The committee met at 10:08 a.m.

[S. Bond in the chair.]

S. Bond (Chair): Good morning, welcome. I very much appreciate all of you being here during the summer. Work continues, as we all know, and I very much appreciate you being here.

I want to thank my colleagues on the committee for their hard work. We are working diligently to ensure that we are keeping up with the reports that the Auditor General’s office is pumping out. We did have a bit of a backlog to catch up on — from our perspective, not the Auditor General’s — but we’re appreciative of the opportunity to meet this morning.

We’re going to consider two reports, and then we have some other committee business to do on follow-ups and also a discussion, led by the Auditor, about follow-up and how it’s done and that process. We’ve been very interested in looking at innovation and how we continue to make sure that there is that follow-up and accountability, so we appreciate the work that has been done on that file.

We’re also, obviously, thinking about the people in the Okanagan today. We have colleagues that are very concerned about the wildfire situation. As a person who was a recipient — our community — of 10,000 evacuees last year, we know how difficult it is. So we want to think of our colleagues today who are working their way through those issues.

[10:10 a.m.]

With that, we’re going to get started. In addition to the Auditor General and her staff, who she will introduce momentarily, I do want to recognize the comptroller general, Carl Fischer, who is here with us. We always appreciate his attendance at these meetings.

Our first report this morning is the Auditor General’s report entitled An Independent Audit of Executive Expenses at School District 61. It was dated April 2018. We’ll follow our usual pattern, for those of you who are visiting with us this morning. The Auditor General will make some opening remarks. Her staff will walk us through the findings of the report, and then we’ll have an opportunity to hear from the Ministry of Education representatives and the board of education reps that are here today.

We’ll work on the technology as we go along. Very grateful to the Hansard staff and, obviously, to the Clerk of Committees for making our meetings work when we’re on the road. It takes a lot of effort to make sure that this happens when we’re outside of Victoria, in particular.

With that, I’m going to welcome the Auditor General, Carol Bellringer, and ask her to make some opening comments.

Consideration of
Auditor General Reports

An Independent Audit of
Executive Expenses at
School District 61

C. Bellringer: Thanks so much. It is indeed my pleasure to join you for this meeting today. I’m actually going to…. I’m certainly available to answer any of your questions today, but I am going to hand it straight over to the assistant Auditors General for their respective reports. Sheila Dodds, who is one of the assistant Auditors General in performance audit, will lead you through school division 61.

S. Dodds: Good morning. Thank you, Carol. Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members. Thank you for inviting us to present the summary of our audit report on executive expenses at school district 61. With me, I have Ed Ryan and Barbara Underhill. Ed was the engagement leader for this audit, and Barbara was the engagement manager.

Ed is the executive director responsible for a new work unit, the compliance, controls and research team, which is conducting narrow-scope performance audits that focus primarily on management controls and compliance. This is the first audit report completed by the controls, compliance and research team.

In this audit, we looked at the executive expenses for six executives from school district 61 in Victoria. Specifically, we looked to see whether expenses that the school district paid on behalf of these executives complied with the district’s policies and followed the spirit and intent of government’s core policy. Overall, we found that school district 61 was doing a good job of managing its executive expenses.

I will turn it over now to Ed Ryan to provide a more detailed overview of the audit, its findings and recommendations.

E. Ryan: Thank you, Sheila. Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members.

This topic is important because payments for executive expenses need to be transparent and disclosed consistently across school districts around the province so everyone is held equally accountable for the spending that they’re doing of public funds. We plan on auditing the executive expenses in a number of districts across the province.

School district 61 was the first. Overall, we found that school district 61 was doing a good job managing the payment of its executives’ expenses. The district’s financial records were complete and accurate, and we didn’t find any instances of inappropriate or non-business expenses that were paid for.

While all payments that we found were appropriate, we did find areas for improvement and two notable variations from government expectations. The first variation was around the executive expenses disclosed in the school district statements of financial information, as required by this Financial Information Act. The second was around the district’s use of corporate purchasing cards.

We concluded that the school district was not disclosing all executive expenses as required by the Financial Information Act. The Financial Information Act is provincial legislation that establishes a requirement for publicly funded organizations to publicly report annual statements of financial information that supplement their annual financial statements themselves.

According to the district, it didn’t disclose all of its executives’ expenses because of how it interpreted the requirements of the legislation. The school district’s approach had been to disclose only those expenses where an employee could have been seen to have received a personal benefit — for example, when an employee attends a conference or a training. As a result, the district wasn’t reporting expenses where there was no personal benefit to the staff member. For example, it wasn’t reporting expenses related to business meetings, such as including travel and accommodation.

We disagreed with the district’s interpretation of the act and confirmed our interpretation with the Ministry of Education, specifically that all expenses should be reported, no matter the reason or potential benefit.

[10:15 a.m.]

The difference in interpretation meant that for the six staff that we sampled, the district should have disclosed approximately $145,000 more in expenses, which is about 60 percent of the group’s total expenses over the two years.

The second variation from government expectations was around the district’s use of corporate purchasing cards. The school district gives its employees a corporate purchasing card to use for their work-related expenses. The district then pays the person’s monthly bill directly, therefore taking on the financial risk from its employees’ expenses.

School districts can set their own policies regarding expenses, but they must follow the spirit and intent of core government policy. In this case, government’s core policy and procedures manual states, and the typical practice in the public sector is, that employees should pay for their expenses first and then get reimbursed by their employer. Currently the district requires employees to submit expense claims for reimbursements for per diems and miscellaneous expenses only, such as mileage and parking.

In conclusion, we made five recommendations in this report to enhance the school district’s policies and procedures. The recommendations also aim to improve transparency in the reporting of executive expenses and consistency in the district’s policies with core government policy. We encourage the other school districts in the province to read this report to ensure that they are appropriately managing and fully disclosing their employees’ expenses. This concludes our presentation.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you very much to Sheila and Ed for laying that out so clearly for us. We appreciate that. I think we’re going to move now to the Ministry of Education for a response. When the ministry begins its comments, the participants will need to just introduce themselves for the record. That’s how it works. We’ll just wait till we queue up the PowerPoint.

Perhaps while we’re waiting for that, maybe just an overarching question. Maybe this is best addressed by Carol, but I’m not sure. The type of audit that we’re receiving this morning is obviously somewhat different than the ones that we’ve received previously. This is the first of this type of audit.

I’m wondering, Carol, because there are so many new members, if you can perhaps remind us or explain to us: why this type of audit? What prompted it? What is the planning process for the next ones? What’s the purpose of this type of audit and maybe the differences between what we normally receive and this one? Because it is a first of its kind.

C. Bellringer: Certainly. I’d be pleased to. The biggest difference between this and the performance audits that you generally are seeing, that we prepare and you’re reviewing, is that it’s much narrower in scope. It takes a lot less time at our end. The real driver for us was…. It’s something we’ve been struggling with for years. It’s a struggle right across the country.

The staff in our office that work on financial statement audits have a really intense, busy season while we’re meeting the deadlines for producing the opinion on the financial statements. Then they have a gap of time where they do other things. They do some planning for next year, but they do have time available to work on something else. The problem with assigning them to a large performance audit is that they don’t have enough time to see it through to the end.

What we were seeing on some of the jobs that they were assigned to was that they would get about a third of the way through the audit and then they’d have to return to the financial statement work, so the audit would just stay on the shelf for a six-month period. Then they’d get back to it and it was already out of date, and you’d start all over again. It wasn’t an efficient way to use their time, so we realized that there was a need to find work for them that was more narrow and shorter.

At the same time, we also receive a lot of inquiries from citizens, from MLAs, from interested parties who want to know about something that’s much narrower, so we have an inventory of things like that.

[10:20 a.m.]

Also, anything the audit teams would have identified that was out of scope for the audit they were working on but that maybe we should take a look at sometime. So we have no shortage of shorter projects that somebody could work on.

For a couple years, we were trying to decide how to go about doing that. I will give credit to Sheila for really coming up with a strong plan to get this organized. We do now have a dedicated team who do work full time through the year to get the planning done, get the audits ready to go. Then, when the staff becomes available to work on them, they can run right in and get them done quickly.

It’s worked out organizationally for us, and we’re also finding topics that we still believe are of interest to the public and to the MLAs and, of course, to the Public Accounts Committee for discussion. But they’re not of the same depth and scope that you’d see in a larger performance audit.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you for that. I don’t know if any of my other colleagues have questions about that. I’ll just follow up with this, and then I think Jane has a question.

Forgive me if I haven’t made the connection. In the audit schedule that you lay out for us, are these captured as well — the smaller, more intense ones? I know what the big ones are, and I know that we have a sequence. In fact, Kate and I just reviewed the list for the coming months, and there’s a fair number of substantive pieces of work, not to mention the financial statements. Are these also identified in your audit plan, as we review it?

C. Bellringer: We’ve identified the fact that the group is in place, and we’ve identified the fact that they will produce some reports. In the first year of the performance audit coverage plan, when the group was in place — so two years ago — we did actually list the names of the work that was in progress. Last year we decided it is too fluid.

In fact, at the time when we’re doing the plan, we don’t know which staff are going to be freed up. We don’t know which ones on the shelf are the ones we should start first, so we took the names out of the list. We mention that there will be…. It’s referred to as CCR. There would be some work coming out of the CCR group, but not the names of the reports.

S. Bond (Chair): CCR, for me, has a whole different meaning. It usually relates to music, but that’s okay.

Okay. I appreciate that. I think your message to us is, first of all, utilization of staff, which I think is an important concept. Obviously, prioritizing important requests that come in, either from the public, MLAs or that are identified somehow through the larger audits…. I’m assuming you have a list that you prioritize and look at how that might match up with the time that’s available from staff.

C. Bellringer: I’m going to ask Sheila or Ed if they could just…. How many do we have in the inventory right now?

E. Ryan: We have a long-list inventory of approximately 53 at the moment — active, about 18. It’s really the 18 that we’re juggling on a regular basis. I’ve got that amount that are in various stages of development, and depending on the staff that’s available and their expertise, I will forward them.

As the Auditor General indicated, it’s a very fluid situation. We’re trying to be quite nimble to use the resources that we’ve got and address the risks that we see are the most compelling.

S. Bond (Chair): I’m going to go to Jane in just a moment.

Thank you for that. I apologize to the others who are here about this specific audit. They’re released as the larger audits are — in the same format, in the same way?

C. Bellringer: This one was. We actually had the intention of grouping them and having a bundle come out together. This one was ready, and we decided not to wait. We released it.

It will depend on timing. They’re quite different, one from the other. It would help, actually, maybe when we have some time over lunch or whatever, to know from the members if you think it would be…. There would be not complications for you but a different…. You’d have to decide whether….

Say you had five audits in one package, and they were five different ministries. Do you break it up and now you have to fit them into five different meetings? Or do you have one single meeting and you’re going to have to invite in a lot of people because it covers a great number of issues? Or they may be small enough that you decide the risk isn’t big enough to call anybody in at all.

There may be a little bit of change to your own practice to consider, but we have some time. The next one wouldn’t be ready, in a bundle, until the fall at the earliest.

S. Bond (Chair): I think it’s been an important contextual piece, because all of us are new — well, other than…. We do have some of our opposition members who have been here before. We appreciate their understanding. That’s been very helpful.

[10:25 a.m.]

Jane, I’m going to let you have a follow-up question before we go on to the actual report from the ministry.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you, Chair. My question is actually the one that you asked but more specific. What prompted this report, specifically, on school district 61?

S. Dodds: I can answer that. We were looking at the issue of executive expenses as an area of potential risk in the broader public sector, in the SUCH sector. There had been a number of concerns that were made public over a period of time around the appropriateness of some of the expenses. So we looked across the SUCH sector and the school system, with 60 different individual organizations with their own policies and practices. We felt that that was an area that would be worth looking at first.

We picked one school district to really test our audit plan, and we picked a local district for convenience. There was no reason other than that. As Ed mentioned, we are anticipating, over time, doing the same work in a sample of other school districts that would get that geographic dispersion, and we would work with the ministry to figure that out over time.

S. Bond (Chair): Thanks, Jane. That was on my question list too.

With that, thank you for your patience as we sort of get an overview of this new type of audit, which I think will be welcomed by people. I think there is a specificity to it that has broader implications, and I know others will have questions about that, as I do, later.

With that, we’ll turn it over to the Ministry of Education for their response. Perhaps you could simply introduce yourselves for us so that you’re captured forever on the Hansard record.

I. Aaron: Thank you very much, Madam Chair and committee members. We’re glad to be here this morning. My name is Ian Aaron. I am the director of school district financial reporting and compliance with the Ministry of Education.

With me today, we have Sally Barton, who is the assistant deputy minister, services and technology division. She is also currently the acting deputy minister while Scott MacDonald is on vacation. I also am pleased that I am able to bring Mark Walsh, who is the secretary-treasurer for school district 61, greater Victoria. Once we get into the specific questions that you may have with regard to school district 61, that’s where Mark will be best placed to address those.

Just to make the committee aware — and most members will likely already be aware — there is a division of statutory responsibilities between the Ministry of Education and locally elected boards of education. With that in mind, the specific recommendations directed towards school district 61 will be their responsibility, and we, the ministry, will support the school district in their efforts. We will also ensure all school districts will benefit from the findings of this report.

The purpose of the audit was to determine if employer-paid expenses for executives at school district 61 comply with applicable school district policies as well as follow the spirit and intent of core government policies. There were five recommendations, all of which were specific to school district 61. Not just the auditors but, as well, the ministry will encourage and already have encouraged other school districts to review the report and see what’s in the report that they can benefit from as well.

We just had the Auditor General go through the specific key findings and recommendations. I won’t repeat those here. Overall, I am pleased to say that school district 61 agrees with the findings and will work to implement all of the recommendations. We have an action plan from the school district. The district will continue with their current corporate card purchasing protocols, because they have not had any issues with inappropriate spending. That was one of the areas of specific note in the audit.

The Ministry of Education will support the school district with implementing all of the recommendations of the report, and we will work with and through the B.C. Association of School Business Officials and the School Trustees Association to ensure all school districts benefit from the findings and recommendations of the report. Overall, school districts make great efforts to provide high-quality public education for B.C.’s communities in a fiscally responsible way.

[10:30 a.m.]

The Ministry of Education is committed to work cooperatively with school districts for the benefit of all students. The Ministry of Education, just to note, appreciates the efforts of the Auditor General and her staff in this examination of employer-paid expenses for executives at school district 61 and the benefit this report will have for the public K-to-12 education system.

That’s probably a good time to pass over to Mark, who has specific comments with regard to the school district.

M. Walsh: First of all, I would like to thank the Auditor General and her office. It’s an excellent opportunity to have your processes reviewed on a regular basis by external par­ties, so we do appreciate that. In Victoria, we are geographically blessed in nature, but also we are very close to the Legislature, which makes us an easy target for audit. We’re quite used to that, and we’re actually happy to play that role for transparency in the public sector.

S. Bond (Chair): You’re also conveniently located for photo ops, so there are two sides to that coin.

M. Walsh: Yes.

Again, we appreciate the opportunity to be a part of in­creased public transparency. Our board and our district are deeply committed to exemplary governance. We have a strategic plan where transparency in exemplary governance is specifically associated with that strategic plan.

I know a number of members around the table likely know school districts very well, but there are just a couple of points of context that perhaps I can share. The first point of context is, No. 1, we pride ourselves on our internal controls, and we hope that it’s very clear in the finding of the Auditor that the expenses were appropriate.

The second piece, though, is associated with the reporting of expenses. As noted, the district has a different interpretation of the regulations of the Financial Information Act. We are very comfortable with the interpretation that we are incorrect, and we are happy to change processes. Where we’re hopeful, however, is that the ministry — and I believe this is happening — is going to give guidance to the entire sector so it’s consistent from one district to another.

When I say that, one of the main aspects you see is the $145,000 number, or 60 percent of expenses, not being disclosed. A majority of those funds are actually associated with our director of international student programming. What we’ve typically done….

Today, for instance, I’m not receiving a personal benefit for being here, but I flew here, and those expenses are associated with my attendance on district business. In the past, we wouldn’t have reported those expenses against me. That’s essentially what we’re talking about here. In the future, obviously, we will.

The number being so large, though, is associated with our director of international student programming. We in school district 61 have nearly $15 million in revenue from our ISP program that subsidizes public education in the greater Victoria school district. So, of course, $15 million in revenue takes business trips, and it takes recruiting sessions and that kind of thing.

In the past, our ISP director would travel, would have hotels, would have business meetings and that kind of thing, and if it wasn’t associated with the professional development activities, that personal benefit concept, we would not report those expenses in the statement of financial information. So you’d see it in the sense that Air Canada would be one of the vendors, and it would likely be over that number, but you wouldn’t see it posted against our ISP director.

That’s obviously something that we’re going to change as a result of this report. But that’s really the majority when it comes to that. We’re happy to share our interpretation, which we applied for approximately 19 years in school district 61 relatively consistently.

Second, we do want to actually recognize the Ministry of Education and the increased level of support and increased level of, I would say, positive pressure to create audit committees within districts to get our local board of education really asking the right questions and making sure there’s appropriate scrutiny at a local level. This is going to be part of that.

With respect to a couple of the recommendations, absolutely we’re going to review our processes. We’re going to put them to the audit committee. It’s a great opportunity to train our staff, to remind them. For instance, one of them was making sure everyone knows and signs off on what the expectations of the use of their cards are on a yearly basis. That’s an excellent suggestion which we’ll incorporate immediately.

[10:35 a.m.]

On the issue noted by Mr. Aaron on the idea of people using individual cards and then applying for reimbursement from the district after, we have concerns with that. One of the things we actually suggested and we hope there’s a future audit about is conflict of interest in the sector more broadly.

