The committee met at 1:34 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re doing the annual review of statutory offices for British Columbia: three-year rolling service plans, annual reports and budgetary estimates for fiscal 2018-2019. We have today Elections B.C.

The floor is yours.

Review of Statutory Officers

ELECTIONS B.C.

K. Archer: Well, good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Mr. Deputy Chair and committee members. I’m pleased to be here today to present our budget request.

[1:35 p.m.]

I’m joined at the table by Anton Boegman, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for electoral operations, and Tanya Ackinclose, who is our manager of finance. Also joining us is Yvonne Koehn, our director of information technology, and Andrew Watson, our communications manager.

This has been an eventful year for Elections B.C. We’ve completed the conduct of a provincewide enumeration and voter list update and the 41st provincial general election.

We introduced a number of changes in the general election, some of which have budget implications in the coming years. I’ll be discussing these in some detail, as will Anton in his portion of our presentation.

The work involved in delivering a general election is not confined to the year in which the general election is conducted. Some funding is required in the years leading up to the event, and some funds are required following the event. This latter observation applies, in particular, to some of our staff in electoral finance. So in my presentation, I’ll describe how we handle payment for what we call post-event staffing.

The overall budget requirements for Elections B.C. are presented in three separate budget requests. The first is our ongoing operating budget, which is used to fund the ongoing operations of Elections B.C. Our operating budget request is presented as a three-year request, beginning in 2018-19 and extending to 2020-21.

Secondly, we have a separate funding request for capital expenditures. As you know, our capital expenditures are amortized over a five-year period, thus, we repay 100 percent of these funds over the five-year period from our operating funds.

Thirdly, we present additional spending requirements to deliver events. In our annual budget submission, this tends to be for scheduled events, and subsequently, we then provide any additional requests for unscheduled events.

It’s important to note that in my current submission, there are a number of bills before the House, or awaiting royal assent, that have spending implications for Elections B.C., including bills relating to provincial electoral finance reform, local electoral finance reform and the conduct of a provincewide referendum on electoral system reform. It should be noted that these bills may have expenditure implications for the current year, which is 2017-18, for next fiscal year, 2018-19, as well as for out-years.

Our budget submission today does not include funding requirements for any of these three bills. As is our established practice in British Columbia, I will submit a supplementary budget request to the committee, if and when legislation is passed and proclaimed that changes the administrative practices or requirements at Elections B.C.

It’s for this same reason that our budget submission does not include a request to administer the pending by-election in Kelowna West, which must be called by February 3, 2018. I will write to this committee again following the issuing of writs of the by-election, which, given the time frame, will include some funding requirements for the current fiscal year as well as for 2018-19. Just for your information, a by-election typically costs about $650,000, and the last provincial mail-based referendum in 2011 cost just over $8 million.

One other matter I’ll mention before turning to the specific budget numbers in our request is the change in operations that accompanies operating in a minority government. British Columbia, of course, was the first jurisdiction in Canada to adopt fixed election dates for general elections, beginning with the 38th general election in 2005. We have adapted many of our administrative practices and procedures since that time to take advantage of the efficiencies that a fixed-date general election provides. In a minority government situation, however, a greater likelihood of an unscheduled general election means that the election agency must maintain a higher level of election readiness throughout the election cycle, and our budget requirements reflect that reality.

[1:40 p.m.]

Now let me turn to the numbers. Our ongoing operating budget request for 2018-19 is $10.405 million. This represents an increase of $718,000 from 2017-18. For the 2019-20 and 2020-21 fiscal years, our operating budget request is $9.993 million and $10.138 million, respectively. Thus, whereas the operating budget request increases by $718,000 in 2018-19, it then decreases by $412,000 in 2019-2020.

For 2018-19, the capital budget requirement is $700,000. This is consistent with our long-term average spending for capital projects. Then event funding for 2018-19 is based on the scheduled 2018 general local elections and readiness preparations for the 42nd provincial general election. These costs are $1.69 million for the local general elections and $1.72 million for event readiness for the 42nd provincial general election.

Regarding the general local elections, Bill 17, which was passed in 2016, provides for spending limits for local candidates, elector organizations and third-party advertisers. The implementation of these changes is reflected in our budget request. As noted previously, however, potential additional changes, such as those anticipated by Bill 15 currently before the House, are not included.

I’d like to take a broad overview of some of the changes that have taken place, are currently taking place or are planned at Elections B.C. that have produced the budget requirements in our submission. I’ll be focusing on areas in which our expenditures are changing.

One is the increased use of technology in the voting place and in election administration more generally. Some of this is a product of previous legislative change, such as the need to report to candidates on who voted during each of the six days of advance voting. This change led us to purchase 2,500 laptop computers that were deployed at all advance voting locations for electronic voter strike-off for the 2017 general election.

