The committee met at 9:46 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Today we are having our spring updates from the independent officers. Today we are very fortunate to have the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and office of the registrar of lobbyists.

Michael McEvoy, welcome. If you wanted to introduce all your staff and people, we would love to hear your presentation.

Financial and Operational Updates
from Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE INFORMATION
AND PRIVACY COMMISSIONER

M. McEvoy: Very well. Thank you. It’s just wonderful to see everybody this morning.

Good morning, hon. Chair, Deputy Chair, members of the committee. I trust this morning finds all of you well.

With me this morning are Deputy Commissioners oline Twiss and Jeannette Van Den Bulk, as well as Michelle Mitchell from our communications team. We’re also joined by Dave Van Swieten, executive director of shared services — who, most of you will know, serves in that same capacity for the four officers of the Legislature all headquartered at 947 Fort Street.

Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the work of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the office of the registrar of lobbyists for British Columbia. What we could not have envisioned just a few short weeks ago is the way this meeting would be held. The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted our province, the country and the world.

Like most workplaces, the virus has significantly affected the way our office operates. What remains unchanged, however, are the demands placed on the services we provide British Columbians. Those demands relate directly to the reasons the offices were established by the Legislative Assembly — namely, ensuring the transparency and accountability of public bodies and private organizations.

These foundational principles are more important than ever as government exercises extraordinary authority to meet the crisis. Meanwhile, an increasing number of organizations are lobbying government to make their needs known to policy-makers. The principles of transparency and accountability that underlie our laws must continue to inform how organizations, public bodies and the public navigate this crisis.

This morning I will share some of our office’s accomplishments in relation to the goals set out in our service plan and conclude with a financial update. First, however, I would like to provide you with some insight on how COVID-19 has affected our office’s operations and highlight some of the issues we have engaged relating to the pandemic.

Because of the virus, it has been necessary to change where we work in order to deliver British Columbians the services mandated by our statutes. Our office was ready for the transformation. I began preparations for the changeover in February, and my senior leadership team acted quickly when the pace of COVID-19 accelerated. By mid-March, with the exception of a very small crew based at 947 Fort Street, my staff transitioned to working from their homes.

[9:50 a.m.]

We, along with the other three independent officers of the Legislature leasing space on Fort Street, have engaged the technical expertise of our shared services IT team, led by Dave Van Swieten, to provide employees with secure, remote access to their files and email accounts. This assistance, combined with the resilience and adaptability of our staff, has ensured the continuity of our operations to serve public bodies, the private sector and the public at large during this extraordinary time.

Beyond operational changes, our offices face and continue to deal with many important legal and policy issues related to the crisis. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, my office has been in regular contact with provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and her team to discuss a range of issues related to information-sharing and its potential privacy implications. These communications will continue as Dr. Henry and her colleagues lead the province’s public health response.

From the outset of the pandemic, I have been clear that the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection Act are designed to facilitate the sharing of personal information necessary to ensure the public’s health and safety. Where public bodies or organizations are unsure of their responsibilities or their authority to collect and use personal information, we will provide guidance to them on an expedited basis. Our oversight and guidance role has intensified with the provincial government implementing measures to deal with the epidemic.

For example, the Ministry of Citizens’ Services consulted me about Ministerial Order 085, an order temporarily lifting B.C.’s data residency requirements. Among other things, it broadens the use of communication tools used by public bodies responding to COVID-19. The order allows health care bodies and their workers to use technology that may be hosted outside of Canada to communicate and collaborate for the purpose of continuing service delivery during the public health emergency.

Since students can no longer come together in physical classrooms around the province, the order permits the use of a wider range of technology tools for distance learning. We are working with the Ministry of Education to implement video conferencing in a privacy-protected way. This work also includes the publication of guidance to assist educators across B.C. entitled “FIPPA and Online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” You can find it on our website, and I think that we ‘ve sent a reference package to all the committee members as well.

The temporary provisions of Ministerial Order 085 are, in my view, tailored and reasonable, given the challenging circumstances we find ourselves in. The technology tools allowed by the order, often referred to as third-party applications, can only be relied on if they support recommendations or requirements related to minimizing the transmission of COVID-19, and public bodies cannot deploy these applications without proper security measures first being put in place.

Finally, it is important to note that Ministerial Order 085 has a defined end date, terminating on June 30, 2020. I expect government will consult my office if they believe there is a need for the order to be extended.

My office has also provided guidance on two other important initiatives — the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 self-assessment app and the provincial health officer’s order directing travellers to demonstrate they have a self-isolation plan in place when they return to B.C. from the U.S. and other international destinations.

All of this ongoing oversight work plays an important role in building public trust in efforts to combat the virus. In a public health crisis, government accountability is not only about the protection of personal information; it is also about the public’s right to access information. Access to information is a critical part of our democracy and necessary to holding governments to account, perhaps even more so when the governments are exercising extraordinary powers. That said, the operations of many public bodies, including their ability to respond to information requests, have been significantly affected by the spread of the virus.

I proactively issued a decision on March 18 that recognized both the challenges public bodies face in reorganizing themselves in the face of COVID-19 and the continuing need for accountability and transparency. In that decision, I granted a 30-day time extension to public bodies to respond to freedom-of-information requests because, as I’m authorized to do under FIPPA, I considered it fair and reasonable in the circumstances.

I’ve just extended that order for an additional 15 days, after which time I expect public bodies to have sufficiently arranged their operations to meet the provisions of the statute.

[9:55 a.m.]

On March 17, my office released guidance entitled “Tips for Public Bodies and Organizations Setting Up Remote Workspaces.” This should assist both as they transition away from traditional office structures.

We will continue to answer their questions and review matters like privacy impact assessments, as well as reviewing draft legislation for government. Through these and other initiatives, we are sending a clear signal that we want to help B.C. public bodies and organizations navigate these uncertain waters so that they can better serve the public.

It remains our intention to ensure that the principles of accountability and transparency are upheld in both decision-making and privacy management during these trying times. These principles can and must work in harmony.

Our office continues to respond to the many questions by the public and the media about how privacy and access statutes apply in a time of pandemic. We are also engaged in ongoing discussions with our regulatory colleagues, nationally and internationally, discussing approaches to the challenges we face commonly.

The relationships we have built with our counterparts in the Asia-Pacific region have proven especially important. We restate our appreciation to the committee for its continuing support of our role as secretariat to the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities.

