The committee met at 9:32 a.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Approval of Agenda and Minutes

Mr. Speaker: I just want to say this before we get into our agenda — which, as you have seen, is a very long agenda. We’ll be stopping for lunch at 12 noon, but in the meantime, at any time, if any one of you, including staff, wants to have a break, let me know, and then we will pause for five minutes or whatever time may be required.

There are a number of decision items we have in front of us. When the time comes to deal with a motion, I’ll ask Artour or other staff members to put that on the screen, and the person who is moving the motion should read it so that people, those who are watching, can hear it. Sometimes it’s not visible, so if you read it into the record, that will be wonderful.

Okay, any questions so far? No.

With that, we will begin with approval of the draft agenda. Any changes to the agenda? None.

May I have a motion to approve the agenda as circulated?

It has been moved and seconded.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Now, the draft minutes from February 2 were circulated. Any changes to the minutes of February 2? No.

May I have a motion to approve the minutes as circulated?

It has been moved and seconded.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Then item 3. We will receive an update from the Clerk.

Kate, please proceed.

Clerk’s Update

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and good morning, Members.

[9:35 a.m.]

I will not provide a lengthy and detailed update this morning, given the extent of the discussion still ahead of us this morning and this afternoon. I did want to take this moment, at the outset of our meeting, to express appreciation to Hilary Woodward, Michael Burke and the financial services team for all of their hard work in the last few weeks of preparing all of the materials for today’s meeting.

It’s been an enormous effort and has taken a great deal of time. We’re all very appreciative of their assistance throughout the day today. So thank you to Hilary and the team.

That’s it for now, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Speaker: That was quick. We like those kinds of reports.

Okay, any discussion or questions? None.

Let’s move to item 4, capital budget request ratification vote.

Kate, please walk the committee through this.

Capital Budget Request
for Information Technology Equipment

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d be happy to. Members will know that we have been working very diligently to provide refreshed IT equipment to all members of the Legislative Assembly community, including members and caucus staff.

We’re projecting a need to secure additional capital investments to provide laptops and other equipment, particularly to caucus users, with the opportunity to secure this equipment prior to the end of this fiscal year.

I corresponded with members of this committee on February 8 to ensure that we had, in conjunction with the capital approval requirements and policy, members’ support of this committee to make this significant capital expenditure, which was a total of $230,114.85. I was very grateful to the members of this committee for their timely response to that email request.

This agenda item is an opportunity to formally ratify that decision so it can be duly noted in the minutes of today’s meeting. So there is a motion that is visible on the screen. If members have any questions, I’d be happy to take them from you. If not, the suggestion to ratify that decision by way of the motion available at this point. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. Artour, would you please put that motion on the screen?

May I have a motion, as outlined in the briefing notes?

B. D’Eith: Mr. Speaker, did you want someone to read it, as you’d mentioned?

Mr. Speaker: Yes, please. Somebody who’s moving it should read it.

B. D’Eith: I could read it if you’d like.

Mr. Speaker: Yeah, please.

B. D’Eith: I move that the information technology capital expenditure of $230,114.85 be approved as presented.

Mr. Speaker: That’s been seconded.

Motion approved.

Caucus Capital Budgets

Mr. Speaker: Okay, the next item is going to be No. 5, caucus capital budgets recommendation from the subcommittee on finance and audit.

Artour, could you please assist the committee?

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant, Parliamentary Services): Yes. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Members, this is a recommendation coming from the subcommittee on finance and audit, which met last week and considered the capital expenditures for the Legislative Assembly for the coming fiscal year. As part of that discussion, the subcommittee asked that consideration be given to increasing the overall capital budget allocated to caucuses. The expenditure is $75,000 in previous fiscal years up to and including the current fiscal year, and that amount has not increased since fiscal year 2015-16.

Recognizing the fact that the capital dollar threshold is $1,000 and that capital costs — just the costs, generally, of goods — continue to increase…. It’s pushing more and more expenditures over that $1,000 threshold. Recognizing that, there is a proposal from the subcommittee that the overall capital budget for caucuses be increased to $115,000. And there is a proposal that each caucus receive a baseline of $15,000 in capital funds and that the remaining $70,000, which is about $814 per member, be divided amongst the members — 86 members, not including the Speaker — using the formula that’s presented in the briefing note.

That recommendation has come forward from the subcommittee for your consideration, as outlined in the briefing note.

[9:40 a.m.]

Mr. Speaker: Okay, any discussion or questions?

If not, can we have a motion to….

Yes, Peter?

P. Milobar: That’s okay.

Mr. Speaker: Oh, you have a question?

P. Milobar: No. Thanks, Mr. Chair. I was just going to say something, but it’s fine.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. Great.

May I have a motion, as outlined in the briefing notes?

G. Begg: I’ll move it.

Mr. Speaker: Moved and seconded.

Motion approved.

Amendment to Policy on
Caucus Funding for Leader’s Office

Mr. Speaker: Now we go to item 6 on the agenda, which is an amendment to policy 7525 — caucus funding, leader’s office — a recommendation from the administration and operations subcommittee.

