The committee met at 1:32 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hi, everyone. First up is No. 1 on the agenda, annual review of statutory offices of British Columbia: three-year rolling service plans, annual reports and budgetary estimates for fiscal 2018-2019.

First up we have the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, if you would please have the floor. If you’d like to introduce people that you have with you, that would be wonderful.

Review of Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE REPRESENTATIVE
FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

B. Richard: From my office, we have Dawn Thomas-Wightman, who’s the Deputy Representative for Children and Youth. We have Alan Markwart, who’s the chief operating officer in our office; Dianne Buljat, who’s our chief financial officer; and Jeff Rud, our communications director.

Last but not least is Cheyenne Andy, who took over the job yesterday, during National Child Day. She liked it so much that we can’t let her go now. I’m getting a little bit nervous, to be honest. Happy to have Cheyenne with us. Cheyenne is on the youth advisory committee of VACFASS and, as well, works part-time for VACFASS. She is also a part-time student in an arts program on the Lower Mainland. I’m not sure of the university.

C. Andy: Nicola Valley Institute of Technology.

B. Richard: We’re happy to present. Should I go on?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, please go ahead.

[1:35 p.m.]

B. Richard: Well, thank you for having us. I’m very pleased to be here for my first time in front of this committee. Of course, I’ve presented on a number of occasions at the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth. I’ll ask for help if and when I need it — usually, I need it — from the folks that are with me this afternoon.

We’re here to provide you with an overview of the budget request for fiscal 2018-2019 and the proposed rolling budget for 2020-21. Our budget for the current fiscal year consists of $8.98 million operating and $50,000 capital. The representative’s office currently includes 63 FTE employees, operating out of Victoria, for the most part, but also Burnaby and Prince George.

I’m seeking a budget increase of 9 percent for fiscal year 2018-19 and a further 3 percent lift in 2019-20 in order for my office to be able to better serve children, youth and families in this province on two important fronts. The funding increase would enable us to significantly enhance RCY’s community and youth engagement programs and begin conducting qualitative assessments of formal planning for children and youth in care as well as cultural plans for Indigenous children and youth in care as recommended by Grand Chief Ed John.

I’ll get to the specific details of our budget request shortly, but I would like to begin with a brief overview of our office’s mandate and the vulnerable children and youth in British Columbia whom we serve.

As many of you will know, the establishment of the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth was a recommendation of the 2006 Hughes review into the province’s child-serving system. In that report, the Mighty Hughes, as he’s been called — the Hon. Ted Hughes — recommended that government establish an independent body to advocate for children and youth, to review and investigate critical injuries and deaths of children and youth, and to monitor and report publicly on systemic issues across the child-serving system to improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of MCFD services, reporting and accountabilities.

Independence, public accountability and transparency are central to the representative’s role, a role that Mr. Hughes saw as key to re-establishing the confidence of British Columbians in the child-serving system. My office differs from other independent offices, in the sense that we oversee the performance of a single ministry as well as some services provided under an array of ministries and that we have these three distinctive functions that are mandated in our legislation.

Last fiscal year our office received 2,214 critical incident reports from the Ministry of Children and Family Development. In our review of these critical injuries and deaths, we must consider a very broad range of events, from broken bones on the playground to sexual abuse and suicide. Therefore, we require an investigative team that is skilled, that can exercise powers akin to a public inquiry at a fraction of the cost and that can support clear public reporting, as necessary, around incidents.

Our advocates, meanwhile, field an extremely broad range of concerns and requests for assistance — from children and youth in care or those receiving MCFD services, young adults ages 19 to 24 who are eligible to receive services from CLBC and their parents, caregivers, service providers, ministry staff, concerned citizens and grandparents. Advocacy and outreach responsibility are particularly important, as many find dealing with a large government bureaucracy to be extremely difficult and often intimidating. This is especially true for children, youth or families who are vulnerable.

Since April 2007, the RCY has opened more than 18,000 advocacy cases, directly helping vulnerable children and their families and caregivers to get the help they need. In the most recent fiscal year, our advocates opened 1,846 new cases.

[1:40 p.m.]

Our monitoring unit tackles a wide range of issues, from child and youth mental health services to substance use services to the resourcing and staffing of delegated Aboriginal agencies. This information helps us to advocate for systemic change, sometimes through reaching out directly to MCFD and other service providers and sometimes through published RCY reports that make recommendations to government.

In addition to those three legislated mandate areas, RCY includes a fourth major component, our Indigenous Strategies and Partnerships team, which ensures that the office is culturally safe and responsible and that its work is guided by relationships based on respect and reconciliation, equity, accountability, Indigenous voices and best practices.

Considering the vast overrepresentation of Indigenous children and youth in the child welfare system, this area of our office is vital. Nearly 63 percent of children and youth in care in B.C., more than 4,300 in total, are Indigenous, despite the fact that only about 9 percent of the entire child and youth population in the province is Indigenous. The ISP team ensures that our office has an Indigenous focus and helps to strengthen RCY’s work on behalf of Indigenous children, youth and young adults.

That is the high-level summary of what we do. The Hughes review said our office should be established “to assist, encourage and sometimes prod the government to be more aware and responsive to the individual concerns of children, youth and families, and to recommend changes that will address broader problems in the child welfare system.” This remains an accurate summary of our mission.

As you can see in our budget submission, which we sent a few days ago, structural changes that have been made since I’ve been formally confirmed as representative in February of this year have provided us with some flexibility to do more within our existing budget. Those changes include a flattening of the organization, a reduction of the number of executives at RCY by eliminating all associate deputy representative positions, thereby freeing resources for reallocation.

