The committee met at 8:02 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good morning, everyone. We are doing an annual review of statutory offices in British Col­um­bia. Next up we have the Office of the Ombudsperson — Jay Chalke.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

Review of Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSPERSON

J. Chalke: Good morning, Chair, Deputy Chair, members of the committee. With me today is Deputy Ombudsperson John Greschner and the executive director of corporate shared services, Dave Van Swieten. Dave is, of course, very familiar to all of you. The Office of the Ombudsperson operates corporate shared services on behalf of three other officers of the Legislature on a chargeback basis, and in that capacity, he appeared with those three officers before this committee yesterday. I gather yesterday there was some interest in corporate shared services, which I’ll address later.

I’m pleased to take this opportunity to speak to you today in support of our office’s budget request for the fiscal year 2019-20. In front of you is our budget request, as well as our three-year service plan and our annual report.

Last year at the time of our budget request, I spent some time providing a high-level orientation to our office’s role and services. We went a little deeper in our regular spring round of meetings, followed by this committee’s visit to our office. I also appeared before you in support of our in-year funding request after the Legislative Assembly passed Bill 28, the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

With that background and before turning to our budget request directly, I’d like to bring you up to date on public reports and updates we’ve released since I was last before this committee. In May, we released special report No. 41, Working Within the Rules: Supporting Employment for Income Assistance Recipients.

Working Within the Rules was the result of a complaint we received from a single income assistance recipient regarding the calculation of the earnings exemption in her particular situation. We found that the ministry had calculated her income as income assistance incorrectly, and as a result, she had received $500 less than she should have. A problem for sure, but here is the critically important part: the calculation of income assistance in this case was in accordance with ministry policy, but that ministry policy was inconsistent with the law. The ministry had applied this incorrect calculation to thousands of other British Columbians over the past six years.

We found the ministry had acted contrary to law in its calculation and oppressively in maintaining that interpretation, even when they knew it was wrong.

[8:05 a.m.]

We recommended that the ministry bring its policy into line with the law; identify everybody since 2012 who, as a result of the improper policy, had received an incorrect amount of income assistance and pay them the shortfall — this was estimated by the ministry to involve nearly $1 million in redress payments; and develop guidelines for responding to systemic or repetitive legal errors that are identified by the ministry’s internal reconsideration process so that once a problem like this is identified through reconsideration, it’s addressed and not allowed to linger for years as this did.

The good news is the ministry accepted all of our recommendations, and we’re currently following up with them to receive a report on their progress implementing those recommendations. We will then prepare and release our assessment of how the ministry has been doing in their policy development and in their reimbursement to individuals of the shortfall.

We’ve changed how we report on our monitoring of how public bodies are doing on implementing our recommendations that they’ve accepted. My intention with this change is to bring greater transparency and timeliness and profile to this important aspect of our work.

In furtherance of that, we recently released monitoring updates of two previous reports under inspection: our 2016 report into the system of regular provincial prison inspections and In the Public Interest, our 2015 report into government’s regulation of the private career-training college sector.

Our prison inspection follow-up report found that the Ministries of Attorney General, and Public Safety and Solicitor General had implemented all but one of the “under inspection” recommendations. The implemented recommendations will improve the internal program of prison inspections.

However, the outstanding recommendation is an important one: implementing the 2015 United Nations prison inspection standards, known as the Mandela rules. In 2016, the ministry had committed to implementing the three prison inspection Mandela rules by April 2018. That didn’t happen in April, and it hasn’t happened since.

I appreciate there’s work to be done by government in implementing the relevant Mandela rules, some of it leading-edge work in Canada. Having said that, I’ve expressed my concern to the ministry and publicly that this implementation is not yet complete, and I’m calling on the ministry to get on with implementing that which, almost three years ago, they agreed to implement by earlier this year. We will continue to monitor and report on this.

We also issued a “still a work in progress” report card on the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training’s improvements to regulation of the private career-training college sector. Over 50,000 people, mostly young adults, are students of these colleges, and many pay significant tuition and other fees, some more than it would cost to attend British Columbia’s leading universities.

We made 36 recommendations in 2015, and our follow-up report indicated that half of the recommendations are implemented, but half still are not. Students in this sector need better protection by the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training, so I’m calling on the ministry to focus on the half of our recommendations that are not yet fully implemented.

The good news is that work by the ministry on many of the remaining recommendations is underway, and that’s encouraging.

A few weeks ago the Speaker tabled our first follow-up report to our April 2017 Misfire report into the 2012 Ministry of Health firings. Our Misfire report was critical of the manner in which government had conducted various investigations, the resulting employment termination decisions and the data suspension and contracting decisions. We made 41 recommendations to address the failings that we determined had occurred.

Our recent update report was largely positive, because we determined that only four recommendations of the 41 we made remain outstanding, and four others will involve some relatively minor further action to ensure that robust implementation takes place.

Many of the implemented Misfire recommendations involved complex policy development with competing values and priorities. Two recommendations required legislation. Both bills were introduced and passed in the spring session earlier this year. One of those was Bill 28, the Public Interest Disclosure Act, which I’ll speak about in a minute. And the other was Bill 13, the Public Service Amendment Act, which impacts the operation of the Merit Commissioner, which you heard about yesterday from Ms. Spencer.

Implementation of Misfire’s recommendations was facilitated by the appointment of the Hon. Thomas Cromwell, and I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for his work. In a number of instances, Mr. Cromwell analyzed government’s first attempt at implementation and suggested that they go back to the drawing board. They did, and the product was better for it.

We did find that while all of the recommended fixed-amount ex gratia payments to individuals had been made, there were three outstanding types of payments where the amount needed to be determined by government or others on a case-by-case basis. Some of those remained outstanding.

As I indicated when we released the update a few weeks ago, it is past time that these individual amounts be settled and paid. We’ll be following up in the months ahead to ensure that government brings the same focus to implementing the remaining recommendations as they brought to the first year. Government’s next implementation report on Misfire is due to us by April 30, 2019.

We released our annual report in July, and that report indicated that we received a ten-year high number of complaints last year. We’ve worked hard to manage that workload from within our current allocation.

[8:10 a.m.]

It’s good news that people are increasingly aware we’re here to help them if they have concerns about the fairness of government services. Of course, it raises a concern that so many people have reason to complain about being treated fairly by public bodies. The question of volume is something we will continue to monitor and analyze as we go forward.

The annual report includes case summaries of the ways we helped British Columbians last year. In case after case, we report how people, many of them vulnerable, turned to us with their concerns of unfairness or unreasonable treatment by an array of provincial and local government bodies. In coming to us, they’re seeking administrative justice not just for themselves but to make things better for those who follow.

In our annual report, we cite one complainant’s reaction to the changes made by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction following her bringing her concern forward and our subsequent investigation. She said: “I feel like Norma Rae.” That engagement by citizens seeking fairness is, of course, wonderful.

Our prevention initiatives project has been very active with in-person workshops, webinars and consultations with employees of provincial and local public agencies. You may recall that you had the opportunity to drop in on one such administrative fairness class when you visited our office earlier this year. An on-line course, available 24-7, is also under development and will be launched in early 2019.

We are, with some colleagues in other provinces, developing a tool for public authorities to self-assess their own policy and program structures to make sure they comply with fairness standards and identify opportunities for improvements. We’re also releasing a best-practice guide to complaints handling to help public authorities respond more effectively when they receive a concern and hopefully avoid it from escalating to us.

Of course, we have been working with individual public agencies to help them work through their specific service issues to make sure fairness is built right into their organizational systems, their operating policies, their service culture and their public communication materials. We’re all very excited about this project, as it takes our expertise developed from 40 years of reactive investigations and applies to the proactive adage “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Next year is the evaluation of our pilot project, and this time next year we will be reporting to the committee on the value that the project has provided. In the meantime, as I say, we’re very busy, and from the positive feedback we’ve received from public bodies and their staff, we’re optimistic about what all that activity is yielding.