Artour again, please.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Mr. Speaker, again, this is a recommendation from the subcommittee on administration and operations. This one has been pending since last May. We didn’t have an opportunity to bring it forward yet. It’s just an amendment to the caucus funding policy for leaders’ offices to replace the section that currently states that there is no central budget funding for office space in Vancouver for the Leader of the Third Party or for additional parties, should they exist, in the Legislative Assembly in the future.

It’s just to state that the Leader of the Third Party or of an additional caucus with official party status can make a request to that effect to the subcommittee on finance and audit for consideration in the future. That’s the recommendation that’s coming forward, from the subcommittee on administration and operations, for a decision by the committee.

Mr. Speaker: Okay, any discussion?

Hon. M. Farnworth: I’ll move.

Mr. Speaker: All right. Mike Farnworth has moved it. Seconder? Seconded.

Motion approved.

Retraining Allowance
for Former Members

Mr. Speaker: Let’s move to item 7, then, the retraining allowance for former members, a recommendation from the subcommittee on administration and operations.

Hilary, would you please help us in that.

H. Woodward: In this particular document, the motion refers to a request for modifications to the retraining allowance policy, following a review of the policy by both the subcommittee on administration and operations and this committee. The training allowance, up to $9,000, reimbursable upon receipt, is available for former members and is part of the transitional assistance program. The key changes include the removal of the word “career” from the retraining allowance in recognition that training requests by former members may be in support of work opportunities in non-governmental organizations.

There’s an easing of limitations on certain types of training, such as second-language training. There’s clarification of eligible and ineligible expenses for this allowance and the introduction of a pre-approval form, as well as a process for former members to appeal decisions by the executive financial officer made in relation to approving training requests.

The motion is to make a request for these modifications to be put in place.

M. Babchuk: Mr. Speaker, I’ll move that the revised retraining allowance for former members be approved as presented.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Any seconder? It has been seconded.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you, Hilary.

Now we go to item 8 on your agenda, which is accompanying person travel provisions, again, as recommended. The recommendation came from the subcommittee on administration and operations.

Artour, please assist the committee.

Accompanying Person Travel Provisions

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Mr. Speaker, the matter that the subcommittee on administration and operations considered specifically under accompanying person travel provisions is the requirement, as set out in the “Members’ guide to policy and resources,” that an accompanying person travelled with the member. The recommendation that’s coming forward is to modify the language and just require that the accompanying person’s travel overlaps significantly with the member’s.

There’s also a recommendation with respect to caucuses — where the position of legislative assistant may not exist — for the caucus to be able to designate another position within the caucus to be able to undertake eligible accompanying person travel. That’s the essence of the recommendation coming forward from the subcommittee. I’ll just go down to the motion.

[9:45 a.m.]

Mr. Speaker: Any discussion or questions for clarification?

If not, somebody can move the motion or read it into the record, please.

S. Cadieux: I move that the accompanying person travel provisions be modified in the “Members’ guide to policy and resources” to allow for an accompanying person’s tra­vel to overlap significantly with the member’s, rather than necessitate travel together with the member, and to allow for a designated caucus position other than legislative assistant, where such a position does not exist, to undertake eligible accompanying person travel.

Motion approved.

Holiday Card Postage

Mr. Speaker: Okay, No. 9, members’ holiday card postage. We are dealing with a recommendation from the subcommittee on administration and operations. Kate, please walk the committee through it.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Members of the subcommittee on administration and operations considered a briefing note with respect to simplifying reimbursements to constituency offices to cover the cost of holiday card postage.

Originally, that had been a service provided through the Office of the Speaker. It makes good sense, I think, to facilitate members’ business with this new streamlined approach, which will provide, upon request from each office, a $200-per-member allowance to cover any holiday card postage. The result of this decision will be retroactive for the fiscal year 2020-21 and on a go-forward basis for future fiscal years. The subcommittee also amended the original proposal from $100, raising it to $200, in light of usage and demand for holiday cards.

I’m happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any discussion or questions?

If not, I will request a member to move the motion and read it into the record, please.

G. Begg: I move that effective fiscal year 2020-2021, a holiday card postage allowance of $200 per member be provided to each member’s constituency office, as required, from the members services budget.

Motion approved.

B. D’Eith: Can I ask a quick question? Sorry, I was trying to ask a question on that last one. It says effective 2021. We just had 2021, so is it retroactive and we get 200 bucks? Is that the deal?

Okay. I just wanted to check.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes, it’s upon request. Please advise financial services if you had incurred expenses with respect to postage in the current fiscal, and they will ensure that your constituency office allowance is adjusted.

B. D’Eith: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: Anything arising out of that question? If not, then the motion as we passed it will stand.

Okay, we’ll move to item 10.

Kate and your team, please.

Vote 1 Budget 2021-2022

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Members, for the opportunity to present to you on the Vote 1 budget submission for the 2021-22 fiscal year. This agenda item, of course, will be the main focus of our deliberations today, and we certainly welcome your questions and comments along the way.

To begin, I will be making some opening comments. We will be initially focused on the overview document. I think it’s a 15-page document that was circulated earlier this week. Following that, we are happy to have the entire team step you through, in some detail, all of the components of the Vote 1 budget on a departmental basis.