Among the things that this has allowed us to do is to fund the cost of some youth engagement events and activities — the initial two versions of the Ignite Your Spirit Indigenous youth forum and the operations of our social media youth team, to name a couple.

However, as mentioned, I’m here today to ask for an increase to our annual budget. Part of that requested increase is to enable us to do more and better youth engagement, something we believe is critical to ensure that our office operates in the spirit of the UN convention on the rights of the child. Article 12 of that convention assures young people that they have the right to be heard and their voices considered when decisions about them are made. I consider that to be the single most important article of the UN convention.

Grand Chief Ed John, in his 2016 report Indigenous Resilience, Connectedness and Reunification: From Root Causes to Root Solutions, suggested adherence to the UNCRC, and the current government’s platform for the 2017 provincial election promised to implement the Grand Chief’s recommendations.

Last week a review panel report released by the B.C. Coroners Service and the First Nations Health Authority examining deaths of Indigenous youth and young adults recommended the promotion of “connectedness to peers, family, community and culture” through a number of tactics incorporating youth consultation and engagement throughout.

There is wide agreement on the value of ensuring that our children have a voice in this process. As such, our office has a responsibility to fully engage children and youth, to hear their voices, to allow them to take our place sometimes as well, and to consistently incorporate those voices and opinions into our work and to have youth ideas and input drive that work when appropriate. After all, youth are the experts when it comes to their own lives.

[1:45 p.m.]

In August, we held our second Ignite Your Spirit youth engagement forum for 32 Indigenous youth in care, at Lake Cowichan, here on the Island. Minister Conroy joined us for part of that event. I know the minister saw firsthand that day the value of this experience for the young people who took part and just how important it is for organizations that work on behalf of children and youth to hear their voices firsthand. Those children let us know that they want to be consulted in decisions that affect them, and they don’t want that communication to be limited to times of crisis.

We want to incorporate more and better youth engagement into the work of our office. To that end, we have engaged the Vancouver Foundation to conduct a review of best practices and to help us develop a detailed youth and community engagement strategy for the RCY. We’ve been working with them for some time, and we expect to have that strategy in hand early in the new year.

I’m asking today for a budget increase to be able to begin to carry out the work that will flow from that strategy. I’m seeking an additional $670,000 and five FTEs, phased in over the next two fiscal years to get that work done.

This envelope will enable us to enhance RCY youth and community engagement through activities that may include the following: establishing mechanisms to give youth a voice and direct input on the work of the office, such as through the RCY Youth Advisory Committee; expanding youth rights; education workshops to communities throughout B.C. for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, including those with disabilities; implementing reconciliation workshops in communities across B.C., in partnership with the Federation of Youth in Care Networks; expanding other engagement activities, such as youth forums focused on specific issues, including aging out of care and homelessness.

As mentioned, I am proposing to phase in these enhanced services over the next two fiscal years — three FTEs and $404,000 in fiscal year 2018-19 and an additional two FTEs and $266,000 in fiscal year 2019-20.

The second part of our budget increase request is to help solve what have been ongoing and systemic problems with MCFD and DAAs when it comes to the completion of plans of care and also with regard to the quality of that planning for children and youth in care.

There are nearly 7,000 children and youth in B.C. who are in the care of the B.C. government, about 3,700 of whom are in permanent care under continuing custody orders. Planning for these children — for their education, for their health and well-being, for their connection to culture — is essential. But too often this important aspect of care falls to the wayside. The office has highlighted this issue in a number of reports over the years, including Much More than Paperwork in 2013, which showed that only five out of 100 care plans reviewed by the RCY were complete and that only about half of them could be considered current.

Many of the investigative reports we have done on critical injuries and deaths of children in care over the years have revealed poor planning for these children’s lives. Better planning might well have helped the young woman who wrote to me just this week. I’d like to quote a part of her email:

“I still struggle with understanding why I was left on my own the first month of tenth grade. If my social worker or someone had met with me, instead of allowing it to happen, things might have turned out differently in my life.

“I don’t think that impressionable 15-year-olds should be left to their own devices, as I was. I didn’t even have independent living or help with money for rent. No social worker met with me and even asked me if I needed help to finish high school.

“The things that happened to me as a result of being left on my own so young — getting sex-trafficked, abused, having to deal drugs to pay rent — are things I continue to pay the price for emotionally.”

I am happy to say that this young woman, who is 32 now, wrote to me because she was initially turned down for a tuition waiver because she’s older than the age cap. She was approved on appeal, and she’s continuing her studies in nursing. She has a 4.1 grade point average. She’s doing well but receiving counselling and struggling with some of the issues she faced earlier on in life.

We continue to have serious concerns about the overall quality of planning for children and youth in care.

[1:50 p.m.]

Earlier this year our office received a call from a social worker who told us that many social workers in her area were “ticking the required boxes” on care plans in order to make their quota, so that their superiors would receive a raise. This social worker was concerned because, although this practice meant that completion rates were improved, the children’s files were not accurate. It goes without saying that accurate files are essential when it comes to ensuring the safety, well-being and development of children in care.

These sorts of problems with planning for children in care are unacceptable when one considers that the province is the parent of these children — not always a very good parent, I’m sad to say. If the province does not properly plan for them, then nobody does.

