The committee met at 3:32 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hello, everybody. I call the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, on Tuesday, February 6.

First up is consideration of Elections B.C.’s funding requests. If I could turn it over to Dr. Keith Archer.

Supplementary Funding Requests

ELECTIONS B.C.

K. Archer: Thank you, Chair, Deputy Chair and committee members for the invitation to meet with you this afternoon to discuss the supplementary budget requests for Elections B.C.

I’m joined today by Nola Western, the Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, funding and disclosure; Anton Boegman, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, electoral operations; and Tanya Ackinclose, manager of finance.

There are two separate supplementary budget requests before us today, neither of which should come as a surprise to this committee, since I mentioned to the committee at our meeting in early December — at which time I presented our annual budget submission — that we anticipated submitting supplementary budget requests early in the new year. I’ll turn directly to the funding required by Elections B.C. in these two requests, and then we’ll provide some background to the committee so that you can understand the requirements for this supplementary funding.

I also note, parenthetically, that Elections B.C. expects to submit to this committee a further supplementary budget request for 2018-19 that is not before the committee today. This latter request arises from the legislative requirement set out in Bill 6, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act, for Elections B.C. to administer a referendum on electoral reform by the end of November of 2018.

[3:35 p.m.]

The specific requirements for Elections B.C. to administer this event will become known at a later date and will be embodied in the regulation issued by government for the referendum. We will prepare and present to this committee a budget for that event following the issuance of the regulation.

The funds required in the two supplementary budget requests presented today are as follows. First, for the by-election in Kelowna West, our budget requirement is $684,000. Of this amount, the lion’s share, $658,000, is for expenditures in the current fiscal year, and a relatively small amount, $26,000, is for expenditures in fiscal 2018-19.

All of the funding for the by-election is for operating expenditures. The one additional element of by-election expenditures that’s not included in this request but was introduced with the passage of Bill 3 is for eligible election expense reimbursements for candidates and political parties. The new provision is that candidates and political parties that receive at least 10 percent of the valid votes in a by-election will be eligible to have 50 percent of their eligible election expenses reimbursed.

Now, the spending limit for candidates and political parties is $58,000 each, so every candidate and political party that receives 10 percent of valid votes could receive up to $29,000 in reimbursement. We did not include any reimbursement amount in the budget because it’s not appropriate for Elections B.C. to anticipate election results.

The other supplementary funding request arises from new legislative responsibilities mandated to Elections B.C. as a consequence of legislation passed in the second session of the 41st parliament, including Bill 3, the Election Amendment Act, 2017, and Bill 15, the Local Elections Campaign Financing Amendment Act, 2017. Implementing these new requirements necessitates additional operating expenditures of $109,000 in the current fiscal year and $1.384 million in 2018-19.

Elections B.C. has resources in our current annual funding allocation to absorb the $109,000 requirement in the current fiscal year without an additional allocation recommended by this committee. Therefore, for our operating expenditures, we require the funding only for 2018-19 at this time, totalling $1.384 million.

As is our norm for supplementary funding requests, we are limiting our request at this time to the current and the next immediate fiscal years — that is, 2017-18 and 2018-19. Spending requirements to administer this new legislative mandate for subsequent fiscal years will be part of our annual budget submission to this committee.

Our current request also includes a one-time capital allocation of $555,000 for a one-time technology systems investment to ensure our technology infrastructure is aligned with our new operational responsibilities. Our current budgeting indicates that there may be a need to supplement this capital allocation with a further capital allocation in our annual budget submission in the fall, but this is not finalized at this time.

Then the last part of our supplementary budget request at this time is $4.571 million for the annual allowance payments for political parties for 2018-2019.

[3:40 p.m.]

To summarize, then, our request, by fiscal year, is as follows: for 2017-18, $658,000 for the Kelowna West by-election in operating funds; for 2018-19, $26,000 for the Kelowna West by-election, $1.384 million to implement Bill 3 and Bill 15 changes, and $4.571 million for the annual allowance for political parties, all of which totals $5.981 million in operating funds in 2018-19; finally, for 2018-19, $555,000 in capital funds.

Now, I’m not sure how this committee wishes to deal with the reimbursement of eligible election expenses for candidates and political parties following the Kelowna West by-election, and I’m open to your guidance on this matter. Legislation requires that the payments are made in two instalments. The first instalment, which is 50 percent of eligible reimbursement, must be paid within 15 days of the Chief Electoral Officer being satisfied that the report has been filed with sufficient information.

The financial filing deadline is 90 days after general voting, which, in this case, is May 15. However, parties and candidates may file in advance of this date. Thus, the 15-day time period may be different for some or for all of the filers.

The second payment may be made following a review and approval of the report by Elections B.C., which, again, may, and likely will, vary by filers. If there is a requirement for the CEO to write to this committee each time a reimbursement cheque needs to be issued and to approve this in such a timely way as to permit reimbursement within 15 days, as the law requires, the result will be administratively burdensome on my office and on this committee alike. One scenario the committee may wish to consider is to recommend preapproval of reimbursement expenses.

I turn now to the specifics of the two supplementary budget requests. The by-election arose in Kelowna West following the resignation of Christy Clark as MLA for Kelowna West on August 4, 2017. Following an order-in-council ordering a by-election, a writ of election was issued on January 17, 2018, with general voting taking place on February 14, 2018. This is the first by-election of the 41st parliament. We’ve presented the cost of the by-election by expense category on page 1 of our budget proposal that was sent in advance to this committee, showing the expenditure categories for the anticipated expenditures of $684,000.