What we see as a concern in the school district is we have a lot of discretionary expenses. I don’t mean from an executive level, but all the way down the line. You have teachers that are going on field trips. You have schools and librarians purchasing books. Often the school is going to be using their purchasing cards. But what we have a great concern about is the personal benefit being gained by the use of your own personal card and then being reimbursed.

If you think you have $5,000 in expenses…. If anyone has got an Avion card in this room, you know that that’s $5,000 in points. That’s one of the concerns that we have about shifting to a make the purchase and get reimbursed, because there is every incentive to benefit personally from your professional expenses.

I know this is not far and wide and this audit is mainly to do with executive expenses, but we want to be consistent from top to bottom in the school district in kind of modelling what we expect. That’s why we’re concerned about changing — that one recommendation that we do have concerns about changing.

I think that that would give some context to the recommendations. I’m happy to answer any questions.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you, Mark, and also Ian and Sally. We appreciate your comments and participation.

We’re going to start with Mitzi, please.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Thank you to everybody for all of this work. I want to acknowledge the work of everybody in school district 61. Half of the schools in school district 61 are part of my constituency, and I really appreciate all the work of everybody in the school district and the trustees, as well, who obviously support that and ensure leadership for it as well.

Picking up on the point of local resources, again, I’m local. I’m a neighbouring MLA to Victoria, and I would hope that audits are also informed by the provincial scope and direction.

S. Bond (Chair): Spread the pain.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Well, it’s the impact on resources is all, if we keep going to local school districts and local agencies, etc.

I also wanted to say thank you to the school district for being so prompt in taking forward the motions to the board. The report came out, and very quickly the board was putting forward motions and passing motions and working on a prompt action plan.

What I’m interested in at each level — the ministry level, the school district level and also at a provincial level — in terms of policy is this matter of the individual cards and prepaying for expenses. I am interested in how that is going to be resolved across all government ministries.

I understand there are issues in terms of conflict of interest. I also understand there are issues in terms of hardship as well. I was at a venue a while ago where this policy was being applied. A First Nations Chief came to give a blessing to open an event. He had to pay for his own travel to get there and would have to then be reimbursed. He didn’t actually have the money to be able to pay to get home and was going to hitchhike.

That’s just one example. I think there are many examples where there’s hardship in people having to pay first and then be reimbursed for expenses.

I’m really interested in how the ministry is going to solve discrepancies within school districts — from the Auditor General, as well — whether there would be any other work. Have you given any consideration…? Have you heard that from other…? Or the comptroller general — to those kinds of matters.

S. Bond (Chair): Who’d like to go first?

I. Aaron: I can start off from a ministry perspective.

For purchasing cards, we have a program governmentwide, Bank of Montreal, BMO, cards. Public sector organizations can on-board onto this provincial government commercial card program through Bank of Montreal, as opposed to using your own credit card. Currently 38 school districts out of the 60 are enrolled in this program. School district 61 is one of them.

What I’m unsure of at this moment is how that works as to the school district or the entity accessing cards for all employees, or at what point…. I know that for my own staff, I have a BMO travel card. If I have any expenses on travel, I put it on that card as opposed to my own personal credit card.

[10:40 a.m.]

I have one employee in my area who travels once a year. There is a cost benefit as to…. It doesn’t make sense for that person who travels very little to have a separate card that, I would presume, has some costs attached to the employer just to have the card.

That’s something that we’ll certainly look at for the other 22 school districts — why they’re not on-boarding onto this BMO card program to get better use of it — and maybe just even the 38 school districts that are part of this program — how much they use it and whether that would get away from the issue of the appearance of having a personal benefit of using your own credit card. I think there’s work that the ministry can do with that.

S. Bond (Chair): Maybe if I can just interject as Chair for a minute to follow up on Mitzi’s question. If 38 districts are on-boarded to a purchasing card system, 22 are doing something else. What are they doing?

I. Aaron: They would have their own bank that they deal with. They’re not going through this BMO card program that is managed through the Ministry of Finance. But that’s something where we, as the Ministry of Education, can certainly go to those other 22 districts, knock on their doors and ask them specifically: “What are you using, and why aren’t you using this other program?” There should be a benefit overall for having this type of corporate program.

S. Bond (Chair): One would assume so. If you’re having one card at one institution, one would think that on-boarding would actually be an advantage. It’s a bit surprising to hear that 22 school districts are doing something else when the report is really about consistency. So we’ll probably pursue that, I think, and some of the other questions that people have.

C. Fischer: Provincially, as Ian said, we do have a provincial card program. It’s not just one card; it’s two cards. We separate purchase cards, which are related to operating expenses. For example, an office needs to go get some pens or paper or pay for a meeting or supplies. They would use their purchase card. It’s a very efficient, low-cost, well-controlled way to make low-level procurement.

For personal use, we have a travel card program. Now, a travel card program is for all expenses for travel or accommodation or other incidental costs that an employee would incur.

The reason we want to separate them is not because of benefit or any kind of personal reasons but because we want to separate the accountability of the individual for those spending decisions from the organizational accountability of regular business and operating expenses.

Our recommendation is that, normally, every office will have a designated person with a purchase card to pay for business expenses, and the individuals who do have the requirement to travel or incur expenses in the delivery of their duties would have their own personal travel card. The travel card process is meant to make it very efficient for people to be able to incur costs and then be reimbursed in a timely manner.

There are situations where people who don’t travel very much, like myself, for example, may be called on to incur some expenses. The province does have an accountable advance process that’s relatively straightforward. So if I were called on to travel someplace and wasn’t comfortable about incurring those expenses, I would apply for the advance before I go and then recover those expenses.

The other circumstances you mentioned, where a community stakeholder was invited to attend an event and had to do so on their own cost, is really outside of a personnel or business cost management issue. That would be something that should be managed by the organization or the program area that extended the invitation.

[10:45 a.m.]

There are different ways around it because, in that case, you don’t have an employee or an internal person making accountable decisions, right? You have the opportunity for the program or the ministry to arrange for transportation costs, pay for it in advance and provide the necessary support, just as we would with any other provider for any type of business or service. So there are ways around that.

Unfortunately, there are times when people who aren’t familiar with a lot of the processes may not have an immediate understanding of all the options available. Within OCG, we do have a financial management branch. We work very closely with ministries to help people understand the scope of options and practice and programs that they can access.

In the case of the purchase card and travel card situation, we do have an interest. It would be very efficient for all of the school districts to adopt the same process with the same provider. The benefit that we would have for very detailed, consistent reporting from the bank really allows sound compliance and oversight in the most efficient way possible. My division will be reaching out to the ministry and thinking about ways that we can help districts improve their practice in that area.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you. That was very helpful, because I think the issue of the consistency part is something we, as a group, are very interested in, in some follow-up. So we’ll come back to that.

G. Begg: Thank you to the Auditor General and your staff for the clarity of the report. I think it’s very good and very precise. And thank you to the school district for being here as well.

Just a matter of clarification with regard to: “require staff to review and sign their reimbursement policy and card-use guidelines to document that they have read and understand the policies related to the payment of employee expenses.” Can it be inferred from that that there was a policy that was not adhered to or that there was some discrepancy in who had read and signed it?

B. Underhill: I can answer that question. No, there was no indication of that. But as a matter of the school district being able to know whether their employees understood the policy…. It was really an administrative recommendation so that they could be sure that all their employees had, in fact, seen it and understood it. It’s an opportunity to ask questions.

There was no indication that…. There were some areas where things were applied slightly differently, but there was no sense that people weren’t, in fact, reasonably well in­formed. It was more of an administrative recommendation that would help the district ensure that they knew that their employees were well aware.

G. Begg: So from a district point of view, is that the case?

M. Walsh: Through you, Madam Chair. I’m not sure how it works.

S. Bond (Chair): Oh, just go ahead. We’re quite friendly in this room. We just talk.

M. Walsh: I think, again, the idea that generally the aware­ness is there is certainly true. An example is that I’ve been with the district for 5½ years now. I signed my card the day I started, but have I been asked to review that process? I should, darn it, and I will. But that’s the concept. School districts have employees that work for you for decades. They signed it in 1995, and they haven’t signed it again or haven’t been reminded of it.

That’s the aspect that we think, actually, is a very valuable recommendation that we intend to institute. So it’s not just new hires. Certainly, it’s more for people like me and the people that have been here a long time.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you. I think that was a good clarification, Garry.

R. Sultan: A very interesting report, I think, with broad ramifications going far beyond school district 61. In the years I’ve sat on this committee, I seldom see such a bold and in-your-face, if I could be a bit colloquial, and, I would even say, naive response on the part of a school district or any other entity being audited by the Auditor General. I refer to the page titled “Response from school district 61,” where it is stated: “The greater Victoria school district has established its own policies and procedures….” I emphasize “its own policies and procedures.”

[10:50 a.m.]

It goes on to say that “the district has not had any issues with the occasional use of its purchasing cards for business travel expenses, and the district plans to continue using purchasing cards in this manner and to ensure close monitoring,” etc. In other words, if I could be extremely vulgar…. I won’t repeat the first word, but it is “something” you.

“We’re in charge. This is our little business here. School board 61 is doing a superb job of educating students. Certainly, there is no evidence in any of the audits that any of the money has actually disappeared or been used improperly. We know what we’re doing. So go pedal your paper somewhere else.”

I find this between-the-lines message upsetting, if I’m interpreting it correctly. It’s quite clear that the Auditor General has an issue. It comes down, I suppose…. Well, who sets the rules — the separate school board or the Auditor General or the Legislature, perhaps? Who’s in charge here? I would suggest, at the end of the day, if there’s an argument about who’s in charge and the measuring of the expenditure of taxpayer moneys, the Legislature and its independent officers are going to have the last word. That’s just the way it is.

It’s an argument that I don’t think, in the long run, school district 61 can win. I say that based upon my own personal experience, and those of the other MLAs sitting here at the table, of what has happened to our little businesses called constituency offices.

As recently as, say, five years ago, it was kind of a cozy little world. The government sent us money from time to time. We ran our own bank account and kept our own books, sometimes on the back of an envelope and sometimes very diligently. I’m sure the vast majority of MLAs were upright, honest and correct, although there might be some confusion from time to time as to the mingling of personal versus political versus taxpayer money, which is always an issue.

Anyway, life was good, and nobody spent a lot of time and effort trying to keep track of every last nickel. We realized it wasn’t particularly relevant when you’re dealing with, after all, a $55 billion business, which is sort of your argument. Namely, we have a $50 million international revenue base here. So let’s not quibble about the nickels and dimes.

Something happened. There was a seismic shift, and a new era dawned. I define the two eras, the two eras before and after, as pre–Mike Duffy and post–Mike Duffy. The post–Mike Duffy era is a very different world. All of us MLAs, over time, were gradually instructed in the new world in which we were privileged to operate — a new world of accountability, a new world of transparency, a new world of non-discretionary rules. In other words, those are the rules. It’s not discretionary. A new world of comprehensiveness. It’s not partial disclosure any more. It’s total disclosure.

If I go down and have a cup of coffee at the White Spot, eventually that receipt will show up on the Internet. Some troll can pull it forth and ridicule me for wasting money on an expensive latte when a 75 cent cup of java may have been sufficient. That’s the new world that we have gradually become very accustomed to.

Given that background and the shift that somehow we have survived…. We’re still here, and we’re still happy in our jobs. It turned out to be not so bad after all. When a district comes forth and says: “Well, we set the rules. We know what we’re doing, and we’ve done it this way for years and years. Be assured that we’re very interested in your opinions. We’ll consider them, but we’re going to continue to make the decisions….”

I would suggest to you that that is not, in fact, the way the new world is going to work. I would suggest to you that when the Auditor General makes some suggestions, you would be wise to say: “This is sort of tantamount to a new rule. If I want to fight the political battle or the war of whatever and say the Auditor General happens to be wrong in this case….” Well, go to it. That’s fair enough.

[10:55 a.m.]

The Auditor General is not invariably correct and prudent in all of her actions, but the base case is: if that’s what she wants, that’s what she’s going to get. At the end of the day, she has to report to the great public how we expended $55 billion of their money. She has to give a clean signature saying: “This is how it is.” There’s no little loosey-goosey, here, there and everywhere, everybody making up their own rules, because she has to assume — it’s the only way she can operate — that everybody’s following the same rules.

I would urge you to go back and reconsider your response to the Auditor General’s report. The dollar amounts are not huge. We grant you that. But the principles here are very, very large indeed.

S. Bond (Chair): I’m not sure if anyone would like to respond. Carl is putting his hand up first.

C. Fischer: Thank you for your comments, Mr. Sultan. Government’s core policies are established by Treasury Board. OCG, the office of the comptroller general, is re­spon­sible for administering them. They apply to all ministries, agencies, boards and commissions that make up core government, and they are expected to be applied consistently.

They also apply to the broader public sector, including Crown corporations, schools, universities, colleges and hospitals, which are required to comply with the spirit and intent of those policies. That recognizes that there are different governance structures, different circumstances and slightly different requirements that are driven by the different nature of those businesses.

We do take an active role in working with the supervising ministries to ensure that the policies and controls employed by school districts and other organizations are, in fact, consistent with the spirit and intent, meaning that they achieve the same outcomes, but there can be slight differences.

The point that you made about being very clear about consistency, particularly across the sector, is very important. I agree with that. My office will be working with the Ministry of Education to help all of those school districts maybe rethink how they’ve approached the expense capture and recognition process and how they might benefit from taking a more streamlined approach.

One of my key goals — as well as policies that achieve the appropriate outcomes, good internal control, accountability, transparency — is efficiency. These are pretty big organizations we’re dealing with, and every small decision that improves efficiency makes a difference, ultimately, to people.

We will be working on this issue. I don’t think that there is a significant departure from government policy in this area in school district 61 and the majority of school districts. I think that this report has provided a good opportunity for my office to work with the ministry and engage with school districts and look for opportunities for improvements.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you, Carl.

Anyone else? Garry, did you want to comment on this issue? I’ll let you jump in, and then John, if you don’t mind.

G. Begg: No disrespect intended, but you didn’t quote entirely the statement that the school district made, and I think it’s important for the public record. You said the greater Victoria school district has established its own policies and procedures, which is correct, but following that is an important caveat where they say: “following the spirit and intent of the Treasury Board’s Core Policy and Procedures Manual.” I think it’s important for the public record that that be very clear.

J. Yap: Thanks to the Auditor General and ministry for the presentations.

I just want to start out with a comment building on what my colleague, MLA Sultan, has said about the pre–Mike Duffy and post–Mike Duffy era, and actually it goes back a little further. That would be the findings of your predecessor Auditor General who had done an audit and made some very strong recommendations about how the Legislative Assembly and all the MLAs should change their many years of practice with regard to travel expenses and travel cards.

[11:00 a.m.]

It goes back to that period, when the start of the transition to this new world — when it really began. The idea that the organization should expect the people that work within the organization with regard to travel expenses to account for them, to claim in a formal claim rather than to have it paid directly, as was the practice, at least with MLAs…. I think, as Ralph has said, that was a big transition. But we’re all functioning and all of us are fully supportive and conversant with the system, which was a shift, when you go back. I know there are new members here who didn’t have the opportunity to experience that system.

I want to just explore the…. This audit was focused on the executive expenses. To what extent would the same category of expense apply to the non-executive level in school district 61? In other words, middle management and junior management within the district. There was a reference that what was audited was about 60 percent of the total. I assume that’s of the executive level. To what extent would this category of expense apply to the entire district?

I. Aaron: I think Mark and I will probably join up on this one. When I looked at the $145,000, I think it was, of unrecorded on the Financial Information Act reporting…. I just want a bit of a…. That’s on the Financial Information Act reporting, what we call colloquially the SOFI reports.

On the audited financial statements for school district 61, everything’s recorded. On those SOFI reports, school district 61 is like all school districts. They provide a reconciliation between what they’ve reported under scheduled remuneration expenses, supplier payments. They reconcile that back to the financial statements so that there’s a comfort that’s provided that everything is recorded in one form or another.

On the $145,000 specifically, the 60 percent of the sample population…. That’s also over a two-year period. I believe that was for the ’15-16 and ’16-17 school years — the $145,000. If I look at both those years’ total operating expenses for the school district, that represents 0.04 percent of total expenses. It’s not to demean the issue; it’s just to put it into a certain amount of context.

M. Walsh: Perhaps to add to that is…. In reality, for the school district, there’d be far more expenses if you went down the middle management, the principals, that kind of thing. One of the things that we as a school district are waiting on is actually the direction from the Ministry of Education. If the Ministry of Education tells us to report something or change the way our card system works or what have you, we will immediately change the way that we do business.

For instance, we’ve been mainly focused, as a school district, on changing our practice with respect to executive expenses. Even before the audit we started looking at superintendent, secretary-treasurer, that kind of thing, to be a little bit more transparent in that regard.

We as a district are a little bit worried about the administrative burden when the impact falls down all the way to, say, the vice-principal level or even further. So we are waiting on the direction from the Ministry of Education with respect to how far down. I think the answer is that if the interpretation of the regulation is what I believe everyone agrees it is, it’s going to have a fairly significant administrative burden on our part.

Just as a background, the way that we do expenses in the school district, regardless of if it’s a purchasing card or a travel card, is…. I make a purchase; I get the hotel. Let’s say I put it on my purchasing card, because we don’t have a travel card, purchasing card. My superintendent will review, on a monthly basis, every single one of my expenses.

[11:05 a.m.]

Then it goes down to my financial service department, which is going to flag any missing information. “Who did you go for coffee with? What was the purpose of your visit to Vancouver? What were you doing?” That kind of thing.

If that’s flagged, I have the opportunity to explain it, and then it goes up to the superintendent. If there’s no explanation, or all of a sudden you see — and this has happened — a parking expense on a Saturday, you say: “You work hard but not that hard.” You realize that you may have made an error, and then people will reimburse those expenses. We have a bit of a double-check.