I’d also like to update the committee on some work that is in progress regarding our information technology challenges. We currently have a database that is customized for use in each of the four offices in the corporate shared-services model. The current system was written in 1991, and while it has seen a number of updates since that time, a software platform it depends on is reaching the end of support by its developer and will eventually become incompatible with current technology.

We’re in the process of engaging a consultant to assist us in selecting an appropriate technology for moving forward. However, this work is in its early days yet, and we do not have any concrete estimates or timelines for completing the forced upgrade. I anticipate by spring that we will have a better sense of costs and timing and that we can present our findings to the committee and share the financial and budget implications at that time.

The benefit of an investment like this in our shared-service environment is that each office will benefit from the upgrade being done, as there’s a common infrastructure shared between us. Thus it won’t be a completely net new investment for each of the four offices.

Turning now to our budget request for 2019-20. It’s quite straightforward. First, we have a minor request of $174,000 for inflation pressure, which will keep our base operations in a status quo situation and avoid service cutbacks to accommodate negotiated salary changes and rent increases. This represents a 2.28 percent increase in our budget.

Offsetting some of the base pressures is a reduction of one staff arising from the completion on March 31, 2019, of the three-year funding for our “files awaiting assignment” backlog project, which began in 2016. This reduction project has taken our “files awaiting assignment” list from a high of over 550 in 2015 to what we project will be near 100 files by the end of the fiscal year, and I’m confident that we’ll reach the actual target of 50 files next year as the improvements we’re making through completion of our investigation, intake and early resolution process reviews continue to take hold. As you know, we’ve made a number of changes through business process reviews, and those will continue to reap benefits for us.

I want to express my thanks to the committee for supporting this temporary project that comes to an end in March.

I want to touch on corporate shared services for the benefit of the committee. I understand there were some questions yesterday when the Police Complaint Commissioner was before you. As you know, corporate shared services is part of the Office of the Ombudsperson. We chargeback the other three participating officers of the Legislature on a pro rata basis. The accounting can be a bit confusing, so we pulled out the total picture for CSS for you.

[8:15 a.m.]

The first place I would refer you to is to page 10 of our budget submission. This table, which we present each year, shows the Ombudsperson’s budget divided into operations and corporate shared services and is done by STOB.

You see the total cost of corporate shared services is $1.646 million, of which we recover $896,000 from the other three officers of the Legislature, and the balance of $750,000 is part of our annual budget request. That’s how we divide the cost. But digging deeper, what are those corporate shared service costs? To that end, we’ve prepared a short document being distributed to you this morning.

On the back, we’ve also included an organization chart so you can see who does what within that team. The columns in the chart show you the budget of all four legislative officers and corporate shared services. The areas highlighted in blue that you’ll see under STOB 85 for the other three officers show how the cost is accounted for from them. Then, in the fifth column, under corporate shared services, at the very bottom, that amount highlighted in blue is our cost. It’s a recovery that we obtain from them, but of course, to us, the net balance that we spend on corporate shared services is an expenditure.

If there are any residual questions about that model, I’d be happy to address those after my remarks.

The main focus of our budget request this year relates to the coming into force in 2019 of this past spring’s Bill 28, the Public Interest Disclosure Act, or PIDA. Although B.C. is the last province to have this important legislation, it puts us in a position to adopt best practices from other jurisdictions and to be a leader in investigating disclosures as well as educating workplaces in how to foster a workplace culture where employees have safe and effective pathways to disclose wrongdoing.

This will support a culture where people who see some­thing wrong speak up and know that if they do, the wrong­doing they point out will be made right. By providing these safe pathways for making a disclosure of wrong­doing, the legislation enhances key public sector values of transparency, accountability and integrity.

We are working with government on implementation of the act, and they are planning that phase 1, covering some 30,000 public servants in ministries and the independent officers, will come into force next year. That will be followed by annual expansions of the application of the act, which happens by regulation, of around 50,000 to 70,000 additional public servants per year for each of the subsequent five years so that by the time of the five-year legislative committee review mandated by the act, it will apply to over 300,000 staff in the broader provincial and local public sectors. This would roughly parallel the application of the Ombudsperson Act.

Phase 1 is critically important to get right, to set a tone for the phased implementation of the act that follows. The small implementation team that was the subject of our in-year allocation request earlier this year will continue. Once the team has completed the work required to ensure that our own office is ready to go, they will turn their focus to implementation and operational support for the hundreds of public bodies with whom we will partner to enable them to be ready as their turn comes. It will be a critical but very busy role to foster successful implementation.

As I mentioned the last time I was before this committee, a successful public interest disclosure law involves much more than simply counting the number of investigations done by the Ombudsperson. It involves supporting an ethical culture and organization that welcomes speaking up, where employees can raise concerns that something is not right and can do so safely, free from reprisal and with confidence that their concerns will be responded to effectively.

Part of our job is to support public bodies to take that positive approach as part of their culture of ethics and integrity. That will include working with public bodies to assist them as they appoint designated officers; design procedures for receiving and assessing disclosures; design and conduct statutorily required risk assessments; adopt measures to protect the identities of disclosers; develop procedures for appropriate cases where the public body seeks to transfer the disclosure to, for example, law enforcement, our office or another body; develop urgent disclosure protocols with law enforcement or the provincial health officer and the like.

Our small team will support public bodies with that work as well as the communication strategies that public bodies develop for their own staff on how they can avail themselves of the new law. Those five positions that were originally funded last May will carry on with that important work.

Turning to the incremental staffing we’re seeking beyond the existing implementation support team, our request for additional staff relates to the three statutory functions we’re mandated to deliver under PIDA: one, providing advice to prospective disclosers; second, investigating disclosures of wrongdoing to determine whether the disclosure is substantiated; and third, investigating complaints from public servants that they’ve been the subject of reprisal for making a disclosure or cooperating with an investigation under the act.

[8:20 a.m.]

Unlike the work of the implementation support team, the volume of which is relatively fixed and predictable, the work related to the advice and the wrongdoing disclosure and reprisal investigation functions is variable, depending on the number and complexity of the cases that come to us.

We’ve employed a multi-factor approach to our volume estimates, incorporating cross-jurisdictional analysis, the specific features of the British Columbia legislation, the awareness of public interest disclosure, generally, as well as related reporting pathways in the anticipated approach to implementation as employed by government.

Complicating the estimates of potential volume is the nature of the legislation itself. Once PIDA is implemented, it is possible we will receive complaints about wrongdoing that could be years or even decades old.

I want to talk about our cross-jurisdictional analysis. We saw quite a range of volume arising from PID legislation in other provinces and territories and at the federal level. Some of that relates to population differences, of course, but even accounting for that, volumes remain quite variable.

Important differences in the roles of PID commissioners under legislation exist across the country. For example, in many jurisdictions, allegations of reprisal are not a matter for the PID commissioner, but rather, they go to a tribunal that is separately managed and funded. That is not the case under our legislation. Those matters will be investigated, determined and reported on by our office.

What we can learn from other jurisdictions, and what appears quite consistent, is that in each jurisdiction, the highest number of contacts come from people who seek advice from PID commissioners about whether to make a disclosure. That’s followed by contacts by individuals who make a disclosure, and then the number of actual investigations by the PID commissioners is a subset of those disclosures. In other words, the number of investigations, while important, is only a portion of the workload.

While we looked at the whole country, the experience of the public interest disclosure commissioner in Alberta is the most instructive, owing to similarities in the legislative schemes and jurisdictions. Like British Columbia, Alberta has the three core functions of giving advice, investigating disclosures and investigating reprisals. Alberta undertakes outreach work to diminish negativity around disclosing wrongdoing.

The population size of Alberta is roughly similar, with Alberta being slightly smaller. As a result, we looked at Alberta’s numbers. Alberta’s public interest disclosure legislation came into force in June 2013. Its experience with the initial rollout of its legislation is informative. In the first year of Alberta’s legislation, the commissioner’s office saw a significant number of inquiries, 132. In its second year, 2014-15, it received even more — 168 inquiries, 29 disclosures and reprisal complaints — and undertook 20 investigations.