On page 2, we provide comparative expenditures by category for the three by-elections that occurred during the 40th parliament. It’s worth noting that the previous by-election budget data provide expenditure actuals, whereas for Kelowna West, of course, we present budgeted figures.

The costs for the by-election are higher than either of the by-elections in 2016 and also more than the Westside-Kelowna by-election in 2013. The latter can be explained partly through the increased costs in Kelowna West in 2018 but also partly by the decreases from typical costs for the by-election in 2013. The unusual characteristic of the 2013 by-election is how soon it occurred after the general election. The writ for this by-election was issued only a couple of weeks after the general election results were certified.

Although total salary costs in 2013 are similar to those budgeted in 2018, some other costs — such as travel, professional services, office and building expenses, advertising and even building occupancy — were considerably less in Westside-Kelowna in 2013 due to the unusual circumstances around an early resignation and subsequent by-election.

A better comparator is the by-elections that occurred in February 2016, because these by-elections included new technology and service requirements from legislative change in 2015, as well as a new staffing model to bring efficiencies into the voting place. The technology changes included such things as using laptop computers for electronic strike-off at all advance voting locations, reporting on who voted to the candidates following each advance voting day, and using label printers to improve the quality of information included on certification envelopes and significantly reduce the number of envelopes set aside due to administrative error — among other technology changes.

[3:45 p.m.]

Service requirement changes include a number of elements, but the most significant was the increase in the number of days of advance voting, from four to six days, which thereby increased staffing requirements. To counterbalance this increase, Elections B.C. introduced a new formula for determining the size of voting areas, which, in turn, had the effect of decreasing staffing costs.

The most notable difference in the proposed budget in comparison with the 2016 by-election budgets is the increased cost of our information systems. However, this difference is somewhat misleading. Our new, more technology-centred voting administration systems have certain standard overhead costs, particularly in staffing needed to administer the new system.

The figures for the information systems operating line in the budget for the Coquitlam–Burke Mountain and Vancouver–Mount Pleasant by-elections are low compared to Kelowna West because the two by-elections occurred on the same day. Thus, the overall costs for the system were split between these two electoral districts. For the Kelowna West by-election, the costs are all distributed to the single district.

In addition, personnel costs are higher, as is public servant travel, to account for the fact that we’re using the administration of the Kelowna West by-election for staff training amongst headquarters staff who are new in their positions and are not able to do this kind of field work during general elections.

If members have questions about our overall approach to the by-election administration or to specific budget lines, of course we’d be pleased to respond to this during the question time.

I turn now to the other supplementary budget request and a requirement for increased funding arising from the Bill 3 and Bill 15 legislative changes. Let me start by saying that much of the commentary surrounding the reasons for and possible impact of the Bill 3 and Bill 15 changes to political financing in B.C., articulated both in the legislative debates on the bills and in the media, emphasized the significant impact of this legislation. I won’t repeat the substance of that debate here. However, what I will do is advise the committee of the direct impact this legislation has on the administration of new political finance rules.

To set the stage for this discussion, let’s talk first about the changing staff complement. Elections B.C. assigns our staff to units that we call program areas. The program area responsible for overseeing the administration of electoral finance laws for the provincial level is called, not surprisingly, provincial electoral finance. It’s a relatively small program area which includes the manager and three staff members.

This supplementary budget request includes funds for an additional six permanent staff in provincial electoral finance, including a team lead, two compliance officers, a political entity registration coordinator, a compliance coordinator and a data analyst. In addition, it includes one additional staff member in our information technology program area and one new investigations coordinator in our investigations program area, as well as a half-time staff member in human resources. This amounts to 8½ ongoing positions.

As a caveat to the comments above, while we have assigned six of the above positions to the provincial electoral finance program area, some of the staff, particularly the compliance coordinator and data analyst, will also be responding to new requirements and supporting new tasks in our local elections campaign financing program area as a result of Bill 15 changes. In other words, had Bill 15 passed without Bill 3 also passing, some of the new positions that I am describing as responding to Bill 3 requirements would still be needed for Bill 15–related work. For simplicity of presentation, I focus my comments on Bill 3, but some of the staffing will contribute to work in local elections campaign financing as well.

Now, let me describe the change in our work in provincial electoral finance that leads to this increased staffing requirement. I’ll describe these changes under five different task labels. First is the frequency, workload and transparency of reporting.

[3:50 p.m.]

Prior to Bill 3, there was one major filing deadline during non-election years — namely, of course, the annual financial filing deadline on March 31. There were no specific provisions for reporting on fundraising functions, other than including these items in the annual financial report. Furthermore, only political contributions and scanned financial reports were published on the Elections B.C. website. With these materials, there was no need to obscure personal information from the scanned forms.

In the new political finance environment, new and more substantial administrative processes are required. Financing reports will be provided quarterly, plus an annual report, thus providing five unique financing reports for some political parties every year. This requires additional effort to remind filers of the deadlines, efforts to prepare the information for publication and, of course, reviewing and reconciling the information provided.

In addition to this periodic reporting, there are new requirements for the continuous reporting of specified fundraising functions by major political parties, including registered constituency associations, candidates and leadership contestants. Each fundraising event needs to be tracked individually to ensure that information is filed by the legislated deadlines, published in a timely manner on our website and amended as necessary. Furthermore, specified fundraising functions also need to be reported as part of all financial reports. So this information must then be reconciled with the financial reports filed to ensure compliance, completeness and accuracy.