Grand Chief John, in his 2016 report, specifically recommended that the RCY “be provided with a mandate and the appropriate resources to review and ensure resiliency, reunification and permanency planning be done for each Indigenous child under a continuing custody order.” The Grand Chief also recommended that the RCY or the provincial court or another new tribunal or independent body to be created “be required to conduct an annual review of care plans for Indigenous children in care, with special attention to ensuring that a cultural and language component of each care plan exists and is implemented.”

As previously stated, the provincial government has committed to following through on Grand Chief John’s recommendations. In the spirit of those recommendations, we are requesting a budget increase of $407,000 and 3.0 FTEs to implement a qualitative assessment process for planning for children in continuing custody and of cultural plans for Indigenous children in care.

We’ve been working together with MCFD on the issue. Our proposed plan would supplement a current ministry commitment to ensuring that plans of care are in place and to conducting regular audits of those plans.

Our role is a role of oversight. It’s not our job to, with great respect to Chief John…. My proposition is that it’s not our role to conduct audits of every care plan for every child in care, but to ensure that these audits are happening. That’s what we’re proposing to do with the pilot that we have. We’ve worked with the previous minister and with the current minister on a set of terms of reference on how that work can move forward.

Early in the next calendar year, MCFD expects to implement an audit tool that will focus on file reviews of plans of care and ascertain whether there has been compliance with standards. RCY, meanwhile, is in the process of developing our own assessment approach that will focus more heavily on the quality of care planning, including cultural planning for Indigenous children and permanency planning for all children in continuing care. Our assessment tool will be ready for implementation of pilot testing early next calendar year as well. The plan is for the ministry and RCY to proceed concurrently and collaboratively with these different but complementary approaches, with the end result being better planning for children and youth in care.

We request this funding for a time-limited, three-year period only and will report to this committee annually on progress to date. I should emphasize that our request for reviewing care planning is very modest and a beginning step. It does not go nearly as far as what Grand Chief John contemplated in his report and recommendations. In this regard, the Grand Chief actually recommended that the RCY review every single plan for every Indigenous child in continuing care every year and, moreover, that obviously much more expensive options of the courts or another independent body, such as an administrative tribunal, could be considered to carry out these reviews.

[1:55 p.m.]

In conclusion, to recap our presentation, between the youth and community engagement initiative and the care plan review proposal, we are seeking a budget increase for the representative’s office of $811,000, or 9 percent of our total budget, in 2018-19, with a further increase of $266,000, or 3 percent of our total budget, in 2019-20.

We’ve been making substantial efforts internally to refocus the existing budget resources that we have. Obviously, we consider that they’re not adequate to meet Chief Ed John’s recommendations or to conduct the type of youth and community engagement that we feel we need to do.

Thank you for considering our request, the details of which can be found in our submission. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Richard and everyone from the Representative for Children and Youth, for your work in an extremely important area for our province. Thank you for your work with children and families and with our youth. It’s such important work.

We have about five minutes.

S. Cadieux: Thank you, Bernard. I’m very supportive of the work you want to do on the care plans. It’s far too long in coming. I’m very supportive of the model that you’re putting forward.

I do have questions, though, about the youth engagement model. That looks like a very, very rich program, from my perspective, having run an outreach and event program for the province for people with disabilities with one person, me, and a budget of $100,000. I held events around the province and into the Yukon on an annual basis for a number of years — upwards of 50 events a year.

While I understand that your clientele is different and there are different things you need to do outreach, it still seems like…. And the addition of three, plus two, new full-time staff, to do that work and accompanying budgets for hosting of events — how much are we talking about? What are we talking about in terms of youth engagement? We’re talking about full-scale, three-day forums five times a year. What are we talking about here? It seems like an awfully rich request, for me.

B. Richard: Certainly, the model that we’ve adopted for Indigenous youth engagement is, I’d have to say, a costly model, because we incorporate a great deal of safety in the events.

Dawn, I know you participated in the last Ignite your Spirit workshops, as I did. Cheyenne participated in the first ones last year.

They require a great deal of support — five elders for the entire week, counsellors in place. We were dealing with, in some cases…. Two of the youth were in recovery. It’s an expensive model. But given the issue, which I think is acknowledged by everyone in this room and the chamber downstairs — the significant overrepresentation of Indigenous youth in care — we believe we have to do more of this kind of engagement.

This morning I was at an advisory committee that we have established for children and youth with special needs. One of the things that we heard is that people feel they don’t see enough of us in the remote parts of the province. I’m sure that’s an issue you hear about all the time. They consider our work as too focused on the Lower Mainland and Victoria. That’s an expensive proposition as well.

It’s a huge province, as I’ve discovered in the past year — 203 First Nations, some very small, and 24, now, delegated Aboriginal agencies. I thought I’d be able to get around to all of those in a year. It’s just not possible.

We talk to young persons every single day, but often it’s in a climate that’s charged. We’re dealing with a child in crisis. Their family or caregiver is intervening with us. We’re talking to ministry officials, who are not always very happy to hear from us. They know it’s not a good day when we’re calling. So it’s not the kind of climate in which we want to engage youth. We want to do it more systematically, and that’s why we think we need this kind of support.

The other…. Yes, go ahead, Dawn.

[2:00 p.m.]

D. Thomas-Wightman: I just was going to say that there are other organizations, which you’re well aware of, that do youth engagement, but not with the success and the focus on Indigenous youth. That was a real gap, as you know, with the federation. Although they’re doing some great outreach — and I don’t want to take anything away from that organization — we need to do a better job. I think they recognize that as well.