One significant distinction between B.C. and Alberta is that Alberta’s act applied only in respect of wrongdoings that occurred after the coming into force of the act. As I mentioned before, ours is explicitly retroactive.

Based on all these considerations, we established ranges for each of the inquiries, disclosures and investigations. We anticipate conducting eight to 20 investigations over the first year. Just to say, again, investigations are only a subset of the projected total incoming workload. While these numbers appear low, compared to the matters addressed annually under the Ombudsperson Act, it’s very clear that these cases are more resource-intensive than a typical Ombudsperson Act case.

We’re forecasting initially requiring a team of an intake officer, four investigators and an investigation team manager. We will carefully monitor this workload, and we’ll report to the committee on our ongoing assessment of the sufficiency of those resources to manage the workload in accordance with the duties the new law imposes on us.

Without proper resources to undertake investigations, we have only two choices. One option would be to place public interest disclosure complaints in a “files awaiting assignment” queue, and assign as resources become available.

This would be contrary to advice we have received from PID commissioners across Canada, who are of the view that PID allegations, by their nature, require that investigations are initiated promptly. The reason for this is self-evident: if the wrongdoing is substantiated, it’s important that it be addressed as soon as possible. There can be significant costs associated with failing to do so.

In addition, the British Columbia act requires that persons involved in receiving, reviewing and investigating disclosures do so expeditiously. So while the statutory provision is of course good public policy, it limits our flexibility by requiring that in PID cases, we get on with the job.

The second option for us, if we have insufficient PID resources, is equally unappealing — namely, to divert resources from Ombudsperson Act investigations to PIDA investigations.

[8:25 a.m.]

As you know, we’ve worked hard, including with extra support from this committee over the past three years, to reduce our “files awaiting assignment” list and better balance our incoming workload with our investigatory capacity. It would be unfair to concerned members of the public if investigations of their complaints about government were delayed because they were viewed as being less of a priority than PID concerns raised by public servants.

Simply put, we’re at capacity on Ombudsperson Act investigations, and thus robbing Peter to pay Paul would be inconsistent with everything that we have been working very hard to achieve.

We could, of course, return to this committee for a budget increase, but the time horizons to detect an unmanageable pressure, obtain a date before the committee, hire staff, train them and then deploy them to undertake a full caseload is a minimum of nine months. In the meantime, we’d be forced to follow one of the two highly unsatisfactory approaches that I just outlined with corrosive effects, not just to the particular investigation involved but also to the reputation of the new law.

I believe we’ve found the sweet spot in terms of our resourcing estimates, but in all candour, there is some uncertainty risk. That said, I will of course be providing this committee with an annual report on workload as the various implementation phases of the act occur, right through the government’s planned five-year implementation plan.

That’s where the government’s annual phased rollout will be particularly useful. We’ll be able to adjust our workload estimates and resulting staff requirements each year through the four subsequent phases of implementation. That mitigates our risk and should be of comfort to the committee.

The coming into force of PIDA represents the largest single change in our statutory mandate in our 40-year history. Implementing our responsibility in a manner that promotes public confidence in the new law as well as supporting the public body subject to the act to do so as well is a tremendous challenge but one that we’re very much looking forward to as we do our part to promote and enhance ethical public administration in the province.

That completes my remarks about our request for next year. Before I close, I want to mention that we have an in-year capital request for 2018-19 of $120,000 to complete readying space this year for the incremental staff for PIDA and associated space realignment in our building. Completing those changes this year allows us to complete that realignment in time for the new staff.

That completes my remarks. I’d be happy to answer your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for, well, everything you do, of course, for the province and for the people of the province and for your thorough submission.

Before we get to the committee members, I just had a couple of questions. In terms of…. I mean, it’s approximately a $1 million lift for dealing with the new responsibilities. So when you say you looked to other jurisdictions, were you looking to Alberta for the cost and how many FTEs? Is that part of how you got to those numbers? You have $800,000 in additional salaries. That’s a significant amount for salaries. So I’m just wondering.

Is it based primarily on Alberta? Are there other jurisdictions? I know, obviously, you’re estimating something you don’t know, to a certain extent, but maybe if you could talk just a little bit more about that, because it is a significant lift. It would just be really good for us to dig in a bit more.

J. Chalke: I think our primary effort when we consulted with other jurisdictions was really to look at their volumes — the workload resulting from those volumes — as well as to their advice about how to best implement public interest disclosure legislation across the board.

In terms of the cost that arose out of that, I think we very much just looked at our own determination of what that assessment would yield, because costs are different. Costs are carried differently in different jurisdictions, so we didn’t….

The actual dollar cost wasn’t so much the concern but more the staffing, I guess I would say. That we were very interested in. For example, Alberta: they have a team of four in Alberta. We’re a slightly larger province, so we thought six was appropriate in that context. So it was more a staffing analysis than it would be a dollar analysis, I guess I would say.

The other thing to note is that at the federal level it’s a special purpose-built commissioner, so this is all they do. So obviously costs are much higher, because they have all sorts of infrastructure costs that we, candidly, don’t have to carry because we already have those built for our pre-existing functions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. And just a second one.

Dave, thank you very much, by the way, for providing us with the detailed breakdown.

[8:30 a.m.]

I think that in the future, as we’ve already discussed, it would make sense to have the Ombudsperson first when we’re dealing with the multiple commissioners. Then we have a chance to see this instead of having it after we’ve seen everybody.

One of the things I did want to mention is that nearly all of the commissioners are talking about inflationary costs because of the corporate shared services. The one thing this doesn’t do is actually show the inflation. It shows the cost this year, but it doesn’t actually show the variation, I don’t think, unless I’ve missed something. If it did, I apologize. At least on this sheet, it shows the costs this year.

I think the questions that we’ve had are around the inflation that has been said in nearly every submission we’ve had. If I missed that, I apologize, but it was just something that might be nice for us to get, just to see that inflationary cost, because we want to be able to compare why someone’s saying 10 percent and someone’s saying 14 percent. We want to make sure that it’s all consistent. Is that something we might be able to get, Dave?

D. Van Swieten: Yes, it is something we can get. The mechanics of getting a spreadsheet comparing last year to this year across five entities was a little more complicated than we could’ve done in one night. But if that’s something the committee’s interested in, we can put that together.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d appreciate it. That seems to be the question that keeps coming up. It’s the inflationary bit that keeps bringing the question up from our members. That would be very helpful, I think, when we do our final deliberation. We’d really appreciate that, and I appreciate the extra effort on all this. It’s just that it keeps coming up, so it’s really good, I think, for all of us to just get our heads around. And it is complex, so that’s why it’s important.

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation, Jay, and for all the work you and your team do.

I just have a couple of questions. I’m looking at page 7 of the budget submission, the fiscal 2018 current budget. Am I missing something? I don’t seem to see anything in terms of your actuals, year to date. Where are you with those?

J. Chalke: We don’t normally present our actuals at this point in time. Currently I think we’re a little bit underspent but sort of within our traditional range, pretty much tracking to the end of the year to be close to on budget.

T. Redies: Okay. Then on the following pages, 8 and 9, as Bob pointed out, $801,000 change in salaries…. Looks like it split $657,000 between the Ombudsperson and corporate and shared services at $144,000. The $657,000. I recognize you’re taking on new responsibilities. That’s a significant increase, 17 percent over what your current salary budget is.

I guess I was struggling a little bit until I heard your presentation. I looked at the notes — STOB 50 and STOB 52. It suggests that it just includes salaries for existing staff positions and known financial impact of the salary increases. How much of that $801,000 is increased staff, how many increased staff are we talking about, and how much of it is actually just salary increases relating to inflation?

J. Chalke: If you take out our new statutory functions, not with respect to that particular STOB but just generally overall, 2.28 percent is our inflation request, our other costs other than PIDA. I wouldn’t disagree with you that it’s a significant lift, with respect to PIDA. It’s all new statutory functions.