Elections B.C. has a new responsibility to publish information on specified fundraising functions. However, in publishing this information, personal information of contributors, such as their residential address, must be obscured. There’s been an increased demand to use technology to help make filing, publishing and tracking information easier. This will be accomplished, in part, through the one-time capital expenditure on information technology that I mentioned. In doing so, however, we also still require the subject matter experts to help develop, test and implement the new systems accurately.

Task 2 is the review and reconciliation of reports to ensure compliance. Prior to Bill 3, there were very few restrictions on political contributions, and therefore, the disclosure reports didn’t require a specific review for contributor eligibility or for contribution limits. Similarly, there were very few restrictions on what political entities could purchase with their money, provided the expenditure was disclosed. As well, the review of political contribution and expenditure information required reconciling financial report data for the same period only during an election year. When there was not an election, there were not multiple reports to reconcile.

The post Bill 3 and Bill 15 scenario looks very different, both at the provincial and the local election levels. There are significant new limits on contributors, including who can contribute and how much they can contribute, requiring much more extensive review on contribution data, including identifying ineligible contributors as well as contributors who have exceeded their limits across the party family — that is, across the party, the constituency association and candidate contributions.

There’s much more information to be reviewed for accuracy, including the type of contribution and the date of event, if accepted in relation to a convention or a specified fundraising function. Additional efforts must also be expended to ensure contributor names and addresses are being reported consistently to ensure that contributors have not exceeded their limits.

This new responsibility in the transition period is to ensure political parties use funds raised prior to November 2017 in ways that are consistent with the “specified use” transition rules in the legislation.

[3:55 p.m.]

On the matter of reconciliation, there will now be a substantially increased effort dedicated to the reconciliation of multiple reports, including reports across multiple filers, such as political parties, candidates and constituency associations. This reconciliation will occur every year, not just in election years.

Thirdly, public and stakeholder education on financing rules. In the period before Bill 3, training was an important part of compliance for financial agents. However, since most limitations on contributions and expenditures relate to the campaign period, almost all of the training provided to political parties and financial agents occurred in the lead-up to a general election.

In the post–Bill 3 era, the more complicated rules for political entities and for third-party advertising sponsors will necessitate additional resources to ensure participants understand and can comply with the rules. The new 60-day pre-campaign-period regulations mean that training for third-party sponsors will need to start earlier and may need to be conducted on a more ongoing basis, given the requirements for sponsorship contribution consent, the requirement for bank accounts and other requirements. In addition, there’s a new need to educate contributors to ensure that they understand how the limits apply and do not find themselves in non-compliance when making contributions to multiple political entities.

Fourthly, assessing penalties for non-compliance. Prior to Bill 3, there were no monetary penalties determined by Elections B.C. for non-compliance, with the exception of the late-filing fees for financial reports. Under Bill 3, a set of monetary penalties are to be determined by the Chief Electoral Officer for various non-compliance issues. Thus, there will be a new requirement to process, evaluate, respond and assess a penalty for a variety of non-compliance matters. In addition, there’s a new requirement to publish information about individuals and organizations that have been assessed a monetary penalty.

Fifthly, with respect to campaign and pre-campaign requirements, there are a number of significant changes involving campaign-related finance requirements. In the pre–Bill 3 period, election financing requirements focused on the 28-day campaign period. There were relatively simple recording and reporting rules for third-party advertising sponsors, and reimbursement of expenses was limited to issuing cheques for $250 nomination deposit refunds.

Under the Bill 3 changes, in addition to the 28-day campaign period, there is an additional 60-day pre-campaign period that affects third-party advertising sponsors. Consequently, there will be significant client support during this period. There are also more complex rules for third-party sponsors, including sponsorship limits, contributor confirmation and consent, requirements for audited financial reports, and initial and subsequent disclosure of sponsorship contributions.

Although much of the day-to-day administration of these new requirements will be conducted by temporary staff hired in advance of the election — and, thereby, using event funding — nonetheless, there’s also a need for subject-matter experts to train and support these temporary staff.

Finally, with respect to reimbursements, as has been alluded to earlier in the presentation, the new campaign spending reimbursements for political parties and candidates will require substantial new effort. There will be a need to evaluate claims for reimbursement for election expenses. While much of this work also will be done by temporary staff, it’s essential that subject-matter experts provide support to this effort — a point made more pressing by the need to provide reimbursement within the legislated time frames. Not only has reporting become more time-sensitive, but also, more detailed and sensitive information must be reviewed in evaluating reimbursement claims.

My hope is that this before-and-after sketch, while, admittedly, lengthy, has provided the committee with an understanding of our funding requirement. Almost all of my comments have centred on the increased workload that this legislative change has had on the program area of provincial electoral finance. As mentioned previously, however, and as indicated in the budget proposal document, some of the increased workload also arises by way of the Bill 15 changes — that is, on some similar contribution limits at the local level as well.

[4:00 p.m.]

In addition to the six new positions in provincial electoral finance, the request also includes one new staff member in IT support and one new staff member in investigations.