The APPA forum we are currently organizing with our colleagues from Singapore will be held virtually in early June. This meeting will be an important opportunity to discuss matters ranging from contact-tracing apps to how government emergency measures have challenged the protection of personal information in a time of crisis.

It is not a zero-sum game to protect personal information and make use of every tool in our toolkit to fight COVID-19.

I will now turn to non-COVID recent work and accomplishments. I’m going to begin with the OIPC. We set out a goal in 2019-20 to increase the implementation of effective privacy management programs for private sector organizations. Since our last appearance before the committee, we have collaborated with other Canadian regulators to produce investigation reports into the privacy practices of several sizeable Canadian organizations.

Late last year we released our joint investigation report with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada into the Victoria-based company AggregateIQ. Our offices found that AIQ failed to ensure consent for the use and disclosure of personal information and failed to adequately safeguard it. AIQ has agreed to implement our office’s recommendations to address these issues.

Two weeks later we announced a joint investigation with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario into the LifeLabs cybersecurity breach that affected up to 15 million Canadians, including millions of British Columbians. It will not surprise the committee to know that since this announcement, we have fielded a high volume of calls and emails from media and concerned British Columbians.

I’m constrained from extensive comments about this investigation because it is ongoing, but I can say it has proven to be a complex matter. I, along with Commissioner Beamish in Ontario, hope to release our report soon.

We are also currently collaborating with the federal privacy commissioner and our counterparts in Quebec and Alberta to jointly investigate Clearview AI. Clearview AI developed an app that permits people to run a photo of an individual against the company’s database of images, using facial recognition technology. This investigation resulted from questions about whether the company was collecting and using personal information without consent.

Related to this, privacy regulators in every province and territory are working together to develop guidance for organizations, including law enforcement, on the use of biometric technology including facial recognition.

In other recent work, we continue to collaborate with Elections B.C. to produce a code of conduct for the province’s political parties, following the release of our political parties report last February.

We also recently developed a well-received privacy impact assessment template and guidance for use by B.C. businesses and other organizations, and last month we concluded a year-long campaign to promote good privacy practices by B.C. businesses. Entitled PrivacyRight, it featured a series of monthly themed webinars, podcasts and guidance documents. We coordinated the distribution of these materials with, among others, the Better Business Bureau of B.C. and Service B.C. locations throughout the province.

Now, moving on to the office of the registrar of lobbyists, there has been an extensive amount of work behind the scenes by my staff since my last appearance before you.

[10:00 a.m.]

This work relates to the transition from the Lobbyists Registration Act to the Lobbyists Transparency Act, or the LTA, which happens in just a few short days, on May 4, 2020. These amendments, passed back in November of 2018, will result in much greater transparency for lobbyists and the public about activities that influence the decisions made by government.

A significant part of this work has been the creation of a new lobbyist registry, based on adapting the federal system. You will recall we negotiated an arrangement to license the federal lobbyist registry at no cost, and our team of developers has completed the work to bring the registry into line with B.C.’s legislative requirements. I want to pay public tribute to our ORL staff and the development team, who have worked hard on the design of the new registry. It will be easier for lobbyists to navigate and will, as importantly, enhance the public’s window into lobbying activities in B.C.

We are, as I speak, in the final stage of preparing to migrate over to the new system. The move will take place this coming weekend so that the new registry is ready on May 4, when the LTA comes into force. We will expect lobbyists to transfer to the new registry in the month of May, with the first monthly lobbying reports due by June 15.

Some organizations on the front line of the response to COVID-19 have told me that it may be challenging for them to meet this timetable. In response, I have said that as long as these lobbyists keep track of their lobbying activities and related information required under the new act from May 4 onwards, they can have until September 15 to submit to the registry.

All of this work supports our goal to ensure implementation of reforms to the Lobbyists Registration Act. The committee approved our total request of $500,000 in capital funds to complete the reforms. The new registry will enhance the transparency purpose of the LTA with a sophisticated search function to provide the public with easy access to information about what is happening in lobbying in B.C.

Our second overall goal has been to ensure that the new legislative changes are well understood so lobbyists achieve a high rate of compliance with the act. We have been reaching out to our stakeholders with a comprehensive educational campaign. It ramped up at the end of the 2019-20 fiscal year and will continue into this fiscal year.

As the COVID-19 crisis evolved in March, we shifted scheduled public information sessions from in-person events to video conferencing so that we could ensure appropriate physical distancing for all participants and ORL staff. Since our last appearance before you, almost 400 participants attended our recent webcasts. We have also published three editions of Influencing B.C., posted 15 guidance documents and more than 100 FAQs, along with other educational materials to the ORL website.

Our office is also slated to host a meeting of our federal, provincial and territorial lobbying commissioners in September, which I now expect to be conducted virtually.

The final accomplishment I wanted to address relates to one of our office’s 2019-20 goals, which is enhancing the quality and capacity of the OIPC’s people, systems, processes and culture. In response to this goal, which affects all staff, whether they work on access to information, privacy or lobbying, my senior management team introduced a new engagement model for our strategic goal-setting procedures and evaluation processes. This approach, which was embraced enthusiastically by staff, was designed to draw out the depth of knowledge and experience at the OIPC and ORL. You can expect to see it reflected in our service plan in the fall.

In addition, we established a diversity and inclusion committee this past year. This committee has made a number of recommendations for our workplace that touch on areas such as mandatory respectful workplace training and incorporating Indigenous relations behavioural competencies into our hiring practices. My senior leadership team have already started operationalizing some of these recommendations, and I’m confident that this will lead to further improvements in our workplace.

Finally, I’d like to turn to our financials. While the books, of course, have not yet been closed on the old fiscal year, we are projecting a modest surplus of 1.3 percent, or about $90,000, on our operating budget side of $6.7 million, while all of our capital budget has been expended.

[10:05 a.m.]

I wish to thank the committee for recommending that government approve our 2020-21 budget request. That request was for $132,000 to cover inflationary costs for operating expenditures of the OIPC and the ORL for a total operating budget of $6.942 million. It also includes capital expenditures of $29,000. Based on what we know today, my office will not require additional funds.

To conclude, the COVID-19 pandemic is unlike anything we have ever experienced. It has tested all of us. Our office is committed to continuing to play its role to guide and assist public bodies, organizations and the public and to ensuring the important pillars of accountability and transparency are maintained as we navigate this crisis. It is too early to say with certainty, but we expect to see continued increases in our work as we face these challenges together. We will continue to monitor the situation and demands on our services closely.

