wait times at advance and absentee voting.

The use of computers for strike-off of voters in advance voting enabled us to readily provide candidates with a list of voters who had voted in the electoral district fol-
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lowing each day of advance voting — a requirement, of course, put in place by Bill 20 changes to the Election Act last spring.

Turnout data from each day of advance voting was uploaded from the voting place laptops to our central server each night after the close of voting. Turnout information was then provided to candidates the following day by secure USB drive. I would note for the committee that we’re working on providing this information through a secure website for the 2017 general election.

The voter strike-off also enabled Elections B.C. to print general voting books at the end of advance voting, with advance voters already struck off. This replaces the previous labour-intensive, manual process to flag general voting books based on the advance voting certificates of each voter. In short, we had a massive manual undertaking, for district electoral officers and their staff, which is now automated.

Per Bill 20, the by-elections also had two additional days of advance voting, and it’s evident that voters took advantage of this flexibility. For example, of all the votes cast in Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, almost a quarter, 23.6 percent, were cast in advance voting. Of the votes cast in Coquitlam–Burke Mountain, almost one in three, 31.1 percent, were cast in advance. Our administrative procedures for advance voting were such that despite this large uptake in advance voting, there were virtually no issues with lineups with voters — as has been seen in other jurisdictions.

In addition, as I reported previously to this committee, we also increased the size of voting areas from a maximum of 400 electors per VA to up to 600 voters per voting area in what we call commuter districts, and up to 700 in population-dense urban districts. This significantly reduced our staffing numbers. We also encouraged our district electoral officers to recruit some younger staff, including university- and college-aged and even high school students, and they reported good outcomes in doing so.

Finally, with respect to the by-elections, there were new privacy requirements for candidates and political parties to observe pertaining to their use of the voters list. From an administrative perspective, we found a universal degree of compliance with the new requirements, as all candidates and political parties involved in the by-elections either agreed to the privacy policy provided by Elections B.C. — we provided that as a template — or they developed their own privacy policy that was approved by my office.

Now we’re still a few weeks away from the deadline for candidates and political parties to file their financial reports for the provincial by-elections. Those reports are due on May 3, and each will be published before the end of that week. Each report will then be reviewed after the deadline, following our standard compliance procedures.

I now turn to the preparations for the 41st general election. Members may have noticed that as of Monday of this week, two days ago, we’re less than a year away now from issuing the writs for the general election. The writs are scheduled to be issued Tuesday, April 11, for general voting to take place Tuesday, May 9, 2017.

The challenge for us is to ensure that all voters are given the opportunity to exercise their democratic franchise and all the electoral stakeholders are provided information that enables them to be knowledgeable about the rules of the election and, therefore, compliant with those rules when participating in the event.

In completing these tasks, Elections B.C. transforms from a Victoria-based organization with 55 staff members to an organization with more than 30,000 staff members deployed to every city, town and rural district in British Columbia.

The cascading of our staffing begins with the selection of the district electoral officers and their deputies. During the past months, we’ve completed a rigorous selection process and have completed, my notes say, almost all of the appointments. Anton advised me a couple of minutes ago that as of yesterday, we’ve now completed all of our appointments of DEOs and deputies. In fact, yesterday I signed more than 150 appointment letters. The few remaining are expected to be completed by the end of next week — that is, the appointment letters — since we’ve hired them.

We have substantially altered our training program for DEOs and deputies. In the past, we would typically bring them to a large hotel in Metro Vancouver where we would provide two- or three-day training sessions to the 190 or so DEOs and deputies and then would do this three or four times during the lead-up to the election. For example, for the 40th general election, we met for 11 days of in-person orientation and training.

We’ve now introduced what we call a blended learning model, where a portion of the training takes place through on-line resources, which we have developed and are currently developing, and in-person training based on hands-on exercises, which takes place in smaller, regional groupings at our offices here in Victoria. Our DEOs and their deputies will begin the on-line version of their training next month. That is in advance of the first in-person sessions, which take place in our offices in June.

This model has enabled us to improve training overall, while reducing the number of days of in-person training from 11 to six for these key staff members. In addition, it also means that we’re able to provide more extensive training, using on-line resources, to other members of the DEO office staff such as their office managers, their trainers or their IT resources.

Our staff are very actively preparing for the upcoming training sessions. For example, tomorrow I will be filmed for material, for four of our training modules, at our of-
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fices. Of course, all of our training materials, as well as all supporting materials such as the DEO on-line resource guide, have been or are being adjusted to reflect the administrative changes that I discussed in the by-election section earlier. Further, these materials are being adopted for the training that will be used for the thousands of election officials that will be trained, in turn, by the DEO staff throughout the province.

These changes that we’ve introduced have an impact on technology in the DEO offices, including an increase in the number of computers, additional networking needs and label printers, as well as an impact on the staffing within those offices. The by-elections demonstrated the value of having appropriate personnel who can handle the more complex technology challenges that arise in the new voting environment, and our recruitment is being adjusted accordingly.

Elections B.C. also was in the midst of implementing the new electoral boundaries, which includes, of course, an increase from 85 to 87 electoral districts. As I mentioned to this committee previously, the transition from the work of the B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission, following the adoption of the recommendations of the commission by the Legislative Assembly, to Elections B.C. has been simplified and expedited in this round of redistribution because we served, of course, as the administrative host of the commission.

In preparation for the general election, we continued to work on the production of maps for the new districts and also are turning our attention to voting area redistribution.

Now, before turning to the remuneration project, I’ll make just a couple of comments about voting modernization. First, it’s worth noting that British Columbia has a very accessible ballot. Voters can cast their ballot during any of the days of the writ period, either at any of the DEO offices in the province or other voting place or by requesting a vote-by-mail package. In addition, there are six days of advance voting where voters can cast a ballot at any advance voting place in the province, including of course, out-of-district voting places.

Perhaps most importantly, voters in B.C., unlike most other jurisdictions in Canada, can vote outside their assigned voting place and even outside their electoral district on general voting day.

Although B.C. has a very accessible ballot, there are elements of the voting experience in this province that could benefit from modernization, of which I’ll mention three.

First, voting outside one’s assigned voting area or outside one’s electoral district requires fairly complex processes to protect against multiple voting. These processes, as currently implemented, require the use of an initial count and a final count of votes separated by an extended period of two to three weeks, where the outcome of a close vote is subject to change.