The data processing requirements in IT, in which our expectation is that contraventions of the new requirements often are identified through programmed flags, will prove as useful to the local elections campaign finance team as they will for the provincial team. Similarly with the new investigation position, our expectation is that since there is a much more complex set of limitations on contributions and on expenditures, there will be an increased workload for the investigations personnel, both in the local elections and in the provincial environment.

The final permanent staff required is a half-time appointment in human resources.

To sum up this part of my presentation, Bill 3 and Bill 15 significantly transform the way in which political parties, candidates, constituency associations and election campaigns are funded in British Columbia. They also have transformed the manner in which third-party advertising sponsors may engage in the electoral process. There are new limits on the raising and spending of money and more disclosure of how, by whom, where and when money was raised.

These new requirements have necessitated a transformation of the way in which Elections B.C. administers political and election financing rules, both provincially and locally. This budget proposal encapsulates the extent of the redesign of our personnel, our processes and our systems — to enable Elections B.C. to deliver on our mandate to fairly and impartially administer the Election Act and the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.

The final budget item that merits some commentary is the annual allowance for political parties. The allowance is calculated as $2.50 per vote received in the 41st provincial general election for 2018 and $2.25 per vote in 2019. The fiscal year 2018-19 bridges these two years, of course. One half of the allowance is due on January 1 and the second half on July 1.

Thus, for fiscal 2018-19, the allowance provided on July 1, 2018, is based on 50 percent of the calculation of $2.50 per vote for each of the B.C. Liberal, B.C. NDP and B.C. Green parties. The allowance provided on January 1, 2019, is based on 50 percent of the calculation of $2.25 per vote for those same parties. The total dollar figure for the three parties is $2.406 million on July 1, 2018, and $2.165 million on January 1, 2019.

With that, rather than going line by line through the rest of our budget request document, I’ll end my comments, providing the committee with a sense of what these legislative changes mean to our administrative processes and answering questions or responding to comments of the committee.

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

A. Weaver: I had a question on the requirement for increased staff for the quarterly reporting. Am I correct in understanding that in the transition year, it’s semi-annually reporting? Is your request based, for the upcoming fiscal year, for the semi-annual or for the quarterly reporting, which would be in the subsequent year after this first year?

K. Archer: I’m going to ask Nola Western to respond to that.

N. Western: Yes, there is a transition in the first year. We haven’t transitioned that staff. Of course, in addition to reviewing the reports that come in, we need to change all of our processes and our procedures and our internal training documentation, etc. So those staff that we get will be working on that, rather than actually reviewing a quarterly report that would be normally filed in March, I think.

[4:05 p.m.]

A. Weaver: To follow up, then, you require the staff…. Fifty percent of the time is transitioning you to actually get to the situation where you can do four quarterly….

N. Western: Probably not 50 percent of the time, but we require staff now to get us there. Once we’re there, we’ll require staff to keep us there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. So from the phone — Tracy, Stephanie or Peter — does anyone have any questions for Dr. Archer?

T. Redies: Bob, I have about four questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Go ahead.

T. Redies: Thanks, Dr. Archer, for your presentation. My first question is with respect to a comment you made around the capital assets, the $555,000. You indicated there would be more but that you don’t know now what that is going to be. Is this normal, that you would come forward for capital funding without having an understanding of the total cost? What if it’s $1 million or $5 million?

K. Archer: Do you want me to respond to the questions as they come?

T. Redies: Yes, thank you.

K. Archer: Okay. We have done some preliminary estimates of our capital costs. One of the things that we needed to be mindful of as we were budgeting capital expenditures is our ability to ensure that our contractors are able to deliver on the projects that we’re going to be putting in front of them.

You may recall from our annual budget submission that we’ve already received significant capital funding for 2018-19 for projects unrelated to Bill 3 and Bill 15 changes. So our estimate — and Tanya can correct me if I’m wrong — of the total new capital expenditure for Bill 3 and Bill 15 was close to about $800,000, of which we’re confident that we could expend about $555,000 in 2018-19 but would have to defer the rest of the expenditures to 2019-20. That would be around $240,000 or so. Again, I’m just recalling these from memory, but that’s the total package that we’re anticipating.

T. Redies: So $800,000 in capital expenditures are required for Bill 3 and Bill 15? That’s what you’re saying?

K. Archer: Yeah, that’s our initial budget estimate. We feel confident with the budget estimate of $555,000 going forward for the 2018-19 fiscal year. We’ll continue to monitor expenditures and reassess as we approach the fall and prepare a budget submission in the fall. But from our current planning process, we’re assuming that will be about another $240,000.

T. Redies: Okay. My second question…. You spoke a lot about the different requirements on your staff because of Bill 3 and Bill 15. Would you say, then, that Bill 3 and Bill 15 are putting a significant administrative burden on your organization?

K. Archer: I would probably characterize it as follows. The structure of the organization in provincial electoral finance was a response to the requirements for provincial election funding as articulated in the Election Act and was suitable for our purposes under the rules as they existed in the Election Act.

As the Election Act has now been significantly rewritten for that part of our mandate, the configuration within provincial electoral finance is woefully inadequate to perform our legislative responsibilities. We simply cannot do it with the staff complement, with the configuration we currently have. That resulted in us redesigning the program area, identifying those positions that needed to be filled in order to be able to deliver on the mandate, and that’s what you see before us.

T. Redies: There were a lot of numbers going around, so I was trying to keep track of what it was. You mentioned you needed an additional complement of 8½ staff. What’s the total operating cost because of Bill 3 and Bill 15?