In engaging with Indigenous youth, you need relationship. And to develop those relationships and that trust takes time. So those four-and five-day events, although costly, are important in that we develop trust with each other, with the youth — that they’re able to share some of those stories. Then we get to the meaningful engagement on day 3 and day 4.

The other piece — you’ll know this as well from your previous work — is that some of those youth have never had any connection to culture or any opportunity to participate in that type of camp.

We shared this morning the feedback that we had: “This is the first opportunity I had to be like a typical kid and have a talent show at a camp and have some laughter and fun.” Those kids don’t get opportunities to go to camp because they’re in recovery, because there are significant special needs. They’re not the kids that participate. So we need to access those youth and make sure that we’re hearing from them.

While it’s costly, I don’t know if there’s another way to do it. If there was, we would be looking at that and looking at a less expensive way. I have to say, the ministry Youth Advisory Committee was a huge help to us. We worked together with them very closely.

It’s just that there’s a gap. There’s also the gap that Bernard talked about. We don’t get into Penticton and Kamloops and those areas enough. People don’t even know…. If you remember the suicide and murder up in Prince Rupert, the coroner’s inquest came out that those families had never heard of RCY in Prince Rupert. I was shocked. How could that be, that they’ve never heard of us? So we need to do some more work around youth engagement and community engagement.

B. Richard: I think our model, obviously, is different because we represent the Legislature. In a sense, I’m an officer of the Legislature.

Clearly, there are non-profits that work with shoestring budgets, and you were referring to that. I’ve been on the boards of many of these kinds of organizations. But we’re a representative of this chamber, and we think that we have to do the best quality work that’s done. We need to set the model that needs to exist in terms of youth engagement.

That’s our proposal.

J. Brar: Thank you for the extraordinary work you and, of course, the people around you do to serve the children of British Columbia.

I just want to clarify that you’re asking for, I understand, the additional amount, which is $811,000 for 2018-19, which is 9 percent, and then $266,000 for 2019-20.

The amount you mention here for the assessments of plans of care and cultural plans, which is $407,000…. Is that part of that amount, or is this additional money for the assessment?

A. Markwart: It’s part of the same amount. The $407,000 would be in the next fiscal year. That would be the full amount for care plans for that year and ensuing years.

J. Brar: Okay. Thank you for the clarification.

My second question is with this amount…. I know you indicated a little bit about that. But this is nowhere close to what was recommended by the Chief. Where would you go with this amount? How much can you perform? How much assessment can you do? Is that only focused on the Indigenous children, or is it for everybody?

B. Richard: For all children. But certainly, Grand Chief Ed John’s recommendations were focused on Indigenous children. Obviously, our mandate goes beyond just Indigenous children. They’re overrepresented in the system, so much of our work will be…. You can expect that two-thirds of our work, over 60 percent, will involve reviewing care plans of Indigenous children.

Our role is a role of oversight. We don’t deliver services directly. We need to understand what the issues are, and then we work with ministries and sometimes prod them, to use Ted Hughes’ word, to implement improvements.

All we can do is…. We will develop a method of review that allows us to do a certain number of care plans per year, identify issues. We have a working group now, which we’ve established with MCFD. That work started under the previous government and continues now.

[2:05 p.m.]

We will establish a methodology that will allow us to review a number of care plans — obviously, not all — and then work with the ministry to bring about the improvements that we think are needed.

The ministry has committed, in its audits, to conduct much more significant auditing of care plans generally. They have 4,500 employees. We have 60. Clearly, we’re not going to be doing all care plans in it, so it meets only partway Chief Ed John’s concerns. But we’re willing to pilot because we think that combined with the work of the ministry, we can bring about the changes, the issues, that he was concerned about.

Obviously, it’s a much less costly model that could be proposed. I don’t think provincial court judges would be interested, personally, but if you were to establish a separate tribunal or agency to do this kind of work, it would cost millions of dollars.

J. Brar: So you will be able to do a relatively small number of files of this.

B. Richard: Yes. We think maybe between 50 and 100. We don’t know because we’ve never done this kind of work.

J. Brar: Okay.

A. Markwart: Probably a couple hundred a year.

P. Milobar: Just a question around staffing the FTEs. On page 9, you reference that you could actually staff at 105 percent due to attrition and lag of new staff coming in. So I’m just wondering: if you can’t maintain full FTEs right now, why is there the request to add a whole whack more FTEs?

It’s a two-part question. I can understand the need for more outreach and more seminars and those types of things, for lack of a better word. I’m not phrasing it very well. But the only significant increase I seem to see here is staffing. Where is the money coming forward to run all of the programming for the new staff that would be doing all this extra outreach?

B. Richard: Certainly, the budget request would cover all costs associated with youth and community engagement. The reason why we think now we have to recruit at 105 percent is that we’ve been prudent managers of the budgets that you’ve allocated, so we tended not to hire at 100 percent. But we’re dealing with turnover. I think that’s true for….

In fact, I’ve asked our HR director to verify with other similar agencies, and there is a significant turnover here. Coming from the east coast, I like to think it’s because the unemployment rate is at 4.5 percent. There are lots of opportunities. In a small agency, we can offer only limited opportunities for advancement, so we see people come and go. But we’ve decided that because we were underspending our budget, we can hire over 100 percent and still not go over budget.

I’m trying to explain. Is that correct, Dianne?

D. Buljat: Accurate.

B. Richard: We can find the people we need. We last had a competition for an advocate about a month ago, and we had 150 applicants for one position. People do want to work in our office. They feel that it’s a valuable contribution to vulnerable children.