In terms of what that is, it’s the five staff that this committee funded earlier this year — I talked about that, that operational support team that’ll carry forward — and then the six staff starting next year to conduct investigations and provide advice, so the statutory functions. So that’s 11.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. It was good to get a stronger sense of what you’re facing as you’re moving forward with this new responsibility.

I guess my question…. You talked about your existing responsibilities. You talked about the educational, the pre­ven­tative and the proactive angle to getting agencies to be more understanding of the processes, to be more compliant.

[8:35 a.m.]

In the same vein, as you’re looking forward to PIDA, you’ve talked about the complaints. This is a whole culture shift, and there’s this fine balance of building trust and maintaining integrity. Is part of your scheme to be looking at more of that preventative, educational aspect so that you can help nurture that new culture and help prevent us seeing hundreds of complaints, rather than dozens?

J. Chalke: Absolutely. When you look at the 11 new staff, five of the staff…. Once that team has completed getting us ready to carry out our statutory function, their focus turns outward. It turns to those public bodies to provide support in them getting ready in terms of the nuts and bolts of the legislation, for sure, but also in terms of supporting that kind of culture change that you’re talking about, creating the kind of “speak up,” welcome environment so that problems, if they’re identified, can be identified early, which is always better than if people are concerned but feel like they have nowhere to go and problems just continue to fester and go on a long time and are only revealed later.

Absolutely. That is the function of that five-person operational support team. The six staff that will be incremental for next year are with respect to delivering our own statutory investigation functions. It’s a little more than half but roughly half and half in terms of the staffing complement to devote to both sides of what I agree with you is a really critical element.

I think that the best advice we’ve received is not to consider only the investigatory functions but, really, to think about how you can support public bodies in promoting that sense of ethics and integrity. The challenge is, of course, the hundreds and hundreds of public bodies across the province as this five-year rollout takes place.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Jay, John and David, thank you very much for your presentation.

On shared-services HR administration, we had another independent officer talk to us about setting up new HR. Is there not a possibility for one addition or some form of addition to what we currently have, instead of a whole new department? I just take a look at how well — it appears to an outsider like myself — shared services seems to function, and I would personally prefer, instead of a new department, that maybe there’s just an additional staff member or some additional support given.

I’ll just plant that seed with you for the future.

J. Chalke: My only comment is that as the service provider, we do our level best to provide support to the other three officers that we are co-located with. That co-location is pretty critical to making the system work efficiently. I work together with Dave and with the other three officers to determine what those services are and the standards that we’re going to deliver those to. But to be candid, my job is to be the Ombudsperson.

I’ll take your point back and am happy to look at what we can do. But really, at the end of the day, it’s pretty important that we keep that as a relatively minor part of our corporate goals and provide that service as efficiently as possible.

All I would say is that I feel like the service, generally, is nearing its limits in terms of our capacity as part of the Ombudsperson’s office to deliver support to other organizations. But I’m happy to take that back and see if there’s some­thing we can do, particularly if it’s a…. I’m not sure what organization you’re speaking about, but if it’s some­thing that we can provide even some temporary assistance to, that’s the sort of thing we might be able to do.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Please accept my apologies. That wasn’t directed at you. It was a suggestion because of the shared services that Dave has a tendency to keep his fingers on, but it does, from my perspective, flow through your office, and that’s one of the issues I would just like under consideration.

I’ll just say it again. There are opportunities, and I hope that every opportunity is explored for efficiency and savings to the taxpayer.

J. Chalke: For sure, absolutely. All I would say is we may have to come back and look at a funding model that’s a little different if we’re going to come up with a different kind of relationship that we might have with other officers. That’s all.

[8:40 a.m.]

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that.

J. Chalke: Thank you for the suggestion.

M. Dean: Thanks for all your work.

I’m just interested in the building occupancy. It looks like it’s going up by nearly 10 percent, but in the note it doesn’t say anything about an increase in space or anything. Can you just kind of unpack that a little bit, about what the driver is for that significant increase?

J. Chalke: An increase in space, for the new staff, related to the new statutory function.

N. Simons: I appreciate the report. Thank you for your submission.

Regarding one of the case summaries in the annual report. I always enjoy…. It is the case of a person who was receiving benefits through social assistance, and it was being administered third-party. He couldn’t go directly to the ministry office. He wasn’t allowed to because of previous involvement, probably a temper or something. The conclusion was….

When he applied to be able to go in and speak to workers again — it had been six years — the ministry told him he wasn’t allowed to. He still had to go through third-party administration. When your office looked into it and made inquiries, it showed that in fact, fair process wasn’t….

It wasn’t handled very well. He had been refused his appeal because he had contacted your office and the MLA’s office in the past. That was the basis for the rejection of his request. In your conclusion, the ministry was reminded of a person’s right to contact your office, and I thought that was very appropriate.

But there was no mention about the fact that he was also being punished for talking to his MLA. We do have a lot of cases of individuals who are a bit afraid to come and speak to us because they feel that they’re personally targeted — or to any particular ministry office, what have you. I wonder if, the larger issue of being afraid to report or pursue a complaint, you can address that a little bit.

J. Chalke: Certainly. The factual circumstance that you recounted, which we reported in our annual report, is a matter of concern to us, whether it be us or to an MLA, of course. It’s not something we encounter very often, to be candid, but when it does happen, we take it very seriously. It’s every citizen’s right to avail themselves, coming to us or, of course, going to an MLA. So while the good news is that we don’t encounter it very often, we do see it from time to time, and it’s a serious issue.

S. Furstenau: Further to that, I’m looking over the summaries as well. One of the things I’m interested in — and I’m sure that you look at this — is that there are complaint processes. So 50 percent of your cases are ministry-related, and there are complaint processes in place for each of these ministries. Clearly, those haven’t worked, and you’ve become the next step, or an escalated step.

Are you also reviewing why those complaint processes didn’t work and, hopefully, identifying ways that they should be working so that your workload can, ideally, decrease?

J. Chalke: We absolutely do that. Sometimes we do it on an individual case, why it didn’t work. Often that is, the unfairness we’re reviewing, is the appeal process — sometimes. That can definitely be a thing we do.

Sometimes we review those appeal processes at a systemic level. We did a systemic investigation, a few years ago, related to the timeliness of the Ministry of Social Development’s internal reconsideration process. They had timelines. They weren’t meeting those timelines. Even when the applicant was successful and thus they were granted income assistance or disability assistance or an increase to those amounts, they weren’t going back to what their service standard was and retroactively increasing the rate. We were obviously critical of that. For sure, that is an element of the kind of work we do, either individually or systemically.

I would say, as well, that our prevention initiative also looks at review processes. That’s a collaborative exercise, as opposed to when we’re doing an investigation, where it’s maybe not quite so collaborative.

[8:45 a.m.]

We’ve been working with review and appeal bodies and inviting them to bring those sorts of issues to us so that we can work with them. I think we’ve had really great success. We’ve had some recently, sessions with tribunals and with other public bodies that do review front-line decisions, kind of retooling what that looks like. So yes, absolutely.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a quick question. When we met with the Privacy Commissioner, lobbyists registry commissioner, one of the things that came up was some efficiencies around investigations, being able to share resources with their investigators between the two sort of sides of what they have to do.

I’m just wondering: are there any potential efficiencies…? Obviously, we have a new responsibility, but I’m just wondering, in terms of investigation, is there any chance that there could be some efficiencies and maybe not need all of the FTEs? I’m just curious whether that had been thought of.

J. Chalke: Absolutely. It has been thought of. We don’t have any capacity or flexibility with respect to our existing roles, but I do believe that from a career development and retention perspective, this does provide good opportunity for the investigators in our office to kind of work through different areas and thereby broaden that skill set.

I think that is a valuable element in the long run, because in the long run, for efficiency, increasing retention is critically important to us. It takes quite a while for a…. You know, you can’t go get a degree in being an ombudsperson investigator or being a PID disclosure investigator. You come to us, and you learn how to do it.