[4:10 p.m.]

K. Archer: That was the $1.384 million — the total operating costs for 2018-19 as a direct result of the passage of Bills 3 and 15.

T. Redies: A final question with Bill 3 and Bill 15, and then I have a question on the referendum. We’ve got a by-election this year. We don’t have another election unless, I suppose, something happens. Is it realistic for you to be coming forward with a full budget as if we were going into an election where you would have to administer 87 different ridings?

K. Archer: I guess I’m confused by the question. The only budget….

T. Redies: You’re asking for 8½ more staff because of Bill 3 and Bill 15, which I believe puts more burden on you in terms of having to respond to the payment deadlines or to reimburse candidates, etc. I may have got it mixed up, because you cut out a bit a couple of times, but it sounded like that was the primary reason for asking for these additional staff. But if we’re not having a full election this year, is it reasonable for you to be coming forward with full costs? I may have misunderstood something.

K. Archer: I certainly didn’t mean to convey that the bulk of the work of the new staff is focused on the reimbursement of election expenses. It’s a new area of responsibility of the five areas that I outlined in my presentation. Amongst the staff that we are deploying, their work will vary at different parts of the election cycle.

One of the consistencies that emerges from this new legislation is the really substantial increase in the amount of disclosure of information that’s required on the part of political parties, constituency associations, third-party advertising sponsors. For some of these actors, political parties in particular, the increased disclosure requirement is not confined to an election period. So whereas in the past, our political parties would be reporting once a year in a non-election year on their annual financial disclosures, they’re now reporting five times a year.

Each of those reports can trigger individuals being in excess of their allowable contributions. So because there are now contribution limits, there’s a need to consistently track that data over time and to ensure that individuals are aware and political parties are facilitative of the new rules and helping to ensure that their contributors are compliant with the legislation.

I’ll see if Nola has any further comment that she’d like to provide. But just again, my clarification is that we don’t intend to convey that this is largely staffing for reimbursement purposes.

N. Western: I also want to add that when we do our review of the annual financial reports, followed by parties and constituency associations — and there are over 100 of those reports every year — we hire at least two temporary staff, temporary accounting students, generally, to assist us in reviewing those reports. With this additional complement, we won’t have to hire those two people, so there will be an offset in some of our temporary staffing costs.

When we came up with these 8½ people, we did review other Canadian electoral management bodies. Everybody has different legislation, but we found that our staffing complement as we’ve requested in this document is in line with the other Canadian agencies.

[4:15 p.m.]

In fact, Elections Canada had 14 political parties and 792 candidates in the 2015 general election, compared to our 368 candidates in 2017, and we have 26 registered political parties. Their organization chart, for campaign financing, has over 100 positions. So I think we’re well under some of the jurisdictions in Canada for staffing in administering campaign finance.

T. Redies: Thank you for that clarification.

My final question is just to clarify. I think you mentioned that you would be coming back to us for costs relating to the referendum. We haven’t seen that budget yet. Is that correct?

K. Archer: Yes, that’s correct.

T. Redies: Not to put you on the spot, but have you got any sense of how…? Is that going to be a quarter of running a regular election? Do you have a ballpark number for us that we should be expecting?

K. Archer: I’m reluctant to put a number on the table, in part because we actually don’t know the rules of the administration of the referendum. What we provided to this committee at our presentation in early December was comparative information from recent referendums and plebiscites.

I’ll just ask Anton if he, or maybe Tanya, one of the two, can recall the budgeted expenditures for the transportation and transit plebiscite — remember, though, that that was only for about half the registered voters in British Columbia, only the Lower Mainland — and then for the HST referendum in 2011.

Do either of your colleagues have that?

T. Redies: I thought you’d said something. Forgive me; it’s my memory. I don’t have it in front of me. But yes, it would be helpful if you could provide that again.

T. Ackinclose: For the plebiscite, I don’t have that number off the top of my head. For the last referendum, it was approximately $8 million that we spent.

T. Redies: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bob, for allowing me those questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem, Tracy.

P. Milobar: Bob, I have one question.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sure, Peter. We just have Jagrup, and then we’ll come back to you. Okay?

P. Milobar: Okay.

J. Brar: Thank you, Dr. Archer, for the presentation.

The way I see it…. It’s a pretty complex situation which, particularly, you and your department are in right now. We have a minority government, and then we are going through a proportional representation referendum. The outcome could completely change the way we elect people.

We have this budget in front of us. Today, after you finish and if this committee gives the approval…. You will, of course, have a transition plan for the new system as well. What I want to understand is…. Knowing that you don’t know — and nobody knows — where things are and how it’s going to play, when do you start making the transition to a new system?

K. Archer: We take our direction from legislation and the provisions of…. Electoral finances here, for example, are as a result of changes to the Election Act and the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. As they change, then we change our processes. Quite frankly, I think we’ve done it pretty quickly, given the fact that this legislation is only a couple of months old and we’re in a position of implementing already.

If at some later date the government advises us that there are further changes to the Election Act, then we will provide a timely and professional response to that as well.

J. Brar: Particularly this amount of money which you have here, the capital cost, which is $555,000…. As I understand, this is for the new information system if we go to proportional representation. That’s how I understand that. I could be wrong.

Interjection.