With respect to the impact, though, on how far this goes down, for us it will be essentially the positions that were audited for 2018-19 while we wait for the Ministry of Education to give us further guidance. I would expect that it’ll apply to everyone in management, anyone that would fall under SOFI. In our world, that’s almost every teacher as well.

J. Yap: I do understand that depending on how wide you cast the net, there would be implications. But as Ralph has said, it’s the principle and finding that right balance between the rigour of the control and the materiality of the amount but also respecting the principle — right? — of the public dollar being spent and accounted for.

Moving on, this was addressed in earlier commentary, I believe, from the Auditor General. This first audit, with school district 61 as the test case, is really part of a wider look at government. Of course, the education system — the 61 school districts — is a very major part of public expenditure. There is the health system, which is even larger.

Is there a sense — this would be for the comptroller general — that, based on the comptroller general’s own internal systems, the health authorities around the province are in compliance with the policy with regard to this type of expense — of managing the expense, the reimbursement, the reporting, etc.?

C. Fischer: Yes, I believe the health sector, including health authorities, is complying with the spirit and intent of core policy. I wouldn’t want to take a guess, but I believe they have adopted or signed on to the province’s master agreement in many areas, including our banking arrangements with regard to purchase cards and travel cards.

J. Yap: If, for example, a department head at VGH were to go on a trip, the expense should be on that Bank of Montreal travel card, which would be a credit card, not a charge card. That individual would have to submit an expense claim to get reimbursed, to pay off the credit card debt.

C. Fischer: Yes. The one thing I’d clarify is that you can never count on everyone who will be travelling to have applied for a travel card.

There is an alternate process if you don’t happen to have a travel card and you’re required to travel. You can gather up all your receipts, fill out the form, sign it, make two copies, and send it in to your accounts payable department for reimbursement. That’s the traditional way.

Currently, through our financial service provider, we have the opportunity to get travel cards, cards specifically for personal expenses, based on the requirements of the organization and the determination of the person in the senior financial officer role. They get a card with a predetermined amount that they are expected to use for any appropriate business expenses that they personally incur, which will then be reimbursed on a timely basis.

[11:10 a.m.]

The real benefit is that because cards allow for electronic reconciliation, it really streamlines the process and helps people in ministries or in financial oversight roles to fulfil their obligations and get the reimbursement to the person who incurred the expense in a very timely manner. It’s very efficient.

J. Yap: If I may, Chair, Mark touched on this in his earlier comments: the world we live in, with the competition between cards. Many cards offer personal benefits — points or travel points. Avion points were mentioned. Does the government have a policy with regard to use of personal cards that have a travel or a point benefit, and how is that enforced?

C. Fischer: There is a policy. The provincial policy is that employees should not gain a personal benefit from the cost of provincial business payments.

There are times when people will use their own credit cards to pay for hotels or accommodation. The expectation and the onus is on the individual when that occurs to make sure that they don’t receive a benefit. Quite often, every year as a matter of fact, we recommend that people have a great opportunity to donate any points to our provincial employees community services fund campaign, which is a good outcome.

We monitor, through our compliance branch, the use of travel cards and purchase cards very carefully, mostly because it is the one area where we can help people out by identifying issues that need to be resolved in helping people avoid getting into problems. We don’t see a larger material risk in people accruing a lot of material benefits from card use. It’s not a big issue. I don’t know that there would be a practical way to monitor or constrain that.

From what we’ve seen, I think we have really good reason to rely on the good faith of people to fulfil their obligations not to receive personal benefits of any substance and to look at the opportunity to, if there is benefit, donate it through our charitable arrangements, which is an appropriate outcome.

S. Bond (Chair): I think that’s an important piece of context here. If people do accrue them, they’re well aware of their obligations. Certainly, I know in the past MLAs have very much contributed to a variety of ways of using those small number of points for the benefit of others, particularly constituents who may need to travel for health reasons or whatever.

Anyone else? I have a couple of questions, if the committee doesn’t mind.

I certainly don’t want to pursue the issue that my colleague, very experienced in financial matters, has already made. But it is important to point out that we receive very few reports at this table where the recipient of the report says: “We got the report, but we’re going to continue to do something.” I think there is an important note to be made about that.

I guess my concern about that is simply that when we receive a report that identifies…. I’m not being negative about the school district directly, but this report says on page 10: “School district 61’s policy for employee use of corporate purchasing cards for employee business expenses differs from core government policy.”

That’s a pretty strong statement about the mechanism that’s being used here. I guess the question is to the ministry. What’s been highlighted in this report is one school district’s use. We need to say, importantly, that school district 61 was noted for having strong practices, good policies. We need to remember that this is one detail, but it is an important one in the overall management and governance of the district. I think it’s an important thing to put that piece, also, on record.

[11:15 a.m.]

I have a couple of specific questions for the ministry. I think that in the ministry’s PowerPoint, it says that we will encourage other districts. What specifically has been done with the results of this audit — to share it, to use it as a teaching mechanism — when there is commentary that an interpretation of government policy has been incorrect?

I’m assuming the ministry issues policy bulletins, interpretation to support districts in their…. This is one district. We have 59 other ones who…. Who knows? As Mitzi rightly pointed out, if you’re in a rural school district, the whole way you manage paying for things might be quite different. So I think it’s an encouragement to the Auditor General to continue these focused type of audits but look at it… I can understand doing the test case closer to home, but I think it is important to see how that works.

Maybe if the ministry could outline for us what exactly they did with this report. What are the next steps, in terms of the whole issue of consistency? And how does the ministry…? You know, I don’t think they’re represented here today, but it’s Treasury Board that lays out core government policy.

The Auditor General in this case has said this does not align. I get spirit and intent. That’s a pretty generous interpretation of government policy. So at the end of the day, Treasury Board produces the policy document. This apparently doesn’t comply. There’s a gap there.

So maybe if the ministry could explain. What did they do with the report? Were all of these findings directly communicated to other districts? And what are the next steps, in terms of trying to bring alignment and transparency to this process?

I. Aaron: The timing of the report was…. Sometimes it doesn’t happen as opportunely as this one did. This report came out just before the B.C. Association of School Business Officials had their annual conference. They happened to have it in Penticton. That was the third or so week in May. We had all 60 school districts represented — all secretary-treasurers, directors of finance — so it was a perfect time, when I specifically said…. I don’t know if I necessarily waved the report or not, but I made sure in our plenary sessions that all school districts were aware of this report.

I reminded them, as I have in past Auditor General reports that might be specific to a school district…. I think it was the 2015-16 report on budget monitoring where we looked at four individual school districts. With that audit report, as well as this current one with district 61, I made sure that all districts knew that even though they don’t see their name on the report, there will be something in all of these reports that they can benefit from. That’s what we’ve done so far with the report.

Other steps going forward: this will mesh very well with the work that we’re doing with the financial governance and accountability for school districts, a follow-on from the ’15-16 budget monitoring report by the Auditor General where we’re working with the School Trustees Association, BCASBO, as well as the superintendents association on trying to strengthen overall financial governance of school districts and understanding what policies there are, their responsibilities for core policy. That is something that will be added on to that work to make sure that they’re aware of core policy.

S. Bond (Chair): Does the ministry make a practice of sending out policy bulletins and interpretations of them so that there is some sense of what the policy means? Treasury Board has a core policies and procedures manual, and what this report points out is that its spirit and intent…. In fact, it says “not necessarily strictly adhering to” that core policy of government.

I actually think, to Ralph’s, John’s, Mitzi’s and Garry’s point, it’s probably the comptroller as well. If government has core policy, and it’s not up to school districts to strictly adhere to it, how do we explain that to the public? This is millions and millions of dollars of public expenditures.

[11:20 a.m.]

C. Fischer: The important thing to remember is that the objective of policy is to achieve an outcome, right? That outcome, in this case, is good internal control to safeguard public money; accountability for decision-making, particularly those people incurring financial expenses; and transparency, the ability to report out to the public on a consistent basis about the expenses incurred in the school district, both for school district operations as well as business expenses that were incurred by individuals.

That’s really the focus. Is the school district, with the way that they have established their operating policies, able to achieve those outcomes? In addition to that, we certainly do have an interest in efficiency, particularly cost-efficiency and consistency across not just the school districts but across the government reporting entity.

It will never be possible to do things exactly the same in every little office across the province. There are always going to be unique circumstances, and that’s where spirit and intent are important. My perspective is that if you are not following the policy as described in core policy, then you have to have a reason that you can express about why you’re unable to do that and what alternate mitigating controls or approaches are appropriate in your situation.

Because the broader public sector is very, very large, it’s very difficult to have constant assurance for every organization across the province that there’s absolute alignment. Our best opportunity is working with ministries. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Ian for many, many years — more than either of us would like to remember — to make some significant improvements, particularly in the education sector, in K to 12, in terms of internal control, financial management and, particularly, accounting and reporting. From, I think, 2001 to today, there’s been a remarkable change.

There’s always an opportunity for improvement. Within OCG, what we do is every time that OAG releases a report, we do review that report to determine what we can learn from it, not just as it relates to that one organization that was the subject but more broadly in terms of our policies, our assessments and tools, our compliance practices. It certainly informs our internal audit program, and it helps us make assessments about what risks we have to understand, investigate or mitigate in terms of financial reporting to make sure that the financial statements of the province consistently report what we are telling the public we are reporting to them.

In this case, the purchase card, travel card issue was the one thing that we really identified as a great opportunity of this report. My office started off by looking more broadly, not just at education or the school districts, across the government reporting entity to get a better understanding of what we knew about the uptake on government’s master arrangement with regard to purchase and travel cards to identify where it was being accessed — in which sectors, in which regions — and where there didn’t seem to be a lot of uptake to determine why and how we can address those gaps.

Ideally, if we had one process that worked for the vast majority of broader public sector operations, we’d maximize our efficiency, and all of those benefits that we talked about, like consistency and efficiency, would accrue to everyone.

A lot of it does wind up being a public relations campaign, where we’ll identify an opportunity and work with the ministry to go out to different working groups or engage districts individually to let them know what the opportunities are. Quite often the reason that they haven’t adopted or shifted is not because they have any different feelings about a policy approach or a practice approach that they need but because they’re not aware of what the options are. That’s our biggest opportunity to improve practice.

[11:25 a.m.]

Now, should there be a situation where an organization does not want to adopt core policy or wants to follow a practice that I don’t think is consistent with the intent that Treasury Board has, I do have the option of going back to Treasury Board and asking whether they would like some additional work in the area or if they would like to provide some direction that would improve the accountability or transparency to the public.

I know that does happen from time to time, but usually, organizations within the government reporting entity are very responsive and happy to comply or shift their policies to improve consistency.

S. Bond (Chair): Carol, I think you wanted to comment.

C. Bellringer: A couple of things. I just wanted to add a few considerations. Certainly, I’m not in any way disagreeing with any of the members’ statements. But of course, we do appreciate the endorsement for others to heed our recommendations.

The one aspect of it, though, that I would say was actually not something that bothered me was I thought it was good that the school district was upfront about their position. It gets a little tiring sometimes when we hear in reports, “We have agreed with everything the Auditor has said,” when we know full well behind the scenes that that’s not entirely the case. Being upfront was actually quite refreshing.

I do believe the school district did land where they did for the right reasons — that their rationale for it was thought through and was being done to protect the school district. There is a difference between a purchasing card and a travel card. I think that subtle difference has been brought forward and that there will be consideration around it.

Around the consistency across the whole broader public sector, it’s a huge issue. It’s something that…. We see more and more, especially over time, where the percentage of operations has moved more and more outside of core government. There are a lot of really tight rules that those of us who are seen to be in the centre are having to comply with that are not necessarily the case outside.

I think, over time, there will become a rationalization of those differences to see something that should be consistent right across the board. You see it with salaries. If you want to pay someone something more, you’ve got to get them outside of core government. That doesn’t make sense to me. It’s political. It’s the public perception. It’s the history. It’s evolving, but we’re not there yet.

We do take the position that if we think something is the appropriate policy to be applied, it be applied right across the whole broader public sector.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you for that and for the vigorous discussion about what was going to be, we thought, a very short item on the agenda. I think it speaks to the importance of this kind of audit, which allows us to look at what the broader implications are.

I think you’ve heard, around the table, that there is an interest in knowing what happens next. I think it’s fair to say that when there is core policy and there is intent and spirit…. Boy, there are a lot of organizations who would love to have an interpretation that says it’s all about intent and spirit. There’s core, and there are intent and spirit.

I think there is some work to be done in terms of clarity, and we do appreciate the candour of the school district. I don’t think British Columbians think it would be unusual for executive travel to be allocated and transparently attached to a person. Those things are matter of fact in the way people do their business today. I think the fact that the district is going to clarify that and be transparent about that…. It is the use of taxpayer dollars.

My final question is: what are entertainment expenses? The report actually makes a recommendation about…. Part of the area of challenge was defining…. Let me have a look at what page it was on for you here. It talks about the difficulty in disclosing entertainment-type activities. It’s on page 12 of the report.

Can the Auditor General’s office explain…? We’ve talked about travel and all of those kinds of things. Those are pretty straightforward. But the report specifically noted entertainment-type activities. What was missing in terms of the district’s disclosure of those things? What are we talking about?

B. Underhill: This is Barbara Underhill speaking. I’ll try and do better this time.

[11:30 a.m.]

Essentially, that’s where an individual executive is hosting another individual or group of individuals for a business purpose. I think Mark spoke of when you’re having a business meeting where other people are involved. You’re hosting something, and it may have, let’s say, a celebratory aspect to it, which is appropriate for the business context, where items are purchased that wouldn’t be normally part of a business meeting.

Let’s just say it was a birthday cake, for the sake of argument. Normally, people don’t have birthday cake for lunch. In those sorts of circumstances, it’s wanting to be very clear about the nature of those types of expenses. Can you buy alcohol in that circumstance? Can you not? Just some clarity in terms of what is permitted in a business-entertainment type of situation.

Also, the district did have policies around being clear about what the purpose of that entertainment meeting was and who was involved and why the event was happening. That’s where really providing that clarity to all employees so that they have a clear understanding of what’s permitted and what isn’t…. That wasn’t as clearly detailed in their policies as it might have been. Again, it wasn’t that there was any indication of inappropriateness, but there were indications that there could be differences of opinion about what was allowed or not allowed.

That’s where the clarity could come in, and also the en­force­ment of being clear about the business purpose, who was involved, why the meeting was happening.

S. Bond (Chair): I’m assuming that the district is now making efforts to look at that specific recommendation around entertainment-type things and being more explicit about that.

M. Walsh: Absolutely. This is one of the aspects that our financial service department is going back to people on, on a monthly basis now. Parking is a great example. Why did I pay $4.50 for parking? “City of Victoria” is not good enough on my receipt to describe that. It’s meeting with X regarding Y. Certainly, I think that for our district, our biggest issue has been the international aspect, as well, so we’re continuing to monitor those receipts kind of in depth and working through our staff that do travel to promote the international student program, to ensure transparency. But that’s a point that was well taken and has been instituted very quickly.

S. Bond (Chair): I’m assuming you wouldn’t be alone in that. There are lots of school districts that have international student programs where people go and recruit. So there’s probably, again, back to the ministry….

Thank you very much. I know this is a different venue for you to be in. We appreciate you coming and speaking on behalf of the district. Again, the vast majority of the report was, “Good job, well done,” and some clarity needed in a couple of important areas. I think the message to the ministry was: “How do we look at this more broadly across education?” Obviously, the comptroller has heard our concerns about the broader public sector.

Thank you very much, and thank you to the Auditor General’s team for the report. I’m sure they did not think it would garner this type of reaction, but I think that speaks to the relevance of the issue that was put on the list and brought forward. We look forward to further follow-up in terms of next steps and also additional audits on some of those more-distant-from-Victoria school districts. With that, we thank you for your time and your participation.

We’re going to move to the second report. We’ll just take a moment and shift up the people that are going to present, and we’ll move on to our second report of the day.

[11:35 a.m.]

We’re going to look at a report from the Auditor General and her team. It is the report entitled Promoting Healthy Eating and Physical Activity in K-12: An Independent Audit, released in May of 2018. We have a number of attendees who will speak on behalf of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and, of course, the Office of the Auditor General. So with that, we’ll turn it over to the Auditor.

Promoting Healthy Eating
and Physical Activity in K-12:
An Independent Audit

C. Bellringer: Thank you very much. I’m going to pass this immediately to Morris Sydor, assistant Auditor General, who’s no stranger to this committee.

M. Sydor: Good morning, Chair and committee members, and thank you for inviting us to present this report on promoting healthy eating and physical activity in K to 12.

The objective of this audit was to determine whether the ministries of Health and Education were working together to effectively oversee public school programs and policies that promote healthy eating and physical activity for children and youth in kindergarten to grade 12. Overall, we found the ministries were not. They had worked together to develop the majority of programs and policies but fell short in their joint work to support the implementation of those programs and policies.

We would like to thank both ministries included in this audit for their support and cooperation. It was greatly appreciated.

I’ll now turn it over to Suzanne Smith, who managed the audit, to provide a more detailed overview of our audit findings and recommendations.

Suzanne Smith: Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members. Let me just start with the first slide. The greatest opportunity for shaping the future health of the people of British Columbia is through positively enforcing the health and well-being of children and youth. Evidence has consistently shown that healthy eating and physical activity lower the risk of chronic disease. In B.C., chronic disease affects one in three people, and their treatment represents the largest burden to the health care system.

[11:40 a.m.]

Schools are an ideal setting for promoting overall healthy living because they can reach almost every child in the province and, by extension, their families. Education, in general, is also strongly linked to health. Research has shown that influencing the health and well-being of children and youth is important for two reasons: first, it makes them better learners, and second, it increases the likelihood of them becoming healthy adults. Schools can support students’ efforts to be healthy and active by providing opportunities for them to practise and learn about healthy eating and physical activity.