Second, the fact that there is not provincewide real-time electronic strike-off when a voter is issued a ballot requires the use of certification envelopes and the extra effort and delays that follow. Thirdly, the more complicated processes used for voting outside of one’s assigned voting area and the limited training provided to the many thousands of workers hired to administer the election increases chances of administrative error when using the procedures.

To address these and other issues, Elections B.C. has embarked on a two-stage process of modernizing the voting experience, which we refer to as vision 2017 and vision 2021.

For 2017, the idea has been to introduce enhancements of the voting experience without requiring any legislative change. Now, although that was a planning assumption when the project began, in fact, there were some legislative changes in Bill 20 that complemented our future plans and allowed earlier implementation. I described many of these earlier in my comments on the changes introduced in the by-elections. That will carry forward into the general election.

For vision 2021, we have initiated a project that envisions even greater changes in the way in which voting could take place in B.C. Such changes may include real-time strike-off, which provides the potential to count all votes on election night.

Other changes under consideration include the production of ballots on demand, thereby eliminating the need for write-in ballots after the close of nominations; the use of tabulators for vote counting; and changing the structure and flow-through processes in voting areas to improve both the staffing and service delivery models.

This project remains under development and, in the end, is likely to require legislative change for the changes under consideration to take effect.

I’ll make a few comments about the enumeration project. British Columbia has long used a continuous voters list. In fact, we were the first jurisdiction in Canada to do so, and now almost every jurisdiction has followed suit. This means that we maintain a high-quality voters list between general elections, and much of the updating of the list comes from sharing data with other organizations, such as ICBC, Vital Statistics or Elections Canada.

Despite this continuous updating of the voters list, there is, inevitably, a decline in the quality of the list over time. To address this decline, Elections B.C. undertakes a project to improve the currency and coverage of the voters list in the months immediately preceding a general election.

The approach to updating the voters list in advance of the 41st general election follows the strategy adopted for the 40th general election, with some adjustments. The strategy is twofold. First, we contact all households in British Columbia, advising residents who is on the vot-
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ers list at that household and asking that they update the information if changes are needed, either to remove voters who no longer reside there or to add voters who live there but are not on the voters list at that address.

The second part of the strategy is to make additional efforts to identify groups of voters who are less likely to be registered and to get them onto the voters list. To do this, we will engage the district electoral officers in each of the 87 electoral districts.

Over the summer and fall of 2016, they will compile an assessment of their district and identify post-secondary institutions, First Nations reserves, ethnic community associations, new residential communities, high-mobility areas and the like within each district.

Based on this research, each DEO will then propose an enumeration strategy that responds to the unique characteristics of their community. For example, they may propose voter registration tables be established on a university or a college campus, or they could propose door-to-door registration efforts be undertaken in high-mobility areas or in new residential developments.

The materials that will be used by the DEOs for this initiative currently are being developed and/or finalized. The enumeration campaign itself will take place in February and March, 2017. We have high expectations for this activity.

In 2013, our enumeration project resulted in the highest-quality voters list in B.C.’s history. Our estimate is that 96.9 percent of eligible voters were registered, and of these, 94.2 percent were registered at their current address. Our goal for 2017 is to improve on these statistics, even beyond the current high performance.

I’ll make just a few brief comments on recent legislative changes and a recent request to my office.

Bill 5 provides for a replacement of witnessed statutory declarations with a more simple signed declaration for a number of forms used by Elections B.C. Examples include the statutory declarations for the establishment of a registered constituency association or the nomination of a candidate. In future, the application forms will be submitted with simply signed declarations, rather than solemn declarations.

These changes are scheduled to take effect upon a regulation of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. Elections B.C. is ready to implement these changes, and the relevant forms and guides have been adjusted accordingly.

Bill 17, which passed third reading on Monday of this week, provides expense limits for local elections. This change will apply beginning with the 2018 general local elections.

Recently I received a communication from the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, asking me to consider several matters related to the disclosure of provincial political contributions. I’ve agreed to undertake this work and have advised the minister that I will make my report public, in keeping with the protocol for an independent officer of the Legislature.

Finally, just a few comments on recommendations for legislative change. In 2014, I submitted a report to the Legislative Assembly on behalf of the independent panel on Internet voting. The report included four recommendations. They are:

First, the panel recommended against universal Internet voting for public elections in B.C. at this time, while also indicating that it may be useful to pilot such voting on a more limited basis, such as a replacement for mail-in ballots or for voters with disabilities.

Second, that the government adopt a coordinated approach to Internet voting, with Elections B.C. engaging with local election officials on this topic.

Third, that the government establish a technical committee on Internet voting, chaired by the Chief Electoral Officer and charged with assessing and possibly certifying Internet voting systems.

Fourthly, that the province adopt a set of principles to guide any implementation of Internet voting in B.C.

I’m pleased to have discussions with this committee on the implementation of the report of the panel, if this committee sees value in doing so.

Madam Vice-Chair, that’s the end of my preliminary comments, and I turn it back to you.

We now have about ten to 12 minutes for questions. Committee, I’ll open it up.

E. Foster: Thank you very much, Dr. Archer, for your presentation. I’m really pleased to hear that things went well with the by-elections, with the changes.

I had a couple of questions on that. The new technology worked well, I assume, and you didn’t run into any glitches. One of the things I would wonder if you’ve factored into your thoughts…. We had, unfortunately, a very low voter turnout, as it is quite often with by-elections. You talked about short lineups and so on. Do you think that was also part of the reason for that, other than just the technology, which I would assume was part of the success?

The other…. You made a comment about this, and then you did, sort of, refer to it later on. You have hired younger people, which I would assume would be to do the technology work because a lot of…. I mean, I’m a real techie, of course, as long as I’ve got somebody to show me how to turn the computer on. Did you get any push-back on that? A lot of the folks who have worked at elections over the years, Chief Electoral Officers and so on, have been there for a long, long time and have certainly served us well. But they may be a little short on the technical skills needed to run elections in the 21st century. Have you seen any kind of an issue with that?
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K. Archer: I’ll make a couple of comments and then ask Anton to elaborate as well.

On the question of applying the changes for the by-elections, using technology and some of the other changes that were introduced, and the degree to which that — I guess, maybe to paraphrase — is a fair test as to how these will work in a general election, where voter turnout is expected to be higher. We don’t know that, but what we did find is that the additional days of advance voting do provide opportunities for more voters to take advantage of that method of voting.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the general election, that trend continues. It’s been a trend that we’ve seen almost continuously from the 2001 election to 2013. I would expect to see that continuing, and the procedures that we have in place ensure that we have quite low processing times for each voter.