We have no problem recruiting. In fact, we’ve had a lot of success with our competitions in the last few months, but we’ve decided to change our recruitment strategy and hire above 100 percent because there are always vacancies throughout the year. So even doing that, we don’t overspend our budget.

P. Milobar: The second part, though, is…. I can see the staffing costs for the increased outreach and the new system. I don’t see any increase of any of the budgets to actually do the outreach — of any significance. So where is that programming money in this budget? To the layperson looking at this, it looks like we’re adding five or six more staff to an office, but there’s no increase…. I’m just wondering where it is — that’s all — and what the scale of it is.

A. Markwart: It’s probably best explained in the first appendix to the submission, entitled “Budget summary.”

[2:10 p.m.]

If you look down the first set of columns, “Youth engagement,” you see there’s $208,000 for base salaries, supplementary salary costs and employee benefits. Then you have a number of items: employee travel, professional services, information systems and office and business expenses. All of those are related to youth engagement, so it’s not entirely salaries.

There are additional costs that go along — the costs of holding events. There would be a certain number of contract costs, which, for example, would be the use of elders, consultants, and so on. Obviously, if we’re reaching out into the far reaches of communities across the province, there are considerable travel costs as well.

P. Milobar: One last follow-up on that. I appreciate that, but I mean, I see a total of $404,000. I see 214, 266, 290…. I’m not seeing outreach, I guess is what I’m saying, within these line items. I’m seeing employee travel, which is understandable — they need to get there — but I’m not seeing a lot of money set aside. Office and business expenses. But I’m not seeing….

I’m not understanding where the money comes from to run the programming once you’re on the ground in these remote communities to provide the services.

B. Richard: We don’t provide services directly. See, the outreach is consulting and involving youth in the work that we do. Some of the funding for this we’re asking for. Some of the funding we’ve reallocated within our own budget. We’ve eliminated three senior positions in the organization. We flattened the organization. That’s allowed us to save some money that we will reallocate to youth engagement and community engagement as well.

A lot of the work will be done by members of our team. Kind of a secondary reason for doing this is that we’ve been, like many organizations who do this kind of work, dealing with some — I don’t know how to call it — secondary trauma…

D. Thomas-Wightman: Vicarious trauma.

B. Richard: …vicarious trauma with some of our advocacy staff. So we want to diversify their work so that they don’t spend every day, all day on the phone or poring over some very difficult files. Community outreach is a way to also diversify their work experience.

We’re confident that by reallocating some of the funding…. We’ve also been using some of our funding in recent years for research and some contracting out of services. We’ve pulled quite a bit of that back, and we’re reallocating to be able to do this, to complete this initiative. So we’re very confident we can do it within the budget ask.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Are there any other questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much, Mr. Richard and everybody from the staff. We appreciate your time.

B. Richard: Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): If we could recess for 15 minutes till the next meeting.

The committee recessed from 2:13 p.m. to 2:22 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, Drew McArthur and Jay Fedorak. We have Dave here too. We met earlier.

Please go ahead.

OFFICE OF THE INFORMATION
AND PRIVACY COMMISSIONER

D. McArthur: Good afternoon, hon. Chair, members of the committee. Thank you for seeing us today. As the Chair noted, joining me today are Jay Fedorak, my deputy commissioner; Dave Van Swieten, the executive director of Shared Services; and members of my staff in the public gallery here, for support.

I’ll keep my remarks as brief as possible to allow more time for discussion. I would like to take an opportunity to highlight some key accomplishments and outline our priorities for the coming fiscal year, and then I’ll move on to my budget proposal.

As you know, on an interim basis, I fulfil two roles. That’s the registrar of lobbyists and the Information and Privacy Commissioner. As the registrar of lobbyists, my job is to monitor and enforce the Lobbyists Registration Act or the LRA. We have up to five staff working, at least part time, on ORL issues — one full-time registrar, and support people and investigators.

In the first six months of this fiscal year, we conducted 66 compliance reviews, which are reviews of a lobbyist’s activity identified either through a complaint, an inquiry or an environmental scan by our staff. Of those 66, two went to formal investigation and resulted in administrative monetary penalties. Three other files, carried over from the last fiscal year, also went to investigation and resulted in administrative penalties.

[2:25 p.m.]

As I’ve outlined in my budget submission, my first priority is to promote legislative changes that would make it easier for lobbyists to comply with the law and to provide more transparency in lobbying. Four years ago my office recommended changes to the Lobbyists Registration Act. That was Liz Denham, then the registrar of lobbyists.

They were formulated after two rounds of consultations with stakeholders. These changes include requiring the registration of actual rather than anticipated lobbying, eliminating the 100-hour non-registered threshold for organizations with in-house lobbyists and requiring lobbyists to register third-party interests that have a stake in the outcome of their lobbying activities. We believe these changes will correct design flaws, when the legislation was originally drafted.

My second priority as registrar is to continue providing public education about the requirements of the Lobbyists Registration Act. We intend to use a variety of strategies, including conferences, training workshops, speaking engagements, webinars, articles in newsletters and journals, toolkits and our e-newsletter, Influencing B.C.

I’m pleased to report that there’s been a further decrease in non-compliant registrations. We believe our ongoing focus on public education has been successful in promoting increasing levels of compliance in the lobbyist community.