The Ministry of Health oversees four provincial-level healthy eating and physical activity programs that are delivered in schools. The ministry funds non-governmental organizations to administer and support their delivery. These programs include Healthy Schools B.C., B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional program, Farm to School B.C. and Action Schools B.C.

The Ministry of Education establishes support for healthy eating and physical activity in schools through the guidelines for food and beverage sales in B.C. schools, the K-to-12 physical and health education curriculum and community-linked funding, which includes funding for meal programs, including breakfast, lunch and/or snacks.

As Morris said, we carried out this audit to determine whether the ministries of Health and Education are working together to effectively oversee these public school programs and policies. Overall, we concluded that the ministries were not.

I’m just going to run through each of the sections and some of the key findings. Under our first section, “Shared direction,” our key finding here was that the ministries have not communicated shared overarching direction to their delivery partners. That’s the health authorities and school districts. One impact from this lack of shared overarching direction is that school districts and schools often don’t prioritize the implementation of these initiatives.

For example, we learned that many education sector staff have had limited engagement with these initiatives because they are not connected to the sector’s priorities. As a result, these staff perceive the initiatives as add-ons to an already overwhelming workload.

Under “Program and policy development,” we found that the majority of initiatives are jointly developed and evidence-informed. However, we found that key changes have been made to Health’s largest healthy eating program, the B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional program, since it was implemented from the pilot. These include a significant reduction in the number of servings of produce provided to students and the elimination of the in-school coordinator position. These changes may have impacted the ministry’s ability to reach its overall goal of improving the nutritional health of children and youth in British Columbia.

We also found that the ministries have developed all of the initiatives with some consideration of vulnerable students. However, we found improvements were needed for maximizing their access to key components of Healthy Schools B.C. This initiative offers grant-based programs to help school districts and schools establish healthy schools.

While one of the grant programs does include criteria for screening in districts with higher vulnerable student populations, this funding model still relies on school districts to fill out applications. A key challenge with this approach is that school districts with less capacity and/or time to apply for grants may not be gaining access to these programs.

Next, under “Monitoring and evaluating,” first, we found that while the Ministry of Health has been monitoring the implementation of all of its initiatives, it is not evaluating program effectiveness in terms of achieving increased healthy eating and physical activity. As a result, it lacks information about adjustments needed to improve its programs.

Second, we found that the Ministry of Education’s monitoring of school meal programs is not sufficient. Most school districts use a portion of their community-linked funding to support meal programs for vulnerable students. The districts are required to report annually on the amount and percentage spent on school meal programs. However, the ministry lacks a consistent method for districts to report on the number of vulnerable students requiring support. This makes it difficult for the ministry to accurately and consistently estimate the funding needs of school districts. For example, we learned through interviews with some school districts and school staff that their funding is not sufficiently meeting their needs.

Third, we found that the Ministry of Education is monitoring the implementation of its curriculum relevant to this area through the student learning survey.

[11:45 a.m.]

Fourth, we found that, for the most part, Health and Education have not jointly implemented strategies to address barriers to the implementation of these initiatives.

Finally, under “Reporting,” we found that the Ministry of Health is reporting publicly on its progress in this area through its Healthy Schools performance measure. This measure tracks the percentage of B.C. students who report that at school they are learning to stay healthy. This measure is not consistent with key indicators for the physical health and well-being of children and youth identified by the provincial health officer and the Canadian Institute for Health Information. These indicators are fruit and vegetable consumption and youth physical activity levels.

In our report, we made eight recommendations to im­prove the ministry’s oversight of healthy eating and physical activity initiatives. You can see them on the screen. Six of them involve the two ministries working together and with their delivery partners. The final two are directed to the individual ministries. Those are the ones you see up on the screen.

That concludes our presentation. Thank you very much.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you to Morris and Suzanne for the outline of the work of the Auditor General’s office.

I think we’re going to begin…. Well, I’m not sure. Maybe Health and Education, working together over there, have decided who’s going to take the lead and who’s going to go first. On my agenda, I have the Ministry of Health noted first.

Interjection.

S. Bond (Chair): We’re going to start with Education?

S. Barton: Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m Sally Barton. I’m here as acting deputy minister for the Ministry of Education on behalf of Scott MacDonald, who sends his regrets to the committee.

Thank you very much to the committee for the opportunity to present and respond today in response to the Office of the Auditor General’s report. I’m pleased to be here, along with my colleagues in the Ministry of Health, with whom we do work very closely on this important issue and intend to work even more closely in the future.

Since 2005, the Ministries of Education and Health have been involved in a joint signing with members of the Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health, which carries the mandate of supporting a comprehensive and coordinated approach to health promotion in the school setting. The Ministers of Education and Health have signed on to the joint consortium until 2020, which illustrates our shared long-term commitment to enhancing the health and educational success of B.C. students.

I would like to thank the Office of the Auditor General for their work in this area and for their recommendations, which highlight areas where we can make further improvements in supporting students’ health and well-being. Both ministries fully accept the recommendations in the Auditor General’s report, and we are looking forward to discussing these recommendations, along with our planned actions, today.

I’m pleased to be here with my colleagues Jennifer McCrea, assistant deputy minister of the Ministry of Education, learning division, and Matt Herman, the executive lead of the population and public health division of the Ministry of Health, who will now walk us through the presentation.

J. McCrea: Thank you and good morning, Madam Chair and committee members. I’d like to begin by acknowledging that we’re gathering this morning on the Coast Salish traditional territory of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish peoples and that we’re grateful to have this opportunity to present here this morning. Thank you.

I’m Jennifer McCrea. I’m the assistant deputy minister of the learning division. By way of introduction, I have what I say it is the best portfolio in government because I have kids and learning. Within my portfolio, I am responsible for student wellness and the safety of our young people in the province, which includes our ERASE strategy and our mental health program as well as on the wellness side, which we’ll be talking about today.

Indigenous education and inclusive education are also part of my portfolio. The Auditor General’s report brings up both of those populations, which we need to help support in many ways, as well as our early learning agenda that we’re partnering with the Ministry of Children and Family Development on and then our custom programs, which are all of the other pathways in which our young people can move towards graduation.

With that, Matt, I’ll let you introduce yourself.

M. Herman: Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members. Thank you for this opportunity to do this presentation. My name is Matt Herman. I’m the executive lead of population and public health. I also think I have the best portfolio in government. We can arm wrestle over that. I’ve worked in the population and public health division since early 2005 and have the privilege of working with a fantastic team.

I’m joined here today by Stephen Smith, who’s our director of life course prevention, which includes clinical prevention, Healthy Schools and healthy aging, and Jonathan Robinson, who’s the executive director of our healthy living and health promotion branch.

I’d like to thank the Office of the Auditor General. It’s a very collegial audit. Over the last two-plus years, I think we’ve developed some good friendships over that time.

[11:50 a.m.]

From a personal perspective, I’ve been involved in Healthy Schools ever since my master’s in Edinburgh in the mid-’90s, where I focused on a master’s in health promotion and Healthy Schools as part of that, a focus on physical activity. I’ve seen the evolution of Healthy Schools over the time working for the NHS in the U.K. and then when I moved over here in 2005 — quite the similarities across the continents there. We’re in exciting times in terms of supporting the growth and development of our youngest in our population.

B.C. has certainly taken a leadership role. Sally mentioned the Joint Consortium for School Health. It’s actually B.C. that initiated the secretariat support for that joint consortium in 2005, and at that time, we did some heavy investments in the school health fields, which we’ll refer to. We’re part of that audit that happened.

I’d say audits are welcomed by our ministries, and especially the Ministry of Health. We have a symbiotic relationship with the office of the provincial health officer — so Dr. Perry Kendall and now Dr. Bonnie Henry — who produce recommendations on a regular basis. We had worked to implement those recommendations, and many of them have been related to children and youth health, especially in the school setting.

J. McCrea: I will lead through. Matt and I, in a collaborative way…. While we’re opposite sides of the table, that is absolutely not how we work or how we will demonstrate our work, moving forward. This presentation will be a tag team approach.

While the Auditor General made eight specific recommendations to both of our ministries related specifically to healthy eating and physical activity, there are a number of pieces within their report that really resonated for our ministry and some of the other work that we’re doing. I didn’t want to lose sight of that work. What we do know is that in order for kids to learn, they need to be healthy and they need to be safe in school environments.

The audit looked at a comprehensive school health plan. There were a number of pieces within that section that talked about social-emotional learning, thinking about the work that we are doing, especially with our partnership with Ministry of Children and Family Development, looking at how we are ensuring that young people coming into our system are supported and are able to learn those social-emotional skills. As the report pointed out, a third of our young people enter kindergarten vulnerable on two or more metrics. So we do need to think about that within our province.

Through our work with the First Nations Health Council and the social determinants of health, we do know education plays a key role in people’s life outcomes and trajectories. So we’re pleased to be partnering on that work and not losing sight of that.

The other piece that is really important is the work that we hear from our school districts around mental health in this province. We do need to look at what we’re doing to support our young people. We are looking at…. It’s work coming out of New Brunswick around mental health fitness and linking those fitness pieces when a young person is anxious. The research is showing that if we can get them moving, that is going to also help with mental health. As we look at the physical activity and the healthy eating portion, specifically, we’ll be actioning those pieces of work.

We’re also looking at a comprehensive school health plan, working with Health, working with Children and Family Development and with the new Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions on what we can be learning and working together on.

The other piece I do just want to speak to is that while this was a public school audit and review and lessons to be learned, we are responsible in our ministry for all young people in our province. So we will be taking our learnings and sharing them with both our independent sector and our partnership with First Nations Schools Association. The health and wellness of all our young people is important. So while we are accepting it — all of the recommendations — I did want to stress that we are not limiting it, but we will definitely put a strong focus on the physical activity and health piece of it.

As well, we will be reporting back on the implementation and our actions that we have taken to date and our planned actions moving forward to speak to the audit.

M. Herman: As detailed in the report, the Auditor General found that our ministries have collaborated in the development of evidence-based programs and policies, and our school-based health initiatives are based on proven practice.

[11:55 a.m.]

In fact, we’re actually blessed in this province to have in B.C. some of the leading researchers in school health: Dr. Heather McKay, Dr. P.J. Naylor, Dr. Joan Wharf-Higgins, who were instrumental in the development of Action Schools in the early 2000s; and Dr. Dan Reist, who specializes in substance use in terms of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. It’s a new name; it used to be CARBC.

We’re lucky to be able to work with those academic leaders in the development of our evidence-based programs. How­ever, the Auditor General did find that there is an oppor­tunity to build on and improve the ways that we work together to support healthy eating and physical activity initiatives and potentially deepen their impact and the long-lasting impact that we’re looking for in terms of the investments in the school system and the lifelong learning and support for prevention and reduction of chronic diseases.

The actions that we’re taking respond to the findings and conclusion of the audit report and are detailed in the plan that we have submitted to the members of this committee. We are committed to continuous improvement and are taking action to respond to the recommendations.

As Jennifer noted, we have accepted all eight of the Auditor General’s recommendations. We’ll go through our collective response to those. I do want to update this slide. We actually do have a signed MOU between the Ministries of Education and Health. This is something we committed to in the action plan that we submitted.

That MOU really does map out our collaborative working together, clearly articulates our roles and responsibilities be­tween the two ministries and defines a collaborative ap­proach to developing policy and programming and delivering interventions and resources that promote health and well-being for children and youth in schools. It’s going to be our guiding document for the future, and it really builds on our commitment to 2020 that Sally referred to in terms of signing onto the Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health.

J. McCrea: How we have structured the next portion of the presentation is to actually break it down into six theme areas. We’ll walk you through shared direction, nutritional standards and guidelines, access and barriers, measuring effectiveness, supporting vulnerable students and the public reporting. That’s how we have themed the eight recommendations.

The very first recommendation that the Auditor General made to us really speaks to our need to look at continuous improvement and the ways that we can work together and improve the ways we work together. When I say together, I mean that extends right down into our school districts and our schools and through the health authorities.

The MOU is a successful first step towards our ministries’ formal commitment to clarify and strengthen our partnership. We have a number of other documents that are guiding our work in order to support our young people in the province. We have just signed a new tripartite agreement with First Nations Education Steering Committee and the government of Canada. That will help us bring the healthy eating and fitness recommendations into our First Nations schools.

The other piece that we’re looking at is our mental health strategy, led by the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions but with a specific K-to-12 action plan. We will be looking at how to think about fitness and nutrition as part of that mental health work that we’re doing, specifically around the vulnerable students that were raised.

We do know that, as we mentioned, a large portion of our young people come from a vulnerable index or vulnerable communities. What we also know is that there are some really proud families out there, and we need to honour and not stigmatize our communities. What we see in North Vancouver is that they do snacks for all. I know that in Cowichan, the same thing happens. They don’t ask people having meal programs to use a different card colour to identify that.

We need to honour that, but we also need to support those students. We are working with Stats Canada on some new evidence-based analytics and how we could better support through some of our work that we’re doing with the funding model review as well to ensure that we’re supporting all vulnerable students in our province.

We will be looking at our co-developed shared direction and implementation to ensure there are consistent messages going out through both the education sector and the health sector, and we’ll be looking at an annual direction-setting exercise to ensure that both sectors, from the very senior leadership, understand what that means as we move forward.

[12:00 p.m.]

The Auditor General did point out that we are building on a strong foundation. We appreciate that being highlighted — that we are looking at evidence-based programs. We do strive to work together. That’s how we will build on our work, recognizing that we have more work to do, especially around clear communications, expectations, evaluation and following through on that implementation piece of work.

M. Herman: Recommendations 2 and 5 both relate to healthy eating, more specifically to nutritional standards and guidelines and what we can do to ensure that schools and school districts have resources that are current and appropriately supported when providing meals or snacks.

Since 2005, we’ve worked collaboratively with the Ministry of Education to create policy and resources that support healthier school eating environments. Foundational to this work has been the nutritional policy and guidance from Health Canada, which is responsible for developing dietary guidance for Canadians.

Health Canada will be releasing updated national dietary policy and guidance in a phased approach between the fall of 2018 and the summer of 2019. The last time that national guidance was updated, and you see that in the Canada food guide, was in 2007. We want to ensure that our key healthy eating supports, which include the policy around guidelines for food and beverage sales in schools and the School Meal and School Nutrition Program Handbook, reflect the most current national nutritional standards.

As such, in the upcoming school year, we will perform an evaluation of the school food environment, which will include what supports are needed by school districts and schools to meet nutritional guidelines when providing meals. Once Health Canada releases their national dietary guidance, we will have the findings from our evaluation. We’ll combine those together to update the policy around the guidelines for food and beverage sales, revise the School Meal and School Nutrition Program Handbook, and identify and update tools and resources to support schools in meeting nutritional guidelines.

The next theme is around access and barriers. That covers recommendations 3 and 7, which speak to maximizing access for vulnerable students and reducing barriers to implementation of physical activity and healthy eating programs. Jennifer has already referred to the specific work that’s going on to identify those vulnerable students. Part of the work also includes….

Since the release of the audit report, we have adapted the approaches of two of our programs within the Ministry of Health, which are actually joint programs with the Ministry of Education, simplifying and reducing administrative requirements on application and reporting for Healthy Schools B.C. grants, something that Suzanne referred to, and prioritizing access for First Nations schools for Healthy Schools B.C. grants.

We are anticipating that those grants will be accessed by 30 First Nations schools this year, and we have been working very closely with the First Nations Health Authority to identify those schools. Also, when there is capacity, we will work with the First Nations Education Steering Committee.

We are also reviewing Action Schools B.C. That’s been one of our sort of internationally recognized programs. It’s time to update that and reflect the current approach in the revised curriculum that the Ministry of Education has put in place. Once you align that with shared priorities between our two ministries and have a specific focus on access for students that have vulnerability, that will be prioritized within our program.

Beyond the action we’ve already taken, going forward, planning across all levels will identify implementation barriers and will determine and apply corresponding approaches to mitigate these barriers for healthy eating–physical activity programs and policies.

On to measuring effectiveness. Recommendation 4 speaks to measuring the effectiveness of our initiatives in terms of increasing healthy eating and physical activity, improving health outcomes. While the Auditor General found we were monitoring the implementation of all of our provincial healthy eating–physical activity programs, we were not gathering sufficient information about what adjustments might be needed to support additional improvements.

We’re currently monitoring impacts on the population basis in terms of proportion of our population 12-plus that consume five-plus fruit and vegetable servings per day. We also monitor how much of the population is meeting the guidelines around physical activity. Again, that is 12-plus. Also, one of our indicators that was referred to is looking at how students are reporting that they are learning to stay healthy, and that’s in grades 3, 4, 7, 10 and 12.

A current action we are taking is evaluating the Farm to School B.C. program in the upcoming school year to determine its impact on evidence-based healthy eating indicators and better health outcomes.

[12:05 p.m.]

Moving forward, we will introduce a new requirement in all of our funding agreements that ensures that our healthy eating and physical activity programs are evaluated at a minimum every three years to measure impact on health outcomes.

Over to Jennifer.

J. McCrea: Recommendation 6 spoke to how we support our vulnerable students. It talks specifically about our CommunityLINK funding. We are currently conducting, in the ministry, an independent review of our funding model in order to ensure that districts have equitable and predictable funding, and CommunityLINK is within the scope of that review.

The terms that the independent panel were given were to think about our vulnerable students, including our children in care, our children with unique needs and our Indigenous students, as well as to provide supports to rural and remote school districts and districts with fast-growing populations.

What we do know is that we do have to do more work on our analytics. We do know that students that are supported and connected to schools have higher graduation outcomes. We know that if kids aren’t hungry, kids can learn. In some communities, the only time that a young person gets fed is at school, so we need to think about that and how we provide food security to our young people.