Before I invite your questions, I want to acknowledge the incredible work being done by everyone at my office. Their flexibility and dedication has permitted us to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and to provide the continuity of service while working remotely. In a word, they have been exemplary, and it’s my privilege to work with them.

I also cannot let this opportunity pass without publicly thanking all of those working to manage the pandemic and, in particular, all of those on the front lines of this crisis. The entire team at the OIPC is very grateful for their work.

With that, Chair, I thank you and the committee for your attention this morning. My team and I would be very pleased to answer any questions that you have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Michael, and to your entire team. Obviously, we’re in an unprecedented and difficult time for all of us. I appreciate how you and your team have responded to this crisis, not only dealing with new challenges but continuing to deliver on the commitments that you had made prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I also wanted to acknowledge your willingness to show the flexibility that people need on the registrar of lobbyists side. Obviously, you want to fulfil your mandate but, at the same time, recognize the need to show some flexibility, so great job. Obviously, it’s a challenge working from home.

Again, thank you to your entire team for making that transition and continuing to deliver for the province of British Columbia.

First up, I have Mitzi.

Did you want to make a comment?

M. Dean: I have a couple of questions, actually.

Thank you, Michael, for your update and your continued service in these times and your understanding for everybody who you work alongside as well. Thanks to your whole team.

Just a couple of things. Firstly, with the new way of working, do you foresee that that is going to have any impact on your budget or any of your significant service goals? Secondly, because you’ve got so much contact with so many public organizations, I’m wondering whether you’re seeing any trends from a genders perspective. Are you able to apply a gender-based analysis plus lens to the work that you’re doing now in these difficult times?

M. McEvoy: Thank you for the questions. The first, on budget — at this point, I don’t think it’s going to have a material effect on the budget. There have been some additional costs that we have had to undergo to transition to people working at home. Those would be things like the Citrix links to ensure that files and all the kinds of sensitive information we work with are dealt with in a secure way. There have been some additional telephone costs as employees have had to make those phone calls to members of the public and public bodies from their home locations.

Some other costs related to computer technology — we were going to those anyway, so to have a Surface Pro instead of a CPU attached to your desk. Those Surface Pros, for example, are very good, because they can be used, essentially, as your CPU at work in your office, or they can be taken home and dealing with things in a secure manner.

Those would be some of the additional costs, but again, I don’t believe it will have a material impact at the end of the day.

In terms of the gender-based analysis plus, that’s training that members of our staff are now undertaking. It’s been an important part of the work of our diversity inclusion group that has embraced a large number of staff members.

[10:10 a.m.]

I do believe that’s going to help assist us as we look at government initiatives being brought out across the province. I think of our work with the Ministry of Education. I’m thinking about accessibility to technologies for students. That’s a matter, I know, of concern to the ministry — that not everybody has ready access to those technologies across the province, depending on where you are, particularly in rural British Columbia, where those connections may not be as strong.

These are the kinds of discussions we have. It’s obviously ensuring the proper protection of personal information — that students’ information, parents’ information, teachers’ information is properly protected as we roll those plans out.

To come back to the issue about the gender plus analysis, that’s something all of our staff are being trained up on and have been for the last number of months. I expect all staff members will have taken it, which will help to guide their work going forward.

M. Dean: Thank you. That’s really good to hear.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Michael.

Doug, did you have a question?

D. Clovechok (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Michael, and your staff, for all that you’re doing.

But no, I’m good.

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

That was a very thorough presentation, Michael. Thank you so much for all the work that you’re doing, and your staff, again. I know everybody’s under a lot of pressure, and the challenges are great. You and your team are obviously rising to the occasion, and we really appreciate it.

With that, unless Kate gives me the evil eye, can we just take a recess till the next one and then come back, or did you want to log off and come back on?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): I would recommend, Mr. Chair, that we recess. The Office of the Conflict of Interest Commissioner is set to connect to the meeting by 10:30. I think they’ll be a few minutes early.

We also wanted to do a quick photo as well, in the next few minutes. You can take a recess, if you’d like.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right.

Thank you again, Michael and team, and off we go.

The committee recessed from 10:12 a.m. to 10:31 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d like to bring the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services back to order. Next up in our reports from the independent officers, we are very pleased to have the Office of the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, Hon. Victoria Gray.

Welcome. Take it away. And please, if you could introduce your staff, that would be fantastic.

OFFICE OF THE CONFLICT
OF INTEREST COMMISSIONER

V. Gray: Well, thanks very much. Carol Hoyer is the office’s executive coordinator, and she’s here because she’s particularly familiar with the budget matters.

Mr. Chair, Mr. Deputy Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to talk to you about the Conflict of Interest Commissioner’s office. I began serving almost four months ago as commissioner. That was January 6, 2020.

First, I thought I’d give a very quick summary of our role. We are B.C.’s smallest statutory office, but we have an important role. We seek to maintain the integrity of the members and to enhance the public perception of the integrity of the decisions of the Legislature and its various decision-making entities.

Our role is described in the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act, and the work focuses on these three things: first, helping MLAs to understand the conflict rules and assisting them to comply. That’s usually by giving advice, often in writing, and often in short time frames when issues arise for MLAs. Second is helping the MLAs navigate the financial disclosure requirements of the act. Thirdly is responding to complaints and requests for public opinions. Those can come from MLAs or members of the public or [audio interrupted].

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): There we go. Now we are back with audio. Victoria, sorry for the interruption.

V. Gray: All right. Well, I probably don’t need to say that the impact of members being found to act in a conflict of interest has a very significant impact on the public perception of their integrity. I expect everyone recalls the political careers of two B.C. Premiers, Premier Vander Zalm and Premier Glen Clark. Both of those careers essentially ended when they were found by my predecessors to have acted in conflicts of interest.

I thought I’d turn now, quickly, to our budget. Our budget remains the smallest of all the statutory officers. The appropriation for operating expenditures is $734,000 in fiscal year ’20-21. And for the following two years, there are modest increases, several thousand dollars.

In the material we sent in for the meeting there’s a spreadsheet. It was done on a budget submission template. The items highlighted in yellow show the figures that the committee approved in the fall. They reflected my appointment as commissioner on a 75 percent full-time basis and that I’m local to Victoria. That was a contrast.

[10:35 a.m.]

The previous commissioner was 100 percent basis, and the budget proposal had anticipated that there might be a commissioner from out of Victoria and related travel costs.