Other changes were introduced due to the use of a best-practices approach to election administration. For example, to ensure greater security of the voters list during enumeration and to promote greater efficiency in updating the voter register with data gathered during this process, we deployed almost 500 tablet computers for our field enumeration activities.

We’ve also elevated our voter services model more generally to provide greater individualized support to all voters and greater outreach efforts for a variety of types of voters. For example, this latter change…. For the first time in 2017, the telephone voting option for voters who otherwise required assistance to vote was introduced.

There have also recently been significant improvements in our GIS and mapping capabilities, providing enhanced products for staff in our district electoral offices and in voting places, as well as for the use of candidates and electors.

Our commitment to adopt a voter-centric approach to our work and to emphasize enhanced voter services also has led to a transformation in our learning and training methodologies. We’ve adopted what we call a blended learning model, combining on-line learning with a more focused, regionally based, small-group, face-to face training model, which has necessitated the establishment of a new learning development unit at Elections B.C.

We’ve also been experiencing a very active event environment that has led to the need for almost continuous recruitment of temporary staff.

[1:45 p.m.]

For example, it’s useful to recall that in just the period since the general election of 2013, Elections B.C. has administered the Independent Panel on Internet Voting, including submitting a report on this topic to the Legislative Assembly; conducted by-elections in three electoral districts and is soon to do so in a fourth; developed and implemented a framework for administering local election campaign finance requirements, including providing training to candidates, financial agents, elector organizations and third-party advertising sponsors; administered the B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission and subsequently conducted an electoral boundaries redistribution; administered a mail-in plebiscite on transportation and transit in the Lower Mainland; administered two initiative petitions and three recall petitions; administered campaign financing requirements for over 100 local by-elections and local assent votes; and administered the 2017 provincial enumeration and the 2017 provincial general election.

I must say, the current legislative agenda suggests that the pace of work at Elections B.C. will not diminish in the near or medium term. This continued high level of activity at Elections B.C. provides the context for the additional budget requirements for 2018-19. Page 14 in our budget submission shows an increase in five FTEs — from 56 in 2017-18 to 61 in 2018-19. I’d like to discuss these five FTEs.

Two of these new positions stem from the splitting of two of our senior management positions due to retirements. The position of comptroller has been split between a manager of finance and a manager of executive and corporate services. The position of director of voter registration and boundaries has been split between a manager of voter services and a manager of electoral geography. Workload issues combined with building greater capacity were behind both of those changes.

The third position added to our FTE count is a new senior analyst in our information technology program area. Greater reliance on technology in many of our business lines has required us to build ongoing capacity in this area so that event staff can be employed more efficiently and effectively when required.

A fourth position is a new outreach coordinator. Now, this position and this function at Elections B.C. was discussed in detail and approved by this committee last year. The person recruited and hired in this position was paid with event funding during part of 2016-17 and 2017-18. The position is continuing, as approved last year, on a continuing basis. Therefore, although we obtained the funds for this position from our submission to the committee last year, it’s appearing as a new FTE for 2018-19.

The fifth position is actually two half-time positions. One of these is an e-learning specialist working in our, at present, one-person learning development unit. The intention is to build increased capacity, particularly more ongoing technical expertise in this new and important business unit. The second half-time appointment is a human resources coordinator to provide necessary capacity to handle the increased volume of work in this area.

The other significant increase in our personnel costs for 2018-19 is more short term in character. I’d note, parenthetically, that these costs are listed in the category “Political entity reporting” on page 9 in our budget submission.

This is the additional funding required for the processing of financial disclosure reports from the 371 candidates, 28 political parties and 294 third-party advertising sponsors for the 2017 general election. That is, these are the general election financial reports that were submitted to Elections B.C. and published on our website in August, three months following general voting day. Now, these same staff will also review the 2017 annual financial reports for parties and constituency associations, which must be filed by March 31, 2018.

[1:50 p.m.]

These will include all of the general election–related transactions so will be more complex and time-consuming than the typical annual reports that are submitted to us. As a result, we will have temporary review staff on for a longer period of time. These are the staff that were hired, trained and deployed ahead of the financing filing deadline in August of 2017 and currently are paid with general election event funds up until the end of March.

Rather than requesting additional event funds for the 2017 general election for the 2018-19 fiscal year, our tradition has been to use operating funds in the post-election year for this close-out activity relating to the general election. You’ll see that the staffing costs — again, it’s under “Political entity reporting” on page 9 — decline in the following year. This accounts for that spending pattern that you see — an increase in 2018-19, then a decrease subsequently.

The commentary above is intended to give you a better understanding of the changes in our operating budget requirements.