To begin, I’ll just note that members will be, of course, aware that Vote 1 encompasses expenses for members, constituency office operations, caucuses and Legislative Assembly administration. The budget is grouped into three main categories. Today’s focus, of course, is on our operating expenditures for the future fiscal year.

The three categories are members services, caucus support services and legislative support services, which is the budget that is allocated to support Legislative Assembly administration. I’d also like to, at this stage, express appreciation to the subcommittee on finance and audit — who last Friday spent a great deal of time going through the review of the proposed capital expenditures for the fiscal year ahead. We very much appreciated their time and assistance with that detailed process.

[9:50 a.m.]

As I did at the outset of the meeting, I’d also like to again thank Hilary and the team in financial services for their detailed and dedicated work in putting this budget submission together.

In preparing the Vote 1 submission for this year, there were two overarching organizational priorities which were shaping our budget planning and ultimately leading to the submission before you today. The first organizational priority, which is noted in the overview document, is the one theme noted as enhancing performance and accountability and support for members. These targeted investments will help the administration improve our performance and accountability through sound management practices, performance planning and reporting.

These investments cover a range of areas, including targeted investments, with respect to our information technology infrastructure and processes, to address recent concerns; opportunities to enhance systems and integrate services in areas of finance, payroll and human resource administration; business continuity and disaster recovery planning; enhanced data and information management systems; and continued improvement to Legislative Assembly policies and procedures. This budget submission also will see us centralize the administration’s procurement processes and establish several new positions to address key priority areas, including a dedicated human resources support position to serve members and cau­cuses.

The second organizational priority noted in your document is actually the first priority on my mind. That is our continuing efforts to build a better workplace. This includes strategic investments in our staff, focused on employee engagement, training and development, as well as ethics and values supports. Many of these priorities have been identified over the course of the last few years. They were also evident in the results from our employee survey, the workplace review process and incorporated into our action plan with respect to the workplace review.

These areas of investment include ongoing opportunities to strengthen employee engagement through our strategic planning sessions, performance management programs and ongoing surveys; resources, also, to support staff training and development opportunities, both within the departments and across the organization; additional training to support ethics and values advisors to act as designated points of contact for staff and to provide guidance and advice to staff on matters related to ethics; and also a range of other human resources initiatives, which are currently in development. My colleague Jamie Hanly will be highlighting some of those initiatives in her remarks with respect to the human resource investments later today.

Another component identified in our priority to build a better workplace is to ensure that we continue to offer competitive compensation, and as such, this budget in­cludes a proposed 2 percent increase to keep compensation for assembly administrative staff comparable with that offered in the B.C. public service and the local market.

As members will know, the current fiscal year, 2020-21, has been a year of change for the Legislative Assembly administration. I’d also like to note, of course, that in recent months, including the time period in which this budget was built, we, as an organization, have learned a lot about how we can improve and take a more responsive approach generally in supporting members, their staff and the organization as a whole.

In particular, the unanticipated general election demonstrated that we need to actively engage with members and their constituency offices, particularly in anticipation of election transition periods. We have identified that election preparedness needs to take place on an annual basis, rather than on a four-year cycle. I’m looking forward to the year ahead, to ensure that election transition guides are consistently maintained with current information, that practices and guidance remain current and shaped by members’ input and direction and that an annual IT plan is in place for members and staff.

Following my appointment as Clerk 11 months ago, assembly administration underwent a significant reorganization. In future years, I hope to build on the good progress and supports that are currently in place. I’ll also acknowledge, of course, that on top of all of these changes, we have also been working on the budget submission, refining our forecasting as best we can to reflect the continuing uncertainty and impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

At this point, I’ll just draw your attention, with Artour’s help, to the meeting document…. I think it’s known as 10A, which is the overview document.

[9:55 a.m.]

I will be inviting Hilary to walk through the committee in detail, but I’ll make some initial comments with respect to this overview. There is a bar graph that members will see on page 1 of the document, which represents a historic development of the operating budget over time. This year, we are requesting an increase of $1 million or a 1.2 percent overall increase compared with the previous fiscal year. Because the general election took place earlier than anticipated, you will see that unlike the fiscal year 2017-18, the related expenses were not clearly defined, as we typically would have planned in anticipation of a general election forthcoming,– so a bit of a different approach for the year ahead.

The budget impacts that are further outlined within the three categories I mentioned — members services, caucus support services and legislative support services — are addressed in this document beginning on the next page, page 2.

The budget for members services has been primarily impacted, of course, by the COVID-19 pandemic, and has, in relation specifically to members’ travel expenses, some accommodation expenses and the capital city living allowance, resulted in a decrease of 2.3 percent or $939,000 to this area of our budget. In addition, another reduction which shapes the decrease, contributes to that decrease, is the additional transfer of seven committee research staff positions originally placed within the members services component of the budget to provide committee support. These have been moved within Legislative Assembly administration, and that has contributed to the decrease in this category. Additional reductions are partially offset by enhancements to constituency office supports.

I’ll also note, under caucus support services, that this category has increased by a small amount — $32,000, or 0.4 percent — due to a formula-driven salary calculation for caucus staff.