How do we report out on that? Public reporting is a very important piece for public accountability, especially ensuring that our performance measures are consistent with the key indicators of physical health and well-being. Recommendation 8 speaks to what we should use and how we should report on those.

We’re working with our key partners, the provincial health officer to validate our shared performance measures as a consistent key indicator for the physical health and well-being of our young people. Following that validation, we will integrate shared performance measures and reporting into our respective ministries and public guidance and strategic documents.

Two of those documents within the Ministry of Education are the accountability framework that’s being reviewed, as well as a new memorandum of understanding with our school trustees. We’ll be thinking about how, as governors of the system, the trustees also play a role in that.

Over to Sally.

S. Barton: In summary, we’d like to thank the Auditor General and the team for their time, effort and collaboration on focusing on this important work. Within the ministry, we have a strong focus on student success with an overarching goal for achieving the educated citizen, which focuses not just on the intellectual development of children but on the holistic development, which encompasses career and human social development, including mental and overall physical well-being.

When we reach children and youth with interventions that promote healthy behaviours, we not only improve their well-being in the present; we also see the benefits unfold over the longer term. These longitudinal benefits mean that individual participants are more likely to be healthy adults. This, in turn, reduces the incidence of chronic diseases and the corresponding burden to families, communities and public systems. It’s a win-win proposition, and the setting of schools provides us with an opportunity to reach and positively impact the greatest number of children and youth within the province.

In summary, we accept all of the recommendations from the Auditor General. We look forward to increased collaboration and actions on the areas highlighted with the Ministry of Health through the audit results in order to enhance our efforts.

Thank you for having us present today. We’d be very happy to accept any questions from the committee.

S. Bond (Chair): All right. Thank you for that presentation. We’re going to start with Jane. Any other of my colleagues who want to be on the list can just let Kate know.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you very much for your presentation and the collaboration that both Health and Education are doing. I think we need to see more of that. You had mentioned, Jen, about your collaboration, also, with the Ministry of Children and Families. I think that’s a really good step — that everybody at this level has recognized that we’ve got to get rid of those silos.

My worry, though, is when we get down to the actual classroom level and the actual individual school level that all of the good work that you’re doing at the top is not necessarily getting passed on or perhaps even accepted in the classroom or school level.

I do have a bunch of questions, Chair, so I’ll maybe ask a couple and then let everybody else…. Then maybe come back to them, because there’s a lot here.

[12:10 p.m.]

For those of you who don’t know who I am, I am a regis­tered dietitian by trade. I was, in the olden days, before I became a school trustee as well, so I’ve definitely had some personal experience with the topics that we’re discussing, in addition to my current portfolio.

I guess my first question is with regards to the measurements. I think it’s admirable that the Auditor General had really focused on measuring and accountability. My first question is: how do you measure health outcomes when kids are in school for half of the day, and what is happening at home?

We know that with mental health, certainly we can do what we can in the school systems, but guess what. Kids go home. I’m just wondering whether or not there’s any talk about the holistic child — the 24 hours that that child is living — as opposed to feeding them, I guess…. I really appreciate what you said, that a lot of times for these kids, that’s the only meal they get. Then of course, there’s the issue of summer holidays and other holidays that come into play.

I guess the overarching question that I have, the first question, is health outcomes, and how you could possibly measure them when you’re not actually with the kids all the time.

J. McCrea: Maybe, Matt, you can jump in as well.

I think that with the fact that we do need to try and measure them and do need to start, we also need, from an education perspective, to work with all of our partners. So we do need to work with our parents associations and with the teachers federation around what can be done and how it can be done in a consistent manner.

One of the examples that I was thinking about this morning is…. Schools are an amazing place for change. Thinking back to when I was in school, we were just starting recycling. I think it was because of kids coming home, saying: “Well, you can’t do that. We have to recycle.” And now we don’t have plastic bags in Victoria. Like, how far a community can come. It’s those social, cultural changes that young people can influence. I’m hopeful that this will be an area that we can use the school system for that.

Also measuring. We know, especially in the mental health world, prevention is key. If we invest early in our young people, $1 in prevention investment is a $37 cost saving later in life, in social costs. The data is there. We need to change habits and figure out what that measurement is. Some of our advanced analytics work and some of our measurements with the new student learning survey will hopefully be getting us there. And I know that Matt is doing a lot of work with the provincial health officer in that lens as well.

M. Herman: That’s right. Thank you, Jennifer.

In answer to this question, I think it’s building on what Jennifer had said. It’s the multiple data points. It has been identified by Statistics Canada that there is a limit to their Canadian community health survey, which for most of the population is from 12-plus. So from our population health indicators, they are moving towards developing a separate survey that starts at the age of five. I think it goes up to the age of 17. So that will be rolled out nationally over the next couple of years.

We also have other data points around the adolescent health survey, which is run through the McCreary society.

I’ll pass that over to Stephen if you’d like to flesh out what that measures. I think it’s important to consider all these different dynamics and pull that data together. We have established, as part of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, a population health observatory. They’re starting to pull all these data points together, so we can build up a picture around our population and really shape our planning in terms of prevention as we go forth.

Stephen Smith: Thanks, Matt. Just to add to what you’ve provided and what Jennifer has provided, and maybe further to your question, the McCreary Centre Society does provide us with some data. There are cycles of data collection that happen every three to four years, depending on their capacity, that look at the status of adolescent health across the province. The surveys are administered in school settings. The reach is quite good. They reach into just about every school district in the province currently with the adolescent health survey.

It does give us a sense of the whole picture, as you were characterizing it, with respect to a number of factors around mental health, physical health, physical activity and healthy eating, and some risk factors that might contribute to problems down the line.

[12:15 p.m.]

The challenge you identified, I think, in your question is a complicated one, which is: how do you tease out the actual impact our programs are having on that overall health status picture that we get from some of those indicators like McCreary and like the Canadian community health survey?

In light of that, in the past we’ve defaulted to indicators that have looked at learning outcomes related to some of our programs, which get back to the surveys that are delivered within the school by the Ministry of Education. Those give us a sense of what students are learning that may contribute to behaviour change in a positive way, and therefore, have a positive benefit with respect to health outcomes.

The longer-term health status issue, which was flagged, I think, by the Auditor General and her staff in the report, is one that we’re grappling with in terms of some of those population-level indicators. As we start to work with our community organizations that deliver some of these programs and introduce that new requirement around evaluation, at minimum every three years after implementation, our expectation is that we get a baseline picture before implementation of the actual intervention. That’s in order to know what the health status looks like within the setting of the catchment for the program. And then have a longitudinal sense of the impact that’s having over time as that implementation occurs.

We need to be able to really tease out what the tangible impact of these programs is with respect to that broader health status picture. That broader health status picture, of course, encompasses not only what we’re doing in schools but what we may be doing in the community through public health or through other health-related interventions and would also reflect the influence of other public systems and other factors in a child’s life.

J. Thornthwaite: Can I have one more follow-up question, Chair?

S. Bond (Chair): Go ahead.

J. Thornthwaite: Is there any thought, then…? Jennifer McCrea will know what I’m getting at here. We need to get these professionals in the schools, for a couple of reasons. We’re asking teachers to do too much. That’s where you’re going to get the push-back. It’s in the classroom: “You’re dumping yet another curriculum item on me.”

It does have to be incorporated into the curriculum, obviously. But is there any talk, then, of getting these professionals in the schools, like what they’re doing in New Brunswick with regards to the rotating professionals? But if you have mental health professionals coming into the schools with the direct availability of actually talking to individual students on a regular basis, why not get — I’ll give my plug to the registered dietitian — the dietitians in there?

I think kids are so into nutrition right now, themselves, but they’re getting really not necessarily adequate and accurate advice, depending on where they’re getting it. A lot of that advice is actually coming in the schools, which is incorrect. Depending on who you talk to and the type of information that you’re actually getting on, say, healthy behaviours…. What we don’t want to be doing is encouraging mental health and eating disorders.

We’ve really got to be careful that the actual information that they’re getting is accurate, because these kids are super vulnerable in schools. We can’t be getting these professionals that may be a professional in one capacity, but they’re not actually a professional in, say, the nutrition capacity.

Is there any thought of getting these professionals actually in the schools, either educating the parents, educating the teachers, but directly educating the kids? That’s how they learn how to recycle. They’re getting the information from the actual people and then educating their parents at home, or their other family members.

J. McCrea: Absolutely. Every idea is being considered. We do have the integrated service delivery hubs in a very small number of our schools, and we’re trying to think about how to build on that. I spent some time with the deputy minister of New Brunswick a few weeks ago and really talked about what that looks like and who are those professionals in their schools.

In pockets in our schools, they are part of our hubs that are happening right now. It needs to be more intentional, to your point.

[12:20 p.m.]

The other important piece is the new curriculum. The physical activity and mental health pieces are directly in the new curriculum, and there is space within the curriculum area to bring in those experts, to have kids go out and work with it and dig into their own health.

The other piece that we are looking at to leverage is around the new student learning survey that we have. It was called the student satisfaction survey in the past. The old question was: at school, I’m learning how to stay healthy. The new questions. There are two of them. At school, I’m learning how to care for my mental health — with examples around anxiety, stress management, relationship and anger management. The second question is: at school, I’m learning how to care for my physical health — for example, getting healthy food, exercise, sleep.

What we’re able to do with the new analytics work we’re doing in the ministry, with my colleague Keith Godin, is to look at the data points. If we are starting to see schools where there are high numbers of kids saying they aren’t getting the physical activity and the health, then we can look at our strategies. We can go in and do some targeted supports and have some specific conversations with districts or principals.

It’s very new. It’s the first year of that data that we’re receiving, but we did have over 80,000 young people respond to our survey. We’ll be using that data to think about what our programs, policies and implementation plans are and definitely working with the schools as they are thinking about what those service delivery hubs look like and what those professionals in the schools could be bringing to the young people.

M. Herman: I’ll just add to that. We have a couple of programs, just to your point. I think you’re referring to the dietitians in the schools, registered dietitians. We won’t say nutritionists.

J. McCrea: Exactly.

M. Herman: We’ve really been investing in Farm to School B.C., partnering with the Public Health Association of B.C. They’re now almost reaching 100 schools across the province. We have the five regional hubs of Vancouver, Victoria, Kamloops, Port Alberni and Nanaimo.

Just from attending some of those regional events they put on, we do have dietitians involved in that. In terms of the school-based gardens, it’s something that dietitians are really interested in as well, in terms of working with those kids directly, and it’s really got those wider community benefits. As we expand that program — and we are expanding that program — over time, and as we’ve been investing — I would say, increasing our investment over the last few years — we’re seeing those schools come on board.

In Action Schools B.C., over the last couple of years, we’ve been partnering with registered dietitians, food literacy mentors. So they’ve been really working — and it’s integrated with Farm to School B.C. as well — with those teachers around how they can impart those food literacy skills in terms of that knowledge, attitude and skills to their students, so they can recognize nutritional foods, they can develop their healthy eating patterns, and they can understand the relationship between food and health and well-being. So there are a couple of ways we’ve got dietitians involved.

Jennifer referred to the curriculum. It’s the office of the provincial dietitian that really reviewed that curriculum from a healthy-eating perspective and the food literacy perspective, so we’ve got confidence that the curriculum is sound. Our programs are there to help the teachers deliver that curriculum to the students.

J. Yap: Thanks to the presenters. My question is regarding the data. MLA Thornthwaite talked about, in her opening question, the data. Just looking at page 39 of the Auditor’s report, “Key Findings and Recommendations,” the second paragraph: “The performance measure tracks a percentage of B.C. students,” in these grades, “who report that ‘at school, they are learning to stay healthy.’” Then it goes on to say: “It is not consistent with key indicators for physical health and well-being of children and youth identified by the provincial health officer and the Canadian Institute for Health Information.”

I’m wondering about the reliability or the quality of the data. It’s so important, right? What gets measured gets done, and we all want to know what programs are effective. How is that data collected? I heard some reference to people doing surveys, going into the school.

[12:25 p.m.]

If you could comment on the process for getting that data and how that is…. At the end of the day, we want to know that the learners, schools, are not only maintaining their health but getting healthier through nutrition, education programs. How is that data collected? And if you could comment on the quality of that data.

M. Herman: I’ll pass it over to Education. I just want to make one small point. The office of the provincial health officer has identified child and youth health indicators. There’s a whole suite of indicators, and some of those might not have associated data sources yet, but they might be valid indicators to associate with, to make attribution to our programs. That’s the work we’re going through in terms of validating the indicators and then what the data sources could be. Then we can integrate them into our programs and have that timely data.

As part of the health authority board reports, we have incorporated, as part of the quarterly reporting, that measure in terms of students learning to stay healthy, as a way of putting their part accountability on the health system to work with the education system to support that. That’s a mechanism to increase that collaboration and have a different sector also accountable in terms of what happens in terms of learning outcomes.

I’ll pass it over to Jennifer in terms of the quality of the satisfaction survey.

S. Barton: Thanks, Matt. I’ll kick off, and then my colleagues will add.

Within the Ministry of Education, we have a very, very strong focus on data. As you said, what gets measured gets managed. We strongly believe in evidence-based decision-making and making sure that the programs we put in place and the dollars we invest are going to the right place and are actually having the outcomes that we desire.

Through various mechanisms, we are able to uniquely track and identify every single student within the K-to-12 system the minute they enter, if not before. If they’ve enrolled in StrongStart programs, we know a lot about the child already. We track them throughout the system in terms of their educational outcomes. Augmenting that data with the student learning survey data that Jennifer has already identified really gives us that holistic view.

We know how they’re actually performing in school. We know if they’re attending school. We have a lot of other data around them. But we also have the more subjective data actually reported by the student in terms of how they’re feeling from a physical standpoint and from a mental standpoint. So we’re really getting that holistic view, and we can put that all together. And if you think of the number of youth cases by which we can actually break that down and start analyzing that and doing some very intense analytics, especially using augmented intelligence, which we’re actually doing now in the ministry, that gives us a really, really strong view and a strong lens of every single student within the province.

J. McCrea: I think the only thing I would add to that is that we are also looking at data-matching partnerships that we’re able to do. The Ministries of Health and Education have a data-matching protocol in place so that we can share our data and learn from each other. We have just entered, as the Ministry of Education, with Stats Canada into that same type of relationship, to be able to look at data linkages with different partners. So we have that with B.C. Stats, but we also have it now with Stats Canada.

J. Yap: If I may. That’s great if every student of all 500,000 or so students is tracked to that extent in terms of their learning, how they’re doing. But on the question of nutrition and health, is it self-reported? What kind of data? Is it just that they’re asked in a regular survey: “When was the last time you had fruits and vegetables?” How does that work?

J. McCrea: Two different ways. The first one is, as you referenced, on page 39 of the Auditor General’s report. That question, “Are they learning to stay healthy?” has changed. It’s recognized the limitations in that, and it’s been much broader, so that is self-reported by the young people in our schools.

The second piece is through the new curriculum. Teachers will be able to be doing assessment as it’s embedded directly into the new curriculum as well. Matt mentioned that we worked with experts in his area to ensure that it was solid.

J. Yap: The new curriculum. When does that get implemented? Or is it already being implemented?

[12:30 p.m.]

S. Barton: It’s already been implemented in grades K to 9, and we’re rolling out grades beyond that over the next two years.

J. McCrea: Grade 10 starts in September, and 11 and 12 to follow.

J. Yap: With that, just in the normal course of going through the curriculum, the learners and the teachers would have to address their healthy eating and their health.

J. McCrea: Correct.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): My only issue is that I think I have the best job, actually. But what I heard…. I really appreciate the collaboration. Anyone who knows me and how I work…. Collaboration runs through my veins.

What I’m concerned about, with all of the really good planning and the great ideas and the effective work that we’re observing today, is what I heard earlier on. The initiatives originally under the audit were not prioritized, because it would be an add-on to an overwhelming workload. So I’d just like to hear some reassurance about, in spite of all the plans and the great ideas, where the mechanisms are that make sure that that trap isn’t fallen into again.

J. McCrea: I’ll start with: it’s in our curriculum. So that is not an add-on for teachers. Also, to MLA Thornthwaite’s comment around how we can bring other experts into the schools, I think that will also play a role in ensuring the collaboration but ensuring the follow-through as well. So those are two key areas from an education perspective, and I know the health authorities are also looking at supporting on the ground.

M. Herman: Yes. I think it’s a couple of things we’re looking at as well, in terms of the interconnectedness of these files. Jennifer started off by talking about how mental health is such a priority. Realizing that, and it’s an everyday issue that teachers are facing, how do we incorporate physical activity and healthy eating as part of those approaches to mental health so we can get a sort of win-win scenario in terms of not having to focus on mental health and substance use and do physical activity, health eating?

All the programs, and working with most of our non-governmental organizations that deliver those programs for us…. We do have a heavy emphasis in terms of how they do incorporate into the curriculum. How do they support the physical and health and education curriculum? What are those lesson plans that you could double up with physical activity and arithmetic, for example? That’s part of what we’re looking at.

Also, really pointing out and having clear communication of how the initiatives — how physical ed and healthy eating, for example — fit within the policies. And looking at comprehensive school health, so you can really look at not just the teaching and learning, but you can really support a wider approach in terms of the environment, so you’ve got a healthy environment. You can focus on a physical environment, the relationships within that environment — so the social environment — and really look at the policy.

We have the policy landscape still around the guidelines for food and beverage sales. But other policies, like the daily physical activity, have been incorporated directly into the curriculum. It’s not seen as an add-on anymore. We still have that for, I think, grades 11 and 12. However, for grades K to 10, it’s incorporated into the curriculum.