On the capital budget side, there are several priority projects that we will focus upon. The main expenditures are on three projects. First, modernizing our on-line voter registration system. Second, updating and enhancing the system used to track vote-by-mail balloting, a change that will benefit not only vote by mail in future general elections but also, potentially, in a vote-by-mail referendum. Third, developing a portal for our interaction with candidates to improve the candidate nomination process and make it more seamless and electronic.

For our event budget, I’ll leave the detailed discussion to Anton. Before turning to his commentary and then to your questions, I wish to provide a bit more detail based specifically on the tables that we’ve provided.

Our ongoing operating budget request by business line is on page 9 of the proposal document. Expenses that support all business areas — such as salaries, amortization, building occupancy, office expenses and IT costs — are shown separately from the core business lines. The core business lines are also shown, and there are notes on the following pages that provide further information about the nature of these expenses.

The request of $10,405,000 is an increase of 7.4 percent over our current budget and one that we’ve considered carefully. The large majority of the increase is in salaries and benefits. Our non-management staff receive the same salary increases as members of the BCGEU. There are scheduled increases in both February and April of 2018, and government has also approved annual salary adjustments for management employees. This budget request also includes funding for the five new FTEs I’ve discussed previously. The other significant budget change is in political entity reporting, which I’ve also discussed previously.

Other changes to the business line budgets are modest. Some will actually be lower next year, as certain activities this year will not be necessary. An example was that this past year we did a personal computer refresh. Consequently, that line item has gone down.

As in past years, we’ve included a pie chart, on page 12, that illustrates our core services budget request for next fiscal year. This chart shows that Elections B.C. is highly dependent on people and information technology. Once salaries, IT and rent are covered, we have very little flexibility in other areas.

The last few pages of the budget proposal include the spreadsheets created by committee staff for our use. I’d like to walk you through those. Table 1, on page 13, is the three-year budget plan by STOB and shows the current fiscal year, 2017, budget compared to our request for the next fiscal year. The spreadsheet includes both our core services and the event budgets for 2018-19 and clearly illustrates how widely the total budget varies from fiscal year to fiscal year as we move through the electoral cycles.

As mentioned previously, the planned budgets for the two out-years, fiscals ’19-20 and ’20-21, do not include any event funding. When we create our budget for electoral events, we don’t simply take the prior event costs and add a percentage. Each budget is developed from the ground up based upon the precise plans for an event, which are finalized during the fiscal year immediately before the event.

[1:55 p.m.]

Table 2, on page 15, shows the budget versus actuals for fiscal 2016-17. You’ll see that during that fiscal year, we conducted the pre-election enumeration, electoral boundaries redistribution, 45 local by-elections and non-assent voting events and much of the preparation and implementation of the 41st provincial general election. Remember, of course, that the writs of the election were issued only 11 days after the end of the fiscal year.

Much of the variance shown on this page resulted from savings we achieved in administering the enumeration. The RegBC tool, which was software that was created for the tablets I mentioned earlier, was developed in-house by one of our staff members, rather than by an external vendor. We saved a lot of money as a result. Printing costs were also less than expected.

Finally, table 3, on page 17, shows the actual expenditures for the last five fiscal years. You’ll notice that the total operating appropriation on this table is equal to the total operating expenses. This is because the total operating appropriation is the amount reported in the public accounts, whereas on the other spreadsheets, the total budget is as approved by this committee. This is a consequence of the funding process. That is, funding for events such as general elections, referendums, plebiscites, recall petitions or by-elections is from a special appropriation that’s approved by this committee and by the Minister of Finance.

At the end of the fiscal year, the ministry actually allocates Elections B.C. with the exact amount necessary, up to the maximum of that approval. So the budget reflected in the public accounts equals exactly the amount that was spent on these events, hence the variance of the actuals to the appropriation of zero. No surplus is reflected, even when the actual cost of the events is lower than the original estimate.

With that, I now turn to Anton to describe in a bit more detail some of our event funding requests for 2018-19. He’ll also share some observations about the 2017 enumeration and the general election.

A. Boegman: Thank you, Keith. Good afternoon, committee members.

As Keith has mentioned, my focus is going to be on our event funding requirements for 2018-19. Before speaking about this detail, I would like to briefly review the 2017 enumeration and election from Elections B.C.’s perspective. Looking back at these events, there were a number of accomplishments and firsts for both Elections B.C. and for the voters in our province. Some of these have been touched on by Keith, and I’ll be providing more detail in selected areas.

The provincial enumeration and voter registration update were conducted between February 14 and April 11, 2017. It was a unique event, building on the approach that we used in 2013. It consisted of specific, targeted enumeration activities carried out in each electoral district based on the geography, demographics and other characteristics of each area. In addition to a comprehensive provincial mailout, voters were approached through door-to-door enumeration, registration drives, community education and outreach, and the enumeration of residential extended care facilities and shelters.

