The committee met at 9:02 a.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Approval of Agenda and Minutes

Mr. Speaker: Good morning, everyone. Let’s start the meeting.

The first item on the agenda is the approval of the draft agenda, which you all received earlier. Any changes to the agenda? None.

Could I have a motion to approve the agenda, as circulated.

S. Cadieux: So moved.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: The second item on our agenda is the review and approval of the draft minutes of the December 21 meeting of the LAMC.

Any changes to the minutes?

B. D’Eith: I just had a question, Kate. The one motion about accepting all things that the Clerk did during the intermediate period during the election — we’re still discussing the severance issue. I’m wondering if that…. It was not articulated that some of the decisions that were made were still being discussed — that one, in particular.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes. Thank you, Bob.

As I understand it, the materials that were the basis for that motion, as considered at the last meeting, related primarily to the expenditure of transition allowance payments to non-returning members and IT-related expenditures.

I’ll look to my colleagues. If there were other pockets of expenditures that were also included.

Artour, is that correct?

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant, Parliamentary Services): Yes. The other item was the matter with relation to the constituency office lease in the Cowichan Valley. It’s just those three matters that were outlined in the report.

B. D’Eith: Great. Thank you for that clarification.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. If there are no changes to the minutes, could I have a motion to approve the minutes of December 21, please.

M. Babchuk: I’ll move the minutes.

[9:05 a.m.]

Mr. Speaker: Okay, so moved.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: The No. 3 item is an update from the Clerk.

Kate, please.

Clerk’s Update

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Good morning, Members. Good morning, everyone. Very nice to see you all today. I appreciate, as always, the opportunity to provide a brief update to committee members this morning.

Before I begin, I would like to introduce two individuals. First, I would like to introduce to you Jamie Hanly, our new chief of human resources here at the Legislative Assembly. You may recall that I did mention at the last meeting that Jamie had joined our executive team. Unfortunately, she was not able to attend that meeting, so this is her first opportunity to do so.

Jamie is in a new position that was established following an administrative restructuring at the assembly, which I initiated in March of 2020, shortly after my appointment as Clerk. I’m very grateful to Jamie for bringing the HR expertise that she does to our table. She has been a wonderful addition to our team. It’s great to have her with us this morning.

Also joining us today for the first time is Michael Pickup, Auditor General of British Columbia. Members have already had an opportunity, at the previous meeting, to meet Russ Jones and Paul Nyquist from the Office of the Auditor General. It’s wonderful to have Michael participating today for the first time. So welcome to him.

Our external auditors, of course, play a very important role. We’re happy to have them join us today and to share more information about the work that they undertake for the Legislative Assembly at a future meeting.

I’ll begin by covering a number of items in my update this morning. I’ll begin with an update on the workplace review. Returning members of the committee, Mr. Begg and Ms. Furstenau, will know that in the fall of 2019, following a competitive bidding opportunity, an external firm named ADR Education was retained to undertake an independent workplace review of the Legislative Assembly administration.

Their report on the workplace review process was released on July 2, 2020. I presented a response and an action plan to their report to your committee and all Legislative Assembly employees in August of last year.

Since that opportunity to prepare the initial response and action plan, as was presented to the committee, members will know that a number of unforeseen events transpired at the Legislative Assembly. This included the unanticipated timing of the 42nd provincial general election as well as a network outage that occurred in November and the many preparations required for the opening of the 42nd parliament in December.

These events required our administrative team to re­deploy resources to operationalize critical supports in a number of priority areas. That, unfortunately, led to some missed targets, as outlined in our initial workplace review response and action plan. I did want all members and all Legislative Assembly employees, as well, to know that we remain fully committed to the commitments that we made in the response to the workplace review and, certainly, are committed to strengthening and bettering the Legislative Assembly as a workplace.

I will be providing an update to your committee by way of email, as well as to all Legislative Assembly employees, later this week. I look forward to discussing our progress to date with respect to the workplace review as well as the goals that we have set for completion of our response. We can cover that at the next meeting of the committee.