In legislative support services, the fund for legislative administration has a planned increase of $1.955 million or a 5.5 percent increase from the previous fiscal year. We’ll be delving into the details in this area of expenditure throughout the day, but at a high level, I’ll just note that the increases found in this category are directly tied to some of the strategic priorities identified at the outset of the planning process and include targeted investments in our IT infrastructure and supports, staffing and employee engagement, and data and information management initiatives.

I also would very much like to acknowledge that there are some decreases in many expenditure areas within various departments. At the beginning of this budget-building process, each department was asked to take a very conservative approach and to deconstruct each of their annual operating budgets to ensure, through a fresh rebuild, that they could seek to eliminate any holdover expenses that had not been accessed in previous years and therefore reduce unused pockets of contingency. As a result, savings were found to partially offset the overall increase. I’m very grateful to those departments which successfully took part in this endeavour, resulting in substantial savings in many areas.

Finally, I’ll note that on page 3 of the overview document, as shown on your screens, we have provisions for the continued good work of the respectful workplace office, a new office that was created in 2020-21 and which will continue its work to fully operationalize this independent service to support, promote and sustain positive workplace interactions at the Legislative Assembly as directed by your committee. There is no change to this particular bud­get at this point in time.

That completes my introductory remarks. I’ll now, if I might, Mr. Speaker, invite Hilary to step in and to walk us through the remainder of this initial overview document in a bit more detail.

H. Woodward: I’m going to start with the bottom of page 3, which is the pie chart. This, essentially, is the composition chart of the four service lines, as Kate has mentioned, that make up the Vote 1 budget. These include members services, caucus support services, the respectful workplace office and legislative support services. Now, pages 4 through 9 of this submission, and we’ll work through them on the screen, provide further details on the year-over-year change in each of these areas. I’m just going to go a little bit deeper into the comments made by the Clerk.

[10:00 a.m.]

I’m going to start with members services. You can see the chart on your screen. The members services budget has decreased from $41.6 million to $40.6 million. That’s an overall reduction of $939,000, or 2.3 percent, as compared to the prior fiscal year.

Within members services, there are four categories of expense. In this submission, there are explanations between either reductions or increases in each of these areas. I will touch on each of those, starting with members’ indemnities and allowances.

For members’ indemnities and allowances, this expense category has been reduced by $641,000. The primary drivers for this reduction include a 20 percent reduction in both MLA travel and capital city living allowance budgets. These reductions are in response to anticipated reductions in travel and accommodation costs in the first half of the year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These reductions are partially offset by the statute-driven increase to member compensation, which is tied to the year-over-year change in B.C.’s CPI. The change for the upcoming fiscal year is 0.8 percent. As well, there is a one-time election-related expense in this category to provide funding for the retraining allowance that is available to members of the 41st parliament. This allowance is tied to the member transitional allowance program, which ends in January 2022.

Moving to members’ constituency office support, this particular budget has increased by $665,000. This increase is primarily due to the annual increase in the constituency office allowance, which, again, is tied to the year-over-year change in B.C.’s CPI, which for the upcoming year will be a 0.8 percent increase.

The other driver of the increase is an anticipated lift in lease costs, following the October 2020 provincial general election. The increase is in response to market rates as well as tenant improvement costs, based on recent lease renewals.

These increases are partially offset by a budget transfer of $75,000 to the human resources department and legislative support services. This funding will be used to fund a dedicated FTE to support member and caucus HR needs. As the committee is aware, in the current year, this service has been provided through a consultant.

Moving next to committee support. Committee support has decreased by $784,000. As Kate mentioned, it’s primarily due to the budget transfer of seven committee support staff as part of an organizational realignment from this expense category to the Clerk of Committees office. Other deductions in this area are in response to adaptations to committee consultations and reduced travel because of COVID-19. Those are offset in part by an increase in the advertising budget for planned consultations in the up­coming year.

Moving to the interparliamentary relations budget, this has also been reduced, by $160,000 — again, in large part due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and the cancellation or transition to virtual conferences or events. The reduction reflects decreases for both member- and staff-supported related expenses in this particular category.

The next service line for Vote 1 is caucus support services. Caucus support services budget is increased from $8.16 million to $8.19 million, an increase of $32,000, or 0.4 percent. The caucus budgets are calculated each year using a formula approved by this committee. The formula is based on the number of members in each caucus, excluding the Speaker. The per-member amount is different depending on if the member is a private member or if the member is part of the executive council.

The $32,000 increase for the upcoming year. The pri­mary driver of that increase is the general salary component of the formula, which is based on the BCGEU master agreement. Later this afternoon, as we do a deeper dive into the departments, I can provide further details on how the formula is calculated.

In addition to the caucus budget per-member formula, there are also two office budgets. There is the Leader of the Official Opposition budget. It receives an allocation to fund the party leader’s office. The budget is based on the average of all minister office budgets, which are included in ministry budgets.

[10:05 a.m.]

The average minister’s office budget has decreased by $3,000, so as a result, the budget for 2021-22 for the Leader of the Official Opposition’s office is $711,000.

Similarly, the Leader of the Third Party also receives an allocation to fund their office. The allocation is equal to 50 percent of the Leader of the Official Opposition’s office budget, or $356,000.

