The committee met at 8:02 a.m.

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant, Committees and Interparliamentary Relations): Good morning, Members. As this is the first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations, it is my honour to oversee the election of a Chair. Do we have any nominations for the Chair of the committee?

R. Kahlon: I would like to nominate Bowinn Ma.

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Bowinn, do you accept the nomination?

B. Ma: Yes.

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Any further nominations? Any further nominations? A third and last time, any further nominations?

Motion approved.

[B. Ma in the chair.]

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): Congratulations, Madam Chair.

B. Ma (Chair): Thank you so much. We will now elect a Deputy Chair. Are there any nominations from the floor?

M. Elmore: I’d like to nominate Stephanie Cadieux.

B. Ma (Chair): Any other nominations? Any other nominations? Once more, are there any other nominations for Deputy Chair?

Stephanie, would you be our Deputy Chair?

S. Cadieux: That would be lovely.

Motion approved.

B. Ma (Chair): I think that is all the formal business we actually have to do today.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): Does anybody want an outline of what we’re going to do next week?

B. Ma (Chair): I meant in terms of formal procedures. Okay. So in terms of formal procedures, we’re good? All right.

Committee Draft Workplan
and Meeting Schedule

B. Ma (Chair): Thank you so much, everyone, for coming in this morning. We are on an exceptionally tight timeline, particularly with holidays coming up. Stephanie and I were talking and taking a look at the holidays, and we do want to respect your time off. As a result, we had very little choice about when we could actually convene, when we could have an organizational meeting, what time we needed to set aside for witness testimonies and for public hearings.

[8:05 a.m.]

Just as a heads-up, today this meeting is pretty much just to convene, and I’ll give you a quick overview of what will likely be coming up pretty shortly.

Over the next week and few days, I will work with Susan on creating a draft workplan, which will be sent out to you, ideally by the end of day, December 8, in time for you to have a couple of days to review it for our meeting on December 12. We will be reconvening on December 12, between 10 a.m. and noon, to basically review the workplan and get ourselves set up for the next few months.

As you know, the deadline for our report is February 15, so working backwards, it kind of looks like this. Again, we’ll produce a draft workplan that we’ll then send out to you for review, but based on the timelines, it sort of looks generally like this.

If the report is due on February 15, the report essentially needs to be finalized by the committee by February 12. A couple of weeks before that, we will have our in-camera discussions on the details of that report. Between every meeting that we will have…. We’ll aim to have maybe three to four discussion meetings, but between each meeting, we need to leave at least three days’ time so that the drafters and the researchers can do their work in between.

Before that, we do come up against holidays, but there is exactly a three-day period when we’re pretty certain nobody is on holidays. We would like for you to maybe put a hold in your calendars for that. It’s January 8, 9 and 10.

Prior to that, I know that once we’ve approved the workplan, Susan…. Actually, potentially starting as early as tomorrow, Susan and the legislative research team will start to look at our terms of reference and start to actually do the research that they can.

A. Weaver: Have you sent out the dates — eight, nine and ten — already, or will you send them out so that we can block them a.s.a.p.?

B. Ma (Chair): I will do that after today’s meeting. I’ll send that out. Our next meeting, again, is December 12, which has been sent out.

The draft workplan will be issued end of day, December 8. If you have ideas for witnesses who you would like to bring in, please send them in by start of day of December 7 — so really, end of day, December 6. Send those in. We might have duplicates. We might not want to actually see every single witness that you send in, but we can talk about that together as a committee on December 12.

We just want to make sure that we get all of your ideas, that we get them assembled, put them into a list. We can talk about whether or not we want to see every single person that everyone submitted, later on. Please do that.

Is there anything else — any questions, concerns, comments?

S. Chandra Herbert: I’m just recognizing that most folks are from the Lower Mainland, aside from my colleague from Oak Bay. I just wondered whether or not, budget-wise, it made any sense to see if we could book a room in Vancouver or something like that, so we’re not paying for travel over and back a lot. I’m not sure. Just an idea.

B. Ma (Chair): Thank you so much for bringing that up, Spencer.

On December 12, we’ll be meeting in Victoria because the B.C. Liberal caucus is all here in Victoria. But it has been discussed that for pretty much the rest of the process, whenever it makes sense, we’re going to have it in Vancouver.

Is that how you feel? Yup. It may make sense, in some cases, that we have it in Victoria, but generally we recognize it does probably make more sense for these meetings to take place in Vancouver, particularly because it is likely that a lot of our witnesses will be coming from the Mainland as well.

[8:10 a.m.]

A. Weaver: It’s important, though, that this issue is not exclusive to Vancouver. It is an issue that has been raised in rural areas as well, like in the Kootenays and in Prince George. So it’s important that we somehow ensure — well, we have it through MLA Morris over there — that we have representation from stakeholders there. Is there a budget to assist people to present to our committee or not?

S. Sourial (Clerk Assistant): It’s on a case-by-case basis, and it’s up to the committee to determine. But there are other ways. Witnesses can present by Skype and by teleconference. They don’t have to travel in person. But the committee can take that on a case-by-case basis.

B. Ma (Chair): Certainly, I think, in terms of travel, even if they’re travelling from up north, Vancouver is probably easier for them to get to, rather than Victoria.

Any other questions, concerns, comments before we conclude this brief convening meeting?

All right. Motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 8:11 a.m.