We possibly should have renamed the columns “approved” instead of leaving a reference to “budget submission,” but I hope you were able to figure that out.

Our appropriation for capital expenditures is $25,000 in each of those three fiscal years. Our most significant budget items are salaries and benefits. As I said, I’m working on a 75 percent of full-time basis. Two of the three staff members are full-time, and one works 60 percent time, so the staff time is 2.6 full-time-equivalents. Including me, we’re 3.35 full-time-equivalents.

The Legislature is our landlord. We work out of the red brick building at 421 Menzies. This is a convenient location for members, and we enjoy being close to the Legislature. My discretionary expenses are low — in part of the reasonable rent we pay.

Our office is driven by complaints and requests for opinions. As such, it’s highly unpredictable what will come in the door and with what degree of urgency. Conducting inquiries and delivering formal public written opinions is very time-consuming, but it is necessary. The public is entitled to know that the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act is understood and applied by MLAs in their work. I have not yet been required to investigate a complaint and issue a formal public written opinion, but I do understand that those investigations and opinions call upon the office’s resources in a significant way.

Perhaps the most important work is the upstream work assisting MLAs to prevent conflicts arising and managing unavoidable conflicts by providing information, guidance and advice in a timely way. So the caveat, which I understand our office routinely applies to its budget request, is that we may need to come back to this committee if we need additional resources in order to deal with a high volume of complaints requiring inquiries and opinions or if the office is the subject of another application for judicial review, which I hope won’t happen. Subject to that caveat, I do not anticipate any material changes to our budget.

As result of the COVID pandemic, our staff has been working remotely from home with occasional brief office visits. We have not incurred any significant additional expense as a result, although we have discovered the limitations of our existing technology. It’s time to upgrade our computers, and we should be able to do that within the existing capital budget.

We anticipate that as a result of the COVID pandemic, the annual meetings between the members and me as commissioner regarding financial disclosure may occur by video conference with access to documents. We’re work on developing an efficient system to do so if required. At this stage, we do not anticipate additional expenses for doing that.

Owing to the cancellation of one annual conference so far and, possibly, another conference set for the fall, the travel expenses may be less than budgeted in our operating expenses. We’ve incurred modest expenses for a table and chair and keyboards to make the office ergonomically appropriate, but that cost, again, was well within our capital budget.

I wanted to briefly address some of the other issues in Ms. Ryan-Lloyd’s email. I do not anticipate any change to our work, apart from the need to do more work remotely, owing to the COVID pandemic. The mandate of our office has not changed, so there are no new activities for me to report.

The primary change for the office has been my appointment as commissioner. I’m delighted to work with the dedicated, professional and long-serving staff of the office. They’ve made me feel very welcome, and they’ve assisted me greatly in learning this new role.

I want to briefly update what has occurred since the 2018 annual report. So 2019 was a difficult year for the Conflict of Interest Commissioner’s office. As you all know, Commissioner Paul Fraser became ill, and he passed away on March 29, 2019. So for almost three months, the highly professional and dedicated staff managed to maintain the office functions without a commissioner. The Hon. Lynn Smith, QC, was acting commissioner for about six months, from June 20, 2019, until my appointment became effective on January 6, 2020.

The workload in 2019 was comparable to 2018. The number of requests for information and advice in 2018 was nearly 200. In 2019, it was almost 210. It’s difficult to say whether 2020 will also be comparable, both because of the pandemic and because we usually get more inquiries from members at the time of the annual meetings in the fall between the MLAs and the commissioner regarding financial disclosure.

[10:40 a.m.]

Also in 2019, Acting Commissioner Lynn Smith completed the investigation and publicly released the opinion requested by MLA Ravi Kahlon regarding his legislative committee work concerning ride-sharing, in light of his father’s ownership of a taxi. This issue was the subject of media attention, and the investigation and public opinion reflected the public concern.

Also, in late 2019, Acting Commissioner Lynn Smith completed the annual meetings with all 87 MLAs to discuss their financial disclosure.

So far in 2020, there has not been a need for an investigation or inquiry or a written public opinion, but since there’s usually only about one a year, there is plenty of time for one to appear in 2020. Of course, I don’t wish that on any members. I’m sure it’s uncomfortable to be the subject of a conflict-of-interest investigation.

Our office has worked collaboratively with other offices and agencies on matters of shared interest. For example, we worked with the office of the lobbyist registrar to coordinate our new brochure on MLAs accepting gifts and benefits, with the lobbyist registrar’s brochure about lobbyists reporting on gifts they provide to MLAs.

We also worked with the Clerk’s office and consulted with the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s office on issues which led to the online posting of members’ public disclosure statements, which is now the wave of the future. It’s underway, and the posting is happening right now.

We also anticipate that at some point in the future, we will be consulting extensively with the Ministry of Attorney General and a legislative committee to update the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act, either in accordance with the legislative review back in 2012 or if there’s a new legislative review.

I mentioned the gifts brochure. We recently completed a revised brochure for members about accepting gifts, and I said we coordinated with the lobbyist registrar about that. That’s because there are some important differences about the obligation on members to report gifts received and the newly legislated obligation coming into effect on May 1 on lobbyists to report gifts given to members.

We have planned a joint presentation of these respective brochures, but that may be rescheduled owing to the pandemic. We have not yet distributed this new gifts brochure because of the pandemic. Not only do we anticipate that the attention of members is, quite properly, focused on the pandemic, but we doubt that members are being offered gifts, owing to the absence of public gatherings. Indeed, we’re not getting requests for opinions about that at this stage.

We will distribute this brochure either when the lobbyist material is distributed or, otherwise, at an appropriate time.

Our continuing work is the timely responses to requests from members for opinions and assistance and from the public about possible complaints. I can’t discuss the opinions given to members in any detail because they’re confidential to members, and our practice is not to publicize inquiries from the public unless they lead to an inquiry on public opinion.

Our priorities and goals remain working to preserve the integrity of the members of the Legislature and the public perception of them and of our provincial government through providing timely, confidential advice to members and timely and thorough responses to complaints.

It has been my honour to serve, since January 6, 2020, as commissioner. I had been looking forward to meeting with this committee in person, and I’m disappointed that it has to occur virtually, although I certainly think it’s the right thing to do. I’m also still looking forward to meeting all 87 MLAs. I hope at least some of that will be in person during the annual financial disclosure process, but again, some of it or all of it may end up occurring virtually. We’ll do what’s safe for everyone.