Stephen Smith: One of the things that’s happened in the past couple of years is we were able to support one of our NGO partners, DASH BC, to work with a family foundation here in Canada, the McConnell foundation, to undertake a user-centred design process. Really, to grapple with this problem firsthand and to bring a group of teachers and administrators together to really wrestle with what would be meaningful supports. What would address some of their needs in the context of these issues around health and well-being?

There’s a focus on mental health but also one on physical health in that process. They surfaced a set of three suggestions that can be foundational for us and that we’re considering foundational in terms of some of that work we’re doing to review our programs as they come up for review through our response to the Auditor General’s recommendation.

As we look at Action Schools B.C., which is the first out of the gate, we’re really going be applying those user-centred design principles that emerged through that process in order to help us understand where there are opportunities to make tools more relevant to the individuals that are actually going to need to use them in the end on the front line.

S. Barton: Let me just add as well, Madam Chair, going back to MLA Yap’s question around data. We’re not collecting data for data’s sake. It’s very much to inform the overall process and really provide a compelling narrative and to provide the evidence that the aspects around mental health, around physical health and well-being, are really integral to the overall ability to progress academically.

[12:35 p.m.]

It’s not seen as a bolt-on, a nice-to-have, an extra that really is workload. It’s an absolute integral of the work, because it’s part of that holistic view.

R. Glumac: I have a couple of questions. Just building on the data on page 38 and the fact that the question is going to be changed. I’m just wondering about the trajectory of the information that’s gathered there. As you progress through the grades, it seems like there’s less and less of a focus on learning how to stay healthy. It seems to be a bigger thing in grade 3, and then in grade 12, it’s significantly less of a focus. So what has been done about that?

Ultimately, when we’re talking about the main goal of all this, it’s to try to instil healthy living, a healthy lifestyle, in kids and have that propagate through to when they’re adults. But the trend here seems to be that…. I would rather see that be the opposite — like where in grade 3, there’s a little bit of learning, and as you get to grade 12, it’s a lot more of a focus — so that when they get out of school, they maintain that healthy lifestyle. What has been done about that? What has been learned from that?

J. McCrea: Yeah, it’s exactly what we see when we look at all of our surveys around what we can do for our older kids as they’re leaving the system and setting them up for success.

That’s one piece that we’re hoping the new curriculum, which will be evaluated and monitored and adjusted…. It was built with B.C. teachers for teachers in order to have that really embedded in their learning, so that every young person would know: “I am learning this. I do know things. I’m actually helping my own family and my extended family now with better eating habits or greater exercise and how that works together.” From a curriculum perspective, that’s where it’s coming in on that piece.

I think our analytics, being able to go in and target certain areas, when we’re able to drill into these results…. It is the first time ever, this year, that we’re able to go in as deep as we’ve been able to. Then I think the analytics piece that Matt has talked about, as well, and being able to really look at what the outputs are that we’re getting from all of our programs, not just the inputs — that we need to measure that.

M. Herman: I would add that it is concerning, I would say, in terms of downward trends. This is a measure that’s been incorporated into our guiding framework for public health and that we reported on, by our provincial health officer, over the summer. Looking at these trends…. That’s why we tried to raise the priority of this within our system in terms of, in 2017-18, the service plans for both the ministry and the Ministry of Health. We did identify in terms of the objectives of healthy schools and Healthy Schools B.C. and reiterated that this is a priority for us to work on.

We are also looking at this across other jurisdictions as well, looking at what other jurisdictions have been able to do in terms of that trajectory, certainly across from K to 12, but also as you look at the transition into beyond school. We certainly know, working with our sport colleagues and the rest of our physical activity colleagues, that there are real drops in terms of physical activity for girls around this age group, as we’re getting towards older age groups.

We are developing and have in place some specific interventions for some of those targeted populations that may be behind some of this data. We’re continuously analyzing that data and refining our programs to try and see how we can reverse this downward trend.

R. Glumac: To follow up on that, is this only because of the Auditor General’s report that these changes are being made now? I mean, the first year that this happened…. The first data point on here is 2011, and that indicates right there, first year, that there’s a huge spread between grade 3 and grade 12 in terms of the question being asked: are you learning about how to stay healthy? But nothing has…. In fact, it’s gotten worse from 2011 to 2015 and 2016. I heard that data is very important and being used, but it didn’t seem to have any effect there.

[12:40 p.m.]

What has changed now that…? Is it from this report, or is it from the extra funding that is being received? What is the…? How can you convince me that it’s going to get better?

J. McCrea: We have data way further back than 2011. I’ll let the Auditor speak to the years that they’ve captured. B.C., especially in education, has one of the biggest data sources in the country for education.

The other thing…. Did it change because of the Auditor General’s report? I’m going to say yes and no. No, the survey was administered last year in advance of receiving the Auditor General’s report. This question, we looked at it, and it isn’t giving us what we need. We’ve actually broken it down into four different areas, around physical activity, healthy eating, mental health and substance use. We’ve taken that one question and broken it down much deeper.

That happened in advance of the Auditor General’s. While they were doing their work, that piece of work was happening. But we are using the findings and the recommendations to help us inform other pieces moving forward on the data points.

Matt talked about the girls, and that’s an important piece. We also know that engaging young males in physical activity also helps with their engagement in school and their connection and helps keep them in school. We need to look at all of those different pieces and how we work together with that.

The data points are much deeper than what this is. The data points and the questions have changed with some of our matching and some of the work that our colleague has done to improve our data points. But it is also being informed, moving forward, by the Auditor’s report.

R. Glumac: Sorry, I guess I’m not asking the question clearly. It was stated that a lot of this is being incorporated into the curriculum in grades 10 and 12. When did that start?

J. McCrea: The curriculum transformation started about eight years ago. That’s how we’ve been able to do the build and build the curriculum and build it with the experts. That work has been well underway.

The grades 10, 11 and 12, over the last two years, took a little bit of a slower path. Those are the graduation years, and we wanted to make sure that every student leaving our system was set up for post-secondary. All of the curriculum changes have been well underway for many years.

R. Glumac: Okay. Then why hasn’t there been an im­provement in the data if it’s been underway for eight years?

S. Barton: The development of the revised curriculum has been underway for many years, but it was an extensive consultative process. It’s only just been implemented in grades K to 9, and it’s a phased rollout for 10 to 12. There’ll be a lag before you actually see it reflected. It won’t be in this question, because, as Jennifer said, the questions have been revised to get much more depth and richness in our responses.

J. McCrea: About two years ago, K to 9 curriculum came in. Grade 10 is coming in in this September.

R. Glumac: K to 9, two years ago, and this September is 10 to 12.

J. McCrea: It’s only grade 10. Next year will be 11 and 12.

R. Glumac: Okay. One other question I have is just to help me understand the reasoning for scaling back the B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutrition program.

M. Herman: We piloted that in 2005-6. It was a fruit and vegetable snack program at the time, quite intensive. We piloted it with ten elementary schools. We had positive evaluations back then, and there was a drive to make it provincial.

We started scaling up provincially. We now have it in, I think, just over about 1,350 schools, which back then was in ten schools. We’ve had a huge scale-up. It’s now in 82 First Nation schools as well. We have a partnership with the First Nations Health Authority in supporting that. B.C. Dairy Association supports the milk delivery, in terms of K to 5.

As we were doing the provincial scale-up, we were careful that we made sure that we evaluated all along the way, in terms of the number of deliveries of servings.

[12:45 p.m.]

We’re now currently at 12 servings, which is quite a bit lower than in terms of what our pilot phase was. The pilot phase was quite intensive, to see if this program would be acceptable and can actually work within a system.

In nature of reflecting on the evaluation that fewer servings, fewer deliveries, could actually still achieve the same outcomes in terms of students’ willingness to try and their understanding and knowledge of how food is connected into the wider environment, the agricultural system, in terms of that connection I’m talking about in terms of food and health, we work closely….

The delivery partner is the B.C. Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation. They developed the program in concert with us, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture. We’ve been taking advice from them as well in terms that they have certain delivery partners that they work with in terms of Overwaitea Foods.

When there was a platform commitment to have this roll down to all provincial schools in 2005, that was how we scaled that up in terms of the ability to able to do that. We had to reduce the servings. The practicality in some of these really rural and remote areas where it involves planes, trains, automobiles and many, many volunteers to actually get it to the classroom…. It wasn’t feasible to be able that amount of deliveries and servings over the school year as per the pilot.

From a practical perspective and from a cost perspective, that’s why the program was scaled back. However, all the way through, in our successive evaluations, we’ve still had positive evaluations on the program outcomes in terms of that sort of affinity to fruits and vegetables.

We’ve got so much anecdotal data in terms of when you’ve got, say, students that may be picky eaters…. When they’ve got some of their fellow students in the classroom eating fruits and vegetables, it does actually encourage them. We know that many of those students have gone home, thousands of them have gone home — there are over 500,000 involved in this per year — and influenced their wider families in terms of purchasing fruits and vegetables. We’ve got very good data even with the scaled-back delivery of the 12 servings a year.

Our partnership with the First Nations Health Authority in terms of more vulnerable schools…. Those 82 First Nations schools match the investment, so there are double deliveries. So it’s equivalent to 24 servings in that school year.

R. Glumac: Why did the in-school coordinator position get eliminated?

M. Herman: Again, it was based on the evaluation. In terms of the provincial rollout, we worked with the B.C. Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation in terms of supporting…. We funded associated curriculum supports. With that, as well, we have an expansion in terms of the supports that arrive with those deliveries. It’s more materials that can be used as part of the curriculum. We felt that was sufficient.

From the evaluations, that seems to be efficient in terms of providing that information, tools and resources to the teachers to impart that information rather than in-school coordinators. As the program has grown, we have thousands of volunteers involved in this, so the capacity for the program itself over the 13 years it has been running is quite substantial. That’s part of it as well.

R. Glumac: In the report, those two changes — the reduction of the number of servings and the elimination of the in-school coordinator position…. It says that these changes “may have impacted the ministry’s ability to reach its overall goal of improving the nutritional health of children and youth in B.C.” So you disagree with that?

M. Herman: I think that statement was relevant to what we had previously been talking about, the attributable data points in terms of the programs. One of the recommendations is that we work with our delivery partners to actually measure that impact in terms of fruit and vegetable consumption. The only way we can look at that right now is in terms of our CCHS data in terms of fruits and vegetables consumption from a population level.

[12:50 p.m.]

R. Glumac: Why, on page 30, in the table where it lists the different programs and says “evidence-informed” under the B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional program…? All the other ones are yes, they’re evidence-informed, but this one is only partially evidence-informed. I’m wondering if I could understand, maybe from the Auditor General, why that was characterized differently.

Suzanne Smith: Sure. I can answer that. The reason for the B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional program being partially evidence-informed is because…. Our expectations there were that there was a pilot, there was some sort of jurisdictional review, and there was something that went on, obviously, prior to the implementation. We did see that in terms of this pilot. But the reason we couldn’t say it continues to be evidence-informed is because of that dramatic change between the pilot and the current iteration of the program.

If you add that with the information around what Matt just mentioned, that we don’t know…. Yes, we know that the evaluation done in 2012-2013, which Matt is referring to, found that children were more likely to try. That’s one of the objectives of that program. The second objective, which is the one that we were also interested in, was: are they increasing their fruit and vegetable intake? That lines up with our other recommendation around measuring effectiveness.

The reason that point is in there about…. We don’t know whether this significant reduction is having an impact or not. That’s why we’ve said: “You need to show us.” I understand Matt and Jennifer have mentioned that the plan is to evaluate these programs every three years to find that information out.

Does that answer your question?

R. Glumac: I’ll leave it at that for now. Thank you.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you, Rick. Appreciate those questions.

Speaking of fruit and vegetables and nutrition, which hopefully are on the table…. Because we have a timeline, as people have to fly and leave, we’re going to keep working right through this agenda. Those of you who are not engaged in this discussion may want to help themselves to lunch, because it’s going to be a working lunch. We are going to continue to work through the agenda so that we can finish on time today.

With that, it’s over to Ralph. The rest of you should feel free to help yourselves to the lunch.

R. Sultan: The Deputy Clerk and I have been exchanging glances as we listen to the discussion, because this is sort of where we came in more years ago than I guess I’d care to admit with the childhood obesity task force, which engaged in a bipartisan tour and a great parade of experts in an attempt to figure out how we can reduce the incidence of childhood obesity.

I must say that I think, in fact, that work and the evidence that Health and Education have obviously spent a lot of time poring over has made a difference. I commend those two ministries for taking this subject very seriously, not that much more remains to be done.

There was very little in those early days. We had Particip­ACTION, a federal program that got everybody out running around. ActNow was Gordon Campbell’s big initiative. It kind of petered out, like all these things do, after three or four years. Now we have, depending on how you count them, four to six programs, from Healthy Schools, Action Schools B.C., B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional, Farm to School B.C., etc.

A lot is happening. Certainly, significant resources. It’s easy to add up $6½ million, not counting the LINK funding program for school meals, which is another $25 million. I didn’t realize we were spending that much, as taxpayers, on improving the nutrition of our students. I’d say: “Good on you who have made this happen.” There has not been, to my impression at least, a good deal of publicity about all of this.

I guess my first question is…. We did seem to have a cycle of, every five years, another great big drive to improve the fitness of the nation, and so on, so that a 22-year-old male Canadian would be as fit as somebody who was 65 years old in Sweden. Those sorts of slogans still stick in my mind.

[12:55 p.m.]

We haven’t had any of that blitz of publicity, which certainly raises consciousness, evidenced by the fact that I wasn’t even aware of all these programs that you have underway.

Do you think there’s any role for this bigger public awareness effort? Or the quiet, methodical way you seem to be going about it now — is that, perhaps, smarter in the long run?

M. Herman: Good point. I’m happy to say we’re still in a partnership with ParticipACTION. Once they reformed in 2007, I think…. We struck a partnership with ParticipACTION. It was initially for three years, extended to six years, which took us to 2018. We now have a new, two-year partnership with them. That will take us to eight years working closely with ParticipACTION.

They, themselves, have just received $25 million from the federal government, in the budget, to increase that awareness. The federal-provincial-territorial ministers responsible for sport, physical activity and recreation have just endorsed the common vision for physical activity — an FPT framework on how we change the landscape in terms of physical activity. Within that is enhanced promotion and awareness.

ParticipACTION itself has changed the way it engages with Canadians. There was so much noise in the space, back in those days, in terms of: “You’re competing with a Swede.” A lot of people would get their information…. The ad­vertising would be through TV and through theatre, or some­thing like that. Now with the change of most people consuming their information directly through their phones, in terms of mobile devices, they’ve gone heavily in terms of a digital health strategy, in terms of how they engage the population.

That’s where the province went as well, in terms of ActNow. We had a lot of community engagement, a lot of advertising on TV. Then, as we transformed into HealthyFamilies B.C., the next one after ActNow, we really focused, in terms of the behavioural sciences, on nudge behaviour — really targeting how people change their behaviour, how they consume their information. You can nudge their behaviour when they’re looking at, say, what their choices might be in the supermarket, for example, in terms of choosing those healthy behaviours. The daily prompts, in terms of: “Are you being active?”

We had a partnership. We’ve developed the Carrot app, which gives that direct incentive in terms of our desire to accumulate points, reflecting back on the previous audit. You can get points through Aeroplan, Overwaitea Foods, Petro-Canada and SCENE — going to the cinema to watch movies. We know the population is driven by getting incentives, and we know that if the population has a way to easily get that health information through a digital means, they can consume that, and they’re engaged.

I think it’s still there. The channels are still there. Can we do more? Yes. The way that we’re engaging the population has changed quite significantly in the last 20 years.

R. Sultan: A second question. That’s reassuring, by the way. I was quite unaware of all that activity. Again, good on you.

A second question. This refers to, I guess, an issue Rick alluded to — namely, these measurements of success or failure on page 38, and so on. Self-reporting on activity levels and whether you had fruit and vegetables this week.

I don’t know. I can remember when I was a kid being asked…. Everybody had to put up their hand if they brushed their teeth this morning. Well, I felt I should be honest and frequently didn’t put up my hand. I got a mark on my report card. I mean, I don’t believe in this self-reporting stuff very much.

Has it been considered and debated — measure the weight of the kids over time? For that matter, with all the electronic gadgetry, let’s line up at one end of the school yard, strap on a wrist device and see what their heart rate gain is by the time that they run to the other end of the school yard.

J. Thornthwaite: That would be shaming.

R. Sultan: It is, yes. I agree.

M. Herman: I think a previous comment from MLA Thornthwaite was around the connection of healthy weight and mental health and stigma.

In 2015, Statistics Canada did run a specific deeper dive in terms of nutrition. It’s a redo of their in-depth dive in 2004.

[1:00 p.m.]

We do actually have data from five- to 17-year-olds in terms of weight and obesity. The latest data in terms of the B.C. population, I think, said 10.2 percent is classed as obese at the moment.

We do have that data, and we’re using that data in terms of having specific interventions. We’ve got a number of interventions, like Shapedown, for example, which is mostly around the province, apart from up in the north. It really does combine that sort of nutritional counselling with the physical activity and with the psychological support as well.

We’re developing an in-B.C. support, more of a community-based support, for children and youth that are on that high index, in terms of their body mass index, as well. It is something we’re trying to create as a wider community support around obesity, piggybacking off the very successful EPODE model in France, which is a world-renowned model in terms of a community-based response to obesity and which involves many, many sectors. We’ve got a similar program called Live 5-2-1-0 that’s run in B.C.

I think that obesity is one of those really challenging community issues that we have right now. Across the globe, there are increasing rates of obesity. B.C. is not increasing as fast as some of those other areas across the globe. It’s a testament to where we live but also the interventions that we have in place. But it is something we’re keeping an eye on.

We really do need to balance that approach. We don’t want to create stigma amongst our children and youth in terms of calling out their sort of body weight. We do know that it’s not necessarily obesity alone that’s leading to our incidence of chronic diseases. You can have a different variety in terms of…. You can have someone that is overweight and that has got quite good inputs in terms of their cardiovascular fitness as well.