J. Brar: That’s not the case? Okay. Can you explain that, then?

K. Archer: The changes that are part of the capital request in this supplementary budget request relate only to changes to our political finance elements in our technology infrastructure. If we were changing for other purposes, we would present that not as a supplementary budget request but as part of our annual budget submissions to this committee.

[4:20 p.m.]

P. Milobar: I’m just looking for clarification around the staffing complement needed around the reissuance back after an election for campaign expenses.

If I understood you correctly, it kind of ties in with what Tracy was asking as well. If I understood you correctly — it was about 15 minutes ago now — it sounded like you said there’s going to be a great amount of administrative work needed because of that reimbursement needed after this by-election.

Are you saying that the complement of staff you’re talking about right now would not be able to accommodate reimbursement for 87 people — that it’s just part of the duties, plus this one by-election reimbursement? Or is this complement going to actually cover off and be able to provide enough administrative workers so that when there’s a full general election and 87 ridings times two, three, four candidates needing reimbursement, the staffing’s there? I’m not sure I made that clear or not.

K. Archer: I think there are two issues, as I understand, that you’re raising, Peter. You can let me know if I’m wrong.

P. Milobar: I’m only raising one issue. It’s if you have enough staff, based on this new staffing complement, to address the reimbursement for all 87 ridings. Or are you saying this is only to cover off administration plus, kind of on the side of your desk, the one by-election reimbursement? And once a general election comes, you’re going to be needing how many more staff for reimbursements?

K. Archer: Right. This is the full complement of permanent staff required to administer the new legislative framework for election finance, going forward. This is it. So for reimbursement of election expenses following general elections, these are the staff that are going to be doing it. There won’t be an additional request for permanent staff for that.

Now of course, there will be so many reports to review. We will continue to hire temporary staff for events, like we’ve always done. I’ve talked to this committee previously about our use of temporary staff, including in the year after an election, who are reviewing annual financial reports, and under the new regime, they’ll be reviewing even more reports.

Then the other issue I was putting forward to the committee on the reimbursement of campaign expenses was that administering the transfer of money for this is potentially complex, especially if the committee wishes the Chief Electoral Officer to have approval of this committee from all of those reimbursements. That will be extraordinarily burdensome.

It’s the law that we need to reimburse eligible expenses by election candidates. We’re suggesting that the committee may wish to consider just a general pre-approval of that and a letter to that effect, presumably to the Minister of Finance and to the Treasury Board.

P. Milobar: So you’re saying you have no money in your budget so that…. Basically, it’s about $29,000 — we’ll say $30,000 for the sake of simplicity — per candidate, per riding. You don’t have any of that money budgeted. You would need an additional, let’s say, $90,000 a riding times 87. So you need another $9 million, $10 million to be able to do reimbursements.

K. Archer: Yes. We haven’t done the calculation. But yes, at the moment, that is an unfunded requirement.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just to follow up on that, and then we will get to the other questions.

In terms of pre-approval, do you feel that this by-election could be an opportunity to try a pre-approval model for dealing with this issue? If that’s the case, how would you see that rolling out for this by-election? Specifically, how would you see that?

K. Archer: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s an interesting test case, as by-elections often are as we’re looking at new procedures. What has become apparent is that it’s administratively burdensome to do it on a case-by-case basis.

[4:25 p.m.]

The committee may wish to, as a group, recommend to the Minister of Finance or Treasury Board a pre-approval of expense reimbursements for this by-election and to invite the Chief Electoral Officer to report back to the committee on how smoothly or otherwise that was administered as a result of the experience in the by-election.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Thank you.

Next we have Mitzi.

M. Dean: There’s a lot of information here. I’d just like to ask a few, what might be minor, questions.

Tracy asked you earlier on about staffing. One of the responses you said was that by having the complement of staff that is proposed now, it would actually be able to reduce your need for some temporary staff. Where would we see, in the budget, how that offset would actually impact the budget so that we might see a reduction in expenses somewhere?

N. Western: Next fall, when we attend this committee again with our annual financial request, you will see a decrease in political entity reporting by about two staff. Now, these are two temporary staff. They’re not paid very much. They’re usually, in an annual report, only on for six months of the fiscal year. So it’s not a lot of money, but it’s still two people.

M. Dean: Thank you. You mentioned about a 0.5 FTE of an HR support staffing person. Do you not get HR support from Shared Services, or do you just have your own contained HR team?

K. Archer: We do have our own self-contained HR team. It’s a small team — two and a half staff members, which includes the manager of HR.

This is one of those instances in which an accumulation of hiring requirements has led us to request this half HR position at this time. It’s partly because we are asking for an additional eight staff members, and our HR department, of course, will be responsible for filling those. But we’re finding that there has been a consistent high level of event-related activity at Elections B.C., certainly in the time that I’ve been in this position, since 2011.

This year is a good case in point. Because we have a new responsibility now for local election campaign finance administration, we will be hiring, later this year, something on the order of 30 or so temporary staff members to help administer local elections campaign finance. Because we will be administering a referendum later this year, we will be hiring, in all likelihood, many tens of staff members within our headquarters office. That’s leaving aside whether there would be any need to have service centres distributed across British Columbia. We don’t know that at this stage.

Because we’re operating in a minority government at the moment, we’ve also hired our district electoral officers, 87 of them, and the deputies, 89 of them. Not surprisingly, we’re already seeing some attrition of that group. So that becomes an ongoing hiring need.

This is one of those instances in which these additional positions seem to be the straw that just made it impossible for us, in our HR team, to be able to deliver on our mandate. That’s why you see that half position being requested here.