For the first time, as Keith has mentioned, technology was deployed to the field. Enumerators used a secure voter registration application, called RegBC, on tablets to capture and confirm registration information. This innovation enabled the secure transmission of new registration information and updates from the field on a daily basis. Keith mentioned there was a reduction in postage and printing costs. Part of that was because we deployed the tablets into the field. Technology replaced paper-based processes and the mailing of handwritten documents, improving the efficiency, accuracy and information security of the field work.

The results of the enumeration were very positive. There were over 388,000 transactions to the voters list during the event, including the addition of 59,700 new voters. Further, an additional 89,000 voters registered when they voted in the election, resulting in the highest ever number of registered voters, as of the close of voting in B.C., at 3,246,614.

We’re currently evaluating the overall quality of the voters list throughout both events and anticipate meeting our pre-enumeration goals of voters list coverage at 95 percent — that’s the percentage of voters on the list out of the eligible population in B.C. — as well as currency at 88 percent. That’s the percentage of voters that are on the list at the correct address.

[2:00 p.m.]

The provincial general election of 2017 also presented a number of firsts to B.C. voters. A significant focus, as Keith has mentioned, during the event was increasing accessibility and improving service delivery for all voters through a number of voter-centric innovations.

There were 348 advance voting locations in the province open during the six-day advance voting period, which was an increase of 84 from 2013. Again, for the first time, technology was deployed to voting places for advance and for absentee voting, with laptop computers running a secure voter-lookup application that was used to automate the completion of voting documents and to electronically strike off records that were then available for secure download by candidates.

The use of technology decreased voter service time at advance voting by over 30 percent, which proved to be very significant given the record levels of advance voter turnout in the election.

For voters with a disability that prevented them from voting independently at established voting locations, Elections B.C. piloted, under special voting rules, an election official–assisted telephone voting opportunity, and 1,062 voters took advantage of this opportunity. For many of those participating, it was an emotional moment when they could, for the first time, vote independently and in secret.

In the election, over 1.98 million voters voted, with a participation rate, in terms of registered voters, of just over 61 percent. That means over 170,000 more British Columbians voted in this election than previously. This additional turnout occurred almost exclusively during advance voting, which increased by 63 percent to a total of 599,000 voters.

Advance voting now represents over 30 percent of all votes cast, with general voting at 61 percent and absentee voting at 9 percent. Voters are clearly taking advantage of ballot-box accessibility and are voting using the opportunities that are most convenient to them.

So what will the next fiscal year look like from an event perspective? Well, it will look markedly different than what has been experienced previously in the fiscal year immediately following a provincial general election.

First, Elections B.C. must maintain an ongoing state of readiness for a potential on-demand provincial general election. As a result of our mandate to administer campaign financing provisions of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, we will be concurrently ramping up preparations next fiscal year to be ready for the October 20 provincial general local elections.

To the specifics — our event budget for 2018-19. This information is provided on page 9 of the budget proposal document, with additional detail provided in the notes section on page 11.

The event budget requirement for ’18-19 is $3.41 million. This request is divided into two components — $1.69 million to enable Elections B.C. to administer the campaign finance provisions of LECFA for the local elections and $1.72 million for preparation activities associated with readiness for an on-demand provincial general election.

The general local elections request of $1.69 million includes funding to update and print forms and guides; to hire, train and equip temporary staff to support local election candidates and other clients leading up to and during the event; to review disclosure statements — we anticipate receiving more than 3,600 such statements; for the know-the-rules advertising that we conduct; for professional services; and for travel costs to enable the delivery of information and training sessions for local election administrators and other stakeholders.

The request for $1.7 million for an on-demand provincial general election readiness includes funding for the production and purchase of forms and guides; for salaries and benefits for a limited number of headquarters temporary staff; fees for 87 district electoral officers, 89 deputies and six regional field officers to perform necessary work packages and other activities; for some information technology costs; building occupancy for an additional warehouse space; and professional services.

This latter request is not typical for this point in our business cycle. The types of readiness activities that will be undertaken in the field include developing an electoral district–specific action plan, identifying potential office locations and testing them for LTE cellular signal strength, storing a small readiness kit of supplies and identifying possible replacement voting places, should any from the 2017 election become unavailable.

In addition, any newly appointed district electoral officers and their deputies — and we anticipate 40 new appointees from the team that was in place to administer the 2017 election — will need to be trained and supported in learning their new roles.

[2:05 p.m.]

The costs associated with many of these activities are those that would normally be incurred during preparations for a fixed-date election. In this case, we are simply fast-tracking them to earlier in the cycle.

This concludes our presentation. Thank you for your attention, committee members.