Now to my duties as the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Pages 7 through 10 of my budget submission outline our major accomplishments since the beginning of the fiscal year, so I will not repeat all of those. The major priority for next fiscal year is to address the significant growth in demand for our services and provide timely service to citizens and consumers seeking redress through our office.

Investigation is the first stage of our process when we receive a complaint or an appeal. There are 12 investigators on our team. These investigators attempt to resolve complaints by working with the parties or by issuing informal findings. They resolved 96 percent of the 1,500 complaints and appeals last year, so that part is working well.

Adjudication is the second stage of our process, which involves a formal written hearing or inquiry when an appeal or a complaint cannot be resolved through the mediation techniques of our investigators. The majority of adjudication work is appeals of access-to-information requests. Adjudicators issue binding written orders. There are five staff and one part-time contract employee on our adjudication team. Should one of the parties disagree with an adjudicator’s decision, they can seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

There are currently ten outstanding judicial reviews, most of which commenced during fiscal year 2016-17. We had eight outstanding judicial reviews at this time last year. In my presentation to this committee in November of 2016, I mentioned our work on our outstanding caseload. We indicated that the number of files awaiting assignment to an investigator had decreased to 95. As of November this year, the backlog of unassigned files was reduced to 89.

We continue to explore opportunities to make further reductions through our continuous improvement program to better ensure service for those waiting to have their complaints investigated. This program has streamlined our case file management from when a complaint or appeal file arrives in our in-basket through when they are resolved or discontinued by an investigator. We have new policies with respect to the opening and closing of files and strategies to ensure that all citizens have fair and timely access to our resources. We have established performance targets and measures to evaluate our success, and we’ve also taken measures to streamline our adjudication process.

However, an unprecedented increase in the number of requests for time extensions from public bodies is challenging our ability to close files at the current rate. These time-extension requests are primarily from government ministries. Our legislation, FIPPA, requires public bodies to respond to access requests within 30 days, but the legislation permits time extensions in certain circumstances.

Public bodies may extend a further 30 days if there is a large volume of records to search, if it’s necessary to consult with another party that may be affected by the disclosure of records, if the applicant has failed to provide sufficient detail to enable the public body to locate the records, or if the applicant consents to the public body extending the time for responding. In cases where 60 days are not enough, a public body must apply to my office for more time to avoid contravening the timelines of FIPPA.

[2:30 p.m.]

Our intake officers have the delegated authority to process requests for time extensions, and they must respond before the 60-day timeline expires. Therefore, responding to their requests for time extensions must take priority over our other work, such as opening complaints and appeals.

Last year there was a 75 percent increase in requests for time extensions over the previous year, and we’re on track to match that same level again this year. The result is that the other work of the intake officers is backing up. Consequently, citizens are waiting up to three months for confirmation that we have received their complaint.

The volume of the requests for time extensions is beyond our control because public bodies have the statutory right to request them. Therefore, I am requesting the assistance of this committee to address this new workload caused by a significant increase in requests for time extensions.

Turning now to recent reports of my office. I released a report of an investigation into the use of audio and video surveillance of employees at a chicken-catching operation in B.C. This is another example of an organization adopting a privacy-invasive solution to a problem without trying other more effective and less privacy-invasive alternatives. In that report, I underline the importance of privacy management programs and tailoring them to the size of an organization’s operations with respect to personal information.

This report follows on my recent audit of the use of video surveillance by a medical clinic. These are just the latest in a series of cases that illustrate my concerns about technology leading to ubiquitous video surveillance both by public bodies and private sector organizations. Surveillance technology is easily available, low-cost and simple to implement, and I’m concerned that many organizations are acting before they seriously consider the privacy implications outlined in our legislation.

We will also continue our leadership in the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities, or APPA, which includes 19 agencies from 13 countries. We promote the interests of British Columbians in a region that is critical to the province’s economic success, since British Columbians’ data is shared with our trading partners.

We are in the second year of responsibility for the secretariat of APPA. Last week we co-hosted the semi-annual conference here in Vancouver with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. At the conference, I was pleased to moderate a panel on practical privacy with the chief privacy officers of four of the world’s most data-intensive organizations: Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. Just four small organizations.

The reason that this forum is so important is that the digital economy is becoming an increasingly important part of B.C.’s crucial ties with Asia-Pacific. It is essential for personal data to be able to flow freely, for commercial purposes, but securely across boundaries.

To properly protect and regulate these data movements, we must continue to work with our fellow regulators to share best practices, ensure consistent regulatory processes and engage in joint enforcement work, such as the now infamous Ashley Madison breach, in which Canada’s and Australia’s privacy commissioners cooperated on an investigation; and the most recent Equifax breach which we are cooperating on.

The secretariat function further strengthens our relationship with each member of APPA and contributes to B.C.’s reputation for leadership. The activities of the secretariat include setting the agenda for and organizing the twice-yearly APPA forums. This involves managing and disseminating all the documents related to the forums and collecting forum membership fees. We also chair eight APPA governance committee meetings annually.

Through this forum, we’re in a position to showcase B.C.’s laws to the world. We also have greater influence in the forum with respect to raising privacy issues of particular interest to British Columbians, including breach reporting and de-identification of data.

Now to my budget ask. My budget request for this year has two parts. The first addresses ongoing cost pressures, such as mandated increases to salaries and benefits. The second is for resources to address the spike in requests for time extensions that I mentioned earlier.

[2:35 p.m.]

On the topic of cost pressures, 68 percent of my budget is for salaries and benefits; 8 percent is for professional services, such as technological and legal advice; 18 percent is for shared costs, such as our shared service costs, rent and utilities; 5 percent is for operating expenses, such as amortization and office expenses; and 1 percent is for travel.