So very much so, retention is a critical element, in my view, for efficiency, and I do believe this will assist with that.

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

Hearing none, thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate everything you do, once again, and we’ll talk to you soon.

A short recess.

The committee recessed from 8:47 a.m. to 8:58 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Elections B.C. — An­ton Boegman.

Welcome. We look forward to your report.

ELECTIONS B.C.

A. Boegman: Good morning, Mr. Chair, Mr. Deputy Chair and committee members. I’m very pleased to be here today to present Elections B.C.’s budget request for 2019-20. I’m joined at the table by Nola Western, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for funding disclosure, and Charles Porter, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for electoral operations. Also attending in the gallery are Tanya Ackinclose, director of finance, and Andrew Watson, director of communications.

This annual presentation is a great opportunity for us to share with members of this committee — and, through you, to the entire Legislative Assembly — the activities and highlights of this office and the way in which our activities are manifest in the expenditure of public funds.

We believe — and I know that our practices demonstrate this belief — that we are prudent and responsible stewards of public funds and are ever mindful of the importance of providing non-partisan quality services to all electoral stakeholders and doing so in an efficient and fiscally responsible manner.

Before setting out our budget request, which we have provided to the committee staff last week, I will make a few brief remarks on the work of Elections B.C. and our key priorities in the upcoming year.

Following these comments, Nola and Charles will each provide additional detail on our budget submission. Nola will speak to the ongoing operating and capital budget requests, while Charles will address our event funding requirements.

[9:00 a.m.]

This has been a very eventful year for Elections B.C. We conducted close-out activities for the 41st provincial general election and tabled both reports on the administration and cost of the election as well as on recommendations for legislative change with the Legislature. We administered the campaign finance requirements for the provincial general local elections, with voting day on October 20, 2018, and are now reviewing financial disclosure statements from all participants in that event.

Although Elections B.C. has no role in administering the voting and counting for local elections, the campaign finance oversight requirements are significant. During the local nomi­nation and campaign periods, Elections B.C. staff responded to over 5,000 inquiries and supported over 3,500 unique participants to meet their legislated financial obligations.

Concurrently we are also in the middle of administering the vote-by-mail referendum on electoral reform, with close of voting being next Friday, November 30. During his comments, Charles will provide an update on that event.

It has been a challenging year for Elections B.C. In addition to the administration of the events specifically mentioned, Elections B.C. has also been implementing significant changes to the legislation that defines our mandate. The passage last year of Bills 3, 5, 6 and 15, and now Bill 53 of the current session, have required us to re-engineer many processes, update almost all of our electoral finance forms and guides, establish new work units and enhance our financial disclosure and tracking and reporting systems.

At the same time, Elections B.C. has also maintained readiness for on-demand events, including an ongoing engagement with district electoral officers in the field to complete the basic readiness assignments that we believe are prudent and necessary in a minority government setting.

What I have mentioned in this retrospective summary should not be news to you as committee members. Indeed, these activities have already been described to you in detail during the five meetings that Elections B.C. has had with the committee since November a year ago. But it is important to frame the last year as context. Event readiness and implementation activities, capital improvements and enhancement projects often cross fiscal years and will therefore show up in successive annual budget presentations. This year’s budget submission reflects that perspective.

The overall budget requirements for Elections B.C. are presented as four separate budget requests. The first is our ongoing operating budget, which is used to fund the day-to-day operational work of Elections B.C. Our operating budget request is presented as a three-year request beginning in 2019-20 and extending to 2021-22. Our operating budget’s primary components are the costs for permanent staff salaries, building occupancy, corporate information systems and amortization of capital projects, which together make up nearly 90 percent of the total operating budget request.

Second, we have a separate funding request for capital expenditures. Many capital projects have multi-year time­lines and therefore require sustained funding over successive years. Our capital budget request is based on both cost estimates from our technology partners as well as a realistic assessment of Elections B.C.’s capacity to complete capital projects given event workloads and constraints.

Third, we present the annual event spending requirements necessary to prepare for and deliver events. In our annual budget submission, this includes readiness for and administration of scheduled events and any known on-demand events. As Elections B.C. only provides event funding requirement estimates for one fiscal year, this is where you also may see event funding requirements in successive annual budget submissions.

Please note that if other events are required to be administered on an on-demand basis subsequently during the year, we will prepare additional, separate event funding requests when those events are initiated. This means that, for example, our budget submission today does not include any funding to administer a future by-election in Nanaimo.

[9:05 a.m.]

Rather, for such an event, I will write to the committee when that event may be called. Just for your information, a by-election typically costs about $570,000 to administer.

The fourth component of our annual budget submission is the annual allowance for political parties. This amount is fixed, based on legislation.

Now let me turn to the numbers. I’ll provide a high-level summary of Elections B.C.’s 2019-20 budget requirements. When Nola and Charles speak, they will provide additional detail and refer you to the specific pages of our budget submission document that are associated with these budgets.

For 2019-20, our ongoing operating or core budget request is $11.106 million. This represents a decrease of $714,000 from our operating budget in 2018-19.

Our capital budget request is for $855,000. Per our capital spending plan, in the appendix, this budget will enable the completion of mandatory system improvements required as a result of prior legislative change as well as the implementation of several key strategic initiatives.

Event funding for 2019-20 is $2.954 million. This is based on completing finance reviews of financial disclosure statements for the 2018 general local elections, wrap-up activities associated with the 2018 referendum on electoral reform, and it also includes funding for ongoing readiness preparations for a possible on-demand provincial general election. These components are consistent with our previous event budget submissions for these events.

Last, the annual allowance for political parties for 2019-20 is $4.091 million.

Before turning to Charles and Nola, I would like to speak to the strategic context and identify the themes underlying our work that are represented by the numbers in our budget submission.

Everything done at Elections B.C. to administer our mandate is aligned with four key priorities established in our strategic plan: delivering events, focusing on stakeholders, leading change and enhancing value.

Delivering events and ensuring that we are ready to deliver events when required is our primary priority. It’s our raison d’être as an organization and, indeed, in every year since 2008, we have administered at least one provincial event. Often, like the past year, it has been multiple events per year.

The ongoing work of our staff, our building occupancy costs, the maintenance of our core technology systems and infrastructure and other costs reflected in our ongoing operation budget set the foundation for us to be ready for and deliver events.

The event budget, of course, entirely supports this priority, representing the additional resources and work requirements that provide us with the specific capacity to achieve readiness and deliver these events when necessary.

The capital budget also supports this priority, particularly when Elections B.C. needs to develop new systems to enable us to administer changes to our mandate resulting from legislative amendments.

Focusing on stakeholders very much supports delivering events and reflects Elections B.C.’s commitment to finding solutions that meet the needs of our electoral stakeholders, while enhancing operational efficiency.

This is supported by our ongoing operational and event budgets, which enable changes to processes and tools to better support stakeholders.

The capital budget is particularly relevant here, as many of our improvement projects have capital components, such as optimizing our on-line voter registration system for use on mobile devices and developing a client portal that will provide a suite of services to candidates, financial agents and parties.

Leading change is about how Elections B.C. is able to re­spond to changes in our environment — be they legislative, technological or societal — and reflects our core value of innovation. As with the two previous strategic priorities, our ability to lead change is directly impacted by our operational, event and capital budgets. Other actions by this office, including CEO reports to the Legislature, support this priority.

Last is enhancing value. This strategic priority, rather than being supported by our budgets, directly impacts how these budgets are developed.

[9:10 a.m.]

Enhancing value reflects our efforts to engage in partnerships that support innovative service delivery, as well as ensuring that event and operational planning is always focused on the most effective and efficient ways of achieving the desired ends. It means that we can be confident that our budget requirements are responsible, prudent and necessary.

I will now turn to, first, Nola, and then Charles, to provide additional detail and key considerations in relation to the specific budget requirements. Nola will address our ongoing and capital budgets, while Charles will speak to our event budget.