Mr. Chair, I’d now like to turn the proceedings back to you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Dr. Archer and Anton.

P. Milobar: Possibly two questions. One is…. It seems like there’s lots of ramping up and then ramping down based on election cycles, both local government and provincial. Now that they’re both four-year cycles, would it be easier if they…? Granted, in the current situation, you don’t know when a provincial election might be, but generally speaking, with fixed election dates, would it be easier to plan and to staff if they were two years apart, instead of having them back-to-back years, then, essentially, almost three years off before the next election and then back-to-back years again?

K. Archer: I must say I didn’t anticipate that question.

P. Milobar: Well, it’s just because there are peaks and valleys with all of the workload and everything.

K. Archer: Right. The staffing that we deploy for local events…. Recall that for local events, we’re only responsible for local election campaign financing requirements. We’re not staffing voting places for local events. Those staff may have worked for us in a provincial general election, but not necessarily. I don’t know if we have a sense of the proportions, but my guess is that it’s probably a fairly small proportion of the people that we will be hiring as officials for the local event campaign financing requirements. Very few of them likely worked for us for the provincial general election.

I would think it likely doesn’t have a great bearing, given our current mandates being more limited at the local level and much broader at the provincial level for conducting voting opportunities. I don’t think it would make much difference for us.

P. Milobar: One other question around staffing. I notice the end of ’13…. That seemed to necessitate 12 more staff. Now, at the end of this election, it’s necessitating five more staff, so 17 staff in five years. Was the split of duties…? Did the PSEC requirements have anything to do with that in terms of trying to attract people to fill a position and not being able to based on the rules around rehiring for the same position and needing to basically slim down some of the duties and split the job so you can hire two people in at lower rates to be able to attract people?

K. Archer: No. In this case, that hiring activity that took place in the summer of 2014 was because of the new mandate that we had for local elections campaign financing. Prior to the 2014 local elections, Elections B.C. had no responsibilities for overseeing any aspect of local election campaigns.

The new act, the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, was passed in May of 2014. Almost immediately we met with this committee with our budget request, which included a request for 11 new positions to administer these new responsibilities. So all of that increase in 2014 was specifically due to our mandate change and due to that legislative change.

P. Milobar: In the split of the ones of the five, you mentioned your COO or CFO. You were splitting duties. Was that because of having trouble attracting under current PSEC rules…? Based on somebody leaving, the new person has to come in — what is it? — at 80 percent of the previous salary. It’s hard to attract, so some boards are finding it easier to split the job in two and hire two in with a new job description. Did that play into it at all?

K. Archer: Again, no, that didn’t play into it in our case. Sometimes if a staff member is employed for a very long period of time, which was the case with one of our staff members, they become able to take on quite a herculean amount of responsibilities.

[2:10 p.m.]

Upon their retirement, we have a chance to reflect on the needs of the organization and how best we can meet those needs. In both instances, we came to the conclusion that operational requirements meant that we were better off splitting both of those positions into two senior management positions.

A. Boegman: Part of the reason that we did that, as well, was to increase our management capacity. As Keith described, the event cycles that we’ve had since 2009…. It seems like there has always been an event that we’re busy administering. One thing that really improves the way that we can administer those events is if we have management capacity available to oversee the additional temporary staff that we bring in. So we wanted to give ourselves more capacity in both of those two areas.

M. Dean: One quick little question and then a larger question, I suppose. In 2018-19 — line 3, building occupancy charges. They just spike by $30,000, and then they go back down again. Is there a reason for that?

K. Archer: Yes, there is. Evidently, our air-conditioning units in our server room are at the end of their life span, their service of a life, and we’re replacing two air-conditioning units at $30,000. That’s a one-time cost.

M. Dean: Okay. My next question is larger. I need you to help me understand better why we’re being asked to approve $1.7 million in preparation. I understand it’s a minority government, but the work that you might do in 2018, using that money, could stale date by 2019-20. Then I see that…. That could be an ongoing readiness kind of cost, and you haven’t actually costed that out for us, I guess partly because it’s so unknown.

Could you give us a bit more detail or reasoning to help us really understand the absolute need for all of that $1.7 million extra ask?

K. Archer: Sure. I’ll start, and then Anton may add some additional information to it.

I guess part of the issue for Elections B.C. is to ensure that we are able to deliver on our mandate. Our mandate is to deliver general elections when required to deliver general elections.

There was a long period of time in our history in which we were required to maintain ongoing election readiness between electoral events, even with majority governments, without fixed election dates and without a culture that respected those fixed elections dates. There was always an opportunity for a snap election call, and the election agency can’t be in a position to say: “Sorry. You have to wait because we’re not able to deliver the event at this time.” So we’re mindful of that requirement.