R. Sultan: But I take it that our task force and all the work we put in years and years ago notwithstanding, obesity among youth and children is increasing.

M. Herman: It’s increasing globally and in B.C.

R. Sultan: Another question, just basically…. Again, Matt, I’ll address it to you. If we just consider the macro strategy, we turn to page 17 of the report and see that in terms of population health and wellness, it’s consuming about 4 percent of our health authority expenses in 2015-16, as opposed to acute care, which is roughly 15 times greater.

I can understand and, particularly as a politician, appreciate why this disproportionate allocation of resources occurs. People show up at the ER; you have to look after them. But in the long term, if you were the Premier, would you be working to increase the wellness in population proportion and try and hold back our impulse to, you know, just replace knees because people are finding it difficult to carry all that weight?

M. Herman: I think one of the things we’re doing is really integrating prevention across our whole system. We’re currently in the development of a wellness plan, which will be a whole, systemwide plan. We had the HealthyFamilies B.C. policy framework, which is one of the policies the ministry developed. We released that in May of 2014, and that guided our system for a three-year period in terms of prevention.

We’re now redoing that policy framework. It fits under our overarching ten-year guiding framework for public health, Promote, Protect, Prevent, which really sets out seven goals and aspirational targets in terms of improving the health of the population through public health. What we realized is we really need that implementation level of policy which really guides the whole system.

When we’re looking at those priorities now of hips, knees and dental, in terms of our surgeries, where can the prevention pieces be put in place? For example, we know, through our clinical prevention work that Stephen leads, that if we put in a policy around fluoride varnish for children, we can have a direct impact on some of those dental caries later in life.

We are really looking at where we’re investing, in terms of our acute dollars, and then how we can integrate prevention into those elements across the whole system. It’s something, in terms of the investment in population health and wellness, that Dr. Bonnie Henry is very keen on. There will be some commentary on that in terms of a report that will be coming out in the next month or so.

[1:05 p.m.]

R. Sultan: A final question, if I may, addressed to Jennifer, perhaps, concerning the school system, again harkening back to our task force of many, many years ago. The issue of sugary drinks in the vending machines was a big issue in those days. It was defended fiercely by schools, which frequently relied upon it for their athletic programs — the profit from selling sugary drinks.

You’re reading in the United States press…. Anti–sugary drink campaigns seem to be quite prevalent at the moment. They seem to come and go. We had hoped that the substitution of vending machines for carrot sticks would replace Coca-Cola. I’m not quite sure how successful that turned out to be.

Could you give us an update? Do we still find Coke machines all over our high schools?

J. McCrea: You will find vending machines, but under the food guidelines for our schools, they are not allowed to sell those drinks that you referenced.

R. Sultan: So you have really diminished the presence of sugary drinks in a significant way?

J. McCrea: Yes, they cannot be sold in our schools.

M. Herman: I think they should not be sold in any public institutions at all.

Suzanne Smith: Just one comment on that, though. In terms of the report, one of the things we’ve said — she’s talking about the guidelines for the sale of food and beverages — is that the ministry is not actively monitoring whether the schools and school districts are following those guidelines. The last time they did listen — 2010. But one of the points we make in the report is that it hasn’t been done since then. Absolutely, Jennifer is right: they’re not allowed to.

I know that when we went to some schools, when we went out into the field to talk to some of the school districts and schools — we went to 15 different schools and five different school districts — it was a wide variety in terms of what was in those vending machines. In fact, sometimes when we showed up, they looked at us like we were the police, and they went rushing off to their vending machines. Of course, we weren’t. We were just there to talk to them.

Certainly, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t school districts and schools that prioritize this area, because there absolutely are. A lot of it is based on the leadership, whether it’s at the district level or at the school level. We did mention that in the report.

J. Thornthwaite: I know everybody is probably getting hungry, talking about food. I’d just like to make a comment that I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing — sorry, men and women; that was just my term — with regards to working together. This has been going on a long time. The fact that you’ve been able to accomplish as much as you have…. I know you’re working on the data. The curriculum is strumming along.

In a comment to something that was mentioned before, I happened to be on a school board when the rollout of the new curriculum was occurring. It was actually from the school-teacher level, the school district level, that they requested that they pause and give extra time to implement the higher grades. That came from the ground level, that request. That was not necessarily a ministry decision. And I think it was a good one.

I really appreciate that, but the working that you’re doing on prevention is really, really key. Me, coming from the health field…. It always is the first thing that gets cut — the prevention. The fact that you’ve been able to accomplish what you have over the years, focusing…. I just wanted to give you kudos on that and really continue to pressure the importance of getting to these kids early. It’s better to get them when they’re five, as opposed to when they’re 15 or 25. It’s often too late. That’s mental health and physical fitness and nutrition and everything else.

So don’t give up. Keep doing what you’re doing. I really appreciate you working together. It’s been a very enlightening report, and I thank the Auditor General for bringing it to our attention. I think that we’re really doing a good job, collectively. Keep it up.

S. Bond (Chair): I just have a couple of questions before we wrap this up and move on in the agenda. Thank you to everyone who has presented today.

[1:10 p.m.]

Just as you both — all of you, probably — feel you have the best job in the world, we have a debate about representing the best ridings in British Columbia. We won’t get into that debate.

Mitzi made the comment about collaborative running in her veins. I do appreciate that. That is very evident in this group, and I really appreciate her being our vice-Chair.

I wanted to pursue a couple of things. One is related to CommunityLINK and the funding that’s provided to school districts. Perhaps a bit more of a discussion about the identification of vulnerable children. I fully respect that there is an issue of pride and family and all of that.

We had some exceptional work done in British Columbia. Sadly, the untimely death of Dr. Clyde Hertzman…. I’m wondering a bit about the work that he did. He was very, very instrumental in identifying not only vulnerable children but where they live, and it helped influence policy and direction. He was critical to and created the human early learning partnership, and it did shape policy in British Columbia.

Does that work continue? As much as we need to be sensitive, we also have to be well informed about where those children are. While food programs matter, they matter more for some children than others. Can you just…? The report reflects on the needs for vulnerable children and the fact that it’s difficult to have data. But if you look at the HELP program, it tells us that 14,000 kids are coming to school, early learning, in an environment where they are vulnerable from the moment they walk through the door.

Maybe just a brief…. Does that work continue? How are we using Hertzman’s work today? Is there continual identification of those vulnerable families, and is that helping shape programs in specific districts?

J. McCrea: Yes, absolutely. Dr. Hertzman’s work is continuing, and we do use the early development instrument in all of our work. In fact, that has expanded to the middle years as well. So there’s more data and research in that we have partnered with that organization to really dig in and think about that.

In addition to that…. I’m hopeful, through the independent panel’s recommendations, the funding review…. We know where the vulnerability index lies in our communities. We know the percentage of the population of our young people coming to school — where they live. The funding, I’m hoping, is going to be realigned to be like that. It’s very similar to young people with unique needs. We know that kids that have autism spectrum disorder…. That’s about 10 percent of our population. We don’t need to wait for a diagnosis. We know where those populations are.

I’m hopeful that the recommendations from the independent panel will address that, but we’re not waiting for that as well. We are using the work of Dr. Hertzman. In fact, there’s a new program that we’re building on which is changing results for young children. That’s really looking at social-emotional learning, working with early childhood educators. That is a collection from First Nations communities, from community providers and from our school system with our StrongStart programs — having those three partners work together, look at the young people and identify where interventions need to be put into place.

We built that program based off of a very successful program we had for changing results for young readers that targeted young people in grade 3. We saw a 95 percent increase in a young person’s reading at grade level by the end of that year. We’ve used that model, and we have a fantastic early childhood educator, Maureen Dockendorf, working and leading that work in our province. She is known internationally for her work.

How are we looking at the vulnerability index of communities? We have the partnership with StatsCan. So we do know where we need to make our investments. We’re building on Dr. Hertzman’s work, and we’re looking at our new evidence-based programs to put some targeted pieces in place.

S. Bond (Chair): You did say that consideration for CommunityLINK was going to be part of the overall review of the funding formula for education. I don’t think it matters which party you belong to. All of us thought…. I can tell you. I’ve been there 17 years. Everyone always thinks we need to review the funding formula because somehow we’re going to figure it out in a different way.

One of the things, though, that I would be very concerned about is seeing a line item like CommunityLINK actually disappear and be blended into funding. I’ll tell you what. Once you start to do that, it is very difficult, unless you have monitoring and data about how that funding is being spent and how those programs….

[1:15 p.m.]

We’re already seeing, in this report, that it’s hard enough to get the kinds of specific data about what’s being done. I don’t know when the review is going to be finished, but there was a reason for identifying CommunityLINK as a separate…. And there was always a debate about who got what and, you know, so-and-so needed more. But at the end the day, at least there was an articulated target, where that funding was directly connected to supporting vulnerable kids and how that’s done.

I make that comment just in passing. I certainly hope it’s not going to result in a blended model, where we actually don’t know what is going into those programs.

You touched on another issue that I had, which was the use of EDI. We know that when 14,000 kids are starting school with vulnerabilities…. I know that work we did, when I was there, looked at the number of kids that come to school who are vulnerable, and the graduation rates, and it didn’t take rocket science to figure out that the numbers are virtually the same or even a bit higher on the graduation end. If you come and you’re not ready, you’re probably not going to do that well.

Early learning opportunities, I think, are critical — the front end, the prevention kinds of things. We talked about K to 12, but what about StrongStart, all-day kindergarten, and all those kinds of things? Is there a concentrated effort? Because if you’re going to start these habits and working at home, it’s got to start earlier than by the time they’re six years old and arrive at school.

So what are the initiatives? I’m assuming there are a number between the two ministries that are looking at those formative years, where we really need to be concentrating.

J. McCrea: I would expand that. Yes, you’re correct. Those early years are really the most important years. We’re doing a number of pieces of work and partnering not only with Health and the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, but very strongly with the Ministry of Children and Family Development in this area, as they are responsible for child care.

We’re looking at the early-years framework that we have. That is being updated right now. Where we’re moving towards is that all early childhood educators would be using the framework that we brought in to our StrongStart facilities, because we have seen huge improvements in that area and with those centres.

In addition to that piece of work, we’re looking at the framework and we’re thinking about — that will be coming out, hopefully, in time for next school year — a number of pieces that can be done at home, for parents. So I used it as my own example. I wanted to provide great things for my daughter, but sometimes I didn’t know how. How can I use the car ride? How can I use the walk to the park? How can I put a label on the fridge that says “white fridge,” so that they start to get letter recognition and start to read it?

We’re thinking about a number of ways in order to support parents at home as well — and building on the very strong success of our StrongStart centres.

S. Bond (Chair): Just a couple of things, in closing.

We know that chronic disease is one of the incredible cost factors driving health care costs. And we know that it’s largely preventable. I would be able to speak to that, because I think we were one of the few governments that ever included eating your fruits and vegetables and getting exercise in a throne speech. I recall we were mocked, and it was… I remember that effort to remind British Columbians about those simple things.

When we look at the amount of spending that is done, both in health and in education, and other ministries, it’s usually on the acute care system. There is a very small amount of funding that is on the prevention end of things. I’m assuming that, looking at a return on investment analysis, when you look at investments in programs like this and early learning and helping parents at home, it would drive us to change our funding formula to look at the front end of things, instead of the acute care system.

Together, have you made that argument, that there is a return-on-investment argument to be had with these kinds of initiatives? As we look at the funding formula, not just in education but in health and elsewhere, are you looking at a more substantive investment on the prevention end?

M. Herman: We have looked at return on investment, and as to my earlier point, we are incorporating prevention across all of our priority areas. For example, one of our strategic agenda priorities is around primary care reform and our primary care network.

[1:20 p.m.]

We’re integrating prevention throughout the way into that all the way through, so working with our colleagues in terms of our general practitioners, in terms of our health authorities.

It’s good to recognize, also, that from a prevention perspective, when we talk about whole of society, it does require a whole-government approach. Our work on social determinants of health is critical around that. As we know, education is one of the social determinants, but also housing, transportation and all the way through.

Multiple ministries have a role in terms of prevention, ultimately, and have those levers out there in society. We’re moving towards assigning the MOU — focusing, really, on that Indigenous health — between the federal government, the provincial government and the First Nations Health Council. We really can piggyback off of that. There’s been a renewed energy in terms of looking at the social determinants of health.

It really comes up in terms of the committees — the cross-government committees that we have. I think we need to look at investments across the whole of government, look at that, and then really look at how our policies that we decide on have that sort of positive or negative health impact.

S. Bond (Chair): Certainly, the emphasis on primary care form…. I’m well aware of it because of Prince George. It leads the province, and Northern Health has done an exceptional job of that. They continue to do that. So that is encouraging to hear.

Part of the report that we received is about you two — you know, the two ministries — working more closely together. We hear today that that’s going to happen. But to just build on the point you’ve made, there are a lot of other ministries that are connected to this. There is now a ministry that has the words “poverty reduction” in the ministry title.

I’m assuming that as this thinking…. This report was centred on the two of you working together. Is there a for­mat? Is there a place where all of you that have these health determinate kinds of issues work together?

M. Herman: There is the Deputy Ministers Council on social initiatives, yes.

J. McCrea: Yeah. That cascades right down — right from the assistant deputy minister table that’s happening, and the executive directors table. The Social Development and Poverty Reduction Ministry is at that table. The Ministry of Children and Family Development is at that table. The Ministry of Health is at that table. The Ministries of Education, of Mental Health and Addictions….

Then, as needed, other ministries are invited in. If there is something that we need to be thinking about, our police partners can be included, or our municipal partners. So those other ministries are invited in, depending on the topic. So, yes.

S. Bond (Chair): Well, that’s good to hear. It was referenced earlier, but you talk about what drives change — incentives and those kinds of things. One of the things that we recognize — it was recognized years ago, and it’s only getting more and more acute — is the issue of screen time. Looking at kids spend…. Well, so do adults, as a matter of fact. It astounds me that you can be in a restaurant watching people, and no one is talking to anybody anymore. They’re all doing their thing.

I think that when we talk about how we change people’s behaviour, we need to take something that can be considered extremely negative and a risk and turn it into something that is a tool. We’re going to kid ourselves if we think that kids in this generation are going to use pens and paper and things like that. This is what they do, and this is how they’re attached.

Are we looking at innovative ways? You talked about programs that exist. To be honest, the audit is helpful. British Columbia has led the country in terms of the kinds of thinking around health and wellness — as I said, including putting it in their throne speech, which did not exactly elicit general support across the country. But it meant that it was a very significant priority, and we’re starting to see the benefits.

How do you take screen time from a place where it’s incredibly worrisome…? In fact, I remember, and I don’t know if it’s the same today, that there was a point in time — I can’t imagine it’s changed much — where this generation of children was at risk of having a shorter lifespan than our generation because of the behaviours and those kinds of things. That was a very significant concern in the health community.

Are we thinking about innovative ways to capture people and families and use the thing that is actually putting some of them at risk?

M. Herman: Absolutely. I referred to a couple of things that are going on. I referred to the common vision for physical activity. It’s actually a common vision for physical activity and sedentary behaviour. It’s to acknowledge that sedentary behaviour as an independent risk factor of chronic diseases alone…. It acknowledges a flip side of being physically active.

[1:25 p.m.]

You’ve heard a lot in the media that sitting is the new tobacco or the new smoking. We’re very aware of that in terms of sedentary behaviour, the screen time. We have acknowledged our partnership with ParticipACTION. They’re involved in working with the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology and coming out with the children’s 24-hour guidelines, which talks about physical activity, sedentary behaviour, has the limits in terms of screen time and also talks about sleep.

Suzanne Smith: It’s in the report. Page 19.

M. Herman: It’s in the report. So a focus on sleep…. It’s the Canadian 24-hour movement guidelines. It was really developed in terms of…. Dr. Mark Tremblay is a real leader in terms of this and in terms of obesity in Canada, and he’s been at the forefront and the biggest advocate in terms of pushing this sedentary behaviour and really focusing on screen time. So that’s one of the ways we’re addressing that.

We also address it in terms of our younger population, in terms of our parent resources, Baby’s Best Chance and Toddler’s First Steps, where you’ve got that guidance of the early years in terms of parents maybe using the screen as a babysitter. So we do have that guidance in there for parents as well.

I’ll pass it over for education, because there are other pieces that have been developed as well.

J. McCrea: Last year, through our ERASE program, which is “Expect Respect And a Safe Education,” we were able to offer 74 regional training sessions for parents, which equals almost 15,000 parents. It was around the responsible use of technology and to understand how their kids were using technology and what that looked like, letting them know that if we are getting reports from a young person, they’re coming in between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Parents are in bed.

Where are you keeping your devices at night? What are the responsibilities within the home? So really looking at developing further, in this coming school year, some parent resources around social media guidelines but also just the responsible use of technology as well.

S. Bond (Chair): I think all of us recognize that it can’t be government-speak. It’s got to be the kind of thing that’s going to capture people’s attention. Your ability to capture people’s interest in a market where they can watch everything and anything they want on YouTube, and things go viral…. The last thing they’re going to watch is some documentary on how you should eat your vegetables, so I think we need to think of think of some pretty creative and innovative ways to figure out how to get people’s attention, using the very thing that’s causing sedentary behaviour.

Anyway, it’s been a really great discussion. We do thank the Auditor General and her team for bringing the report to us and also reminding the ministries about the important things that they need to do together with other colleagues at the government table. But I think you can tell by the interest here at the table that there’s a general sense of support. Looking forward to seeing the enhanced opportunities in our schools and the ongoing data which will drive those decisions.

I think both reports today were very helpful in, first of all, understanding what we are doing for British Columbians, and then looking at how we can improve those things. So thank you all very much for your time and your participation. We very much appreciate it.