N. Western: Can I just add that we do use the Public Service Agency. We do use many of their services, including employee relations, occupational health and safety, classification work. We do use them. But we also, as Keith said, have internal HR experts.

M. Dean: That’s helpful. Thank you.

If you’re hiring an extra eight staff, where is it in this budget where you’ve budgeted for office space? Are you taking on extra office space, or are you going to be able to absorb them in your existing space?

K. Archer: We are requesting no additional space for those permanent staff members. Elections B.C. has some event space within our space configuration. We operate call centres on a regular basis, both at the provincial level and at the local level.

[4:30 p.m.]

What we’re finding is that we’re using some of our flexible, temporary space. It will be converted to a larger program area. Occupying that and shrinking some of our temporary space a bit, we think we’re able to get by with a few more people in the same quarters.

N. Western: We keep adding to this.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I hate to interrupt, but we’re getting over time now. We’re well over time now. We have another presenter, as well, and we only have a half-hour left to hear the presenter and to deliberate, so could we maybe get through the questions quickly.

R. Leonard: Just one quick question. What I’m seeing is the unfolding of a more open, accountable, transparent electoral process here, which of course is going to cost money to implement. One of the things that I know…. People really trust Elections B.C. to give us the integrity in our process.

You made reference to training — training for third-party advertisers, training for contributors. I was wondering if you could just expand a little bit about how the budget is involved in that training aspect. I know people…. There will be a lot of turning to you on that issue.

N. Western: In the operating budget, there are funds — actually almost one-time funds — to update our website and our e-learning products, to update our guides and forms. And in our annual budget, you will see annual training sessions for political parties. We have always offered annual training sessions for political parties, but everything needs to be redeveloped now. So it is in here. Most of it’s under “Business and office expenses.” But it’s the staff, some of these eight people, that will be doing that work.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have to cut things off now because of time.

Dr. Archer and everyone, thank you so much for your presentation and your thorough answers.

Thanks to the members for all your great questions.

K. Archer: Great. Thanks for having us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Stan, are you on the line?

S. Lowe: Yup, I’m on the line.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We ran a bit over, so I appreciate your patience. Are you going to be leading the conversation, or is one of the staff here going to be?

S. Lowe: Yes, I have a very short submission. I know I said that last time, but I have a very short submission. Then we’ll be available, through all our staff, for any questions, comments or concerns.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. If you could go ahead, that would be great. Thank you very much.

OFFICE OF THE POLICE
COMPLAINT COMMISSIONER

S. Lowe: I’d like to begin today by expressing my appreciation to the committee, Ms. Ryan-Lloyd and her staff for providing our office with the ability to appear before you, both in person and by teleconference, on relatively short notice. Unlike my previous appearance, I intend to keep my submissions relatively short and leave more time for any questions, comments or recommendations you may have.

Once again, in attendance in person, there should be Dave Van Swieten, executive director of corporate shared services, and Andrea Spindler, director of operations and strategic initiatives at the OPCC.

I’d like to thank the committee for your support and your recommendations published in your report this past December.

My goal today is to provide the committee with the most up-to-date costs associated with the administration of three avenues of adjudicated review, as well as the legal costs associated with judicial reviews slated for this fiscal year. This is in support of our request for funding in the current fiscal year.

In addition, it’s clear from the concerns expressed by the committee in your report that I could have done a better job of explaining the complexities associated with seeking legal costs to offset the expenditures that we have incurred in judicial reviews. I have a potential alternative solution, for which I am seeking the support of the committee in the form of legislative reform to address these costs.

First, I will deal with our new projections for costs and our new request for funding in the current fiscal year.

[4:35 p.m.]

Since we met just over three months ago, we have new information on actual expenditures which have impacted our ability to manage allocated funding for fiscal 2017-2018. Since our last appearance, many of these matters have proceeded through the adjudicative processes or have been scheduled for review prior to the March 31, 2018, cutoff for the fiscal year.

The projected portion of our spending plan extends only to March 31, 2018. We are projecting to be overspent in our adjudicative/judicial reviews by $412,111. You’ll recall that funding in this category is 100 percent restricted and dedicated to supporting the adjudicative processes and judicial reviews, and they are managed at arm’s length by a third party, as mandated by the courts. We are respectfully requesting from the committee access to an additional $200,000, based on confirmed expenditures to January 31 and our best projections for the remaining two months of this fiscal year.

Now, in terms of the committee’s concerns and advice as it relates to the recovery of legal costs to the courts, I wish to advise that in the realm of administrative law and tribunals, the courts have been very reluctant in awarding costs for or against administrative tribunals. The nature of the judicial review involved is a jurisdictional issue. Many of the judicial reviews brought by the litigants so far have been framed within this jurisdictional/constitutional lens. Therefore, the likelihood of recovery is low unless there’s some other aggravated circumstance at play.

The committee will receive materials for your deliberations which explain in more detail the legal conundrum associated with seeking costs in the administrative law context. It is important to note that the OPCC operates in a hybrid nature in terms of its processes, with some elements being both of an administrative tribunal and other elements of a commission of inquiry. Seeking legal costs is not a reliable avenue of recouping expenditures for a judicial review.