Thanks for your attention, and I’ll try to answer any questions you may have, with Carol’s assistance.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very, very much. Of course, on behalf of the Finance Committee, I wanted to welcome you to present for the first time and thank you for stepping up into this very important position. I also want to recognize the work that Lynn Smith did in the interim, filling in after the untimely passing of Paul Fraser, who we all got to know and love over the time he took on this position, and we all remember the wonderful conversations we had with him every fall. He is sorely missed, but we’re very pleased that we have you to guide us and to take us through these times.

[10:45 a.m.]

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with the registrar of lobbyists and the gift side of things. It will be interesting to see how they dovetail and work together. It will be a little challenge for you, I’m sure, but I’m confident that you’ll get through that.

Questions.

I have one from Mitzi Dean.

M. Dean: Welcome, Victoria. Good to meet and greet, even though it’s unprecedented times. I think Bob covered it all off really well, recognizing all of the work of your predecessors as well — much appreciated.

I’m interested in your workload and how you’re managing, given that the previous position was full-time and your position now is 0.75, as I understand it. Can you just talk to the committee a little bit about how your workload is?

V. Gray: All right. Since I’ve started, it has been the slower time of year. The busier time of year is the meetings with all 87 MLAs and handling any complaints and inquiries at that time.

One change is that the legal officer, Alyne Mochan, is now full-time, and that’s very helpful. She’s able to respond and do some first drafts and immediate responses and get hold of me.

But it’s been fine; 75 percent is fine. I think I’ll have a better sense when I’ve been through a year.

I am anticipating longer hours in the fall. Perhaps we’ll be meeting in the evenings and so on, but that’s fine. Of course, the pandemic makes things very strange, but I certainly think it’s fine.

M. Dean: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Do any other members have questions? I see none.

Okay, well, thank you so much, Victoria. Again, welcome, and thank you for your very thorough presentation. We look forward to meeting you, hopefully in person in the fall, and if not, virtually. That’ll be great. Welcome and thanks.

Kate, do we want to take another recess now?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes, that sounds like a good idea. The acting Auditor General and his team will be connecting by 11:15, so we can reconnect just before then.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great, thank you.

So if I could go into recess, then. Thank you.

The committee recessed from 10:47 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Office of the Auditor General — Russ Jones, acting Auditor General.

Russ, if you wouldn’t mind introducing your staff. I gather we have a PowerPoint. Please proceed.

OFFICE OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL

R. Jones: Good morning and thank you, committee members, for this opportunity to provide an update on how the current fiscal year is going and is unfolding for our office so far.

With me today I’ve got John McNeill, who you’ve met before — he’s my manager of finance; and Peter Nagati, who’s the executive director in our performance audit portfolio and is responsible for the service plan and also working on the annual report for us. It’s good to have them along, and they will be able to answer all the tough questions that I can’t.

You do have the PowerPoint slides, do you, hopefully?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes, I will bring them up now, Russ.

R. Jones: Okay. One of the things I want to let you know before I get started…. I think I must have had a COVID moment before I sent the slides to you, because on slide 7, the two columns are interchanged. The target and the actual should be reversed. When we get to that, you’ll see why, because what I tell you in my narrative does not really correspond to what’s in that chart. When I was reading it last night, I thought: “Uh-oh.” Sorry about that.

Anyway, we’ll start with some numbers via a financial update on page 2. This includes anticipated changes to our forecast expenditures and why. Then we’ll change gears and talk a bit about our performance more generally, which will tell you about our priorities, goals and performance measures as detailed in our service plan and in our annual report. Then finally, there’s one last slide that we’ll present you on a question that was raised before around revenues that we collect — or, as I should say, don’t necessarily collect and keep, but as requested by the committee. We’ll tell you a little bit about that.

If we move to slide 3, a few words about our strategic context at the moment. Executive is working to provide stability as we transition to new leadership. As you can imagine, we’re in the transition phase to a new Auditor General, Michael Pickup, who’s going to be joining us July 27. He’s leaving his job as Auditor General in Nova Scotia and coming to join us here, which will be great.

We’re committed to continuing down our current path at the present time without a significant change. I’ve talked to Michael about that, and he’s okay with that. That means providing independent assurance and advice to the Leg. about the performance of government and the public service, and our revision remains unchanged at this point in time. It is a Legislative Assembly, government and public service that work effectively for the people of British Columbia.

We expect that the incoming Auditor General, of course, will put his own stamp on it, and that will be great. For now, our priorities remain unchanged, and yeah, as I said, Michael is okay with that. He said, “Carry on,” and I said: “Okay, we’ll carry on.”

Then we’re talking a bit about how we’re adjusting to the realities, as everybody is, in the era of COVID-19. Our financial audits are continuing, with our staff working remotely. I should probably add that all 120 of our staff are working remotely. They only go into the office if they need to pick up something to take home and continue on with their work.

It’s a very, very different dynamic from what I’m used to. I’m going to be glad, actually, to get back to the old style a little bit more where I can actually talk face to face with everybody other than through Zoom, although you guys all look good on Zoom too.

[11:20 a.m.]

Anyway, financial audits are going along well. We’re finding that our ongoing performance audits are experiencing a few problems, not in terms of the work itself but just delays in getting to talk to people and not getting in the way of what the ministries are doing, especially when we take a look at the Ministry of Health. We were doing an audit on end-of-life care at Interior Health, and we’ve actually decided to postpone that to later in the fall, because they’re busy enough with everything else they’re doing. Understandably, that’s the way it is in this day and age.

For other ministries that aren’t on the front line, the staff are busy with the pressures on the home front resulting from closure of schools and daycare and working remotely. This is also causing some delays. It’s to be expected, and we’re doing as well as we can.

One of the things we’re currently doing is preparing a list of all COVID-19 types of issues that we’re running into, to see if there are some ways that we can be very nimble and work on some areas where we could give quicker feedback than we do normally through our performance auditing.

As you well know, some of our performance audits can take a year to two years to come out, so are there some types of reports that we can currently do right now that would be useful to legislators? I had a chat with the Chair and vice-Chair of PAC yesterday and got some very good feedback from them on areas where they might see us adding some value and getting involved.

If we go on to the next slide on page 4, it’s too soon right now to predict with accuracy the magnitude of the impact that COVID is going to have on us. Our ability to deliver on our planned program of performance audits is probably what is going to be hit more than anything else. Our ability to use all of our full budget allocation probably won’t happen. As you can see, our best estimate at this point in time is that COVID-19 is going to result in a net underspend of between $290,000 and $350,000.