Now, I went and observed some of the advance voting in both of the electoral districts during the event, and Anton and his team had people doing time studies of the process. I was really struck at how efficient it is. From the time that a person presented themselves at the voting place, especially if they had their where-to-vote card with the bar code on it…. That could be scanned, and they could be struck off the voters list very quickly. They show their ID. They’re handed the ballot. For many voters, that part of the process itself was a minute or, at the most, a minute and a half. Then they would go cast their ballot and complete the process.

When you compare that to some of our more informal reviews of advance voting in other jurisdictions, in which it may take up to ten minutes from the time a voter presents themselves, we have a pretty high level of confidence that the system we have in place here will work effectively and ensure that there are not the long lineups that seem to plague a number of other jurisdictions. Again, not a complete test of that, but a fairly high level of confidence.

E. Foster: I appreciate that. I sincerely hope that it does follow through, as you say. We all wish to see a higher voter turnout. If you could please share this with your federal counterparts, they might be able to fix their problems too.

You didn’t touch on the issue that I want to ask you a question about. I’m informed that as a result of the Electoral Boundaries Commission report and the adoption by the Legislature, obviously there’s a requirement for new electoral districts or changed electoral districts to reconstitute, in each party, their constituency associations. But I’m informed that the requirement of Elections B.C. is actually that every single constituency association do that, even if there is no change in boundary whatsoever.

I’m wondering if you can give us the rationale for that, as well as an estimate on what the cost will be to process changes that are, in fact, no change at all.

N. Western: The reason that all the existing registered constituency associations have to deregister is legislation. It’s in the Election Act that they will all be automatically deregistered on the day the writs are issued for the next general election.

We’re going to encourage constituency associations to deregister early. The last thing they want to do is do any paperwork during the campaign period. In fact, on Friday this week, a package will be sent to all registered constituency associations with guides and forms and a little process sheet advising them to register, or recommending that they register, their new constituency associations; transfer bank accounts, if they have to transfer bank accounts — sometimes the banks will let them just change the signing officers, and that’s fine; and register well before the start of the next campaign. But the legislation says that they have to deregister.

S. Gibson: Three super quick questions. I moved, and I didn’t want to get this alumni magazine anymore. It was really boring. So I purposely didn’t tell the university that I’d moved. But about month later, I started to get the alumni magazine again. They tracked me down. There’s some company that does this as contract.

A. Boegman: We don’t use those specific types of companies, but we do work with Canada Post. They have a change of address register that’s a national register and broken down by province. If people have registered with Canada Post, we will get those updates. Other than that, we don’t source people’s changes through other companies.

S. Gibson: Like we’ve discussed here, so many people are moving between elections. I was just amazed. I said to my wife: “This magazine again?” I’m still throwing it away.

My second question. This is kind of just me asking the question. There’s so much political campaigning that goes on at the time of elections, and I sometimes wonder if Elections B.C. needs to spend quite so much money on talking about the election when all the campaigns are saying: “Vote here” and “Vote for me.” Do you know what I mean?

You guys are spending a lot of money during election time to promote elections, when all the parties are doing a pretty good job of that themselves. I’m just wondering — your comment on that.

K. Archer: Thanks, Simon. Part of our advertising is statutory. The act requires that we publish certain kinds of information, such as the voting locations and voting days, and things like that. So we do a lot of newspaper advertising over the course of an election campaign, and we do what seems to me to be a fairly limited amount of more general advertising to encourage people either to register to vote or to get out to vote.

In the last general election, we created one 30-second television ad and two 15-second television ads, which ran throughout the province. Then we did some outdoor advertising on things like transit shelters. Whether that’s a lot or a little I guess is one of those “is the glass half-empty or half-full?” questions.

My sense is that the advertising we do is of the type that’s intended to remind electors of some of the administrative aspects of elections, and of course, the political parties and candidates are doing the more motivational elements.

S. Gibson: The only other question I have is…. I do all my banking on this thing. I can pay bills. I can transfer things. I think young people…. My feeling is that young people — if they could vote on their iPhone, you’d get way more people voting. I know we’re not going to do it for a while. I get it. But if you want to pick a riding to test it, you can pick my riding. I’m totally in.

J. Tegart: Being a new MLA, can I just ask Nola: is the requirement for the constituency offices a new requirement, or has it always been there?

N. Western: These are registered constituency associations, which are different than your constituency office. And yes, since the Election Act came into force in 1995, if you have a registered constituency association, it will be automatically deregistered when the electoral district is disestablished.

J. Tegart: Do we have any idea when the maps will be ready on the new boundaries?

A. Boegman: I can speak to that. Right now the new electoral district maps — 8½ by 11 PDFs and the shapefiles for those — are currently available on the B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission website. We’re working now, of course, to redistribute all the voting areas within those boundaries, as the populations have shifted. Just as an example, in the last general election there were over 10,500 voting areas, so it’s a considerable body of work to do that.

We anticipate it’s going to take about seven months to complete that process, including a field review by the district electoral officers. They’re going to look at that. We’re going to adjust boundaries based on their feedback, do all of our quality adjustment activities. The anticipated dates right now for the provincial and selected areas map will be October 2016, for when that’s available. The location index is also projected for October 2016. The 3-foot by 3-foot electoral district maps will be available December 2016; the electoral district VA shapefiles, December 2016; the street index also in December 2016; and the electoral district EDVA shapefiles in December 2016.

That’s kind of the schedule right now. We recognize that there is significant interest, obviously, in the electoral geography products, so if some are available earlier, we will make them available earlier.

J. Rice: My constituency is, according to Elections B.C., 44 percent First Nations. I would say almost half of the communities that I visit are reserves. However, I did notice that the information on the list and the information on the ground is hugely…. I’m wondering if there’s a concerted effort to update First Nations communities, and rural and remote communities.

A. Boegman: We certainly do put greater effort into that aspect of it. One of the activities that our newly appointed district electoral officers are going to be doing over the course of the summer is to develop a thorough understanding of their electoral district. They’ll be producing what we call an electoral district profile, which includes a listing of all the First Nations communities in that district, post-secondary institutions, areas of high mobility, areas of new development and that sort of thing.