We have a staff complement of 37 positions, plus myself. This means that management of mandated cost increases must come from salaries — that is, not hiring staff — or a reduction in outside professional services, such as legal advice, which are driven by appeals to the Supreme Court.

For the forthcoming fiscal year, my office is again faced with an adjustment to cover government-mandated salary increments and adjustments for schedule A employees, management employees and the commissioner in the amount of $135,000. In addition, we face increases in our shared services costs of $6,000, IT of $1,000 and building occupancy of $5,000 and other increases of $9,000. This amounts to unavoidable increases of $157,000, compared to our 2017-18 estimates.

We have exhausted the flexibility in our budget to address these cost pressures. Last year we came within 2 percent of our appropriation. In order to meet these increases, the only option available would be to not hire for any vacant positions. For these reasons, I am requesting a funding increase to cover the new and ongoing cost pressures totalling $157,000.

As I have mentioned, the sudden spike in requests for time extensions from public bodies is hampering our ability to deliver services to citizens. After years of a workload of between 600 and 700 time-extension requests, it is now up to nearly 1,300 per year. We believe this is the new normal.

The increase in this volume is a result of government receiving requests that produce higher volumes of pages. So 300,000 is now not unusual, and the requests are more complex. I reviewed this issue in my recent report on the timeliness of government’s access-to-information responses. We also expect the recommendations to government ministries to meet statutory timelines for responding to access requests will result in them requesting more time extensions.

In addition, requests for time extensions themselves are becoming more complex and time-consuming. In some cases, we receive requests for time extensions simultaneously from multiple ministries that have the same access requests from the same applicant.

Some ministries may not need as much time as others to complete the request, and they may cite different statutory provisions to justify their requests for time. As a result, they may ask for different amounts of time to complete their individual requests, and we need to ensure that they are all valid and reasonable.

To restore adequate service to the public, we are requesting two additional intake officers, reducing the workload for each intake officer back down to 200 time-extension requests per year. It would eliminate the backlog in opening complaint and review files and enable them to close files at early resolution. Therefore, I’m requesting funding of $205,000 for salary, benefits, office space and other related costs for two additional intake officers, bringing our number of intake officers to six.

In summary, I ask the committee’s consideration for funding to cover unavoidable increases in salary, benefits, IT billing and other costs, netting at $157,000; and funding for two additional intake officers to deal with an increase in requests for time extensions, in the amount of $205,000. In total, this request represents an operating budget of $6.426 million and a capital budget of $45,000 for 2018-19.

Thank you for your attention. I’d be pleased to take any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. McArthur, for everything you are doing under your two positions at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists.

S. Cadieux: My question is, actually, about the piece that isn’t in the ask for this year but notionally in for next year, and that’s the piece around public awareness. I understand, I think, the intent of increasing public awareness on privacy regulation and access.

[2:40 p.m.]

I’m confused a bit by the request, which would be for a policy analyst and an investigator. If the issue is helping people understand this on a broad scale, why would one request an investigator and not dollars for an information campaign or something to that effect?

D. McArthur: Good question. As it relates to what we see in the future, and in support of work that we have done in setting our strategy and working with our external advisory board, they have identified a number of very significant issues that are coming at us, including the use of AI, or artificial intelligence, to process data; the use of big data; and the activities of companies that I mentioned earlier when I hosted the panel.

A lot of our outreach and communication work is done through the work of our policy analysts. So they become experts in the aspects of the law to help organizations and the public understand what their rights are and organizations what their obligations are. We do a lot of reviews of privacy impact assessments in other organizations who come to us for requests for consultation. The use of an investigator is what we anticipate these new technologies are going to cause, in terms of an increased and heightened awareness of the ubiquitousness of technology that is doing things with our personal information.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. A couple of small questions, really. Do you have a year-on-year percentage increase that you can just summarize for us?

D. McArthur: In other words, the ask that we have put forward represents a 6 percent increase over last year.

M. Dean: Six percent.

D. McArthur: Yes, 6 percent.

M. Dean: Okay. That includes the two FTEs. Then what’s your request for the following two years, by percentage?

D. McArthur: I don’t have the percentage off the top of my head, but Mr. Van Swieten, my figures expert, might have that answer.

D. Van Swieten: We don’t have the percentages, but there is a spreadsheet we provided in advance that shows what the dollar values are. I don’t have a percentage without a calculator in front of me.

M. Dean: Okay. I’ll go away and work that out.

My second question is about capital expenses. You have $45,000 a year allocated for capital expenses, but within your operating budget, you already cover your overheads, then your IT and all those kinds of needs. So what falls under the scope of your capital expenses?

D. McArthur: Under capital, it’s shared hardware services, such as servers and the mechanics to operate our IT infrastructure that is shared amongst the four officers in our building. Our servers are aging. That’s what that capital allocation is for, if we require new servers during the year.

M. Dean: So that remains constant through your three years?

D. McArthur: It has been and is constant at $45,000. We have not reached that maximum ever yet.

M. Dean: Yeah, you’ve spent $24,000. Okay.

D. McArthur: That’s because we share it with four other offices, which makes it a little more economical.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any other questions?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just curious. What’s the square footage of your offices? Round figures.