A lot of that is because of the travel. At this time of year, we’re normally travelling all over the province, doing our financial audits and attending audit committee meetings and whatnot. Travel is not allowed right at this point in time by our office. I don’t want anybody travelling out there, and it’s not allowed — period. Our people that are working out of Vancouver can still get the work done at UBC and Hydro, but they can do it without having to travel.

We probably spend up to $240,000 in May to June, at this time of year, in our financial audits. Travel for other projects has also been cancelled, and that’s going to save us probably about $50,000. We could save up to about $65,000 on training as well, because now most of the training is being done online. That’s just the way it is. We’re going to be developing our budget forecast again in the fall, and we’ll have to take all of these things into account.

An example of additional COVID-related expenses, which aren’t a lot at this point in time, is we had to buy some hand sanitizers and increase the cleaning services at work. But the biggest, probably, expense that we might have had was purchasing an additional number of IT-related items that would allow our staff to work from home. It’s not a huge expense to our office. I just thought I’d bring you up to date on that.

If we take a look at progress on our audits, we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that our office is all about audits. We did need to trim back on our planned program of financial and performance audits to align with the budget allocation we were given, as you well know. This included dropping our planned performance audits of policy capacity within government and the Patient Transfer Network. We dropped some other planned audits, as well, from the plan because of ongoing review, when we looked at the relevant significance and what the internal auditors are doing around government.

[11:25 a.m.]

We did amend our performance audit coverage plan, and it was accepted by the Public Accounts Committee. We also trimmed back our financial audit coverage plan. We’ve reduced the number of universities, colleges and institutes we directly audit from two to one by continuing to perform oversight over Capilano University instead of auditing it directly, and we’ll continue oversight for at least one more next year.

Starting in 2021, we will no longer audit B.C. Infrastructure Benefits Inc., but we will perform oversight there. And after some growth pains, which always happens when you take on new financial audits, I’m happy to report that we’re delivering on our new financial audits, B.C. Hydro and UBC. We’ve actually had some really good feedback — and I may have mentioned this before — from the chair of the audit committee at B.C. Hydro, saying they’re very happy with the work we’re doing and that we’ve actually brought a new perspective in to looking at things around Hydro that has been very helpful to them. As an auditor, that’s always good to hear.

We continue to work with the comptroller general’s office on the summary financial statements and trying to make sure they get out on time. And it looks like, at this point, we’re still hoping for an end of June release of the public accounts, which would be fantastic. All of the entities are working very hard to get their financial statements in to the comptroller general’s office, and we’re working hard to get all the audit work done. So that’s really impressive of our staff and the comptroller general’s office.

We look forward to the upcoming release of a number of performance audit reports on a variety of topics, and we’ve provided some examples there for you. The provincial nominee program we’re looking to release in first part of June. It will be a really interesting report, I think, for people to read. I found it interesting.

We’ve also got a report on resource roads and, as I mentioned, the end-of-life care report that are probably not going to come out now until the fall. Those will be released under Michael’s name when he gets here. We’re also assessing if there are any areas, as I said, that we could look at that could be of value to legislators and the public resulting from the COVID crisis.

One of the suggestions I had from the Chair and vice-Chair of Public Accounts and, as well, from one of the deputy ministers was to maybe take a look at the supply chain as it relates to PPE in the province and maybe even include in that food security as well, going forward, just to see what we could do. So we are actively looking at all of that stuff.

Next slide is on key activities and initiatives. A quick update on our key initiatives. The first two relate to specific funding we received in our budget allocation for the new initiatives. And yeah, as I said, we’re doing well. We’re not spending as much, actually, on consultants at Hydro and UBC as we thought we might at this point in time. That’s probably good from the point of view that that means there haven’t been a lot of new initiatives that we can’t deal with. So I’m not all that displeased by that. So that’s really good.

We also wanted to tell you about three of our other key initiatives covered within our overall budget. This year we hope to begin work to enhance and better communicate the results of our financial audit work. Executive intends to provide the Leg. with audit information it needs to fully understand the soundness of financial information and reporting across government. This means working to ensure that we get full value out of the over 40,000 hours we invest each year to audit the province’s summary financial statements.

To support better understanding of the financial performance of government, we’re undertaking future work to provide information, assurance and advice about specific aspects of the public accounts. We put a report out in 2019, as you remember, around rate-regulated accounting.

[11:30 a.m.]

Prior to that we put out a couple of reports where we included a section called: “What you should know about the public accounts.” Some interesting information. So we’re looking at trying to do that again. And if we don’t get it in this year, we definitely will the following year, because that’s something that the new Auditor General does in Nova Scotia as well. So I think that will be really useful.

We’re trying to find efficiencies as a main focus for our office. We routinely challenge ourselves on how we can find additional direct audit hours from our existing staff complement. We also are continuing our efforts to ensure that the office delivers high-quality work efficiently and uses taxpayers’ dollars wisely.

We have a key initiative this year to explore automating a lot of the aspects of our performance audit methodology to be able to save some time. And we’re also exploring opportunities to help staff complete performance audits a little more nimbly and quickly. While maintaining the high quality, we want to try and shorten down the time that it takes to carry out some of these performance audits.

As I think I’ve mentioned to you before, we have a group in our performance audit group called controls, compliance and research. We’re trying to get them to take on some audits where we can get them done in less than a thousand hours, which would be wonderful, so that we can, within a five- to six-month period, tackle an issue and get it out and get the conversation going from PAC around that. So that provides good information to the Legislative Assembly as well.

And then finding and retaining qualified staff remains one of our key challenges. We mentioned that, I think, when we were talking about the budget last year around our new strategic human resources area. Trying to get highly qualified people is always a challenge — and with designations. It’s no different still.

I know, back east, KPMG actually laid people off, so the Auditor General back there was able to get some really good people. Not so out here. We’re still having a hard time to get our full complement in place, but we’re doing our best. We’re putting in place a much better human resource plan to improve our recruitment, to look at succession planning and staff engagement. So it’s all starting to show some benefits. We’re also hiring more people to work out of Vancouver. We just hired a director in financial audit that’s going to work out of our Vancouver area.

So they are out there. It’s just taking time, and we’re working away at it. We have work to do in this area as evidenced by…. In staff engagement we have work to do because our workforce environment survey statistics weren’t as good as what we were hoping. So we’re gradually going to build that back up, but it takes some time.