And then, based on that profile, they’ll be developing a targeted enumeration strategy to address those unique characteristics of their district. So they will be making contact with the First Nations bands, working with them to put in place voter registration opportunities for them, identifying work opportunities for people to work as election officials, identify what is the best approach to provide voting opportunities for that community — whether they can be integrated into a larger voting opportunity in another community or whether they would require a mobile team to visit them, depending upon the characteristics.

We do that. That’s one of the outputs, I suppose, of this new approach that we’re putting in place. Rather than having a one-size-fits-all approach to the province, we’re able to use an overall approach as well as a targeted approach to reflect the unique characteristics of each district.

J. Rice: I just wanted to say I hope that there will be boots on the ground to update it because there are ad-
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dresses that don’t exist. Then First Nations names for streets without…. I think the only way to really rectify it, because I worked very hard to update that, is boots on the ground. These are hard places to get to — seaplane and ferry access only. I would encourage that.

G. Heyman: I’m wondering if Ms. Western could just let me know — through the Clerk is fine — the section of the act to which you are referring.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Archer. Thank you, Ms. Western. Thank you, Mr. Boegman, for coming.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Welcome, to the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth — Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Just an opportunity to be able to, as we said at the beginning of the meeting, get an update on the office, both financial and operational, so that the committee is well informed before we get to next year, when we go back to look at budgets again.

Welcome, Mary Ellen. I’ll let you introduce the guests that you have with you today, and then the time is yours.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning to all the committee members. I’ll introduce the staff with me today.

To my immediate left, your right, is the deputy representative, Dawn Thomas-Wightman, and to the further right of you is the chief investigator and associate deputy representative, Bill Naughton. On my right, your left, I have Dianne Buljat. Dianne is responsible for finances and operations in the representative’s office, and she’ll be familiar to you.

There’s a new face at the table, and I’d like to extend a welcome to Blair Mitchell, who has been with the representative’s office for a period of time, doing advocacy, and has moved into senior leadership for our advocacy team. He is here today to answer any questions and also give you an opportunity to meet him, because you’ll be seeing him more regularly.

With that, I’d like to, with the permission of the Chair, go ahead with the presentation. I’m very pleased to be here.

Given the time constraints, I want to begin with just a very brief synopsis of our financial picture and then move into a bit of a progress report on a few items at the high level and, of course, provide opportunity for any questions you may have.

Our operating budget for 2015-2016 was $8.138 million. We’re still in the process of tabulating our final fiscal year-end position, and if Dianne is looking a little tired today, it’s because she’s been working around the clock.

I’m pleased to report that we will be within budget and recognize the commitment by the representative’s office to be disciplined in that regard and that that is important to us. We’re very grateful for the budget, and we’re very grateful for the opportunity to perform the type of public service that we are able to do in our office.

As the committee knows, my office is subject to an annual audit, as per the Representative for Children and Youth Act. This is underway. The final results form part of our annual reporting process. Of course, if we ever had any difficulty, we would be flagging that for the committee in advance. We’ve never had a difficulty, but that process is underway.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to update the committee on how the additional resources that were approved after our November appearance have been approached in terms of planning and the work underway for this fiscal year.

As a result of the lift that was provided, particularly for critical injuries and deaths investigations, our operating budget for 2016-2017 is $8.83 million, with the bulk of that increase of $692,000 going to cover our increased investigations workload — that was about $656,000 — as well as various approved salary and benefit lifts to the schedule A staff and, as well, to the head of the agency, as per a court decision.

During fiscal year 2015-2016, we have the equivalent of 56.4 FTEs working in three locations. We have 39 in Victoria, 10.4 in Burnaby and seven in Prince George.

The budget lift beginning this fiscal allows us to add five FTEs to Victoria to help complete reviews and investigations and to ensure that that work goes forward. In order to give such incidents a proper scrutiny, it’s important that we learn critical lessons and that we do full public reports that lead to changes as necessary and required, as well as serve the interests of public accountability. The budget increase has allowed us to move ahead with hiring staff so that we can manage not only these several high-profile death investigations that have been launched or are being launched shortly but also deal with a significant uptick in the number of injury and death reportables to our office.

Last month we completed a human resources process and are now engaged in making offers to two new in-
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vestigators at the representative’s office. We’ve been able to add a research officer to our critical injury and death team for a six-month term.

I’m pleased to report that we have launched one of our investigations, which is an investigation into the death of a youth who died in July 2015, while being treated at the CAPE unit of the B.C. Children’s Hospital. We expect to report out on that investigation before the end of this year.

When I appeared before you in November, I anticipated that the scope of that investigation would be a bit more narrow than it has ended up being, in part because we’ve reached some barriers around the sharing of internal hospital reviews. I was hoping to collaborate closely with the other reviews that are undertaken so that I wouldn’t have to duplicate investigative processes. Unfortunately, I’ve hit a wall on that front, so the scope of this investigation will have to be wider than I thought. That is a factor that I knew may be a consideration, in November when I appeared, but now it has become clear, as I’ve received clear direction and feedback from the provincial health services agency and the Ministry of Health that they will not be sharing their internal review on the matter.

We are also doing the preparatory groundwork on two other cases, and we will be ready to launch those investigations as soon as the coroner has completed their work. They have up to one year. In the case of the incident I just described, where we’ve launched the investigation, the coroner’s verdict came fairly quickly, which we really appreciate. We work closely with the Coroners Service.

The other two cases may be known to committee members because we did discuss them in November. One involves a youth who committed suicide — it would appear he committed suicide — in June 2015, while undergoing youth justice system–ordered substance abuse treatment on Vancouver Island. The other is the case of the youth in care who fell to his death from a window, while in the midst of a long-term hospital stay, in an Abbotsford-area hotel in September 2015.

The preparatory work has been completed. These two investigations are ready to go. They are in the investigation post-planning stage, meaning it has pretty much been planned. But we await a report from the coroner on the verdict or cause of death in those two instances. We do have, after extensive work with the Ministry of Children and Families, their blessing, shall we say, or their support to begin these investigations as soon as possible.

We expect to release public reports on at least one of those two cases before the end of this calendar year, with the other to follow shortly — we hope within the fiscal year. The additional resources, as I said, have been much appreciated and have allowed us to continue working on these important cases in that aspect of my office.

