The committee met at 9 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are listening to the statutory offices updates for the spring. First up, we have the Office of the Ombudsperson — Jay Chalke.

Welcome, Jay. We wish we were meeting you in person, but under the circumstances, it’s still great to see you.

And hi, Dave.

All right. Take it away, Jay.

Financial and Operational Updates
from Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSPERSON

J. Chalke: Great. Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everybody. I want to acknowledge that I’m speaking to you today from the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations.

I wanted to start by thanking the committee for proceeding with this round of hearings, notwithstanding the unusual time that we find ourselves in. I think it’s great to see you all. As the Chair noted, Dave Van Swieten is with me remotely today. He needs no introduction.

My remarks today are really going to focus on three things, but I’m happy to take questions on any aspect of our service when we get to that point. The three things that I would propose to talk about are an update on our services since I was last in front of you in October and November, our plans for the upcoming fiscal year and our current services and approach during the pandemic.

First, highlighting things that are new since I was last before you, I want to mention our new statutory responsibility. On December 1, 2019, the Public Interest Disclosure Act was brought into force. Phase 1 applied the act to employees and former employees of ministries and independent legislative offices. Thus, as of that date, some 30,000 public servants and, further, tens of thousands of former public servants may disclose wrongdoing arising from their employment and are protected from reprisal for doing so.

The legislation establishes a choice model, recognizing that different people will wish to take the matters that they wish to disclose through different routes, depending on, for example, their confidence that their employer will treat the matter properly. Under the act, we are one of six places that employees can seek advice about their rights under the act. We are one of two options for employees to make a disclosure. The disclosures can either be made internally to their employer or to us. We’re the only place under the act where employees have the right to make an allegation of reprisal.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous appearances before this committee, I’m strongly of the view that a key success factor for the legislation is for employers covered by the act to create a workplace culture that would welcome the making of a wrongdoing disclosure. By creating that welcoming, speak-up culture, employees who are concerned about wrongdoing will potentially have far greater trust that their employer will diligently and fairly investigate their concerns.

In addition to preparing for our own advice-giving and investigatory roles under the act, we’ve promoted appropriate employer culture for the public bodies now covered by the legislation. We’ve worked closely with the Ministry of Attorney General and the Public Service Agency on a variety of issues, including coming to a common understanding of virtually every provision of the statute and its interpretation, identifying and establishing effective and consistent processes where government’s role and my office’s role intersect, and ensuring that communications messages to both senior leadership of ministries and front-line staff are appropriately reinforcing the principles of the act and commitment by ministries to its effective implementation.

I personally met with the senior executives of nearly every ministry and with stakeholders, including unions and employee associations, to reinforce the welcoming of disclosures and to stress the importance of fair investigations conducted with integrity. In addition, we conducted dozens of presentations to staff of ministries and independent offices as well as to external stakeholders, providing both training in how to implement the act and raising awareness of its implications to organizations.

[9:05 a.m.]

We publish various guides and tip sheets for officials affected by the act. In your materials this morning is a sample. It’s just one, but I thought it would give you an idea. This is the one for chief executives; it’s the CEO checklist. All the various publications for different officials are available on our website.

In November, my office held an all-day conference on the new act. The agenda is also in your materials. You’ll see that the Attorney General was the keynote speaker.

About 100 participants included senior leaders from the British Columbia government and senior Quebec officials speaking about the first two years of public interest disclosure in that province. A senior private sector wrong­doing investigator also spoke. We also heard the experience of a whistle-blower at the federal level. The whole event was very well received by the attendees, all of whom were people involved in various ways in implementation of the act.

All of these implementation efforts were focused on the ob­jective of creating a positive, welcoming perspective for the act and its value in promoting integrity in public service.

Within a few weeks, I’ll be delivering the first annual report, for 2019-2020, under the new act, to the Speaker. I’d be pleased at an upcoming appearance before this committee to discuss the details of that report.

We’ve been very busy on the Ombudsperson Act side of the ledger as well, where our volumes, of course, are much, much higher than they are on the public interest disclosure side. In February, we issued our update report about the status of implementation by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction on the commitments that that ministry had made following our 2018 Holding Pattern report. That report was about the response times at the ministry’s call centre for income and disability assistance — both applicants and recipients.

Our most recent update, which is in your materials, is a mixed scorecard showing some improvements. But overall, our latest assessment is that ministry wait times were, through those six months in 2019 that we looked at, still too long. I’m disappointed that more than a year after our original report, the ministry was able to meet even its own service target, which it preferred to the one that we had recommended, only one-third of the time.

Of course, given the current move to physical distancing during the pandemic, telephone service is even more important, so we’ve been encouraging the ministry to address this issue with more focus and diligence.

Yesterday the Police Complaint Commissioner mentioned to this committee that his office had been copied by the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls on various referrals made to police agencies. He indicated that his office was monitoring steps taken by those police forces.

Similarly, various agencies of the government of British Columbia have also received what are known as section​ S referrals from the national inquiry, issued when the national inquiry believes that there may have been misconduct by a public agency. On many of those section S referrals, we were copied for the purpose of monitoring government’s action on those matters, and we’re doing so at present. That work continues and, I expect, may be the subject of public reporting in the future.

We’ve also been active in the outreach and communications area. We conducted an outreach tour in February focused on post-secondary students and new Canadians in the Lower Mainland in order to ensure that both those groups were aware of our office’s services. I want to thank the many not-for-profit groups throughout the Lower Mainland that facilitated our presentations and promoted our services within their communities.

In addition, we attended the Whistler Pride event and a newcomer affair in Vancouver and placed targeted ads in order to raise awareness in the LGBTQ2S communities.

In March, we launched a more accessible website, which includes a complaint checker feature that allows the public to determine for themselves whether a public body they are complaining about is within our jurisdiction and what other complaint processes or rights of appeal or review may be able to assist them even if the agency is not one we oversee. We always make the point that if people who are visiting the site are unsure about where to turn, they’re welcome to contact us for assistance by phone.

Our prevention initiatives team was very busy since the manager of that team, Rachel Warren, was before this committee last October. Activity since then has included 18 in-person workshops, training over 500 public servants in that time, including tailored sessions to Community Living B.C., B.C. Housing, Island Health, school district 61, Thompson Rivers University, B.C. Utilities Commission and the district of Metchosin.

[9:10 a.m.]

We’ve had a number of presentations postponed due to the pandemic but look forward to rescheduling future sessions with the Local Government Management Association, Licence Inspectors and Bylaw Officers Association, civil resolution tribunal, teacher regulation branch, Provincial Health Services Authority and B.C. Corrections.

We’ve prepared a new complaints guide to assist public bodies with effectively and efficiently addressing their own customer complaints. That guide, which will be deposited with the Speaker shortly, will be launched, together with a webinar, once we have a sense that complaint-handling staff in public authorities have the capacity to receive this information, given their other duties, no doubt, during the pandemic.

As you may recall, we’ve produced a series of quick-tip documents that have been quite popular with public authorities. Over the past few months, we’ve produced additional quick-tip documents that, again, pending the pandemic, we’ll be releasing soon. These include quick tips on bias and conflict of interest, exercising discretion fairly and setting limits to unreasonable complainant conduct.

Just a word about our finances last year. We completed the year with expenditures in the amount of $8,852,356. That represents an expenditure level of 99.8 percent of our 2019-2020 budget of $8.873 million, which this committee allocated to us. As you can see, it was tight, but I’m very pleased that we were able to deliver our services within that funding, even if only just barely.

Turning briefly to the upcoming year. In doing so, I’m going to set aside, for the moment, comments about the pandemic and focus on our other challenges and deliverables, except to say that given the uncertain times that we find ourselves in, we have, by necessity, kept the current list of non-pandemic initiatives short. When we get to the happy event that the current provincial emergency resolves, then we can certainly add other items.

Matters that we will be pursuing later in the fiscal year include the development of our new 2021-2026 strategic plan. Our current strategic plan expires next March 31, and it would be my intention to have promulgated the new strategic plan before the current one ends. This will involve consultation with the public; my staff; legislators — yourselves; and public authorities under our jurisdiction. So, too, will we continue this year with the development of outcome-based performance measures, based on the work that I reported previously to this committee. Of course, central to our work will be the release of various investigation reports and monitoring reports.

I want to turn now to the matter that’s on all our minds currently — namely, the present pandemic and the resulting impact on public services across the province. Obviously, I focus on the public administration impacts because my office’s jurisdiction relates to public author­ities. However, in doing so, it’s important to be mindful of the severe private and not-for-profit sector impacts, if only because they result in increased need for government support and intervention. That has affected government significantly, and what affects government in turn affects government oversight.

Like the other independent officers, we are teleworking. Many thanks to our team that made that happen. But the pandemic has had impacts far beyond the relatively straight­forward difference between in-person and distance delivery. The pandemic has impacted the need for our services, how we deliver those services and public administration in the hundreds of public authorities that we oversee. There is almost no aspect of our operations that has not been impacted.

One example of this relates to our steps to keep abreast of public administration changes during the pandemic. You’ll recall that we have the role of receiving complaints about the fairness of services in the broader public sector.

Just for a second imagine, during the pandemic, the changes that have occurred in all the provincial government ministries, including the Ministry of Health; the provincial prison system; youth custody; emergency management B.C. and others; school districts, colleges and universities; all manner of local governments; Crown corporations such as Hydro and ICBC; agency boards and commissions such as WorkSafe and professional regula­tory bodies; and of course, at the heart of the pandemic, the health authorities. As you might imagine, it’s important for our organization to maintain a broad and, particularly for those high-volume public authorities under our jurisdiction, deep understanding of how public authorities deliver services.

[9:15 a.m.]

Doing so allows us to effectively and efficiently identify outreach priorities, provide accurate and useful referral information to people who call us, triage incoming complaints, establish investigation priorities, recognize systemic issues and identify prevention opportunities.

In normal times, we’re able to do this through our regular approaches in a manner that’s very efficient and involves little in the way of dedicated staff resources. However, over the past few months, if one can describe the normal rate of public administration changes as being X, there has been, without exaggeration, probably 30 to 50 X-worth of changes.

As a result, we’ve had to develop new methods of learning about those public administration changes and have had to devote full-time resources to do so. I’m very pleased with how we’ve accomplished that transition and the nimble and creative ways that we have developed for learning, curating and responding to those changes.

I’m going to spend the next few minutes mentioning a few of the impacts and how we’ve adapted our services.

I would say that the most visible part of our service, the releasing of reports…. In these early weeks of the pandemic, we’ve held back on releasing public reports. We’ll resume releasing public reports in the future, once government operations have stabilized.

These remarks that I’m going to make fall into five categories. One, we’re resolving individual instances of unfairness arising from the pandemic. While we continue to receive complaints regarding all manner of public administration, we’re now receiving complaints that relate to the impact of the pandemic on public services. For example, I can indicate that the narrowing of services to only online delivery, in some instances, has been the source of some complaints we receive.

We’re also expanding our use of early dispute resolution approaches to pandemic-related complaints. This should allow for faster resolution, yielding results for complainants earlier, as well as less work for public authorities in responding to formal investigations by us. To that end, we’ve established rapid response liaison structures with our high-volume public authorities to bring matters forward quickly for resolution.

I would note that some changes that public authorities have made during the pandemic have broadened eligibility for services to individuals and have addressed various matters that historically have been the subject of frequent complaint to us. As a result, while it’s early, there will be questions for government after the pandemic as to whether they wish to re-establish those criteria that have been a source of complaints to us over the years.

In doing this work, we’re being mindful of the impacts of our investigations on front-line programs and the importance of supporting the work done by public servants to protect the citizens of the province. We’re taking proactive and consultative approaches in concert with more formal approaches, when needed, to ensure that we’re supporting fair and effective service delivery while minimizing the disruptive potential of formal investigations during the provincial emergency.

Second, we’re helping marginalized and vulnerable people whose traditional supports have been removed. As many observers have noted, this pandemic has laid bare weaknesses in our society and systems of public administration. In some cases, the problem is the fragility of service delivery methods — for example, those that traditionally rely on in-person support by not-for-profits that are now only delivering services remotely. As a result, we’re making a special effort during the pandemic to reach out, through our contact networks, to make sure that vulnerable and marginalized populations are aware that our services continue to be available.

We are, not surprisingly, seeing an increase in calls about matters outside our jurisdiction. People who have lost their jobs, fear for the health of themselves or their families or have been threatened with eviction are turning to us for information, even if they don’t have a complaint about a provincial or local public authority.

Although many of these pandemic-related complaints are not within our mandate, we continue to help people by advising them on how to get the help they need and providing them with referral information. The difference now is that, at least in the early weeks of the pandemic, the number of those calls has escalated and placed more demands on our intake resources.

Three, we are open and working while many courts are closed. Much of the work of British Columbia’s courts, other than urgent matters, was suspended in the early days of the provincial emergency. It’s good to see the courts are now starting to widen their services again during the pandemic. However, it’s important to note that the narrowing of services by the courts means that other methods of achieving justice — in the case of our office, administrative justice — become even more critical.

[9:20 a.m.]

Four, we’re proactively helping government avoid pitfalls while they rapidly retool existing services or establish new ones. Government is moving quickly during the pandemic on many fronts at once, but the nature of these changes varies widely. In short, government is concurrently doing less and more at the same time. Some services are being continued but delivered in a different way, others are being suspended during the pandemic, while still others are new services that have been established to mitigate the harm arising from the pandemic and its effects.

While changes in public administration normally would be accompanied by long and careful policy development, extensive stakeholder consultation and — in the case of legislation — consideration by legislators, during the pandemic, many of those steps are not occurring. My staff and I have made ourselves available to government for the purpose of consultation when any of these changes have been made. This advice is to help government get things right even where government moves quickly and, as a result, the regular policy and program development steps aren’t taking place.

I’m pleased that the positive relationships we developed before the pandemic have meant that government has been willing to obtain our assistance. It’s certainly my view that that has benefited government’s new or amended programs. A few examples might assist here. The emergency program Ministerial Order 093 appointed provincial gaming, cannabis and liquor inspectors to provide assistance for the purpose of enforcing Dr. Henry’s orders. One of their functions is to act as a central resource, coordinated by the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, for local bylaw enforcement officers across the province who had been appointed to a similar role in an earlier Emergency Program Act ministerial order.

From our experience investigating complaints about bylaw enforcement, we are well familiar with the concerns that can and do arise in that context. So we worked with the ministry on training, advice and support from the central unit to ensure administrative fairness in the carrying out of the enforcement role established by those two ministerial orders.

In another example that demonstrates how we can move quickly in the context of the emergency, late last Friday afternoon the ministry provided us with us a proposal for changes to the legal structure governing certain services by a particular public sector during the pandemic. My staff carried out legal and program analysis throughout the weekend, and we provided our advice to government this past Monday. That kind of rapid turnaround gives government an early assessment of potential pitfalls that they can avoid before finalizing and announcing a change, even in the high-paced reality of public administration changes during the pandemic. This prevention role keeps alive during the pandemic that a stitch in time saves nine.

Fifth, oversight of government’s use of emergency power is vital. My office’s role in emergencies does not change from that during non-emergencies even if the legal context does. We are to consider whether various acts, decisions, recommendations or other things done or not done by government demonstrate various types of maladministration set out in the Ombudsperson Act.

As the Information and Privacy Commissioner said to this committee on Tuesday, oversight of government is always important, but even more so when government exercises extraordinary powers. During the state of emergency that has been declared, the Solicitor General has, under the Emergency Program Act, additional powers he could not exercise before. This allows government to take steps quickly, efficiently and effectively to address the pandemic, all of which we expect governments to do.

Furthermore, it represents the judgment by legislators of the appropriate extra authority required in such situations. However, this supplemental power is not unlimited. There are statutory rules that impose limits as well as constitutional limits.

Our fundamental approach is to give government the opportunity to fix problems as we find them. However, oversight has both an inside and an outside voice, and where government declines to remedy those problems that we raise with them, we will then consider whether public reporting is appropriate and when.

Now, some might say oversight should simply get out of the way during an emergency — that it’s too important a time to worry about public complaints and issues like fairness. But while we want governments, as I mentioned before, to deal with the problems effectively, efficiently and quickly, we also want governments to do so in accordance with broadly held Canadian values that find resonance in the constituting statutes of various officers of the Legislature, including mine.

We want governments to follow the rule of law, treat people respectfully, have concerns for the vulnerable and be transparent and accountable. Ensuring that governments do so is not about reducing trust in government. Trust is very important, obviously, at the current time. It’s about reinforcing that trust by assuring British Columbians that while government addresses the emergency, it’s doing so in a manner that is consistent with our democratic governance traditions.

[9:25 a.m.]

We’re in a dynamic and fluid situation right now. My office is committed to continuous adaptation and innovation while staying within the four corners of our statutory authority. These statutes afford us considerable flexibility in how we deliver our services, and to date, during the pandemic, our terrific team has been able to modify our approaches nimbly and creatively, and we will continue to do so.

I think that completes my remarks, and I’d be happy to take your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Jay. On behalf of the committee, obviously, we’d like to extend our gratitude for your ability to shift and pivot during this very extraordinary time and, also, thank your staff for going that extra mile and showing an extraordinary effort.

It actually is really helpful to hear from you how much pressure the pandemic is putting on your position, and we really appreciate that. We also appreciate how you’re responding to it. So thank you very much for that.

Mitzi Dean has a question.

M. Dean: Thanks for all your work, Jay, and to all of your staff as well — and for your thoughtfulness in your approach in the current situation.

I have a question about the whistleblowing. I know you said that you wrote some quick tips, but I’m interested in how you’re tackling the power imbalance on a gendered relationship and what kind of advice you’re giving to people to make sure that in particular, for example, women wanting to complain about men or to men would be supported where there’s a significant power imbalance.

J. Chalke: I think one of the things that has been experienced in jurisdictions where public interest disclosure has been in effect in years past has been that there are sometimes cases of bullying and harassment that arise that become so serious that they rise to the threshold established in the Public Interest Disclosure Act and constitute wrongdoing under that act. It’s certainly possible that those sorts of workplace situations will be the kinds of things that we would be investigating.

It’s also important that employers establish processes for dealing with some of those sorts of concerns and complaints, short of the seriousness of the statutory threshold in the Public Interest Disclosure Act. We’ve certainly been encouraging government to keep establishing or keep pursuing the work that they have with respect to respectful workplaces in the ministries and are supporting that.

As for how one sees gender issues in the context, specifically, of public interest disclosure, I think it’s very early. Certainly, we’re looking at all our services with a GBA+ kind of approach. I think we would be interested, once we have sufficient cases, to applying a bit of research to that question.

It’s certainly something that we’re alive to — very early days yet. Certainly, I think the experience in other jurisdictions indicates that there can be issues that arise from power imbalance in workplace situations, and sometimes those can rise to that seriousness threshold.

M. Dean: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Jay. I had a couple of questions in regards to the traditional types of questions that you would normally get or investigations you would normally get. Are you finding that people are continuing to get access to your office during this period?

Secondly, you did say that there’s a lot more work that you’re doing. I’m just curious: in terms of budgeting, do you feel that you’ll be able to work within the budget that you have right now?

J. Chalke: It’s the 30th of April, so we’re 1/12 of the way through the year. It’s been an unusual month. I think it’s, candidly, too early to say. Given not only do we not know the profile of people coming to us…. We don’t even really know, obviously, how the pandemic is going to unfold over the next few months.

I certainly will be happy to commit to the committee that we would come forward with as much early warning as we could. We’d be in touch if we thought we were encountering a problem that we couldn’t manage our­selves.

[9:30 a.m.]

My first effort, obviously, would be to figure out how we could allocate the resources this committee has recommended to us, even in the context of the pandemic. We’ll keep an eye on it.

In terms of non-pandemic-related complaints, our complaints were up 12 percent year over year last year from the year before. The year before was light compared to the year prior, so it’s a bit of a bouncing around over the past couple of years. That was 2019-20, obviously.

In the first four or five weeks of the pandemic — again, pretty early — a little bit hard to tell. I think, probably, government is not doing as many things, other than the pandemic, as it used to do, so maybe some of those numbers are down. But very early, in the first few weeks, our phones were very, very busy; last week or so, a little bit less. I think we just need to let things settle down a bit.

I think overall, it’s too early to tell, but we certainly still are getting completely, if I can put it, regular non-pandemic-related complaints. Those are still coming.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you for that commitment to keep a heads-up. If we get down the path here and then find out we’re way over budget or things like that, it would be good, in terms of surprises. Maybe just keep an eye on it for us. You’ve always been very upfront with everything, obviously, but we don’t like surprises.

J. Chalke: I would say that obviously, and I noted that there was a bit of the discussion in front of the committee yesterday on this question, there may be areas where we’re able to achieve some savings. Obviously, travel is likely, if this persists through a significant portion of the year, to be less than it would be otherwise.

We’ll look internally first and go through our budget lines. We are trying to figure out how to deliver some of those things we used to do in person — to do them virtually. For example, our prevention program is designing a series of webinars and also its one-day fairness program and figuring out how it can do that virtually as opposed to doing so in person.

To some degree, we’re moving money. We’re delivering service a different way, as are all other public bodies. In other respects, we may find that we actually don’t spend some money in some pockets, like travel, that we can use to help with some of the other new pressures we have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. That makes sense.

My earlier question — I was just concerned about access to services. I know some of the other officers…. Given the nature of not being able to be physically present at certain parts of the province and whatnot, whether that’s having an impact on your services. Do you normally find that most requests come in anyway via email or via phone or otherwise? The main thing is making sure that people throughout the province, especially rural and remote areas, are getting the access to the Ombudsperson’s office.

J. Chalke: You bet. I mean, our dominant way of people reaching us is by is by phone. We accomplished that transition from office to home seamlessly, so we never had any interruption in our phone service to the public. I think what is of bigger concern to us is that how people find out about us is often with the support of people in the community, say in the not-for-profit sector, and having contact with people who know about us and who can refer someone to contact us. We are concerned that some of those traditional supports aren’t necessarily there.

Last week we wrote to 130 agencies across the province to remind them of our continued availability and, to the degree that they that they are having contact with people in their community who have a complaint about government, that they can reach out to us.

D. Barnett: I have not so much a question but just a comment to Jay. You do a great job for rural British Columbia. I’ve had quite a few conversations over the past few years with you, and any time our constituents have used your office, nothing but kudos. So thank you.

J. Chalke: Thank you. Those kudos are all for the team, but thank you. I’ll pass that along.

[9:35 a.m.]

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

Okay, seeing none, thank you very much, Jay. Please pass along our thanks from the committee to everyone on your team for a job well done so far. Obviously, this is a marathon, not a sprint. We appreciate all the work that you’re doing in pivoting during this crisis and continuing to serve the province in a way that you do, so thanks again.

Thanks, Dave, of course, for all your continued work.

D. Clovechok (Deputy Chair): And a great COVID-19 beard too, Jay.

J. Chalke: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Kate, we’ll take a short recess until the next meeting.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Maureen Baird, the Merit Commissioner, is already in the wings, so we have a choice to continue now, if you would like. I think Dave Van Swieten is also going to continue. He’s going to support Maureen, as well, with the next presentation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great, thank you. Why don’t we go straight in, then?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes, we can do that. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. So we are in presentations from statutory offices. It’s our spring update. With us now we have from the Office of the Merit Commissioner — Maureen Baird, the commissioner.

Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate you being able to come to us this week. We really appreciate that.

If you want to go ahead, please do.

OFFICE OF THE MERIT COMMISSIONER

M. Baird: Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to share with you the work being done by our office to fulfil the mandate of the Merit Commissioner.

I have with me today Dave Van Swieten, our executive director of corporate shared services, who I understand is well known to this committee.

I commenced my duties as Merit Commissioner on January 13, 2020, so this is my inaugural appearance before you. I look forward to a productive dialogue with this committee throughout the period of my appointment.

I think it’s an understatement to say that this has been a very interesting time to be starting a new job. However, the current circumstances in which we find ourselves have shone a light, indeed a laser beam, on the importance of public servants and the critical services they perform on behalf of the people of British Columbia.

The Legislature that created the Office of the Merit Commissioner understood that a non-partisan, merit-based public service is a central attribute of any modern democratic state, which would not be able to function optimally without its presence.

As I undertake my new responsibilities, I’m reminded of the purpose for which this office was created: to oversee the application of the merit principle in appointments to and from the British Columbia public service. The importance of oversight was expanded in 2018 with the additional mandate of review of dismissal processes.

My plan today is to review with you the work that was outlined in the 2020-21 to 2022-23 service plan [audio interrupted]. It’s further my intention to have an annual report tabled later this spring that I’ll be able to review with you in the fall.

By way of background, the Merit Commissioner has three major responsibilities: to conduct random audits of appointments to and within the B.C. public service, to act as a final level of review for appointment decisions at the request of unsuccessful employee applicants and to conduct reviews of processes related to eligible just cause dismissals from the public service.

I’m going to start with the merit performance audit. Currently the work of auditing the appointments goes on continually. We sample quarterly and report on our audits on an interim and final basis each year. The 2018-19 merit performance audit was tabled in March 2020. Our service plan target for this annual reporting was November 2019.

[9:40 a.m.]

As you are aware, my predecessor’s appointment ended on September 15, 2019, and no acting Merit Commissioner was appointed. Therefore, the completion of the annual audit and other statutory obligations that can only be performed by the Merit Commissioner could not be completed until I commenced my duties in mid-January 2020. I’ll say more about that a little bit later.

During the year April 1, 2018, to March 31, 2019, a total of over 7,000 appointments subject to audit were made to and within the British Columbia public service. Of these, the Office of the Merit Commissioner audited 273 randomly selected appointments, which represented over 14,000 applicants. This sample is sufficiently robust to enable us to generalize the result of our audits to the population of all appointments made within the same time per­iod.

The performance audit demonstrated noted improvement this year. The audit process findings, which can be extrapolated to all appointments of a similar type through­out the British Columbia service in the fiscal year, shows 56 percent of appointments were found to be “merit,” up 13 percentage points from 43 percent in the previous two fiscal years. And 3 percent of appointments were found to be “merit not applied,” an improvement over the previous year. Improvement was also noted in fewer observed errors in the sampled appointments as well as improved documentation.

With respect to the qualifications of individuals appointed last year, in nearly all cases, the individuals whose appointments were selected for audit had the qualifications specified as required for the position. In three appointments, there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the individual was qualified. Based on an analysis of the performance audit results, recommendations have been made to deputy ministers and organization heads for their delegated hiring managers to improve the identified weaknesses or errors.

We have recently completed the audited appointments made in the first half of the 2019-2020 fiscal year and reported the results to deputy ministers and the head of the British Columbia Public Service Agency. We are actively engaged in audit appointments made in the last half of the fiscal year.

In respect of the fourth quarter sample, we have diverged from our usual practice of requiring documentation by a fixed date. In recognition of the unusual circumstances whereby employees are working remotely and do not necessarily have access to documentation without the need to make otherwise unscheduled trips to their workplace — and also that work priorities on the front lines should take priority — we have provided flexibility in document production, which may well affect our ability to provide our final merit performance audit report in accordance with the November 2020 date set out in our service plan.

Staffing reviews are the second main area of responsibility for the Office of the Merit Commissioner. When unsuccessful applicants for bargaining unit positions request a review by the Merit Commissioner of an appointment decision, it is the final level of review provided for in the legislation. Such a review follows an internal inquiry by the appropriate deputy minister or organization head.

In 2018-19, we received 25 requests for staffing reviews, the same number as the previous year, which was the high-water mark in these requests. Of the 19 reviews completed, a reconsideration of the appointment decision was directed in three cases, and in the others, the appointment deci­sion was upheld.

The most common ground for a complaint from re­questing employees was the incorrect marking of tests or interview responses. Other common grounds included an unfair or unreasonable assessment of all of the factors of merit, including, most frequently, shortlisting.

The absence of a Merit Commissioner resulted in five staffing reviews being held in advance between September 15 and January 13, 2020, when I commenced. Regrettably, one request for review was withdrawn because the candidate did not want to wait for the appointment of a new Merit Commissioner.

In 2019-20, we received 22 requests for a review. A summary of these requests and the outcome of these reviews is underway, and a report will be released this summer.

Lastly, I want to address dismissal process reviews. In April 2018, the Legislature amended the Public Service Act to extend my mandate to conducting review of dismissal processes and just cause dismissals in the British Columbia public service.

[9:45 a.m.]

Last spring you were updated on the various steps being taken by my office to accommodate the increased workload that comes with that added responsibility. This included employing external consultants to develop the approach to facilitate these reviews.

During the conduct of the initial reviews, it was identified that in order to properly determine whether the dismissal process was consistent with government practices, policies and standards, it was necessary to have access to legal opinions provided to the individuals responsible for the dismissal decision. Prior to this, files for dismissal process reviews were being redacted for any reference to legal advice sought or received. Discussions commenced in July 2018 between my office and the legal services branch to develop a protocol that would permit the sharing of this privileged information.

Issues of disclosure and use of privileged information are complex and sensitive. When my predecessor’s term ended in September 2019, there was a draft protocol for sharing privileged information that was drafted but not yet finalized. Ms. Spencer determined that it should be left to the new commissioner to finalize this critical step.

I’m pleased to advise that a pilot protocol has just been completed and that we are expecting the first unredacted files to be delivered this week. However, it will be important to come to a permanent solution in the near future.

In terms of the number of dismissal process reviews, there were three files received in June and July of 2019 which were the subject of a preliminary review with the redacted information and another five received since that time that have been held in advance, waiting for the agreement on provision of legal advice to be finalized. The work on these files will be undertaken under the pilot protocol now for the first three files and the others under the final protocol as soon as possible. Currently I’m expecting an additional six files prior to the end of December.

A number of factors have contributed to the timing of these files being processed, such as the minimum one-year lag time proscribed in the legislation, the determination that privileged information was necessary to properly complete a review of the process and the period without a Merit Commissioner. It has also resulted in a delay in our office being in a position to report out our findings to the Legislature and to the public. This is not in harmony, in my view, with the goals of timeliness, transparency and accountability, which are central to fulfilling our independent oversight function.

The finalization of a formal protocol for privileged in­formation review of these files and the reporting are a pri­ority for me this year. I will be reporting on this in the fall.

Special audits and studies. The office currently has a special study of eligibility lists planned. I look forward to learning more about the work of the office and the other possibilities for special audits and studies prior to moving forward.

On the issue of budget, while the books are not yet finalized, I wanted to advise you that we have a substantial surplus this past fiscal year of approximately $153,000. The surplus is primarily attributable to the combined effect of the four months with an acting commissioner and an additional four months with no commissioner.

The office was unable to proceed normally during these periods, as long-term commitments related to resources and projects could not be undertaken. For example, there was a position added to the budget for last fiscal year which has not been filled. I am waiting to hire for that position until I’ve had an opportunity to assess the work required to fulfil my mandate.

It is my expectation that the budgeted allocation of $1.36 million for this upcoming fiscal year will be sufficient for our work. My only reservation relates to the work required to process not only the historical dismissal process review files but those which will be received during the year. It is not possible to predict the total number of dismissal review files that will be received. What is important, however, is that they’re reviewed and reported in a timely way.

I see 2020 as a year of transition. There is a learning curve for me, there is some backlog in terms of dismissal review files, and there is the ongoing work of the office.

[9:50 a.m.]

Having said that, when I accepted this position, it was and it remains my intention to add value to the work done in the office and to maintain the high quality of work being done and to provide vision looking forward. That remains my goal, and as I integrate myself into the work and the cycles of the office, it will be a priority.

Lastly, I want to say that I am the beneficiary of a very dedicated, committed and hard-working skilled staff who managed the office without a commissioner for four months. In these difficult times, they are again supporting me and the work of the office, going above and beyond, so that together we’re able to fulfil the important mandate of the office.

In conclusion, it’s still very early days for me in the capacity of Merit Commissioner. I’m grateful I have dedicated staff that have supported my orientation to date. I look forward to gaining further knowledge of processes, building relationships with key figures in the British Columbia public service and delivering on a strategic plan for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, including my assessment of the office’s priorities.

Thank you for your time. I’m pleased to take any questions that committee members may have at this time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Maureen. On behalf of the committee, I do want to welcome you to your position.

M. Baird: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): As you said, it’s a very strange time to be taking on a new role, especially given taking on the position where there was already a backlog and a lot of things for you to learn as well. We all very much appreciate you stepping in and taking on this important role and doing it in this environment that we’re all living in.

I would like to ask how you’re managing, especially given how new you are to the role, given the pandemic, in terms of the staff and how it’s working and whether or not there have been any adverse impacts on your commission and your ability to deal with the jobs at hand. Have you been able to make that transition?

M. Baird: Yes. Well, there was originally, I would say, some disruption while the staff acclimatized themselves to working remotely. There were some issues with document distribution because of the sensitive personal information that we deal with. We wanted to be very careful about how that personal information was dealt with.

I’m very fortunate in that I have a very cohesive and skilled office, and they’ve managed very well. I don’t anticipate any problems going forward. The transition has now been made, and the office is working. I consider it to be something of a well-oiled machine, and I don’t foresee any problems in that regard.

M. Dean: Welcome, Maureen. Good to see you again.

Just a brief comment, actually, to let you know that the gender equity office does provide gender-based analysis plus training. That might be something you might want to look into for you and your staff, if your staff hasn’t already taken that.

M. Baird: Thank you for raising that. We are aware of that in our office. My director of audit and review has completed the training. I have done some reading on it, and I’m very interested in it.

Our office has actually started to make some changes in terms of the language in the reports we issue. Our office is committed to having everyone do that training, and I will, of course, be doing it myself as well.

M. Dean: Wonderful. Thanks, Maureen.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Any other questions from members at all? I’m looking around. I think we’re good.

Thank you very much for your first report. I know it’s early days, but we really look forward to getting to know you over the next coming months and look forward to your fall presentation.

M. Baird: I look forward to it as well. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, I’d like to have a motion to move in camera.

N. Simons: So moved.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 9:55 a.m. to 9:58 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are now back in session.

Thank you very much, Members. This was an interesting week, and I appreciate everybody coming out.

I also wanted to particularly thank Kate and Karan and everybody at the Clerk’s office for continuing to be amazing, as you always are, but especially under these circumstances. It seems like we’ve had many challenges over the last year, and they keep rolling, and so do you. Thank you so much for everything.

Also, thank you to Hansard for making this possible. I know that a lot of work had to be done to make sure that we could do this through Zoom and through digital. People behind the scenes often don’t get thanked enough, but thank you so much to Hansard and everybody who made it happen.

There are tons of thumbs-up from the members on that.

Do the members have anything further?

Okay, seeing none, thanks again. A motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 9:59 a.m.