N. Western: Good morning. It’s a pleasure to appear before this committee again and to give you some details about some of the numbers you see in the budget proposal document. Our ongoing operating budget request by business line is on page 14 of that document.

Expenses that support all the business areas — such as salaries; amortization; building occupancy, which is rent; office expenses; and information technology 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 those expenses.

The request of $11.106 million for ongoing core services is actually, as Anton said, a decrease from the current year’s core services budget. There is an increase to salaries and benefits next year, resulting largely from the negotiated wage increase for schedule A staff, who are entitled to the same increases as BCGEU members.

Corporate information’s, or IT, costs will decrease. When Bills 3 and 15 were passed last fall, those were the bills that brought in significant changes to the election financing rules for both provincial and local elections. We requested from this committee additional funding to implement those changes, including some one-time IT costs.

Likewise, in political entity, we had some one-time implementation costs for Bill 3. Another reason political entity will decrease next year is because the annual financial reports for non–general election years are less complex and take less time to review. Therefore, the temporary staff hired to review the 2017 annual financial reports, which included the general election information…. Those temporary staff will be done, and we will not replace them. Next year permanent staff will conduct those reviews.

Amortization or depreciation, of course, is the allocation of the costs of a capital asset to the operating budget over the expected useful life of the asset. So although the actual cost of capital assets must initially be paid from our capital budget, that cost must also be paid out of future operating budgets over the number of years. Amortization fluctuates every year based on the level of investment in capital assets and the age of the assets that are currently held.

Other changes to the business line budgets are modest and reflect minor fluctuations between the separate line items as we adjust to normally changing circumstances and projects every year.

Charles will address the event expenses, so I’m going to skip down to the bottom of the page, where you’ll see the annual allowance for political parties.

Next year it will be $4.091 million. This amount is shown separately because it is not funding for Elections B.C.’s operations. Rather, it’s a statutory payment to political parties, based on the number of votes they received in the last general election.

As in past years, we’ve included a pie chart. It’s on page 17. That pie chart illustrates the core services budget request for next fiscal year, the $11.106 million. This chart really illustrates that Elections B.C. is highly dependent on people and information technology. Once the salaries, the information technology and the rent are paid, there’s really little flexibility in other areas.

The last few pages of the budget proposal include the spreadsheets created by the committee staff for our use. Table 1 is on page 18. It is a three-year budget plan by STOB and shows the current fiscal year, 2018-19, compared to our request for next fiscal year. This spreadsheet includes both our core services and the event budgets for 2019-20 and clearly illustrates how widely the total budget varies from fiscal year to fiscal year as we move through the electoral cycles.

[9:15 a.m.]

The total ongoing operating budget request for 2019-20 is the $11.106 million I just spoke about, plus the $2.954 million for events that Charles will talk about and $4.091 million for annual allowances to the political parties. The planned budgets for the two out-years, fiscals ’20-21 and ’21-22, do not include any event funding.

When we create our budget for electoral events, we don’t simply take the prior year event costs and add a percentage. Each budget is developed from the ground up, based on the precise plans for that event. Those plans are not finalized until the fiscal year immediately before the event.

Table 2, on page 20, shows the budget versus actuals for fiscal 2017-18. During that fiscal year, we conducted the 41st provincial general election, the Kelowna West by-election, finished the pre-election enumeration and administered the campaign finance and election advertising provisions for 41 local by-elections and non-election assent votes. Much of the variance shown on this page results from savings we achieved by changing the staffing model in voting places for the 2017 general election.

Table 3, on page 22, 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. Funding for events such as general elections, referendums, recall petitions, by-elections, etc., is from a special appropriation and is approved by this committee and the Minister of Finance. At the end of the fiscal year, the Ministry of Finance actually allocates Elections B.C. the exact amount necessary, up to the maximum of the approval made by this committee.

The budget reflected in the public accounts equals exactly the amount that was spent on those events. Hence, the variance of actuals to appropriation is zero, and no surplus is reflected, even when the actual costs of the events are lower than the original estimate. You can see this illustrated on pages 22 and 23 of the consolidated revenue fund supplementary schedules in the most recent public accounts for ’17-18.

Finally, table 4, on page 24, shows the capital spending plan. Our capital request for 2019-20 is $855,000. This is all related to information technology. We do not plan to purchase any new furniture or equipment or incur any capital tenant improvements to our office or our warehouse.

Elections B.C. strives for continuous improvement of our services to voters, candidates and other stakeholders. The new systems projects reflect that service orientation, including an on-line client portal that will allow candidates to file nomination information electronically, improvements to the on-line disclosure systems and continued enhancements to our on-line voter registration system.

Other information technology projects are required as a result of last fall’s amendments to the campaign financing rules under the Election Act and the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. The requirements-gathering and de­sign of those changes has been done, and we’ve implemented some of the changes. We are now in the development stage for others.

Thank you for your attention. Charles will now address the funding for the events.

C. Porter: Thank you, Anton. Thank you, Nola.

Good morning, committee members. My focus will be on Elections B.C.’s event-related funding requirements for 2019-20. Delivering events and ensuring that we are ready to deliver events when required is our primary priority as an organization.

Before speaking about the event-funding request details, I would like to briefly review some highlights of our event-related activities to date in 2018-19. I will include an update on the current status of the 2018 Referendum on Electoral Reform.

So 2018 began and continues with Elections B.C. maintaining an ongoing state of readiness for a potential on-demand provincial general election. Elections B.C. administered the Kelowna West by-election, which was held on February 14, 2018, and issued the subsequent event report. And 2018 has been a busy year with local election campaign financing. Elections B.C. administers the campaign financing and election advertising provisions in the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, or LECFA, as we know it. This year that process was complicated by recent amendments to LECFA prior to the October 20 general local elections.

[9:20 a.m.]

Now we will turn to the 2018 Referendum on Electoral Reform, which we are currently administering. As you know, government chose the questions, timing and vote-by-mail methodology for this referendum. Elections B.C. was given an education role in this referendum and is running a comprehensive public awareness campaign. The campaign is aimed at getting the word out about the referendum and to help people learn about the four voting systems which are in question.

The campaign includes print, radio, digital and social media ads. We have a webpage with comprehensive information about the referendum, and a Voter’s Guide was distributed to every household, which explains how to vote and the basics of the systems of the ballot. Additionally, we have a series of short videos on the same topics.

Budgeted costs associated with public education and voter communications total approximately $3.195 million, or 22 percent of the overall event budget. The budget for public awareness is very similar to what was spent during the 2017 provincial general election on voter communications and outreach.

The main cost drivers are referendum advertising, printing and mailing those four million householders, salaries and benefits for public education contact centre staff, outreach activities, voter surveys, and Braille and translation services. Our contact centre, to date, has answered over 40,000 calls, and our website has had approximately 500,000 referendum-related visits since September. We have regis­tered more than 7,600 new voters during the process, and we have issued more than 20,000 replacement packages for mail which has gone astray.

Referendum voting began on Monday, October 22, and is currently planned to end Friday, November 30, unless an extension is required. As of November 21, Elections B.C. had issued 3.295 million voting packages to registered voters and received about 810,000 completed voting packages. This represents approximately 25 percent of registered voters. This figure does not include ballot packages which are currently in transit in the mail system.

With respect to the Canada Post labour dispute, we are monitoring the situation very, very closely. We are in daily contact with Canada Post to understand any impacts. Despite rotating strikes, the vast majority of voting packages were distributed to registered voters by November 2, as planned. As of this week, Canada Post’s estimate is that letter mail processing and delivery in B.C. has been affected by an average delay of between one and three days. However, Elections B.C. is aware of longer delays in some instances.

Elections B.C. believes that delivery times of voting packages have been materially affected by the Canada Post labour dispute. We also believe that voter behaviour has been affected as a result of the Canada Post strikes, the related public debate and related confusion.