I would note that MCFD completed some important training in April and May of last year for social workers, to make sure that critical injuries and deaths are properly reported, particularly after my office issued our report Paige’s Story. As a result, the number of reportables continues to double. We were at 374 reportables in the previous fiscal year from the one that just ended. This past fiscal year it was 803.

So better compliance, better reporting, better tracking and monitoring and attention have led to more identification. What that means, of course, is that we have to carefully screen and review every one. I’m, again, recognizing the hard work of the representative’s staff, particularly the critical injury and death side, where a doubling of work and a small uptick in resources mean that the work is still being done.

But this also speaks to the issue I mentioned, which is systemwide collaboration on learning from the deaths of children and removing any barriers that are there so that, by default, it doesn’t end up being the representative’s office that takes the full responsibility for public accountability and reporting without collaborating. Being able to collaborate closely with hospitals and other agencies would be very valuable as a long-term strategy to remove some of those barriers.

Just to provide context again, one critical injury or death investigation can last for more than a year. And based on our best estimates prepared by Dianne, who tracks these matters fairly carefully for us for planning, one investigation can cost approximately $300,000 in staff salaries, travels and expenses. I appreciate that compared to, say, a public inquiry, which may be a magnitude of several million dollars for a case, it probably is a very cost-wise expenditure. But nevertheless, we have to understand what is involved, from a financial viewpoint, in conducting these and conducting these to an appropriate level.

I’d like to move on to one issue which is sort of a standing issue with this committee. I’ve spoken before about our particular advocacy work around adoptions. Our advocacy caseload…. We’ve had approximately 16,000 advocacy cases since we opened our advocacy role. I know that sounds like we would be swamped with advocacy cases, and in fact, some days we are swamped with advocacy cases.

We have about 284 active cases today, just checking with Blair. What that means in our staff…. “Active” means that we’re juggling a lot of issues. Some of those cases require intensive activity, not only of the advocacy team but the executive team, including myself, interfacing with the minister, deputy minister, heads of agencies and others. These are significant. Probably, we are not dealing with as many cases as we could and should.

One area that I’ve submitted to the committee before, and I speak to it again today, is with respect to adoption. There are 900 children in care in British Columbia who have, as their plan, having a permanent family. Foster care should be temporary. It shouldn’t be something that
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someone lives in right through to their 19th birthday. Unfortunately, due to a number of factors with systemic problems in child welfare in British Columbia, there is an enormous amount of drift in foster care, and foster care tends to become a default norm where kids go through to aging out of care. Hence, many members of this committee would be aware of the ongoing public discussion that my office has promoted and generated around talking about aging out of care.

In addition to that, there’s a very important principle, which is that children should not be in foster care for anything but a short, temporary basis. There are 900 children who are in care for whom the planning to move them out of care into an adoptive or permanent home is frequently non-existent, meaning that there is no plan. Once they receive the designation of a child permanently in care, or CCO status, pretty much that’s it. There’s no more regular reviewing. There’s no more accountability. There’s the representative’s advocacy, and there’s just luck of the draw on the street, effectively.

We are really trying to tackle that. As this committee and those of you who may cross over with the Standing Committee on Children and Youth will know, in 2014 we produced a very significant audit report on adoption that led to the government accepting all of the recommendations. I’m very happy to say that, working closely with the ministry, the minister, the staff…. After they accepted the recommendations in that report, we have seen some progress. But I would want to emphasize to the committee that there’s been an enormous amount of work, including high priority in my office, on supporting kids who are in CCO status, permanency status, but for whom the planning is not happening.

The ministry has supported us to come forward to this committee several times. Again, I received some correspondence this week from the deputy minister to MCFD assuring me that they continue to support our request to expand, somewhat, our advocacy capacity to help that targeted group of those 900 CCOs. So we think the ministry still needs significant help. We’ve promoted them to get a target. We’ve promoted them to reach the target. We’ve helped in that regard.

I would say to the committee that approximately 20 percent of the cases where we’ve now had completed adoptions were cases where paperwork was just not completed. The placements were there, and the child…. But they just never got the work done. So that’s a key part where advocacy, like the rep’s office, can get involved and say, “Look, we’ve got to finish this. We’ve got to get this done,” and so forth. Very valuable, very collaborative.

Where that collaboration can’t happen and a crisis arises, either with the caregiver or a child…. What is beginning to happen, and what I suspect will happen more if we don’t build this a little bit more thoughtfully, is that there will be more litigation. More caregivers will go to court to challenge this, and more kids will go to court.

They are entitled to do that now. But, as committee members will know, that’s expensive. You get locked into a fight mentality. In the end, there’s a decision. It means substantial delay. It can sometimes mean a one- and two-year delay because accessing appeals and so forth takes a long time.

I certainly, respectfully, feel that we haven’t given it the best shot we can from an advocacy viewpoint to build the capacity for us to solve these issues for these 900 kids in care. It would be unfortunate if we pushed people into litigation because we weren’t able to deal with the fact that they have rights, including the right to a family, and that caregivers, who have had long placements of kids and want to adopt, can’t get the customer service that they’re due to get.

The minister and I worked closely. The ministry supports it. Again, I placed it before you. I appreciate today as an update. I’m not asking for a decision. But I would just say to you, very respectfully in that regard, that if it is possible to evaluate that sometime again in the future — I know, as I said, you left it hanging a bit after last year — it would be extremely valuable.

We have a plan, and we are ready to roll out that plan. However, I would say that I have pretty much maxed out what I can do in terms of the demands on my advocates to respond to those cases. I am trying to mediate the best I can in the cases where there is litigation, because things have gone so far down the road. I don’t know how much longer that is going to be a sustainable approach.

As you know, once there are five, six, seven, eight cases that go to court, eventually it becomes a class of cases. Eventually, things become very seriously frozen up. I don’t want to see that. I want to see things moving very positively.

The advocacy initiative, again, is looking at team of eight individuals that we would add. I’ll just speak very quickly to it. A senior advocate. A research analyst. Five permanent advocates that would be out in the regions — particularly underserved regions: the north, the Interior, north Island. An administrative support person. They would be targeting that 900 and hoping to sustain the ministry to make gains in the number of adoptions placements but also hoping to change the culture of permanency.

Foster care is a temporary issue. Children have a right to a family. They don’t find themselves, once that CCO has been granted, essentially in a rabbit hole, if you like, where they’re just going all the way till 19 and not coming out.

That’s a really focused piece of work. We are completely ad idem and in agreement with the ministry on that. But again, the capacity of our office is maximized on that front.