On a different topic, constituency office leases. I wanted to touch briefly on that topic. Last week I became aware of a gap in communication that had transpired with respect to members’ constituency office leases for the duration of the 42nd parliament. I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize to members for the manner in which we undertook administrative steps with respect to constituency office leases without direction from your committee or one of its subcommittees.

[9:10 a.m.]

Yesterday afternoon I sent an email to all members and constituency offices on this topic clarifying, I hope, the status of the request from financial services to receive confirmation from each member with respect to their constituency office lease. Simply, the request is to receive an email from each returning member who has a continuing lease that is still in effect.

Our financial services team is, indeed, processing office rent payments. They would very much appreciate your assistance to help them ensure that they have documentation to confirm the continuity of payment amounts and the appropriate vendors for any returning members with continuing leases. We simply need to hear from each of you to ensure that those leases are, indeed, still active and continuing until they expire.

Of course, we have learned many lessons from the recent electoral transition period. We are in regular communication with caucuses to get feedback on how things are going and where there is an area for improvement. I’m certainly looking forward to undertaking additional work in this area, constituency office leases, with the subcommittee on administration and operations with a view to bringing recommendations to the full committee well in time for the next general election cycle and transition period.

I will also touch briefly on the topic of information technology. I want to acknowledge that we continue to have ongoing and significant challenges with respect to our distribution and deployment of new IT devices and other equipment at the present time. I recognize that this is rightly causing much frustration for members and others across the Legislative Assembly.

The IT staff have been continuing to diligently work long hours along with the office of the chief information officer and third-party contractors. I’m particularly grateful to Natalie Branch from the OCIO as well as our third-party partners who have assisted the IT staff.

Our users have been patient, but we still have many hurdles to overcome. To that end, I would like to address this topic in more detail, if time permits, later today in the in-camera discussion. I will note that we have been in touch with caucus chairs and a number of the senior caucus staff to establish an IT resumption group which I hope will provide a helpful venue for regular updates on the status of IT work and also help the administration ensure that we have a clear understanding of any new or evolving pressure points as they affect members, caucuses and constituency offices.

As I mentioned at our last meeting, I look forward to providing this committee with a full report on the network outage and the ensuing IT challenges at a future meeting. It is timely, I think, that the Legislative Assembly is recruiting at this time a chief information officer. I look forward to working with that individual and assembly staff in conducting a full post-incident assessment, the results of which will be presented to your committee.

Clearly, there are a lot of areas of improvement and a lot of lessons learned to date. We are going to continue our work until we have this matter resolved at the very first opportunity.

In closing, I’ll just mention a final update on the topic of a new crosswalk adjacent to the parliament buildings: the crossing at Menzies and Quebec Streets. Members of this committee in the last parliament may recall that there has been an interest amongst many on the committee in establishing a safe crosswalk crossing from the main portion of the legislative precinct, across Menzies Street and towards the Hotel Grand Pacific and Confederation Garden. It has been flagged as a potential safety issue for some time.

Members will be happy to know that the city of Victoria has facilitated the installation and completion of this new crosswalk. I wanted to extend my appreciation to the city of Victoria for assisting us with this important work and, in particular, to Ross Kenney, manager of transportation operations and construction at the city of Victoria, for ensuring that this work was completed. It is greatly appreciated by all.

With that, I’d be happy to answer any questions from members at this point. As I mentioned, I look forward to an opportunity, if time permits, to further address IT matters during the in-camera session.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? None. Okay.

Personnel Matters

Mr. Speaker: Let’s move on to the next item, personnel matters, which we have to discuss in camera.

May I have a motion to proceed in camera, please.

G. Begg: So moved.

Mr. Speaker: The motion has been moved.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 9:15 a.m. to 10:38 a.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: We are now in public session.

Any other business?

I don’t see any hands up. It appears no other motions or issues need to be dealt with.

Motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 10:39 a.m.