Information from Audited Organizations

S. Bond (Chair): We’re going to move on. You’re welcome to change seats as needed. I wanted to have the committee work through just a number of pieces of correspondence that we’ve received. We made a decision — I think Rick initiated this in some of his discussions — of bringing back the follow-up information requests to the committee so that we can actually see if there’s any further need for clarification or follow-up. I wanted to bring those items to your attention.

There is a chart in the agenda where we’ve all received additional information. What I’d like to do is perhaps just walk through them, and if anyone has any questions or reasons for us to want to bring those people back to a public meeting, we can certainly do that. But if you feel that at this point, it’s met the concerns that we have…. Not everything is here. There are also some other things that we need to continue to bring back in future agendas, but these were the ones that arrived in time for us to deal with.

If that’s okay with the committee, why don’t we start with the request for follow-up information on public service ethics management.

[1:30 p.m.]

We did receive from Lori Halls, the deputy minister…. The response was received in a very prompt period of time. I’m hopeful that you saw the work environment scores that were attached, a new status update in terms of the recommendations related to the audit initially and then the letter from Deputy Minister Halls.

Do any committee members have any comments or further concerns about the update on the ethics management report that we received? Everyone’s good? I thought it was really well laid out. I appreciated the follow-up.

The only question that I would have, in response to the points made by the deputy minister, was that there are ethics advisory roles established in every ministry. The only clarification I would like to have there is: has that simply been added to someone’s job description? Are they additional people? Are there costs to the ministries that have to be absorbed?

I think it certainly responds to some of the concerns expressed at this table, but we want to make sure that it’s not an add-on to someone’s job or additional costs that the ministry has to somehow figure out how to fund. I don’t know, Carl, if you know the answer to that.

C. Fischer: Yes, in all cases, the ethics adviser is a pre-existing member of the executive. The approach was that those interested in participating as the ethics adviser were asked to nominate themselves, and in every ministry, a number of executives expressed interest. There was initial orientation and training to talk about the developing area — what is the role of the ethics adviser; where is their point of focus? — and also a lot of effort placed on communicating throughout all those ministries to employees of the availability of the ethics adviser to support them in their question.

The reason it is reasonable that this be part of someone’s everyday role is that expectations are that it won’t be a full-time job. Generally, as you can see from the workforce engagement survey, there’s a lot of good feeling about the ethical place that government is in. The ethics advisers, so far, have reported interest but more in the nature of curiosity than a stampede of people coming to talk about ethical dilemmas that they face.

The key point that government, and in particular the deputy minister, Lori Halls, wants to address is that there is support available when people do need help to unpack or work through an ethical question. So far I’ve heard only positive response and a lot of interest from the ethics advisers themselves, from the community employees who are interested in it and from a number of working groups and meetings with the broader community that we represent.

S. Bond (Chair): That’s great. I remember that. That was a really interesting discussion we had here at the table. I think that the deputy minister has certainly gone back and worked through some of those issues, so that is appreciated.

I assume we’ll just take that as received. Is there anything we need to do procedurally, Kate?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Well, no. I’ll just take the opportunity to mention that we are tracking the status of all of the additional information requests that the committee has provided. As the Chair mentioned, in addition to the one that was on your agenda at the June 12 meeting, we have four today and, I believe, five pending at the current time. We’ll keep a close eye on those.

I also wanted to take an opportunity to note that the terminology that had been applied in some of the correspondence has referred to these additional information requests as follow-up requests. I just wanted to make a distinction between the questions that are led by committee members at a committee meeting — and those additional information requests are very much framed around your questions — as compared to what has traditionally been called the follow-up process by the committee, which we’ll be talking about in more detail in a few minutes. That is focused on the implementation of recommendations by the Auditor or by the committee and, in due course, by government.

[1:35 p.m.]

Both of them, I guess, could be different styles of follow-up, but the term has been used interchangeably. I’m trying to help our staff, even in our office, make a distinction between the two streams of information.

S. Bond (Chair): Okay. Certainly that’s an important reminder to us about what these are when they come back to us.

Our second item came from Richard Fyfe, the Deputy Attorney General. Pretty straightforward. I think, Kate, our committee would want to be sure that when the final decision is made, we would want to know that. That is because this basically says it hasn’t been made yet. The final decision hasn’t been made.

Mitzi, did you want to comment on this one?

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Sorry, Chair. That was the exact point that I was concerned about. I would like us to hear back.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): We’ll ensure that Mr. Fyfe is aware of your ongoing interest and provide you with an opportunity to receive an update as soon as one’s available.

S. Bond (Chair): This report received a lot of attention at the committee, and I think there was a great deal of concern about the procurement process. So it would be good to remind them that they will be coming back.

This is an update on the Workstation Support Services Contract: An Audit of Due Diligence. These were some of the items that we had looked at. I had no particular questions on this item. Does anyone else? Everyone’s good.

We appreciate that, and I’m sure that Kate will let the various ministries know that we appreciated the follow-up.

Then the last item for this agenda came as a result of our discussion about the Audit of B.C. Housing’s Non-Profit Asset Transfer Program, released in March of 2017. We considered it in 2018. A pretty straightforward answer to some of those questions that we asked. Is there anyone who requires any further follow up?

R. Glumac: My question around this was more around the transparency of the decision-making process. I’m just confirming that we’re still going to visit that in the future.

S. Bond (Chair): Yes, we are.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, we did confirm that there was an ongoing interest to receive further information on public interest immunity. That request is still very much in the hands of legal services branch, and I understand we will be receiving either written information or an appearance, likely at your next meeting.

R. Glumac: Okay. Thank you.

S. Bond (Chair): So it remains there. Thank you for reminding us about that.

R. Sultan: Could I just add a comment, Chair, on the non-profit asset transfer program? I think it’s worth drawing the particular attention of the committee to the fact of the funds transferred under the NPAT program, the non-profit asset transfer program. The large proportion was reinvested in new social housing projects. As of March 31, 2018, 2,000 new units of affordable housing had been committed.

Contrary to, I think, some concerns that were expressed at that meeting that somehow there was sort of an underhanded liquidation of key government assets, my overall understanding of the program is that it was sort of a recycling of money into new affordable housing and certainly not destroying the existing affordable housing stock. So that’s a good thing.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you for those comments. Certainly, it’s articulated in the response that we received, and it does outline the uses of that funding. And by having it on the agenda, this now is public information. The copies of the…. How does that work, Kate?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, that’s right.

This has been a recent change of practice. In terms of formally receiving the additional written information and having it on your public agenda here today, we will be uploading it as part of the meeting documents just subsequent to adjournment of this meeting.

S. Bond (Chair): Thanks, Kate.

Committee Follow-up Process

S. Bond (Chair): All right. I know we have a bit of a compressed time frame here, so I want to confirm with the Auditor General that she’s comfortable — and also, obviously, the comptroller general. We have about 20 minutes. Do you feel like you want to try to tackle that? Would you like to put this…?

We could do it at a subsequent meeting, could we?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Absolutely. We’re….

[1:40 p.m.]

S. Bond (Chair): I just don’t want you to feel like we’re going to rush this through. We’re completely open to moving it to another meeting, if you’d prefer.

C. Bellringer: Kate met with members of my office. Were you there, Carl?

C. Fischer: Yes.

C. Bellringer: We talked about what to do next in terms of coming to the committee with more information about the follow-up process. We have a few ideas of some future practice that we think should maybe be considered. We ended up concluding that it would be useful, but entirely up to you, to maybe just run through the way it is done now to remind everybody.

There was one particular question or suggestion, or both, around timing, which is the last slide. We could actually go quickly through…. In terms of process, we can almost just show the slide, say “Any questions?” and carry on and then get to the question.

S. Bond (Chair): I think that it would be good to do the overview, because this is something the committee’s very interested in, and then come back at some point and have a broader discussion about what other kinds of practice we could look at. If the Auditor or the comptroller have ideas, we would love to hear them. We might not agree, but we would at least have an open discussion about that or have some discussion.

Why don’t you work your way through the slides as briefly as possible, and we will bring this item back at some form. It’s also going to be an item of discussion at the national level.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, the Canadian Council of Public Accounts Committees.

S. Bond (Chair): Right — when we attend and participate there. We may well learn something. We’re going to go and participate, share our best practice, but there are opportunities to learn as well.

Why don’t you go ahead and take us through these slides.

C. Bellringer: Thanks so much. I’ll turn it over to Ardice Todosichuk, who will run through the slides. Ardice is a director in our performance audit practice and has been very, very much following everything up from the follow-up process for us.

A. Todosichuk: Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. As I know you’re tight on time, we’ll go through this really quickly.

In 2015, the PAC adopted the current process for follow-up, which you can see here. I won’t go through each step, but you can see it in the slide there. There are various stages. When an audit report comes to the PAC, the OCG advises the auditees that they should prepare an action plan — so just like you saw; you got a report today — that details how they will be addressing the recommendations, and targeted dates to complete those actions.

Once a year these action plans are updated. This process includes the OAG compiling a list of audits that require updated action plans, the OAG making recommendations to the PAC on which actions should be removed from the requirement for an updated action plan.

When we make these recommendations, we make several considerations about which ones we would recommend being removed. Most recommendations that have been fully or substantially met — we look at those. We look at reports that have very small risks to the program. They might have some outstanding recommendations, but it’s a small risk to the program. Or the audit was tabled over four years ago. All those things go into our consideration when we make those recommendations.

The OAG then submits the finalized list to the OCG. The OCG sends to each auditee a template to complete, which includes an updated action plan and the requirement to provide an assessment of their progress. They are asked to assess their progress as “fully or substantially,” “partially” or “alternative action taken” or “no action taken.” “Fully or substantially implemented” means the recommendation has been fully addressed through the action, there are only minor steps left to be undertaken, and those should take less than a year.

“Partially implemented” means there are still actions to be done to get to the part where they’re fully implemented. Alternative action means that the action taken does not directly address the recommendation because the organization has shifted or there have been changes. So that’s alternative action.

They’re also requested to provide the activities they’ve undertaken that have led them to their assessment. Once complete, the information is sent to the PAC from the OCG, which has compiled the information, and the OAG gets a copy of the information.

[1:45 p.m.]

Once the OAG receives a copy of the updated action plan, we conduct an internal risk assessment. Considerations include perceived reliability of the assessment that we’ve received, significance of recommendations to the public, interest by MLAs or the PAC, length of time since the report was published. A selection is made as to the proposed follow-up audits to be undertaken in the next year, which is then considered within the OAG’s timing and resource constraints. The follow-up audit is then conducted, and then it goes to the same process of being tabled and brought back to the PAC.

As Carol was stating, these are some ideas that we had about potential changes. Our current process is to request an updated action plan in fall. We typically put those out in September. However, to better coordinate with the OAG process for audit planning, we’re suggesting that intake happen, rather, in spring. This could then allow PAC to potentially hold a meeting in June to discuss those updated action plans and, if warranted or requested, to call witnesses to answer questions regarding the progress. Then, from that information, the PAC may wish to provide our office with recommendations on where they see we should be doing follow-up audits.

That basically concludes our very small presentation on this.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you very much for that. Do any members have questions about the current process?

R. Sultan: Just a quick question. This is a very systematic, almost engineering-type of follow-up. “Recommendations were made. We’re going to mechanically work through the list and see what happened.”

I get the impression, though, that in reality, it’s a very discretionary thing. Some Auditor reports get extensive follow-up. Others probably kind of slip on into history. Or not. Does everybody get the same treatment? That’s my question. Or should they?

C. Bellringer: In terms of which ones we select to then put on to the list to go back in and do pretty much a full re-audit of the areas that we had identified previously, everything follows the same process outlined here.

It may not be the discretionary element you’re referring to, but the part that is not really reflected in here is there are ongoing conversations within all the ministries all the time, and our assistant Auditors General are assigned a sector. In the sector, they have meetings with the deputy minister. I have a meeting with the minister, and the deputy is usually there, and we always go through: “Here are all the recent reports that have been issued. How are things going?”

That part of it isn’t a formalized, programmed exercise. If it’s one we know they’re having particular difficulty im­ple­menting, we’ll say: “Do we need to talk about the recom­men­dations and better explain where we were coming from?”

That part is quite very significantly…. This element of “now we’ve got the action plan; let’s run through them….” We do put everybody through the same process, with the factors that we noted that we consider. So we may consider one to be higher risk than another, and we’ll look at it more closely.

S. Bond (Chair): All right. Well, thank you very much for that. I think what we’ll do is…. We continue to be interested in transparency, making sure that there’s momentum behind the recommendations, that the reports we hear here are actually being implemented and that there’s ongoing accountability there. We have a pretty fulsome process now. So I think we’re just looking at whether or not there are ways we can improve that or add to it. So thank you for that.

C. Bellringer: The switch from fall to spring would be a change. The fall date was something that the committee had previously…. I don’t know if you endorsed it or approved it or suggested it, but if you don’t mind the switch, then that’s the only thing to raise.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): I have a question about that. If we as the committee held a meeting in June and we would then provide recommendations, that would then inform your plan, starting from the following April. Is that right?

[1:50 p.m.]

C. Bellringer: We issue a coverage plan in November, so it would show up in that coverage plan in November. But we might start that work immediately. It wouldn’t wait even for the coverage plan. It might start in July. Is there any other aspect to that?

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): For me, I guess it’s about how it aligns with how the budget for the office is also approved, because your budget is about you being able to deliver your coverage plan as well. I’m sure there is some flexibility in your coverage plan, but I was kind of anticipating that you’d be looking ahead with lining both of those processes up.

C. Bellringer: That is the process that we’re trying to line it up to. That coverage plan is what informs the budget. It’s all happening in that November period, October-November. The Public Accounts Committee also approves the financial statement coverage plan.

We aren’t anticipating…. I mean, if we were to suggest a significant change in terms of volume, as to how many follow-ups we would do, we’d propose that through our budget process or through the plan. It’s more which one we are going to look at.

If you’re looking at that in November, we’ve already got the plan out. It’s not going to show up in any public report. Then we wouldn’t start it until a little bit later, so it would probably delay things in terms of from the date that they submitted the plan to you until when we get going. We just looked at the calendar, and it made more sense. But the request going out…. There would be a delay in terms of….

The OCG would send the next batch out in October. Now we’re saying that, rather, it would go out in the spring. They get a few months more to go and implement a whole bunch more of those recommendations for the transition, first-time application.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): So what you’re saying is that you already have, like, an envelope within your budget for follow-up, and this process would mean that actually, the content and what you’d prioritize would be a bit more responsive to what the committee would discuss in June.

C. Bellringer: Correct.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Okay. I like that. Thank you.

C. Bellringer: I like the way you put it.

S. Bond (Chair): Anyone else want to comment, or are we comfortable with that change? I think it came from the previous, the recommendation or our thinking, did it not?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): The timing?

S. Bond (Chair): Yes.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I think some of those details were more formalized in 2015. Prior to that point in time, it was a six-month cycle. Prior to that, it was more of an ad hoc.

The committee has undertaken some degree of follow-up for many, many years. It has just been refined and fine-tuned to suit the priorities of the time.

S. Bond (Chair): All right. I think that you have general consensus around that. Thank you for the presentation. We very much appreciate it and all the work that’s been done today.

Canadian Council of Public Accounts
Committees Conference

S. Bond (Chair): We have one further item that we would like to consider, the CCPAC conference update. I believe that Mitzi is prepared to make a motion. It is a significant event for representatives from across the country. I believe this is the one where we take on the vice-chair’s role, the province of B.C.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, that’s correct. Members may know that our jurisdiction will be hosting the Canadian Council of Public Accounts Committees in the year 2020. It’s a conference held in conjunction with the Canadian Council of Legislative Auditors conference as well.

At the upcoming CCPAC conference, in addition to having members of the B.C. delegation participate in business sessions, we are anticipating that the Chair of your committee will become part of the CCPAC executive as part of the rotation in terms of conference planning responsibilities.

S. Bond (Chair): I should point out, too, that Mitzi, Kate and I have been in discussion about the requests for B.C. members to present. There are a number of them. We will be working through how we will participate in those panels. They’re very important. They will speak to best practice here in British Columbia.

There are a number of ways we would hope to involve each of our delegates in presenting on a panel.

Mitzi, I’m going to turn it over to you as Deputy Chair to make the motion.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): I move “that the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts designate up to four (4) Committee Members to attend the 2018 Joint Conference of the Canadian Council of Public Accounts Committees and Canadian Council of Legislative Auditors in Prince Edward Island from September 23 to 25, accompanied by up to two (2) staff members.”

[1:55 p.m.]

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you, Mitzi.

Do we have a seconder for that motion? Thank you, Ralph.

Is there any discussion? I know that some of you have made your intentions clear. We are working through those. Certainly, in the spirit of transparency and making sure that people know where we’re going and what we’re doing, we thought that it was important to put this motion on the record.

Hearing no further questions or input, all those in favour?

Motion approved.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you, Mitzi. I appreciate that. We’ll be continuing to work on the assignment of who’s going to speak on what panel.

M. Dean (Deputy Chair): Having had a conversation with the Auditor General earlier on, I don’t know whether there was a particular question about which panel we were going to make sure we had representation on.

C. Bellringer: I can also chat with you afterwards, because there is one panel that I’ve been asked to participate on, so we would be doing it sitting together on the panel. And there are other jurisdictions involved as well.

S. Bond (Chair): Thank you. We will certainly consider that. I think Kate has made that clear to us in terms of what the panels are.

Are there any other items of business to consider?

With that, I’d entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

S. Bond (Chair): Thanks you very much for your hard work, and we look forward to meeting again. I know there’s at least one more report for us to deal with, hopefully before the session resumes.

Thank you, everyone, for attending today.

The committee adjourned at 1:56 p.m.