I’ll leave that at that point. As I say, I’m not sure if today is the day to address that issue. However, it’s important for me to at least table it and keep committee members aware of the pressures that are there.
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Thank you. I will open up to any questions or clarifications that you might be seeking.

S. Gibson: Isn’t one of the challenges you have with regard to adoption that there’s a preponderance of First Nations? My understanding is that your first endeavour is to try to get First Nations adopting First Nations. But there are also challenges with that, given some of the social issues confronting those families. Isn’t that a part? That’s aggravating the situation and delaying the adoption process. That’s a part of your challenge, as I understand it.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think that’s a well-known issue. When we redid the 2014 report, we identified that. We have recommended that the ministry improves its practice.

They adopted our recommendations. They’ve been pretty slow to put that in place. At the same time, the minister hired as an advisor Grand Chief Ed John, who’s a person I have a high regard for. However, he’s an individual that’s very busy and part-time and doesn’t carry a caseload. We’re supporting him. He’s advising the minister. But you’re absolutely right to say this is an issue.

It isn’t an issue that can’t be solved. The ministry does not have effective processes in place for kinship placement. The ministry does not do, at this point, what we recommended, which is, for the 200-plus First Nations, giving an itemized list of every child every year and having a review with each of those First Nations communities, whether there’s a family placement, kinship placement, in that community.

That was a recommendation that’s two years old, and they haven’t done that. They’ve begun to have meetings, but in an anonymous way, not actually doing that every year.

Bringing it down to the actual child. That’s the key piece of the representative’s work. There’s the dimension of talking and understanding the issue. Then there’s the issue of 900 kids in care; 65 percent of the CCOs are aboriginal. It’s actually even close to 70 right now. We should get that done on a child-by-child basis.

That additional request is really to be targeted. In the Interior targeting, we know there are 45 kids from one First Nation. We would be in that First Nation much more strongly, saying: “Where’s the kinship placement? What’s happening?” And then bring the ministry in — not in an adversarial way, but in a supportive way — to say: “Look, we think we have kinship supports for ten of these kids. Can we sit down and talk about it? What does the young person or the child think?” That’s the really detailed, boots-on-the-ground type of work.

The high-level understanding of the problem is there. The problem is a solvable problem, but it requires work. Political discussion is valuable, but actual work in the child welfare system is needed to get those placements completed.

S. Gibson: You mentioned that a number of young people currently in foster care are not making the transition into adoption or other, more secure home life. Is part of the problem the qualifications of the people doing the foster care, that they’re not being properly invigilated to ensure that they’re a part of the smooth transitional process? Perhaps they’re doing it for other reasons, and they have no interest in necessarily being a part of the smooth transition to a more secure home life? That’s my anecdotal question. I don’t know. I’m just wondering.

M. Turpel-Lafond: Well, I think we have really fantastic foster parents in British Columbia, and we have really great advocacy to strengthen that. The foster families really bring a lot of advocacy cases, and they don’t want to be in the public eye. They don’t want to be the focus of a maelstrom that develops when a case blows up, because they feel it’s easy to blame them, when they’re really trying to support things.

The key thing to understand about what the current structural problem is around kids in care and aging out of care is that we’ve had a very challenging situation for a decade. Kids that come into child welfare will not come out quickly, and aboriginal kids in particular. Instead of being back in a family placement…. If you’re in at two, you should be back in that family placement, ideally, still at two. But you’re finding yourself at 14, and now things are really falling apart. The mom-and-pop foster home thing does not, maybe, necessarily work. You’re now going to be moved to a group home. Group home situations have multiple challenges.

Residential services in the ministry have multiple challenges around how they’re run and whether they meet the needs of kids. They’re certainly not always a family setting. In fact, I would suggest to you that they’re not a family setting. Furthermore, that ends up breaking down, and as we found out this year, sometimes kids end up in hotels — in fact, 131 hotel stays last year, based on the joint report I did with the ministry. These are areas where….

Then what happens next? Well, they put the youth on independent living, which basically means they’re trying to pretend to be an adult, when they’re actually really struggling. A lot of times they go missing. They’re easy targets to be recruited, particularly for the aboriginal girls, into sex work, into abuse, into street crime. They literally spend their life in care. It’s not the model.

It comes back to that very basic principle, which is that foster care is temporary. How did we end up getting here?

Well, we ended up getting here because we didn’t do permanency and adoption properly. We’re trying to come
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back to that, but I really feel like there’s a massive problem in British Columbia, which is: we see it, but someone has to do something about the 900 kids — you know, other than just finish the paperwork that’s been sitting there. That means actively making sure that the placements are there. Improvement is needed.

I mean, I’m grateful that the ministry has supported our request to come here. They know we can get there one way. We will get there different ways. Some of them will be easier than others, and some of them will be easier on kids than others. The model that we’re taking, which is getting involved and talking to them and strengthening the kids’ ability to advocate for themselves is, I think, the preferred model than what we’re seeing now.

The foster parents are good partners in that, and a lot of the foster parents end up becoming adoptive parents. They’re very upset when they’re disentitled to become adoptive parents at the last minute. They have been, de facto, the family setting for the child. Many of them will have a child for a year. Then you talk to them and say: “Well, we’ve actually had our daughter Jennifer for 12 years, even though she was only supposed to be here for a week.” We’re like: “Okay, we honour that. We respect that. Let’s just keep Jennifer supported there.”

J. Rice: I wanted to ask about the ministry’s 1000FamiliesBC campaign. I know that last year, come estimates period, I was shocked to know how many actual adoptions had taken place. It was quite a significantly low number. I don’t remember the number offhand.

I understand, though, there are growing pains or transition pains when you’re implementing a new program. I’m wondering if you could comment on just how successful adoptions are working right now.

M. Turpel-Lafond: The amount of work that we’ve been doing, collaboratively, since that 2014 report from my office has been significant. But even before that 2014 report, I would certainly say that in my time as representative, since 2008, there has been an unrelenting, constant focus on permanency.

It started to bear fruit after 2014, when we started really working together, but it is just rolling. When you look at it…. I look at trends. I look at what happens. Of course, my staff — Blair and others — are close to the ground.

In 2007, we had 323 adoptions. Then that fell right down, by 2012-2013, to 205. The ministry set a target. They didn’t make the target the first year. I feel they’re on track to make the target this year, which is bringing it back up to around that 207. We’re actually coming back up to where we were a decade ago, which is making a very key point.