As I mention in my notes, because British Columbia moved to the fixed election date model earlier than other jurisdictions, we actually were able to take advantage of the savings that come with the predictability around a known fixed election date, particularly when we have majority governments.

When we don’t have a majority government, it’s more than prudent. It’s a requirement of my office that we be prepared to deliver an event at short notice. So the model that we have developed is to establish an event-readiness date for provincial general election 42. Our event-readiness date is December of 2017. We have our warehouse built out with the equipment necessary to deliver a GE if required to. That material has been purchased, printed, when printing is required for our manuals, and it’s ready to go.

[2:15 p.m.]

As Anton mentioned, we have an additional provision that we are also maintaining the appointments of our district electoral officers. It’s useful reminding you that our district electoral officers from 2017 were appointed in April of 2016. So we went through a period of 2½ years without having district electoral officers and their deputies. I believe we can’t do that in the current minority government environment, and I don’t think any election agency in this country would do that in a minority government environment.

I guess I should also note parenthetically that some jurisdictions maintain their returning officer, or district electoral officer, appointments on an ongoing basis even in majority situations. Elections Canada now has ten-year appointments for its returning officers. Elections Ontario has ongoing appointments for their returning officers. That may be one of the things that we explore after reviewing the experience we’ve had this time out.

There are some costs that we simply feel that it’s part of our mandate to include in our budget submission. Consequently, we bring them to this committee.

The other part of that $1.7 million request this time is for some items — and I think Anton talked about this a bit — that had to be produced, in any event, for the next provincial general election. Maybe that’s thought of as a prepurchasing of some materials — voting screens and ballot boxes, for example — rather than a purchase of material that’s going to be discarded, subsequently.

Again, we need to maintain ongoing readiness, we believe, because of the environment within which we’re operating. To do otherwise, I think, would not be living up to the mandate of my office.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Tracy, just before you follow up on that, do you mind if I just follow up on that? Okay.

Because we have the to-be-determined numbers, would we expect a similar amount for the next year, the years after? How much can we anticipate in the years after this year in terms of…? Obviously, there are the returning officers. But some of the costs, like printing, you may have already done. So is there some idea, just ballpark?

A. Boegman: I can speak to next year. As Keith mentioned, we plan in detail for what we see coming ahead of us, and we don’t know what’s going to happen in the subsequent years.

Certainly for the $1.7 million, around $850,000 of that could be classified as a prepurchase — so 50 percent. This is money that we’re spending on things like documents forms, printing those forms, reconfiguring the 2,500 laptops that Keith mentioned, to take off the 2017 voters list and put on the new voters list.

We’re doing some migration around IT. We’re getting some system documentation put together. A big part of that is the recruitment of the district electoral officers, the replacement district electoral officers.

Keith mentioned the ten-year time spans, and under our law, the DEOs…. Their appointment for the election expires six months after the return of the writs. Or is that after general voting day? So on the ninth of November, their appointments expired.

We reappointed those that were interested, but there’s a vacancy rate where we absolutely have to appoint people, bring them in and train them and get them up to speed. Some of the readiness work that they’re doing and some equipment that we’re buying, again, is a prepurchase.

There’s around $850,000, as well — what we could classify as minority-only costs. These are mainly the fees we’re going to be paying the DEOs to maintain contact with us — to keep watching our email, to update what’s happening on our DEO desktop application; for them to store some supplies; for them to do some of the readiness work around identifying, “Well, where could you potentially have an office”; and some of the extra warehouse capacity that we had to acquire to have additional storage space for the documents.

There will be some ongoing costs in readiness. I would think that it would be towards the second half that I talked about. Certainly, the one-time costs are a prepurchase. Once we have recruited and initially trained our DEOs and deputies, we won’t need to do that again on a significant basis, unless there were to be changes to the electoral law.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much.

[2:20 p.m.]

T. Redies: I’d like to follow on that question as well. The $1.7 million readiness cost. Are you saying that before this year, you hadn’t had them because there was a majority government? Is that correct?

A. Boegman: Because we were on a fixed election day and there was a majority government…. Typically, we wouldn’t hire our district electoral officers until perhaps a year before the event. Then all the work in getting ready would be front-loaded into that year. We would keep supplies for by-elections, of course. We wouldn’t restock the warehouse for a general election until the year before the election.

T. Redies: The workers, the DEOs, that you’re going to be hiring — or keeping, I guess — what do they do if there’s no election?

A. Boegman: Well, they’ll continue to do different types of readiness activities. They’ll just be monitoring what’s happening in their district. They’ll be monitoring available space for a district electoral office.

They’ll be monitoring any changes to locations. Let’s say that they used a school as a voting place, and that school is now undergoing seismic upgrading or something. It’s no longer available. They’ll just be maintaining a register of those sorts of things.