I move now into legislative support services. As Kate mentioned, this area consists of the Office of the Speaker; the Office of the Clerk; Clerk of Committees; legislative operations, which consists of a number of departments; the Sergeant-at-Arms; Hansard; and the Legislative Library. The budget for legislative support services has increased from $35.3 million to $37.2 million, a net overall increase of $1.96 million or 5.5 percent. As noted earlier by the Clerk, this increase is tied to a series of strategic investments in the coming year, with the primary focus being on our IT infrastructure and processes and the workplace review recommendations.

Starting with IT, additional investments of $2.7 million are required in IT to address concerns with currency, reliability and existing infrastructure. Outdated hardware and systems have contributed to IT vulnerabilities, as noted through recent reviews and the recent network outage. The assembly has made this area a priority and key investment area in the upcoming budget.

The next category is competitive compensation. Retaining current staff and attracting talent is also a priority for the assembly. A key component in achieving this is to provide competitive compensation. The upcoming budget includes a request for a proposed 2 percent increase in compensation for staff as well as funding to implement recommendations arising from the assembly’s compensation review.

The next significant category is performance accountability and support for members — again, another priority area for the assembly. Building on the budget themes outlined in this submission, additional funding of $864,000 is being requested to hire several new positions in key priority areas to undertake reviews of all of our business process systems, make additional investments in our business continuity program and continue with the work initiated as a result of the workplace review and implementation of those recommendations. The operating budget requirement for this area is $864,000.

The next area is a reduction, and that’s in our amortization budget. It is decreased by $411,000. This decrease reflects a refinement of the prior year’s amortization budget, taking into account capital projects expected to become operational in the upcoming year as well as delays in other projects.

Finally, operating savings and net reductions. As the Clerk noted, several budgetary reductions have been found in legislative support services. In total, in combination, this comes up to approximately $2 million in reductions, as a result of the budget reduction strategies employed as part of the ’21-22 budget building process as well as savings due to COVID-19.

By way of background, the assembly has historically underspent its operating budget, with the primary areas of underspend being in salaries and benefits and discretionary expenses. In 2021-22, the assembly undertook a deconstructive approach to departmental budgets. The departments were asked to rebuild their budgets from essentially the ground up. This process identified savings in discretionary expenses and eliminated several departmental contingency reserves.

The assembly also took a review of the employee benefits budget. This area of expense has been historically underspent, in large part due to the formula used to calculate the budget. This year the formula has been changed from a five-year historical average unique to each department to a calculation based on actuals from 2019-20. This change has also resulted in savings in a number of departments, which you’ll see later this afternoon as we go through each of the departments’ budget requests.

To address underspending in salaries, the assembly has introduced a 2 percent vacancy discount for all support departments. The 2 percent reduction in salaries and benefits is targeted specifically at hiring lag — hiring lag being that the budget assumes positions will be filled on April 1, when in fact that doesn’t necessarily occur. Also, when there is a departure midyear, there is hiring lag between the departure of one individual and the hiring of another.

[10:10 a.m.]

Lastly, as noted, the impact of COVID-19 has resulted in savings in the areas of staff travel, training and auxiliary staffing positions. In-province staff travel has been reduced by 20 percent and out-of-province travel eliminated until January 2022. A number of training requests have been reduced as a result of virtual options or training being cancelled. And additional, auxiliary staffing — some reductions in both parliamentary education office and the parliamentary dining room, as a result of reduced volume and the building’s current status of being closed has reduced the requirement for auxiliary staff for the upcoming year.

I thought I would stop there and see if there are any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions so far? If not, we will continue.

Thanks, Hilary. Carry on.

H. Woodward: The next area is on additional FTE requests for ’21-22. I will point out there has been an update to these amounts. As Kate mentioned, we were busily pulling all of this information together, and on final review, identified there are two positions missing from this amount.

The submission before you indicates an additional funding for a total of 5.33 positions. Actually, there will be 7.33 positions, of which we will be requesting funding for 3.33.

For FTEs, we’ve broken the requests into three areas. The first area is additional new FTE requests by department, a net four FTEs. So there are a number of additional positions, which we’ll be going into more detail this afternoon by department. They also tie in to a number of the strategic investments that will be planned for the upcoming budget. In addition, there are a number of reductions. Some of those reductions are as a result of COVID-19 and other reductions just as an opportunity, as departments have gone through their FTE requirements for the upcoming year.

The total net position request for the Legislative Assembly for the upcoming year is four FTEs made up of a combination of the requests — the additions and reductions noted on the screen.

The next area is senior administration restructuring. As this committee will recall, there was a restructuring at the senior administration level in the Legislative Assembly in April 2020. That was reported out by the Clerk. The funding set aside for the restructuring was in the 2020-2021 budget. But at that time, the FTEs and the actual restructuring was not known, so the request here is noting for a net three positions. The funding is already in the budget for these positions, but we wanted to highlight — now that these positions are known.

As you will note, because of the restructuring, there is a new position, the Clerk Assistant, Parliamentary Services, in the Office of the Clerk. There is the removal of the Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees. That position is no longer required, because it has been replaced by these new positions. There is the Clerk of Committees in the Clerk of Committees Office. There is also, of course, our new chief human resources officer position and our chief information officer position that will be housed in the digital information office.

It’s a total of four new positions, less the removal of the Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees position.

Finally, the final area — again, this is reclassification from temporary or auxiliary positions to permanent. These positions were approved by this committee in 2020-21 as part of the budget submission approval process. These requests are now being asked to be made permanent. One is the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel position. That also formed part of the reorganization, but in this case, the position did exist at the time of the 2020-21 budget.

There is the senior policy and project analyst. That position was an auxiliary position in the current year and is requested to be made a permanent position going into ’21-22.

Similarly, a financial analyst position was created on an auxiliary basis in 2020-21. The request is to make that position permanent for the upcoming year.

[10:15 a.m.]

Similarly for a human resources advisor position. This position has been auxiliary for a number of years, and the request is to make this position permanent.

Finally, the records information management specialist was an auxiliary request in 2020-21, and the request is to make that position permanent for ’21-22.

That becomes a total request of five additional positions going forward. Are there any questions on the FTEs?

B. D’Eith: I just had a question. In regard to human resources, do we feel that there’s really sufficient…? Has there been enough, after our discussions around the needs for human resources support? There’s enough there?

H. Woodward: I’m happy to answer that question. I believe, following from the subcommittee discussion, the commitment was to put one position in as dedicated support for members. As noted, there is contingency reserve in the Vote 1 budget. We would certainly look to the committees, and this committee, for advice and feedback in terms of whether there’s sufficient support coming from that position.

B. D’Eith: Right. I know Artour had been talking about that as a possibility, and I just wasn’t sure whether that had been worked on in the meantime.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. Any further questions? I don’t see any.

H. Woodward: If we could just go back to page 11 of the Vote 1 submission, this page includes the operating budget assumptions and risks. With the creation of any budget, there are a number of assumptions that are built in, and there also are risks. We’d like to take this opportunity, in this submission, to flag these areas. I won’t go through each individual budget assumption or risk. Many of these are consistent with prior years for the Vote 1 submission.

I will, however, point out an additional new risk that I have included as a result of some of the proposed reductions in this upcoming budget. That’s specific to travel, accommodation, conference, training and auxiliary staffing costs, and those reductions in response to COVID-19 I have just included on this page. There is a risk, should restrictions on travel be lifted sooner than anticipated, that the funds may not be sufficient. That is the only change from prior assumptions and risks.

Does anyone have any specific questions on any of the assumptions or risks that have been built in?

Mr. Speaker: Any point that needs clarification? None.

Continue.

H. Woodward: Okay, moving on to page 13. Page 13 is an overview of the capital budget. Again, as the Clerk mentioned, I would like to thank the subcommittee on finance and audit for the hours spent last week going through the individual capital projects that tie into this request. I will also note that the feedback from that committee has been incorporated into the amounts that you see in front of you.

For ’21-22, the Legislative Assembly capital budget submission is $6.3 million. That’s an increase of $359,000, or 6 percent, in comparison to the prior year. The chart in front of you on the screen shows you the increase. As mentioned, again there are ongoing strategic capital investments in safety, building envelope and security upgrades, together with required life-cycle replacement of critical systems, assets and infrastructure. That will continue to be the primary focus for the Legislative Assembly.

On the life-cycle replacements in particular, we see an increase in that area, in direct response to the recent network outage and the need to upgrade the IT infrastructure and assets within the Legislative Assembly. From the pie chart that’s on this screen, you can see that the life-cycle replacements represent 36.4 percent of the total, overall ask, followed then by safety upgrades, which speak to a focus on our building envelope at the Legislative Assem­bly, as well as a continual emphasis on seismic upgrades.

[10:20 a.m.]

The Legislative Assembly does remain committed to the development of a long-term vision and plan for the legislative precinct that would identify planned expenditures over the next 15 to 20 years. It will be a comprehensive plan. It will address infrastructure restoration and repair and redevelopment requirements, including seismic upgrades. The timeline for completion of that plan has been amended. It is now scheduled for completion on or before March 2022.

I would like to note, in terms of capital expenditures, that there are always challenges impacting the timely completion of projects — scheduling, retaining of vendors, when we go out to bid on a number of these projects and if we are successful — in terms of the budgets being put forward. There are also weather conditions and variable construction market conditions.

All of these can impact some of our major project costs and resource availability. To that end, we do include a contingency reserve in our capital budget for unforeseen building infrastructure expenses and other capital expenses. The contingency reserve for ’21-22 is $500,000. That remains unchanged from the prior fiscal year.

Moving to page 15, similarly to the operating budget, the capital budget also comes with assumptions and risks. Again, these assumptions and risks are consistent with prior years’ submissions. They do identify some of the keys, of course, noting that the age and condition of the parliament buildings and the buildings on the precinct — and the importance of these buildings — will require, in often cases, higher costs for renovation and maintenance.

We also work around the House schedule, so that can delay or affect the timing of some projects.

I’d also like to point out, subject to the completion of the long-term plan, that outer year capital costs are for planning purposes or have not been incorporated for some of the major projects, subject to approval of the plan.

Are there any questions on the Vote 1 submission?

Mr. Speaker: All right, none.

Continue, Hilary.

H. Woodward: Okay.

Kate, should I turn it back over to you?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you, Hilary, for the overview.

I think the next element of our review of the budget would be to share the PowerPoint slides with the members and walk through each area of expenditure with you, inviting your questions or comments along the way.

We will begin with members services and review, in a bit more detail, some of the high-level information that we’ve already provided, then caucus support services and then the Legislative Assembly administrative departments.

If that works for you, Mr. Speaker, we can start moving through these slides. Does that work?

Mr. Speaker: Yup.

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

Hilary, did you want to take the first few elements of members services?

I’ll also invite colleagues, with respect to oversight of different components of our operating budget, whether it’s departmental oversight or program areas, to please take on those slides. We will have a team approach throughout the rest of the meeting.

H. Woodward: Okay. This slide is familiar. It was from the Vote 1 budget submission. Again, from an overview perspective on the operating budget, just indicating, again, the requested $1 million increase over the prior year. That’s a net increase for the Legislative Assembly Vote 1 budget.

Again, just to show where the expenses are, the composition has not changed significantly from prior years.

Moving on to members services, again, the reduction in members services is approximately $939,000, from $41.5 million to $40.6 million.

Just a little backup, in terms of members services. Members services is made up of a number of areas, as Kate noted. I will speak to members’ indemnities and allowances and members’ constituency support. Then I will turn to my colleagues to speak in more detail on the last three areas of expense.

[10:25 a.m.]

Members’ indemnities and allowances. Within this category…. I’ve spoken at a high level on this, but in more detail, what’s included in members’ indemnities and allowances are a number of areas: MLA compensation and benefits, MLA mobile device costs, MLA personalized stationery costs, MLA travel, a capital city living allowance, the transitional assistance retraining allowance and the MLA legal fund. What you’re seeing on this particular chart is showing the reduction specifically to that subcategory, so going from $18.9 million to $18.3 million for ’21-22.

This particular table provides the variance analysis or the year-over-year change in each of the account categories by both dollar value and variance. I’ll just touch on more of the significant variances for the members, and I’m happy to answer any questions. Base salaries and overtime, particularly that $31,000. That referred to the salary for a part-time care aide for one of the former members. This salary has been removed from the budget.

In terms of the employee benefits, there was a benefits rate reduction due to underutilization of extended health and dental benefits. That benefits decrease is partially offset by an increase in long-term disability charges. That resulted in a net reduction of $39,000.

Legislative salaries and indemnities. This is members’ compensation. I will note that the reduction is $135,000. The member compensation, I mentioned previously, did increase by 0.8 percent per statute, in keeping with the year-over-year change in B.C. CPI. However, on a budget-to-budget basis, the decrease is due to member compensation staying at 2019-20 levels in 2020-21. That was a decision made by this committee following the budget being approved. As a result, the 2020-21 budget assumed a 2 percent increase. So the budget-over-budget results in a reduction. A bit confusing.

Information systems and operating. There is no change in this area. This line covers the cost of MLA mobile phones and devices. Again, no proposed changes.

Office and business expense. There is an increase of $10,000. That increase is to reflect the historical actual expenditures for members’ personal stationery. We’ve been seeing, over the last several years, some costs over the budget set aside. So there’s been an increase to accommodate that.

Then the final area is Legislative Assembly, members only. This includes the allowance, travel allowance, and the members accommodation or capital city living allowance. As noted previously, we have taken a 20 percent reduction on both of those, MLA travel and capital city allowance, which is driving a large portion of that $445,000 reduction.

In addition, there is an election-related retraining allowance that’s available to members of the 41st parliament through to January 2022. That was a net increase of $75,000. Those are the primary reasons for the change.

Finally, the other expense is for the legal fund. Again, that was approved previously by this committee. There’s no change in the funding for that category.

Are there any questions on members’ indemnities and allowances, or the changes?

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? Seeing none….

Mike Farnworth.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Just one quick question on the accommodation that’s COVID-related. Fewer people are coming down to Victoria, right?

H. Woodward: Correct. So for the accommodation, it’s just a reduction. We looked at the capital city living allowance, and where we took the reduction was in the hotel category, as we anticipated less people travelling and staying in hotels.

Mr. Speaker: Any further questions? None.

Hilary, continue, please.

H. Woodward: The next one is members’ constituency support. Included in this category is the annual constituency office allowance. There are constituency assistant benefits not covered by the constituency office allowance. That includes pension, CPP and EI.

[10:30 a.m.]

There is an in-constituency travel allowance that is for constituency assistants. Members receive a flat-rate ex­pense allowance for travel within their constituency. That’s $6,000 per member.

Also included in this category are constituency office leases, Internet, insurance and security upgrades and, finally, a constituency office furniture allowance and start-up allowance.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? None.

Continue.

H. Woodward: Okay. The increase in this category is going from $20.4 million to $21 million in ’21-22. This represents a proposed increase of $665,000 or 3 percent. This is the more detailed table on the year-over-year changes in the account description areas.

Starting with employee benefits, there is a $32,000 increase. That’s a minor increase to CA benefits to follow inflation.