We are climbing back to a target that we had ten years ago. Well, I’m very happy we’re getting there. But let’s not forget that we’re actually going back to capture a target that’s a decade old. We lost a decade. That we lost a decade means what? Kids in care — no one’s looked at a permanency plan. We’ve basically said: “You’re on independent living. Good luck. You’re out there.”

Some of that has got to change around the numbers. It’s very important for me to say: “Look, we’re making progress. We are working closely. Our sleeves are rolled up. Our noses are to the grindstone.” But we’re a little office, and we have this big demand. I don’t think the ministry, right now, can respond to that demand fully.

I think there are 900 kids waiting. With 900 kids waiting, the likelihood that they’re going to get a result without an advocate? I don’t think it’s likely. I think we need to all be on the same page. We’re trying to do that, but that’s 900 now.

We could have a spike. We could have a bunch more kids come into care suddenly. You have to have a little wiggle room. Certainly, at the rep’s office, we have no wiggle room. Our advocacy isn’t just permanency. Our advocacy is special needs, mental health — the whole range of issues that arise in that pod of 16,000 cases. To really zone in and give it the due, it needs more work. The government has not fully implemented the recommendations I’ve made. They’ve done some.

What they have done is bearing fruit. I’m really happy about that. But they’ve got to do the full thing. We saw this before. In 2007, they tried it. Then, all of a sudden, they give up. Then the culture shifts, and then there are no adoptions, or they go under 200.

It’s something that…. I don’t want these hills and valleys. I want a stable, strong process on permanency.

J. Rice: Would you say that when you’re looking at child welfare, or just the Ministry of Children and Family Development, adoptions are the area that is always the least focused on?

When you have a kid in crisis and you need to do removals…. I notice that, in my local offices, the critical stuff always supersedes everything else, which makes sense, of course. If you have a crisis and a child’s in danger, you need to remove them. But adoptions, it’s been said to me, “are done off the side of our desks, even if we actually ever get to that.”

Would you say that this is one of the problems, why we’re not being successful with adoptions?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I had to work really hard from 2008 to 2011, I would say monthly, doing advocacy at the senior levels of government to get the adoptions program buttoned down as a service line in MCFD.

When the deputy minister, Steve Brown, came into the ministry and when Mary McNeil became the minister, she had a very strong personal commitment to adoption and a very quick understanding of it. She was a unique minister, and she insisted that that become an official ser-
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vice line. The adoption program was, with all due respect for the pun, an orphan that really had no focus.

There was some good leadership, but that was the product of multiple discussions, of saying: “Can we pin this down?” We have now pinned it down, which is good, but that was only 2011. By 2014, we presented an audit. We presented an audit because between 2011 and 2014, we couldn’t get it really pinned down. We got it as a service line, but how is it going to function? Like anything in a ministry, you can have a title, you can have an area that you’re supposed to work on, and you can have an Adoption Act, but then you can still not get the work done.

This is one that requires an office like my office. This is one of our core oversight advocacy functions — making sure kids who are in the child welfare system as permanent wards of the state are not going to live their entire childhoods in foster care. Among the priorities, this is one of our top priorities, and it’s a lot of work to get it there.

So, absolutely, it waxes and wanes. I have seen that myself in my nine years as representative, and that’s why I say this will wane. This will not move forward unless we make the structural changes to make sure that the checks and balances are there. If you don’t make the structural changes, it’s very inevitable what will happen. It’s happened in every other jurisdiction. People will go to court. You’ll end up getting all tangled up in that process. And that’s fine. People can do that. It doesn’t solve the issue, and it doesn’t promote the type of change we want.

This year, when they met the adoptions target — which I believe they have; I can’t say for certain, as we’re still tabulating — they did that by pulling staff off other areas and asking them to do adoptions. Those staff worked really hard. I’m really proud of the work that they did. I had to do that in my office, and we all did it, because it was the right thing to do. But when you pull someone off something to do it, something doesn’t get done.

That is, as you described it, off the side of the desk, meaning: “This isn’t really in my job description, but I’m going to do it this year because the ministry has a target.” But we need to make it work, right? So some of those structural issues remain. I’m hoping we’re not going to be here in a decade and say we lost gains and then we came back because the people stopped being vigilant, they didn’t understand the culture, and they didn’t understand the child focus.

The risk of losing that gain is a very high risk at this point. I’d say we have an 80 percent chance of losing those gains unless we address this issue. That would be really disappointing, because it means a lot for kids and families to get that permanency done.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much. I apologize for missing part of your presentation, but I caught most of it. I’d like to preface my remarks by saying that I think the history of the work that has been done through your office has garnered significant trust and respect from British Columbians.

From the perspective of having been on this committee for a little over two years now and having watched the presentations of yourself and your staff and other independent officers, I think, from my perspective, you’ve accomplished a lot within your budget. You’ve been transparent and accountable in your presentations back. Most importantly, I think you’ve been very proactive in looking for efficiencies and recognizing the overall fiscal reality within which government is operating.

I’m looking at your proposal. On the one hand, a $958,000 lift sounds big. But when I listen to you talk about the 900 children waiting for adoption, if you break that down, I think that works out to about $1,064 per child per year.

I know the costs of keeping children in care or even foster care for the limited amounts of money that are paid to foster parents are substantial. I’m wondering if you can assist us by telling us: within this budget, how many of those 900 children per year do you think — in addition to the systemic issues that you intend to identify, which will have long-lasting value for British Columbian kids — over the course of a year, will be placed for adoption who might otherwise not be without the additional resources?

M. Turpel-Lafond: Right. Well, I think — my view — this is a modest request. You know, my respectful view. I mean, I appreciate that all demands on the public treasury are significant issues. I think this is modest for the gain. I think we can see a significant improvement.

I also, in my job as promoting improvement to the system, have pushed very hard with the new federal minister for indigenous affairs, the provincial deputy and Grand Chief Ed John, to the extent that he’s advising the minister, to set a target on the First Nations kids and get the federal government to collaborate and say we’re going to have….

I think it’s perfectly reasonable that in one year, 300 of those kids could be placed. The money that will have to be invested federally, after the human rights decision, should come in to these kids.