They will have identified key people that they would be bringing into their office should an election happen and just kind of keeping tabs on them — what their vacations are and that sort of thing. It’s kind of maintenance.

T. Redies: Is it full-time work?

A. Boegman: It’s not full-time work at all.

T. Redies: So they’re part-time.

A. Boegman: Part-time work. But there’s a number of them out there.

K. Archer: There are also deputies, right? So there are the district electoral officer and their deputies — 87 and 89.

T. Redies: Then the documents that you’re printing…. I mean, I’m a little confused by that because you’d think you could print documents at any time. What are they? Are they time-sensitive? For example, you print them, and then you can use them in subsequent years, or you can’t?

A. Boegman: No. The ones that we’re printing, generally, right now are ones that we need to have ready to go when an election is called and will be available for use for the 42nd provincial general election, regardless of when.

T. Redies: The other question I had was around your capital budgeting, which seems to have been pretty consistent — around $700,000 since 2013, with the exception of the one year in 2014-15. I just added them up. It looks like you’ve underspent by $1 million.

I guess I’m curious, because the amount is very similar across so many years. Are you using zero-base budgeting? Are you budgeting from the ground up, or are you just putting a number out there and seeing what you can use in that year?

K. Archer: I can respond to that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think we may have to be away. Yes, we’re going to recess.

The committee recessed from 2:22 p.m. to 2:34 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Where were we?

K. Archer: We were just about to answer the question on why the request is $700,000 for our capital budget, typically, and we underspend that from time to time.

We do budget on zero-base budgeting for all of the capital projects that we have. The reason that you’ll see that the capital budget request is typically around $700,000 is that we have to be mindful that this is amortized, so we need to be aware that we’re repaying this money over five years. There’s a limit to how much we’re prepared to spend and then to pay down and to lose, effectively, from our budget over the next five years. So because of that, we make efforts to keep the capital request to no higher than $700,000.

[2:35 p.m.]

The instances in which we don’t meet that target — and you’ll see that that happens on a fairly regular basis — are instances in which there are unscheduled events that intervene in the process. So if we have to deliver an initiative petition or a plebiscite, for example, or a referendum, that work, which may have its own capital requirements, can begin to crowd out the work that we had planned to do with our capital budget request.

You’ll see that in many instances, and particularly over the last decade or so, because of the continuation of activity at Elections B.C., we’re finding that, although we are well-intentioned in trying to complete a number of capital projects, sometimes it takes us longer to complete those than we would prefer.

J. Brar: This is kind of a hypothetical question. We are going to conduct the referendum next year on proportional representation. If that becomes a reality, all the work you were saying, the readiness work, all the printing…. Will that be usable? How much will there be that you can use in the new process?

K. Archer: That’s an interesting question. I don’t think we’ll know the answer to that for some time. My understanding is that Bill 6 indicated that in the event that a referendum for change is supported, the next general election conducted after July 1, 2021, will be conducted under a new voting system. I guess it’s conceivable that a new voting system could be introduced prior to that time, but the direction that I would take from the legislation as it’s currently drafted is that we should probably assume that any general election conducted between now and the end of June, 2021, will be conducted under our current voting system.

The materials that have been prepared for the conduct of a general election under our current system would, I would think, be usable for some period of time. That may change through the government’s direction. But at this point, that’s how I would read the bill.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just have a quick question about the FTEs. There are five, right? Thank you very much for your detailed explanations. Are all five of those contracted now? Have you already contracted all five of those for positions? Are they salaried already, or are there some that are and some that are hopeful? I just wasn’t sure, so if you could explain.

K. Archer: Yeah. It’s the latter. Some have been hired already. Some are planned hires for the future. Of those, I know that at least two of them are planned hires. I think we have hired three of the five at this point.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. So there are two. Frankly, if you didn’t have those two hires, what would be the ramifications to your commission?

K. Archer: Let’s see. Well, one is the split position between the e-learning specialist and the human resources specialist — two half-time appointments. I suspect that we’ll be doing a lot of hiring in this coming year. Just to give you a sense of what it would look like from our perspective, for a local election, we typically hire about 30 compliance specialists, and there could be some other support people at headquarters as well.

I suppose we could look to either re-allocate funding internally for that, part of our operating budget, or it would be reflected in…. You know, the other model that we have is where we have event-funding requests. We have a number of staff members who kind of piece together long-term appointments as a result of a series of short-term appointments, based upon separate event funds.

[2:40 p.m.]

It’s conceivable that positions could be funded through event funding. But those are not long-term appointments.