D. Van Swieten: I don’t know.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): How many total employees?

D. McArthur: In my office, there are 38 total. We are at a space maximum right now, although we do have access to other locations in the building. We occupy two floors, not two full floors. We share one floor with folks from Shared Services. The Ombudsperson is on another floor. Then there’s the Merit Commissioner and the Police Complaint Commissioner.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): If you have a minute, would you mind getting back to me just on square footage, if you think of it. No rush.

D. Van Swieten: Sure. To provide a broader context as well, building on what Drew said, at 947 Fort, where we live, there are four independent offices of the Legislature, plus Shared Services. We occupy, basically, the second, third, fourth, fifth and half of the sixth floors. It allows the offices to share space, things like boardrooms and reception, and have common services like that.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): That’s important. It’s been brought up before. So thank you for that.

P. Milobar: The question from Dan triggered…. So the extra staff come on. There’s not going to be a new capital request for space allocation. If you’re already in a full space, where are the two going to work out of?

[2:45 p.m.]

D. McArthur: We are lucky enough to have a bit of flexibility on one floor that is being vacated, the sixth floor. We have half of the sixth floor now. The space is being vacated by the existing tenant, so we will be able to utilize a bit of that office space. We do not foresee a capital request associated with the two extra employees.

R. Leonard: I’m not sure if this is more of a philosophical question. On the lobbyist registration, you have: “Public education and outreach to raise awareness amongst lobbyists in terms of what their duties are.”

They’re in the job to help people get something. I guess I have a little bit of trouble thinking about a service to them without a corollary service to the public to understand a little bit of what they should be watching themselves, if they’re going to alert your office to any issue. Am I clear there?

D. McArthur: There are probably three, I’ll say — and Jay can correct me — key stakeholder groups for lobbyist registration. One is the lobbyists themselves, to ensure they are following the law and doing registrations appropriately.

The other is the associations, the corollary of lobbyist associations, who assist lobbyists with their work and are a governing body for them.

The third is organizations and the people who use the registry. These are typically journalists, who use the registry to determine who is lobbying whom. The whole point behind lobbyist registration is that database of transparency, as to who’s lobbying whom. Have I missed any stakeholders?

J. Fedorak: No. A few years ago a journalist, Chad Skelton, did an award-winning series of articles about the lobbyist registry and lobbying activities in British Columbia, and we provided him with all the data from our registration system and all the context.

We try, to the best we can, to make information about the requirements and the legislation public. We publish the e-newsletter. We put all of our investigation reports on our website.

I think there’s a bit of a difference between the Freedom of Information Act and the Lobbyists Registration Act, in the sense that the Lobbyists Registration Act is currently very limited in its scope. It just requires the registration by lobbyists of their lobbying activity. We don’t regulate the behaviours of lobbyists, such as other jurisdictions in Canada do.

In terms of what the legislation requires, when you must register and what details you have to register, the legislation really is firmly focused on the lobbyist. Our job is to try and ensure the lobbyists comply with the legislation. Our public education tends to focus on the lobbyists, but whenever we can, we try and spread as much information out to people who are interested in the lobbying regime in B.C.

A. Weaver: I just wanted to comment on the lobbyist legislation. The legislation has been updated slightly. Those five recommendations that you had in the report, we brought forward. A number of them will be passed in the fall, in particular to ensure that people register who they have lobbied, as opposed to listing 87 MLAs as who they might potentially lobby, which is not very helpful to anyone.

I suspect we’ll see that legislation come through in the fall. The government has agreed to a further review, which is why we didn’t push through some of the amendments that we had written by the legislative drafters. So I hope that comes in a timely manner.

D. McArthur: Yes, we fully endorse those recommendations.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just to follow up on that, with those recommendations, would you anticipate any changes to the budgeting or your plans or any of that? Would that impact this, and would it be something that you would need to come back to this committee for? Or do you feel that you’re anticipating those?

D. McArthur: As it relates to the amendments that Mr. Weaver was mentioning that might be implemented in the fall, we do see impacts to the registration database associated with that and some improvements, and we have not scoped out the time and cost to do that. While I don’t believe significant, there will be work to be done. We may need to come back to this committee.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Are there any other questions?

[2:50 p.m.]

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just really quickly, page 18 of your statement. I just want to run down a few things.

Professional services, accounting, for ’17-18, $530,000.

D. McArthur: My expert, Dave Van Swieten, knows more about the STOBs than I do.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Okay, just real quick. Professional services.

D. Van Swieten: A significant portion of that relates to adjudicative files, so they’d be legal contracts.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): To independent…?

D. Van Swieten: Yes.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Building occupancy for the square footage. You’re going to get me other expenses? Fourth line up from the bottom.

D. Van Swieten: That is how we track the contribution to the corporate shared services model. You may not recall, but corporate shared services has to sit somewhere, so we sit with the Office of the Ombudsperson and have a chargeback model based on head count for the other three offices.

When Drew contributes to the funding for corporate shared services, it shows up under “other expenses.”

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): That’s entirely that?

D. Van Swieten: That’s entirely that.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): You’ll come back with square footage?

D. Van Swieten: Absolutely, yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Dave, if you wouldn’t mind sending that to Kate, and then that’ll be sent to everyone.

D. Van Swieten: I’ll send it to Kate, and also the percentages.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are there any other questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate everything you do and look forward to reviewing it.

Was there one last…? Yes, go ahead.

J. Fedorak: Numbers. We have 11,000 square feet.

D. McArthur: Do you want all the offices or just ours?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): No, yours.

J. Fedorak: That’s just ours. The 11,000 is our square footage.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. We stand adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 2:52 p.m.