A potential solution that I bring today for your consideration and potential endorsement is legislative change. This legislative change transfers, or at least shares, some of these administrative costs with municipal governments. It’s important to note that the current legislation in this province leaves the core responsibilities of policing within the jurisdiction of municipalities. An integral part of policing in British Columbia is civilian oversight, pursuant to our model of policing by consent and the need for accountability.

I intend on providing to the government submissions for legislative reform which transfers some or all of the administrative costs of administering these avenues of adjudication to the municipalities where the police department is engaged in the process — i.e., that being where there was a matter that was going for adjudication. In Vancouver, there would be a recovery of costs, pursuant to legislation, from the city of Vancouver, and the police board for that matter, with respect to the administrative costs — again, those being the costs for the retired judge and the costs for the administrative personnel that assist the judge in those matters.

This will have a positive effect on oversight. In my view, this will result in another layer of accountability for police departments to the municipal governments and their boards. I hasten to add that this proposal for legislative change is not my original idea. This proposal in fact came, in a broader sense, from a former committee member a few years back, from the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

That is my potential solution that I would have in the circumstances, and I hope I’ve addressed your concerns with respect to the legal costs. Those are my brief submissions, and we’re happy to answer any questions you may have.

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

Does anyone have any questions?

Okay. Seeing no questions, thank you very, very much for your presentation and for your letter and your supplementary budget. Was there anything else that you or the staff wanted to add?

S. Lowe: No, just that we appreciate you making time for us today for our submission.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem at all.

A short recess — three minutes.

The committee recessed from 4:40 p.m. to 4:43 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

Deliberations

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d like to move in camera, please. Motion to go in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 4:43 p.m. to 5:18 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re now on the record.

Votes on Supplementary Funding

ELECTIONS B.C. AND
OFFICE OF THE
POLICE COMPLAINT COMMISSIONER

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Mr. Chair, I have a motion. Could I bring it forward?

The motion for Elections B.C. is that the committee recommends Elections B.C. be granted access to the supplementary funding of up to $658,000 for the operating expenditures in the 2017-18 fiscal year; that the committee recommends that Elections B.C. be granted access to supplementary funding for up to $5.981 million for operating expenditures in the 2018-19 year; and that the committee recommends that Elections B.C. be granted access to supplementary funding of up to $555,000 for capital expenditures in the 2018-19 fiscal year. Also, under the Police Complaint Commissioner, that the committee recommends that the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner be granted access to supplementary funding of up to $200,000 for operating expenditures for the 2017-18 fiscal year.

[5:20 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): The motion — do I have a second? Ronna-Rae.

Any discussion on the motion?

T. Redies: I’m sorry. I’m having trouble following the motion. I guess on the basis of my discomfort with the $1.3 million, I am going to abstain.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): You cannot abstain.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Can’t abstain?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): No, you have to vote.

T. Redies: I can’t abstain? Well, then, I guess I vote no.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Peter, are you on the phone?

P. Milobar: It’s going to get a little convoluted here. I would have preferred that we broke out the per-vote subsidies so that our votes could have stayed consistent from the previous ones.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So vote yes or no?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Peter, just to clarify, the original proposal was to incorporate all four budgetary requests into a single motion. Three for Elections B.C. — two operating ones, one for the 2017-18 fiscal year and one for the 2018-19 fiscal year, and their capital request — as well as the additional operating requests for the Police Complaint Commissioner for the 2017-18 fiscal year.

We prepared the motion to deal with all of those matters at one time. It’s not incorrect to divide a motion up into distinct portions if it makes sense.

If that’s preferable to the committee, we can take it sequentially. I don’t want to create a….

T. Redies: That would be better from my perspective.

A. Weaver: I have a point of order. Here we have a motion on the table that was seconded. We have to call that motion to a vote at this juncture…

B. D’Eith (Chair): We have.

A. Weaver: …and we’re in the process of doing that. I don’t know how we can suddenly backpedal through our entire system here.

P. Milobar: I’m not trying to backpedal.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The motion is on the table. The motion has been made, it’s been seconded, and a vote has been called.

P. Milobar: I was just trying to clarify that per-vote subsidy is part of this motion.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes.

P. Milobar: Okay. Then I’ll have to vote no, to keep my vote consistent.

B. D’Eith (Chair): How many votes do we have? Has everyone voted?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I think Stephanie….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Stephanie, did you want to vote? I haven’t heard from you. Maybe she’s not on the phone anymore.

Motion approved on division.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Then there’s another motion.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I move that the Chair advise the Minister of Finance, as the Chair of Treasury Board, of the recommendations adopted earlier today and that the committee’s recommendations be formally recorded and included in its report on its annual review of the statutory office budgets in 2018.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We have a motion. Seconded by Mitzi.

Any discussion on the motion?

Motion approved.

Other Business

B. D’Eith (Chair): Now, we did want to make one recommendation to the Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees in regards to how we are receiving our presentations. In particular, we would request that the Clerk’s office write a letter to Elections B.C., making a recommendation to make a detailed proposal in regards to the operating and capital requests that have been made and approved, to allow the committee more due diligence in regards to those specific requests. We’d like that to be done by the end of April 2018.

In addition to that, we are requesting that a general review be done, especially on supplementary requests; that we receive more detail, particularly in regards to operating and capital expenditures; and that we will also talk to the Clerk’s office about having templates created or having more information about ongoing budgets and how the budgets are rolling out so that we have that information moving forward.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you so much for that direction. I’d be happy to facilitate that on behalf of the committee.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are now adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 5:25 p.m.