B. D’Eith (Chair): But the point is: you need these positions in order to fulfill your mandate.

K. Archer: Our sense is that this is actually a more efficient way of staffing up the organization. If you look at our budget over the years, you see that it fluctuates dramatically, based upon events. So we’re often coming back to this committee, requesting support for IT specialists or support for HR specialists, to help on a short-term basis. Part of the model that we’re bringing to the committee today is: if we can transform some of these positions to ongoing positions, I think that you’re going to see greater efficiencies in the use of the short-term funding.

J. Brar: You mentioned that you’re going to…. Keeping in mind the uncertainty of the election time, you guys are maintaining the staffing at the ground level, which is both the district returning officer and the deputy, if I heard correctly. Right?

K. Archer: Yes.

J. Brar: So my question is just, if you can explain: why do we need to have both people in place? I understand the uncertainty, but it could be also three years or four years.

K. Archer: The decision was…. In keeping the leadership within an electoral district, we always operate with this team of two. We train them together. It is not at all unusual, even for a short period of time. We have our DEOs and deputies hired for a year before the event. It’s not at all unusual to see attrition somewhere between 5 and 10 percent.

Part of what we’re guaranteed when we have deputies in place is someone who’s able to step up and take on the role of DEO with little notice, if required. The amount of work that’s assigned, the amount of pay that’s assigned, is fairly modest in total. For DEOs — Anton, you can correct me if I’m wrong — we’re looking at a pay that’s ranging somewhere between about $100 and $400 a month for a DEO, depending upon what kind of work is being required.

If the expectation is that they’re just maintaining contact with us through their email and getting a sense of availability of office space within their district and of voting places within their district, they may be working for three hours a month, so we’ll be paying them $110 or $120 or thereabouts. If they’re doing a work package and there’s a lot more work involved, their pay may go up to about $400. Again, the numbers become large, just because you’re multiplying it, by almost 200, once you’re paying for the 87 DEOs and the 89 deputy DEOs.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Andrew, did you want to ask a question about this? I know you just came in, but if you had a question, please ask it, even if….

A. Weaver: I do apologize. I have to be in two places at once very often.

I did notice budget item No. 12, but you must have discussed this already — what this readiness-on-demand provincial general election fund is. Have you already had a discussion on that?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes.

A. Weaver: I can go to Hansard. I don’t want to waste time.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Sir, thank you again for your presentation. Anton and Tanya and the rest of the staff, thank you for coming today.

One question that was raised to me by one of your returning officers is the proximity to Thanksgiving of the proposed election that’s coming forward and the availability for them to get people to work. I hope that’s in a notation somewhere. According to the individual, they said they were concerned about that. It’s a comment, not a question.

K. Archer: Whenever elections, either general elections or by-elections, have statutory holidays within the election period, the campaign period, particularly in advanced voting periods, it raises some additional challenges, for sure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. I think we’re good. Thank you very much for your very detailed analysis and all the answers to all the questions. We really appreciate that and everything you do for the whole province. We really appreciate it.

K. Archer: Thanks very much for having us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ll recess for five minutes.

The committee recessed from 2:44 p.m. to 2:47 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

Appointment of Audit Firm
for Office of the Auditor General

B. D’Eith (Chair): Before we go to preliminary deliberations, there was the issue of the appointment of an independent auditor. The initial discussion we had…. If you remember, there were three….

We had discussed this in the past, and there is a motion on the table. Did you want to maybe just speak to it or read it?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I’ll just move the motion again. I move that the committee appoint Grant Thornton LLP as the independent auditor to audit the financial statements and the annual reports of the Auditor General for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018, on condition that there will be a senior staff rotation on the audit engagement.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. That’s the motion on the table. The idea here is that this is just for this year, which would give the committee an opportunity, if the committee so chooses, next year, to have a more robust RFP or selection process or whatever. But this allows us now to appoint…. That’s the point of it.

Is there any discussion?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Can I make that a motion, then, versus sitting? Would you mind?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sorry. I thought we had made a motion.

Does anyone want to discuss that, or should we go right to a vote?

R. Leonard: Just to reiterate that in the report it does say that the last recommendation was to go through a reverse competitive process. In recognition of that, I like the idea of at least there being a change in the folks who are actually doing the looking at it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Or at least review. But I think that’s why we’re just doing the one year.

R. Leonard: Yeah, with a commitment to….

T. Redies: The only comment I would make…. Obviously, it doesn’t impact the motion. But having had the same auditor since 2005 is a bit of a red flag. It’s a very long time, so it is very important that that process is put out to tender going forward, I think.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fair enough. I see concurrence with that.

Can we have a vote on the motion?

Motion approved.

Deliberations

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d like to make a motion to move in camera. Could someone make a motion?

A. Weaver: So moved.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Stephanie seconded.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 2:50 p.m. to 3:27 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. We’re out of in camera. A motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:27 p.m.