Moving on to slide 7, which is the one where…. Disregard those numbers, put them on the other side of the chart. These are some of our key performance indicators that are part of our service plan, and it’s all about delivering high-quality audits in our service plan. In 2020-21 it’s our road map for continuing that, as the office makes the transition to a new Auditor General. It’s our commitment to focusing our audits on areas of importance to members of the Legislative Assembly and the people of B.C. and ensuring that our work is of high quality.

We haven’t introduced any new things in our service plan that are resulting in additional financial pressures. Rather, our service plan focus is about continuing to provide valuable assurance and advice. And our mission, goals and objectives as described in our service plan have all been carried forward without significant change.

Specifically, the executive team pledges to continue our high-quality work as outlined annually in our financial audit and performance audit coverage plans. This means we will continue, to the best of our abilities, our financial audit work to assess whether government’s summary financial statements are fairly presented and free of material misstatements and that our performance audit work assesses how well significant programs, services and resources are being managed.

[11:35 a.m.]

This service plan continues to show our performance against the same robust set of performance measures and key performance indicators as last year’s plan, with one exception. We’ve discontinued reporting on the percentage of staff positions that are vacant, as we found it does not provide meaningful insight on how efficiently we are using our financial and human resources.

We’re intent on improving our performance. As you will see, we will be reporting out on our performance for 2019-20 in detail through our annual report at the end of June, but the table on pages 17 and 18 of the service plan foreshadows some of our performance. We are pleased to report that we are doing well in some areas. For example, 90 percent of the MLAs on PAC are satisfied that our office is effectively delivering our legislative mandate and is making a real difference for the people of B.C.

But our performance isn’t quite where we’d like it in a number of areas, such as government’s uptake on our recommendations. Our work environment survey score is not where we’d like it either, and spending our budget isn’t where we thought we were going to be by the end of the year. We were tracking really well for a while, down to 1 percent, but this COVID has sort of turned the tables a little bit.

In response to these results, we will continue to audit a sample of audit reports to inform PAC on progress auditees have made to implement the recommendations and where further work is needed; implementation of the strategic human resources plan, as previously mentioned; and we’re going to improve our project management practices to better forecast our needs.

Underexpenditures are, in part, savings due to the travel and turnover, but we will also need to do a better job forecasting our expenses for items such as professional fees. I alluded to that when I was talking about how we were using our professional fees at Hydro and some of the new audits. So you’ll see a much more refined budget coming up in the fall for next year.

On to page 8. It’s not a lot for you around our revenue, but you’d asked for some thoughts. Our estimated billings for fiscal year ’21 are going to be about $1.68 million. So 100 percent of that money goes to the consolidated revenue fund, and 100 percent of our funding is received through our appropriation and approved by the committee. It was a number of years ago that we changed this, and it was at the request of not just us but government to do it that way.

Our office doesn’t bill for non-audit-related work when we’re doing financial audits. For instance, if we’re asked for advice by one of our clients, we give it to them. If Hydro is looking for some help on certain things that weren’t in the original budget, we still do it, because we think that’s of value, not only to Hydro but to the people of B.C. as well.

Our billing principle is neutrality, which refers to a billing practice where our audit fee neither benefits nor penalizes the entities we audit. I think I mentioned that to you before. When we take over a health authority, we will not charge any more than what the previous audit firm was charging. Given the six health authorities across the province, that maintains sort of an equal playing field for everybody.

We do this, as I said, by matching our services to the market rate that the firms are charging. It’s difficult to compare our services, the services that we provide, to what the private accounting firms do. We spent probably — I don’t know — maybe 200, 300 hours looking at the merger acquisition at Columbia Power Corp. this year. I would hate to think what the fee would have been if it had been one of the firms doing it, because that’s a lot of hours, and it was a complicated process.

[11:40 a.m.]

But it was an important aspect of policy that the province was putting in place, and we felt we needed to spend that time and give that advice to Columbia Power and Columbia Basin Trust, because we do both those audits. It didn’t impact…. The extra amount we spent, we’re not billing them. Whether you like that or not, that’s our philosophy at the moment, so I just thought that I’d give you that perspective.

Accounting firms, you know, are very much profit-oriented. We’re more about keeping the playing field even for the entities that we do audit by not charging them more than we would anybody else but at the same time providing them with expertise in the public sector that we have that maybe the firms don’t, in all cases, because we audit much more.

I must admit the uptake from the auditees is that they have no problem picking up the phone and giving us a call, because they know it’s not going to cost them another $100,000 or whatever by the time they’re done talking to one of the firms. Especially when it comes to school districts, they don’t have the extra money to spend — they really don’t — on this advice. I just think that as the Auditor General for the province, being able to provide our expertise to them and not causing it to take money away from providing education or things like that is a really good thing. Anyway, I won’t talk about that much more.

In conclusion, this year is about continuing to do great audit work. We know our work makes a positive difference for the people of B.C. and that the Public Accounts Committee uses our audit reports to hold government to account. We’re committed to doing this important work as we transition to a new Auditor General. You are really going to like him. He’s very, very good.

We look forward to working with you, bringing this plan to life and continuing to make a difference in the work we do. Any questions?

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s great. Well, thank you so much, Russ. You’ve done an exemplary job in the interim position. It will be really great to meet Michael Pickup when he comes into the new position. That’s great.

I just wanted to clarify one thing in the billing. On one of the slides about the billing back, it says financial year ’21. I’m assuming that’s 2021. Is that year ending…?

R. Jones: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I just wanted to…. That’s the fiscal year we’re in right now. That’s the anticipated billing for this fiscal year?

R. Jones: Absolutely, yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just wanted to clarify that.

I have two questions so far.

N. Simons: I was just curious, if you wouldn’t mind elaborating a bit on the food security thought that you almost got into. Just maybe give us a little bit more on that.

R. Jones: Yeah, it was when I was talking with the Chair and vice-Chair of PAC, Mitzi and Shirley, yesterday. I mentioned that one of the areas we had been asked to take a look at was around the supply chain and how well it was managed during the current COVID crisis. They said: “Well, could you also include in that, if you’re looking at for the PPE stuff, taking a look at possible food security in terms of the supply chain as well?” Like, “Can we get the food we’re going to need? Was there a plan in place?” and that type of thing. We didn’t really elaborate yet. It was more just: “Here are some thoughts. You asked, so here you go.” I should never ask those questions.

D. Barnett: My question is — going back to the third slide, I think it is — when you’re doing audits on some of the organizations. I have a big concern about PNP. Could you maybe give in detail what kind of an audit you’re doing on PNP? Are you talking to people that have gone through the PNP system or MLAs or those of us that have experienced this particular program?

R. Jones: Yes. Thank you, Member. You’re in luck today because Peter Nagati…. Not only does he help me with the service plan and the annual report; he was the person in charge of that audit. So I will let Peter maybe talk to you about that.

[11:45 a.m.]

P. Nagati: Good afternoon, everyone.

The PNP program — yes, happy to speak to it. I can’t share very much. I can only share what’s on our public website regarding the work we have in progress right now. We do have two objectives under that audit. One is looking at the program itself, the management of the program, to test or assess whether government, whether the ministry is meeting its program objectives. The second objective is looking at whether or not the ministry is adequately managing for risks associated with fraud and misrepresentation.

The question about who we’ve spoken to…. Are we aware of situations? Yes, we’ve had many interviews during the course of the audit. We’ve had some recent late-breaking information, some additional people we also want to follow up with. So we’re going to carry on with that work. Our plan is to report out, very likely, at the start of June.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

D. Barnett: Could I just ask another question?

Thank you very much for that. I’ll be anxious to see the report.

My office has had quite a lot of experience with the PNP program because of where we live and the nature of people who really want to move to some parts of rural British Columbia from other countries. And I would just like to say that…. I’m sure nothing will happen, but I can honestly say that we have not had good success with the PNP program.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right.

Ronna-Rae, did you have a comment or a thought? Or you’re okay?

R. Leonard: No, actually. I think I’ll hang tight.

I’ve been having a little bit of challenge wrapping my head around the different layers of auditing. Like, various entities do audits — have auditors. And then there’s this oversight.

Maybe Russ could give us a little tutorial on those layers, because I think it’ll feed into the questions that we’ve had around some of the external professionals that are being used in various auditing processes and who’s paying for what and how it’s accounted for. The more I think about it, the more confused I’m getting about that auditing process and the role of the Auditor General layered overtop of existing audits.

R. Jones: Yes, thank you, Member. I’ll try and uncomplicate it as much as I can.

Our mandate is to do the audit of the public accounts of the province, which are the financial statements that incorporate not only what the ministries do, but what all of the Crown corps. do in the better part of the public sector entity. So we’re responsible for putting an opinion on those overall public accounts that come out at the end of June.

Making up, as I said, the public accounts are all of the ministries, which is in the government reporting entity, and it’s the consolidated revenue fund, it’s called, that they’re part of. We audit that completely. That’s the responsibility of our office.

Then on top of that, you have certain Crown corps. like B.C. Hydro and what are called government business enterprises, where they actually make money. They have a profit, you know, like Liquor Distribution — surprise, surprise — does. Lottery, same thing. Hydro. Columbia Power Corp. is one of those as well, because they sell a lot of power and make money. And ICBC — it is currently called a government business enterprise.

Those ones follow what we call international financial reporting standards, which is different than what public sector accounting standards are. So we audit some of those. We audit Hydro. We audit Columbia Power.

[11:50 a.m.]

Then what we do with…. All of the ones that we don’t audit, the firms audit. So KPMG audits the Lottery Corp., and PricewaterhouseCoopers audits ICBC. What we do in that regard, because they’re very important to the overall numbers that go into the public accounts of the province, is oversee them. We do oversight. We go in, and we look at the planning. We look at the year-end report that they put out and make sure that we’re happy with the numbers that are coming out and that we understand all of the risks and whatnot.

For the rest of the government Crown corps., like hospitals, universities, colleges and other public sector entities — like maybe the Oil and Gas Commission, B.C. Transit and whatnot — we take a look at the ones we need to audit to give us enough assurance that the numbers going into the public accounts of the province are accurate. We’ll audit those directly. The ones that we think we need to audit, we audit directly.

Columbia Basin Trust is a good example. There’s a number of them that we do. In total, we audit one university, which is UBC. We’ve decided to audit one of the health authorities, which is Interior Health. We used to audit two, but we decided we only needed to audit one. We audit a number of school districts, three or four, just to give us a sense of what’s going on and give us that assurance that we understand, when we get the financial statements from the private sector accountants, what’s going on.

What we also do in the health sector, because it is such a large sector, in the university sector, because it’s so large, and in the college sector is what we call these oversight audits, where we go in, and we attend the audit committee meetings. Our senior staff do. We take a look at the planning that the firms have done, the year-end reports that the firms have done, so that we’re happy that we understand all of the issues that are out there that could impact the province’s financial statements at the end of the year.

There are a number of entities — much smaller ones, like B.C. Summer Games or something like that — where we don’t even bother, other than taking a look at the financial statements, to do any extra work. So I’m not sure if that helps or complicates matters.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That was very helpful, Russ. Thank you.

Mitzi, go ahead.

M. Dean: Thanks for the staffing update, Russ. That’s something that’s been coming to this committee ever since I’ve been around and on this committee. I’m wondering whether you’ve applied a gender-based analysis plus tool to your staffing, planning and analysis of staffing and how you’re thinking that you might move forward. It might be that maybe the British Columbia Office of the Auditor General can’t compete with companies that may be offering higher salaries or something, but we could actually offer a different work experience, different career pathway.

R. Jones: Thank you, Mitzi. Yeah, we take that into account in all of our hiring. I think our office is actually pretty good in terms of gender balance.

We’re also trying to figure out, and it’s more difficult than I ever thought it should be, how to — not lure — get Indigenous people into the office, to get them into the accounting profession and be able to train them up and whatnot. We currently, I think, have two — yeah, I think it’s two now — going through our system.

We have been looking at the gender-plus model. We have people in the office that make sure that we’re looking at that whenever we’re doing hiring. It’s something we take very seriously, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job on it, to be quite honest.

M. Dean: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Any other questions from members at all?

[11:55 a.m.]

Thank you so much, Russ, and thanks to everyone in your department and all your staff for making the transition into this very challenging period that we’re all living through. I appreciate the fact that you’re managing to continue to do the work for this province, even given the challenges that are in front of you. I look forward to hearing a presentation from the new Auditor General, I guess in the fall, if not before.

Were there any final questions or thoughts from anyone, other than that? Did you need us to stay on at all, Kate?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): No, I think we’re good, Mr. Chair. If you like, we can adjourn and then reconvene tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Perfect. Thanks, everybody.

Motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:56 a.m.