The Chief Electoral Officer has the authority to extend deadlines, as was done during the HST referendum. We are actively considering an extension order but have wanted to better understand the impact of strike actions, as well as potential solutions which may be exercised by the government of Canada or the parties to the dispute prior to making any decisions. In the meantime, Elections B.C. has stepped up communications to encourage voters to complete and mail their packages as quickly as possible or to take advantage of the many opportunities to drop ballot packages off at Service B.C. and referendum service office locations.

Consistent with best practices used in various jurisdictions and British Columbia for vote-by-mail events, we have rigorous and careful safeguards in place to ensure that laws are followed, only eligible voters vote, and they only vote once. Each voting package is personalized and addressed to a specific voter, and we track all voting packages individually. Voters must sign a formal declaration stating they are the voter named on the package and have not voted previously in the referendum. They must also provide their shared secret, which is their date of birth, in order to vote.

To date, 98.2 percent of the packages Elections B.C. has received and screened for compliance have met all required criteria. It’s a very high rate. For the 1.8 percent which do have a deficiency — for example, somebody has failed to sign the certification envelope or has transposed their birthdate entry — Elections B.C. has procedures in place to provide correction opportunities.

[9:25 a.m.]

More than 80 percent of the voter packages which do not pass that initial screening have been eligible for correction, and Elections B.C. has reached out to every one of those voters to provide that opportunity in those cases.

At the end of the day, incomplete voting packages or ones that do not pass the compliance screening will be set aside not considered for counting, but will be reported in our post-event report.

We have systems in place to detect multiple requests for voting packages from the same voter and will void a voting package if a voter lets us know they didn’t receive that package. We also monitor voting package requests for suspicious patterns. There is very little evidence of voter fraud in British Columbia provincial elections or mail-based referenda. That said, it is something we take seriously and are vigilant about. We follow up on each and every complaint we receive. Built into our referendum process are numerous steps and procedures taken to verify and validate the results. Observers will have opportunities to be present during the process.

At the close of voting, Elections B.C. will move on to the tabulation stage of the event. This is planned, at this point in time, to begin on December 1 and will continue until complete. After the count is complete, an audit of a statistically valid random sample of referendum ballots will be performed, and the results will be reported. Following completion of the referendum event, Elections B.C. will compile and issue a report, which will include any lessons learned, to ensure continuous improvement for the future.

I will now move on to Elections B.C.’s event-related funding request. As Anton indicated earlier, I’d like to emphasize that our event budget request for 2019-20 only includes funding that’s required for known event activities. There will be a number of events in 2019-20 that are either unknown at this point in time or not known to a sufficient level of detail to be included in this budget proposal. Elections B.C. will return to present those as supplementary requests to this committee.

The specifics of our electoral event budget request are provided on page 14 of the budget proposal document in front of you, under the subheading “Event expenses,” with additional detail provided in notes 10, 11 and 12, on page 16.

The overall event budget requirement for the 2019-20 fiscal year is $2.954 million. This request is divided into three components, each representing a separate electoral event.

First, I’d like to speak to requirements relating to closing out the 2018 Referendum on Electoral Reform. Elections B.C. is requesting $50,000 for that purpose. As Anton noted earlier, we’ve advised the committee of the need for these funds at previous committee meetings in 2018. These are funds that are required for fiscal 2019-20 to fund inquiries and the cost of potential investigations and legal services relating to referendum disclosure reports. Disclosure reports are due 90 days after the 2018 referendum voting closes. This is a one-time funding request.

Now I’d like to speak to funding requests related to general local elections. Elections B.C. is requesting $772,000 to administer the statutory campaign finance provisions of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. This general local elections request includes funding for temporary staff to review disclosure statements. We anticipate receiving more than 3,500 such statements.

Voting day for the 2018 general local elections was October 20, and elections occurred in 250 jurisdictions across the province. Candidates were vying for offices such as mayor, councillor, school board trustee and electoral area director. There were 3,396 candidates, 64 elector organizations and 96 third-party advertising sponsors. All must file disclosure statements by Friday, January 18, 2019. All statements are reviewed by Elections B.C. to ensure compliance. We anticipate compliance reviews to run, at least, until late summer 2019.

Now I would like to turn to the request relating to provincial general election readiness. Elections B.C. is requesting $2.132 million for preparation activities associated with ongoing readiness for an on-demand provincial general election. What does readiness mean? Elections B.C. maintains the staffing, materials, systems and processes necessary to spring into action on short notice and hold a provincial general election. This request to fund on-demand readiness is not typical for this point in Elections B.C.’s business cycle. It’s related to the current status of the minority government.

[9:30 a.m.]

The provincial general election readiness request includes funding for the salaries and benefits of a limited number of headquarters temporary staff and fees for 87 district electoral officers, 88 deputy district electoral officers and six regional field officers. These key regional and electoral district positions are not full-time employees, are paid only for the actual work they complete and only carry out necessary and prudent work tasks to ensure readiness. This includes completing necessary work assignments and training and other readiness activities. Also included in the request are information technology costs, building occupancy for additional warehouse space and professional services.

The specific types of readiness activities that will be undertaken in all 87 electoral districts include developing specific local election plans for each electoral district to ensure voter accessibility, identifying or confirming potential office locations with appropriate infrastructure, storing readiness kits of supplies and addressing attrition among potential district electoral office staff. Continuing appointees will receive refresher training, and newly appointed district electoral officers and their deputies will be trained and supported in learning their new roles.

This concludes my remarks. Thank you to the committee for your attention.

Anton, do you have any closing thoughts?

A. Boegman: Thank you, Charles.

I don’t have any additional comments on our budget submission; however, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my colleague Nola Western. Nola is retiring from Elections B.C. in January after 30 years of public service. As such, this will very likely be her last appearance before this committee, and I wanted to acknowledge this milestone.

Nola’s work has been integral to the success of Elections B.C. in administering our mandate, and I wanted to thank her for her dedication and service and wish her well in retirement.

Thank you, Nola.

N. Western: Thank you.

A. Boegman: Now, Mr. Chair, I’m pleased to turn the proceedings back to you for any questions or comments that committee members may have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much for your presentation.

I’m sure, on behalf of all of the Finance Committee, Nola, we’d like to extend our absolute thanks for everything you’ve done for the province and wish you the best in your retirement. That’s wonderful.

N. Western: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’re welcome.

I just had a couple of preliminary questions. In regards to the…. This might be something for Charles. If there is a postal strike and if there is an extension, would you anticipate any additional costs associated with extending the dates, or do you think that given the budget you have, the things that need to be done to finish the referendum would be able to be completed within the budget?

C. Porter: At this point in time, we’re confident that we can deliver the services within the existing budget.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. In terms of the readiness on the on-demand provincial general election…. I mean, I notice that it’s $2.1 million. It was $1.7 million. I’m wondering if you could maybe just drill down a little bit more into the specifics as to why it’s $2.1 million and maybe some of the specific things that need to be done next year.

C. Porter: Yes, certainly. Essentially, this reflects that we are moving closer to the planned election date of October 2021. The increased spending request is to, essentially, step up the preparations, which are both for readiness for an on-demand election but also to make those preparations for the planned election date.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Finally, just before we move on to general questions, I notice the Site C petition and the note in 14 for the $801,000 that was approved for this fiscal year. Would that not, going ahead, presumably…? In the note, it says that’s being returned. Is that correct? I just wanted to clarify that.

C. Porter: That’s correct, Mr. Chair.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, great.

First up we have Peter.

P. Milobar: Just to pick up on the ongoing costs of election readiness. If I’m understanding this correctly, you need roughly $2 million a year for election readiness every year that there’s a minority government because you’re not sure when there may be an election. Is that what I’m hearing? Post PR, that could be….

[9:35 a.m.]

If there was a successful referendum, that would translate to an ongoing $2 million a year, in perpetuity, for Elections B.C.?

A. Boegman: I think that what we can talk about is what we know at this point in time. With the current system, first-past-the-post, and the mandate that the office has, we need to make sure that we are ready. There are certain activities that we have identified that we will continue to do on an ongoing basis to ensure that we can maintain that state of readiness.

Charles alluded to some of those activities that we’re doing. Some of them are annual activities. Some are being done at this time because they reflect, as he mentioned, that we are closer now to the planned date of the next fixed-date scheduled elections in British Columbia.

As for what it may look like in a new electoral model, we’re not in a position to make any educated guesses or comment on that. That would completely depend on how the legislation is set up and the model that we need to put in place to administer that.

Some of the things that we are doing in our capital budget, for example, will support our ability to administer elections at short notice. The candidate portal, for instance, is one that will allow candidates access on a 24-7 basis to file their nomination documents with Elections B.C. and provide a more efficient manner of that than the paper forms that we currently have, which then have to get reviewed manually and entered into our systems at Elections B.C.

P. Milobar: The only reason I ask is that the whole reason there was $1.7 million last year and $2.1 million this year…. Both of those were explained as election readiness, not knowing when a fixed election would come because of a minority situation.

It stands to reason, if you’re going to keep needing that year over year up until the next general election, if the next general election under even first-past-the-post results in another minority government, one would assume you would still need to have election readiness because the fixed election date is no longer relevant when you have a minority government situation under any electoral system.

I think your answer kind of maybe tried to depoliticize what I was not really trying to make political, which was simply a question around ongoing costs based on not necessarily knowing when a fixed election date is, regardless of what electoral system creates a minority government.

The other question I have, though…. When Charles was referencing confusion and the mail strike, it seemed like the suggestion was…. I think the least confusing part for people right now is the mail strike. It’s pretty much been accepted that everyone has gotten their ballots in the mail. Whether there’s a strike or not, it’s not confusing to put that in a mailbox. Whether it gets to you or not, in time, is between yourself and Canada Post.

I’m hard-pressed to understand how the mail strike is leading to confusion — of all the confusing pieces of the referendum. Can you maybe elaborate on how people would be confused how to use Canada Post, whether there’s a strike or not?

C. Porter: Certainly. We’re receiving calls in our call centre from people asking what they should do, reporting stories they’ve seen in social media or in the media. Should they hold on to their package? Is there going to be an extension? That sort of confusion is what I was referring to. And our advice, in every case, to voters is to get their mail package into the mail as quickly as possible and that we will count it if it arrives on time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just to follow up on Peter’s, before we go. In terms of election readiness, presumably these are costs that would have to be incurred, for the most part, anyway, for the general election, many of which are just being done in advance. So I’m not sure that there’s a direct connection between $2 million every year and the minority government. Presumably, a lot of these costs would have to be incurred anyway.

A. Boegman: That’s correct. A lot of the costs would have to be incurred anyway. Whenever there is a minority government situation, an electoral agency needs to spend money to ensure a heightened state of readiness. That is the same for us. It was the same for Elections Ontario in their minority government.

But yes, what we’re looking at now reflects costs that we’re maintaining readiness for and some costs that we’re spending in advance of the scheduled election date that we would be incurring anyways.

[9:40 a.m.]

S. Cadieux: Can you explain the additional spend that’s planned in professional services? It’s about a 150, 200…. I can’t do the math this early in the morning. It’s a significant bump-up in professional services, over the 2018-19 budget, and projected to go down again in 2020-21. Page 18, line 60.

N. Western: Yes, the 2018-19 total budget for professional services is $1.578 million.

S. Cadieux: No, the original budget.

N. Western: The $474,000.

S. Cadieux: Right. Then understanding there was a larger amount, given what happened last year…. I would have assumed the budget to drop to what it had been previously, or close to, and it has not. So could you explain what those additional costs are for next year?

N. Western: Tanya, who is our director of finance, tells me that in ’19-20, there are some costs in there for the events, including some of the…. Closing the referendum — what else is in the event? The local elections and….

Interjection.

N. Western: Yeah, the GE readiness. But it goes down in 2020, because we won’t have those.

If you want more details about what is exactly included in that, we’ll give it to you later.

S. Cadieux: Yeah, I would like to know, because professional services would suggest that’s contracted-out services.

N. Western: It’s usually legal fees and investigation fees. That’s nearly all of our professional services.

A. Boegman: As an example, the event budget request for the conclusion of the referendum included $50,000 if we need to do any audits or investigations. That would show up entirely in the professional services budget line for 2019-20 but would not appear in subsequent years. That’s an example of some of those costs that are there that are related to the events.

N. Western: Yes, thank you, Anton. You remind me that a lot of the professional services…. It’s in our ongoing budget, but for investigations related to the referendum — those financial reports are due 90 days after the close of voting — and related to the local election campaign financing reports. Again, those financing reports are due at the end of the January, late filing to the end of February.

Once we look at those reports and we identify that there could be investigations needed…. There’s a little bit of a jump in the year after big events like referendums and general local elections.

A. Boegman: Again, these are funds that we’ve put into our budget, based on the potential for these types of things to happen. If we don’t require to do any of those, then those funds are returned to the Crown.

T. Redies: You raised the ongoing referendum right now. I’m curious. Do you have any sense of when the results will be known?

C. Porter: The results will be known when we finish the process of counting, which will be a matter of weeks after the close of voting finishes.

T. Redies: Weeks?

C. Porter: Weeks.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Anton, Nola and Charles, thank you. Nola, congratulations — 30 years’ service. I wish you well in your retirement.

Charles, you made mention there were 3,000 issues that you had to address, and there was a $700,000 request. Did I hear that right, partway through, that there were 3,000 examinations you had to do?

C. Porter: Yes, this was with respect to the local election campaign financing requirements for next year, for 2019-20. There are 3,500 candidates and parties to that process which will file campaign financing disclosure statements, which then require follow-up.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): And that’s approximately $700,000, you said.

C. Porter: That’s correct.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): So that’s $240 or $250 per, to look at it.

[9:45 a.m.]

N. Western: That includes investigation money that we just talked about, that we may or may not need.

P. Milobar: Just one question that came to mind on that whole municipal side. With the new rules in place and the caps on even what people can personally put into campaigns, what happens to a candidate if they’ve…?

I get there’s the civil side, if they have unpaid bills, but what happens when their budgeted expense amount doesn’t match up with what they’re allowed to personally donate and have been able to receive in donations? There’s a deficit there. Is there any…? Previous, if you don’t file, you don’t get to run in the next election. Things like that. Is there any consequence to a candidate where they have outstanding debts from a campaign because of the new financing rules?

N. Western: There’s no consequence in the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act except that unpaid debts become contributions, and of course, organizations cannot make contributions, so there could be offences there. And there’s the normal law about paying your debts that’s outside of the jurisdiction of Elections B.C.

It’s important to note that candidates can collect new contributions in relation to that election once we pass January 1, 2019. So if they need to continue to raise money to pay outstanding bills from the October 2018 election, they can do so in 2019. The new campaign contribution limit kicks into place January 1.

M. Dean: Just a quick question. Thank you so much and good luck. Thank you for being able to end up with a zero variance.

Your building occupancy costs go down into next year and stay the same into the year after and then go up again. I’m interested in how they stay the same, because everybody else comes to us and puts the 2 percent or whatever inflation on. Then do they go up again because you’re anticipating then we’re going to have an event?

N. Western: We have a fixed lease so we know for the next couple of years until the lease comes up how much exactly it’s going to be for each of those periods. These building occu­pancy charges are for our…. We have two warehouse bases right now, and our office.

M. Dean: Can you explain the jump up in ’21-22?

N. Western: Property taxes are going up. The operating expenses related to the lease are going up in ’21-22. It’s scheduled in the lease — normal increments to cover things like insurance, property taxes, maintenance of the building.

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

Seeing none, I wanted to thank you, Anton, Nola and Charles, for your very thorough presentation. We appreciate all the work you do. I know you had a very tough year, and you’ve got a tough year ahead. Thank you very much for everything, and we will see you soon.

Can I get a motion to adjourn, please?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 9:48 a.m.