I’m an impatient person. I’m a calm person, but I’m impatient. Like any of us knows, if you didn’t have track of your own kids…. Every week that passes is a big deal for these kids. There is no reason, in British Columbia, why we don’t say, “We’re going to place another 300 to 400 of those First Nations kids,” and get it done in one year and do a proper agreement with the feds on the funding and make it happen.

What happens in the Ministry of Children and Families is…. Its change is glacial. It’s often motivated by individual leadership, which is important. I appreciate it, but it has to become systemic that it’s what you do. That requires — what? — accountability, and it requires an attitude. The attitude is: these kids have a right to a family.
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And we have no way of making that happen. Once they become CCO, they’re down the rabbit hole.

The indigenous kids are down a bigger rabbit hole. It’s the federal-provincial game and so forth, and it’s completely fixable. Whenever we see a problem that can be fixed, we should try and fix it. That’s my respectful view. So my proposal to the committee is….

My experience, my staff’s experience, tells me that this is a small piece. We’ll do our best to do a contribution to that part of it. I’d also like to see the government of British Columbia, the government of Canada, set some strong targets and make a commitment to kids and say that we’re going to get those kids in permanent placements. These things can be done. They require work, and someone has to be on those files and get it done.

It’s easy to…. The head of an agency or a minister can say, “I want to do this,” but someone has to do the work. What we’ve seen with First Nations, when we’ve done investigations, as an example, is: the lack of credibility with the ministry and the community is huge. And we’ve got to go out there and do work with kinship and family. Our job in the rep’s office is to have a strong aboriginal focus on all of our work and to build bridges. We don’t burn bridges; we build bridges. We have to bring issues forward.

Some of the geographical areas of the province…. I know that the member in this committee, Jennifer Rice, will know that her riding, in particular, is underserved. Nobody is there doing permanency to the extent that they should. There are ridings where families and kids aren’t getting what they need.

There are other places that they do, and that’s not fair. When I hear from the staff at MLAs’ offices saying, “We’ve got cases. Can’t we solve them?” it’s really tough on me to say: “I’d like to help, but unfortunately, there’s the Finance Committee in Victoria that has told me I can’t.” It’s not all about me. It’s about really being able to have a consistent, uniform footprint and have people that can get out there and do it.

Sometimes it’s getting that executive director of service out to one of the First Nations in the community that they haven’t been to for years. Not just a meet-and-greet but to meet and greet about 60 kids that need permanency and then someone following up and saying: “Those three kids are a priority. We’ve got the kinship placement. Let’s get this moving.”

G. Heyman: Just to sum up. I mean, I don’t want to reduce it to simply dollars and cents — the important issue of finding a forever family for children who deserve one. But of course, this is a budget presentation, and it’s about dollars.

For me, I guess I would characterize what I’m taking from your presentation as: for three years and a $958,000 investment in identifying systemic barriers that can be shifted, changed — practices that can be changed — to improve the adoption process, and then somewhere between a $2,000- and $3,000-per-child investment per year to give them a home and take them off the books of public responsibility….

M. Turpel-Lafond: Yeah, I agree with you fully. I think it’s a modest request. I think that we can…. It’s a three-year request. At the end of the first year, we would tell you how it’s going.

As you know, the attitude in the rep’s office is to be…. I promote accountability. I want to know how many kids are in care, how many kids are being adopted. I want the ministry to set targets. I want to know where, how and why, because if you don’t look at things, things don’t happen. At the same time, when you look at things, sometimes people can become very sensitive about that. We have to get through that, and we have to get the work done.

I think it’s a modest request. I appreciate that this is only an update, but I just give you that update to say that I feel strongly that there’s additional work that we can get done. In fact, I could roll it out immediately.

I bring it back because I have put it before. We can do it. The ministry supports it. If you need to, the deputy has indicated to me he can submit additional correspondence. He appeared before this committee to support it as well. The minister and I, I think, are completely shoulder to shoulder on it, as is, I believe, the opposition critic. So it’s not a political issue. We’re all on side. But we’ve got to get the work done.

I leave it with the committee to determine…. If we don’t do it, well…. Will we make the target next year? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I hope we don’t see what we saw before, from 2007 to 2017, the peaks and valleys. We could go back to what placements? I don’t know. Maybe no aboriginal placements. I don’t know. It’s a challenge. I’m really uncertain what will happen if we can’t get the work done.

You addressed, Mary Ellen, the issue that I wanted to touch on, which was the accountability issue. I think that’s an important piece. It’s an important piece for our committee, but it’s an important piece that I think we see coming from your office that we need to recognize. I know we’ll have further discussion on this as we go along as a committee.

The fact that there are targets, that there are numbers, that there will be reporting back…. I think those are very important pieces for us to consider as we take a look at the presentation. That doesn’t always happen in requests that come forward, whether it’s ministries or other areas. There are very specific targets here.

I think the other piece that is really important for us to consider as a committee is the building of trust — the building of trust for communities in working with the
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ministry, which often isn’t there, particularly in aboriginal communities, but also the building of trust between the ministry and your office.

I think, again, often, because of the nature of the work, there are conflicts that are there between the two offices. I think a project that provides an opportunity for working together on a particular issue…. I don’t think any of us can, and should, underestimate the support that that provides for future work where the difficult discussions need to occur.

I guess I just wanted to make sure that I put those on the table. I know there’s lots of opportunity for us to have a further discussion around other pressures that your office is facing. I think you identified some of those when you talked about children aging out of care and some of the pressures that come around that. I know that’s probably the other committee’s discussion. Again, I just wanted to recognize the work that’s being done.

Thank you very much, Mary Ellen, and a huge thank-you to you and your staff for the kind of work that you do. We really appreciate it.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Committee, we’re close to wrapping up. I just want to make a mention, under any new business, that we do have, as has been mentioned by the rep, one outstanding issue still to deal with, which is the issue of the budget request.

Can I suggest, and see if the committee is open to this…? We have a meeting booked on April 27, a time booked right now. We do have space where we could bring this discussion back and have a further discussion. Does that makes sense to people on the committee? I think we’ve run out of time now, so I don’t think it makes sense to have that discussion now. So we’ll bring that back for our agenda on April 27.

Access to on-line versions of the report of proceedings (Hansard)
and webcasts of committee proceedings is available on the Internet.

Chair:	Wm. Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
Members:	Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)
	Robin Austin (Skeena NDP)
	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal)
	George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)
	Jennifer Rice (North Coast NDP)
	Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
	John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Kate Ryan-Lloyd

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES