The committee met at 8:31 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 to order on Friday, September 18, 2020. We are once again meeting virtually.

I’d like to say that I’m on the beautiful territory of the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations.

We have members from all over the province who are meeting today. Today we are having a presentation from Elections B.C. in regards to supplementary funding requests.

Anton, welcome — and your staff. If you would like to take it away, please do.

Supplementary Funding Requests

ELECTIONS B.C.

A. Boegman: Thank you very much. Good morning, Mr. Chair, Deputy Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to meet via Zoom today to discuss Elections B.C.’s additional funding requirements to maintain election readiness during the pandemic.

I am joined on this video call by Yvonne Koehn, deputy chief electoral officer for corporate services; by Charles Porter, deputy chief electoral officer for electoral finance and operations; as well, by Tanya Ackinclose, director of finance.

This is our third meeting with the committee under this new model, as we met twice during April, first to discuss the supplementary funding necessary this fiscal year to begin implementation of the voting modernization provisions of Bill 43, the Election Amendment Act, 2019. Then we met again for our annual spring meeting.

At those meetings, I described Elections B.C.’s initial contingency planning for administering an election under COVID-19 public health restrictions and indicated that there would be additional costs because of required safety protocols and related considerations. This meeting is as a result of the conclusion of our contingency planning and will include a discussion of our requirements to maintain electoral readiness in the current environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has materially affected the mandate of Elections B.C. Significant changes and mitigation measures are needed in this environment to ensure that professional election management can take place and to meet the public health requirements necessary for a safe and accessible election. This means that to maintain electoral readiness, Elections B.C. must adapt processes, purchase safety supplies and equipment, and conduct additional preparatory activities.

Since the onset of the pandemic, Elections B.C. has engaged with the office of the provincial health officer to better understand the impact and trajectory of COVID-19 and how it will affect the administration of a provincial election. It is clear that the next by-election or general election in B.C., regardless of whether it is held in 2020 or 2021, will take place during a phase of this pandemic.

Millions of British Columbians participate in provincial elections. During a pandemic, without mitigation measures and safe voting protocols, an election would represent a public health risk. That is why we’ve adapted many of our election processes to keep voters and election officials safe as well as to maintain accessibility to the ballot box and the integrity of the overall electoral process.

Our approach is based on best practices from those jurisdictions that have administered elections during the pandemic and includes insight gained from voter surveys. Our safe voting plans have been reviewed by the provincial health officer, WorkSafeBC and other health care professionals. Our preparations reflect how the pandemic has changed how business interactions take place, requiring longer lead times and additional protocols for facility access, inspection and rental.

Elections B.C. has used the public health framework of physical distancing, engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment as a means of assessing our electoral readiness, processes and identifying where adaptations are necessary for reducing COVID-19 transmission hazards.

[8:35 a.m.]

This framework has been applied to all elements of electoral management, including how electoral offices and voting places are set up; the flow of voters and roles of election officials; and the usual touchpoints in candidate nominations, voting and counting.

We’ve also focused on increasing accessibility and our capacity for remote voting options, such as vote by mail. We have reviewed and updated our public communications plans to reflect “Vote safely” messaging, while still providing the information that voters need to know about where, when and how they can vote. You will find that all of these elements are reflected in this budget request.

To the specifics. Pages 1 and 2 of the cover memo in the budget proposal document describe the background, context and other key aspects of the request, with additional detail broken down by STOB on page 3. The total supplementary budget request for fiscal 2020-21 is $5.7 million. The primary components of the supplemental budget request are as follows.

For $2.665 million, the purchase of sufficient quantities of personal protective equipment necessary to keep election officials and voters safe at Elections B.C. headquarters, at district electoral offices and in voting places. This equipment includes portable rigid safety barriers for service delivery in offices and at voting stations, masks for officials and voters, face shields for those officials who must be mobile in a voting place, as well as gloves, hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. There is significant cost associated with this item because of the scale of supplies necessary to equip the province.

A further $1.337 million is needed for building and occupancy costs, including the rental of additional warehouse space for the storage of pandemic election supplies and funding for one month’s rental of 88 district electoral offices, a readiness measure that is prudent in a high-risk pandemic election scenario. The additional warehouse space will be retained by Elections B.C. and will become our primary warehouse location following the expiry of the lease for our current facility this year.

Securing a potential office space prior to a potential on-demand election during the pandemic is essential to create a stable base of operations for local staff. The pandemic has resulted in conditions in which rapid access to and the rental of space, even of a temporary nature, is not possible. It was also a best practice in provincial elections prior to 2005. Together, these two elements total just over $4 million, or 70 percent of the total supplemental budget.

The request also includes $678,000 for professional services. This is mainly for the necessary changes to election advertising to incorporate pandemic safety images and messaging. As part of our previous readiness activities, advertising shells had been created. However, these are not appropriate in the current environment. The professional services budget element also includes funding for legal fees for a review of anticipated pandemic adaptations to electoral processes.

A further $537,000 is required for office expenses, in­cluding the purchase of paper and envelopes to meet the anticipated significant increase in demand for vote-by-mail packages in a pandemic election. Voter surveys conducted over the past several months have consistently indicated that approximately 35 percent of British Columbians would want to use this remote voting option in a pandemic election.

Also required is $413,000 for information technology expenses. This includes funding for laptop computers and peripherals that would enable the establishment of additional advance voting opportunities. Being able to spread voters across more voting opportunities is a key component of our safe voting plans. The IT budget request also includes funding for necessary modifications to our vote-by-mail systems to streamline the receipt and fulfilment of voting package requests.

The remaining amount in the budget request is for $80,000 for additional temporary staff at headquarters and for FTE overtime. I would like to emphasize that these new positions are not permanent ongoing staff for Elections B.C. but, rather, temporary project staff necessary to support effective implementation of our pandemic readiness activities. They will be working to support the development of pandemic processes as well as operational and training materials.

[8:40 a.m.]

In conclusion, I would like to re-emphasize that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly and materially impacted Elections B.C.’s mandate. The items included in this supplemental budget request are absolutely necessary for Elections B.C. to be able to maintain electoral readiness during the pandemic and to enable us to implement safe voting plans if required to do so. The $5,700,000 supplementary funding request for this fiscal year is a one-time funding request and can be characterized as a pre-purchase of election supplies and services. The amount of this budget will form part of the overall budget for the 42nd provincial election, whether that event occurs in fiscal year 2020-21 or in 2021-22.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to appear before the committee and to make this presentation. Mr. Chair, I’d now like to turn the proceedings back over to you for comments and questions from committee members. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Anton, and thank you to all of your staff and everyone from Elections B.C. for all the hard work you’ve done to make sure our public is safe and will continue to be safe in the event of an election. I know it’s been a lot of work for everyone, so thanks again for everything you’ve done.

From the candidates’ point of view, I know there are some candidates…. I notice that you’ve taken some steps to try and not have the paper signing for everybody, so that further helps people not put the public at risk, having to go get original signatures. I think all of the members would say thank you for that and other measures you’re taking to keep the members safe. So thank you for that.

A. Boegman: You’re welcome.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Do we have questions from members?

Mitzi, please go ahead.

M. Dean: Thanks so much for your presentation and all the work that I know must have gone into just all of your preparedness. I’m just wondering. Is there anything we have learned from the New Brunswick election?

A. Boegman: That’s a great question. I have had some conversations in the lead-up to the election with Chief Electoral Officer Kim Poffenroth there, and I actually have a call scheduled with her later today to get her first take on lessons learned and any gotchas that they might have had.

Obviously, they were very busy during their event. I think the geographic locations are different in terms of, you know, there was an Atlantic bubble and those sorts of things. But many of the processes that we are looking at putting in place are very similar to what they had. They also experienced a significant increase in vote by mail.

Their model is somewhat different in terms of the locations that they use. For example, they do not use schools as voting places due to, I suppose, long-standing challenges with the various school boards, and they don’t have that legislated in their act like we do here in B.C. They didn’t have the similar work that we have done with schools to integrate our safe voting plan, with the safe schools plans for use on weekends when the students aren’t in class.

Long story short, there are lessons learned to be had. I’m having that conversation with her this afternoon. We’ll make sure that we can incorporate any key issues from them into our plans and operations.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Wonderful.

R. Coleman: I’m befuddled with this one this morning. I read the presentation. I’m very familiar with states of emergency extended by British Columbia. I don’t see the immediacy of this ask unless the Chief Electoral Officer knows there’s going to be an election that hasn’t been announced yet this fall.

More than that, it befuddles me because, quite frankly, in a state of emergency, the continued access to dollars [audio interrupted] that are unusual as a result of a state of emergency is already there. It’s a $15 billion deficit that we as legislators approved. As a state of emergency, my experience is that if something comes along and it needs the dollars, it’s pretty simple to apply it.

[8:45 a.m.]

At this stage of the game, I am more inclined to wonder if this is something coming as a result of rumour or information that the Chief Electoral Officer and their office has, as a result of what I’m reading in the media as possibilities. Quite frankly, my expectation would be that when an election is called, if dollars were needed for this sort of thing under a state of emergency, the request would go to a different place, not to the Legislative Assembly.

A. Boegman: I can’t say. I don’t know that there will be an election. I’m responding to the same sources that are out there and the same information that is out there.

My mandate requires that I be ready if an election is called. I do have statutory spending already, under the act, to spend as necessary to administer the act. My position is that in the interests of transparency with legislators, when we’re spending money, it’s appropriate for me to come to this committee to make a presentation as to what we were spending it on and why.

That’s the reason why I’ve gone ahead with this request. But as I’ve said, I do have statutory spending authority to spend to administer an election if one is required.

R. Coleman: In addition to that, Anton, could you tell me: what inventory sits in government for PPE today? I would have expected that a lot of this inventory that you’re talking about would be there as a result of the state of emergency, given that they would be analyzing what the supply chain would be short, medium and long term. I expect that’s what expectations would be, because that’s how I would have seen it done when I had to deal with provincial states of emergency.

If you could tell me…. I could find out back then how many mats we had, how many sandbags we had — how many of everything we had. What do we have in inventory?

A. Boegman: I don’t know what government has in total inventory. I know that the source of much of the supplies that we have procured has come from the government stock and from the governmental portal and the procurement efforts that government was doing.

There were some items that we have purchased, such as the acrylic barriers. These ones were not available in government sources, so we went to the market for those. But the majority of items have come directly from the government stock. If you’d like a detail of that….

Tanya, I believe that if you can provide the specific numbers for Rich Coleman, that would be appreciated.

R. Coleman: Well, I’m looking at your specific numbers. I’m wondering what you’ve done to find out what matches up within government to your specific numbers….

A. Boegman: Do you mean in terms of the costs of the items, or in terms of the volumes of things that we’re purchasing?

R. Coleman: Volumes of inventory, yeah, and costs.

A. Boegman: The items that we have purchased are obviously based on…. The numbers are based on what our plans estimate for use in a provincial election. So use in voting places and use in electoral offices, in having a number of masks to be available to provide to voters if they don’t have one and they would like to use one. Sanitizer for the number of voting places that we have. Wipes for the number of stations that are going to be there. Gloves.

It’s all based on the numbers that we require for an election process. When we identified what numbers we needed, we approached the provincial government supply portal to see whether those supplies were available within the government portal and whether we could have access to them for an election — to put into our interim warehouse.

That discussion was held. We were able to access some of the requirements through that. There’s a chargeback for that, which is reflected in the budget numbers that we have. There were other items that they did not have that we, then, needed to procure.

R. Coleman: Have you purchased anything yet?

A. Boegman: Yes, we have.

R. Coleman: How much have you spent, then?

A. Boegman: We’ve spent all of the money on the PPE.

R. Coleman: So the money you’re asking for today has been spent?

A. Boegman: The money has been spent. That is correct.

R. Coleman: Okay.

R. Leonard: I just want to say thank you very much for all of your preparation work. Although, as Rich says, it is a state of emergency, it’s a very long emergency, and we know what the risks are. Being prepared for it is, I think, very prudent, and I think will help give the citizens of British Columbia confidence that our democracy is running smoothly and, as you say, safely.

[8:50 a.m.]

I think the electorate will be reassured by knowing all of the background work that you’ve done. I know we saw this document, originally, in the summer. I know you’ve been working on it for a long time, and I want to just thank you all for the work that you’ve done.

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

Seeing none, I wanted to thank you very much again, Anton and everyone, for all the work that you’ve done. Just to echo what Ronna-Rae was saying, this work has been going on for — what? — seven months now. This is part of the culmination of all of those efforts.

We appreciate you coming to the committee. I know that you do have the statutory authority, but we also very much appreciate the transparency, as you said, in coming forward. It gives you, also, an opportunity to share some of the steps that you’re taking with the public. Thank you very much.

With that, if I could ask Elections B.C. to leave so we can go in camera.

Do I have a motion to go in camera, please? Okay, let’s go in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 8:52 a.m. to 9:18 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

Votes on Supplementary Funding

ELECTIONS B.C.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, we are out of in camera. We are back in regular session.

There are three motions on the table: two in regards to the presentation from Elections B.C. and one in regards to a procedure in terms of meeting and deliberating on budgets of the nine statutory offices.

Kate, if we could start with the first motion.

If we could have someone move that, please.

R. Leonard: I move:

[That the Committee recommend that Elections BC be granted access to supplementary funding up to $5,700,000 for operating expenditures in 2020/21 for pandemic election preparedness.]

R. Coleman: I’d like to speak to the motion before we pass it, please, on the record.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Do we do that?

R. Coleman: Sure you can.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, go ahead. We haven’t done that in the past, but yeah, go ahead.

R. Coleman: Well, in any select standing committee I’ve been on in the past, you can always put your thoughts on the record.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem, Rich. Go ahead.

R. Coleman: I think there’s a reluctance on our part to actually support the motion for a number of reasons — not because of the safety of British Columbians but because the money is halfway spent already. And I feel that this is sort of a bit of a precedent for a committee to have to do it this way.

However, given the fact that we don’t want people to think that they wouldn’t be safe during an election, I think we are able to support the motion and go ahead. I think it should just be recognized by the committee, though, that there is a state of emergency in place. The funding is there, and this particular statutory office of the Legislature has an access to money that, usually, others don’t.

I realize he’s trying to do this from the perspective of making the public be informed, and I’ve accepted all of that. I’m reluctant to just do this because money has been spent, but then on looking back and thinking, “Well, we’ve gone through this discussion,” I think I can support the motion.

[9:20 a.m.]

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

Did anyone else like to speak to the motion at all?

D. Barnett: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I agree with Rich. In many ways, I feel uncomfortable at this point in time because of all the things that are happening out here in the province today. I think safety is the number one for our citizens, and if it wasn’t for that fact, I certainly would not be supporting this motion. But the safety of people is so important.

When it comes to democracy, we all believe in democracy. I sincerely hope that we remember that in the future.

N. Simons: I just want to say I recognize the hesitation, but I also think that this is an important acknowledgment of the work that Elections B.C. has done to be prepared for any eventuality, which I think is their role. Despite the fact that they have access to these funds, whether or not this motion passes, I think this is an acknowledgment of that work, and it’s also a reflection of our concern about the safety of British Columbians. I think that the support is warranted, so I’m pleased to hear that it’ll be supported.

D. Clovechok (Deputy Chair): Thanks for that, Nick. I just reflect what Rich was saying too. There’s something about this that just does not sit well with me. But given the fact that they’re well into the process and, certainly, the public safety is paramount, yeah, I can support this too.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Would anyone else like to speak to the motion?

Motion approved.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Second motion.

R. Leonard: I move:

[That the Chair advise the Minister of Finance, as Chair of Treasury Board, of the recommendation adopted earlier today and that the Committee’s recommendation be formally recorded and included in its forthcoming report on its annual review of statutory office budgets.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Would anyone like to speak to the motion?

Motion approved.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Third motion.

N. Simons: I’ll do it. I move:

[That the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services authorize the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly to invite Statutory Offices to undertake an annual process for their budgets for the 2021/22 and 2022/23 fiscal years in conjunction with this year’s statutory office budget process; and, should a provincial general election be underway prior to the completion of the fall 2020 statutory office budget process, that the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly provide guidance to Statutory Offices regarding the 2021/22 and 2022/23 fiscal years to facilitate completion of the Committee’s statutory office budget role in a new Parliament.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Would anyone like to speak to this motion?

Motion approved.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

Kate, is there anything else that we need to deal with today at all?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): No, not at this time. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and Members.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I wanted to thank everyone for the very fulsome discussion on all of this and, of course, everything that you’ve done over the last year. It’s certainly been a journey. We haven’t had much of a chance to talk about the budget review process, and I wanted to, again, thank all of you for your amazing efforts. The fact we had a two-volume report was quite amazing. It was an amazing amount of work, and I know everyone just dug in and did what they had to do.

So thank you so much to the members and to Kate and to staff and everyone for everything you do. And of course, thank you, Hansard, for everything that you do always.

Was there anything else anyone would like to say?

N. Simons: Thank you, Chair.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Nick.

N. Simons: And thank you, Deputy Chair, too. Good job.

D. Clovechok (Deputy Chair): Thank you all.

N. Simons: I enjoy working with all of you. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Great. Could I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 9:25 a.m.