There’s a $15,000 increase in professional services, operational. That is an increase to the contract we have with Shared Services to support and review member leases. Those will be continuing through into ’21-22, following the October 2020 provincial general election.

Professional services, advisory, has a reduction of $75,000. That reflects the budget transfer of the funding that was previously used for a consulting agency to provide HR services to members. This money is being transferred to the human resources department and will be supplemented to provide for a dedicated FTE position to support members and caucuses with HR-related matters.

The $46,000 increase in information systems, operating, is, again, to enhance Internet in support of streaming services out in the constituency offices due to the increased demand and use of those services.

Finally, Legislative Assembly, members only, is in­creased by $647,000. It’s primarily due to the 0.8 percent increase in constituency office allowances, in keeping with the B.C. CPI year-over-year change.

In addition, the anticipated increase in lease costs following the provincial general election, in response to higher market rates and tenant improvement requests, particularly for new spaces for new members…. We’re anticipating a significant increase in that area as well. There also are some increases in relation to the office and furniture and start-up allowances. That makes up the total increase for the allowance area of this particular expense category, an overall net increase of $665,000 or 3 percent.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? None.

H. Woodward: I’ll now turn it over to my colleagues, then.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): The next one is me, the legislative internship program, which is operated by the parliamentary education office.

As members are aware, the Legislative Assembly hires 12 recent undergrads for a six-month term, which is a total count of six FTEs, from January to June every year. Members will have an opportunity to meet this year’s interns fairly soon around the time that the House resumes sitting.

There’s a slight decrease in the legislative internship program budget — I’ll get into that in a second — down to $457,000 for the coming fiscal year.

The base salaries and overtime increase of $6,000 is to account for the 2 percent salary increase being proposed for all Legislative Assembly staff. The supplementary salary costs are to offer honoraria to guest speakers who may be coming to speak to the interns on various topics that will flow into their program areas of interest. The employee benefits line is staying flat.

Employee travel is being reduced because the interns are not anticipated to have an opportunity to travel to Ottawa in the coming fiscal year.

Professional services, operational, is being increased for e-learning opportunities and training opportunities for the interns. As a result, there’s just a bit of an accounting switch where it has moved from advisory into operational.

[10:35 a.m.]

Information systems is staying flat. That’s a mobile device for the BCLIP internship coordinator.

Office and business expenses is seeing a slight dip due to savings anticipated from not hosting groups such as the Washington State Legislative interns.

Information advertising and publications is seeing a slight increase to increase advertising of the internship pro­gram for the coming program year.

There’s an overall decrease of 4 percent or $19,000.

Happy to answer any questions, if there are any.

B. D’Eith: Artour, just wondering how the internship program is working during COVID.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Right now the interns, I think quite happily, have longer ministry assignments.

This year, also, they’ve been afforded an opportunity…. I believe two, possibly three — I can’t recall; I think it’s two — interns have taken an opportunity to also be placed in a statutory office.

They’re in those placements until this week, actually. Next week they come back, and they’re going to have the second part of their training program, which focuses on the Legislative Assembly and the work that they’ll be undertaking.

I think they’re quite happy that caucuses are happy to have them. I know that we’re having some challenges right now with finding space to allow for sufficient physical distancing. I think we realize that there’s more advantage for them to be present on the legislative precinct when the Legislative Assembly is sitting and to have that opportunity to learn and to absorb the environment while being on site.

Largely, I’m hearing very good things. They’re happy. I think they’re very keen to have the opportunity. I’m looking forward to spending some time with them next week during their training opportunity.

Mr. Speaker: Anybody else?

Continue.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): I will move on to parliamentary committees, which is also one of my areas of oversight.

I will say, Members, that this is one of those budgets where we have to have a bit of a magic eight ball and try to predict what is going to come in the coming fiscal year, but we do our best with the projections in this area.

Parliamentary committees is the member-related support for the operations of parliamentary committees ap­pointed by the Legislative Assembly. There is an overall FTE decrease. As has been mentioned by both Kate and Hilary, this is just to move the staff from research services into the Clerk of Committees’ office. I wasn’t particularly sure, when I took over oversight, why these FTEs were housed under the members services budgetary envelope. I think it made more sense to move them over to legislative operations.

This decrease is accounted for when we get to the Clerk of Committees. These seven FTEs have been moved out from this budgetary envelope and now fall under the Clerk of Committees’ office.

Overall, there is a decrease. You’ll see here that the budget request is for $640,000 in the coming fiscal year. Again, that’s in very large part due to the fact that there’s a reduction of $633,000 for those salaries that were transferred to the Clerk of Committees’ budget. That’s captured here. The employee benefits line as well, the reduction of $155,000. You’ll see the reduction here, but it will appear in the Clerk of Committees’ budget when we get there.

There’s an increase in employee travel. Just looking ahead…. Members, I’ll flag that we tried our best to calculate and to predict the level of public consultations and when committees may or may not resume public hearings in a different format than the Zoom environment that’s currently underway. I think at least one member participated in budget consultations last year in a Zoom environment. It’s very difficult. It’s a very different environment in which to undertake a public consultation to engage with British Columbians.

The Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act is going to be taking a public consultation. Presumably, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services is going to be undertaking a budget consultation for Budget 2022.

I anticipate that there will be more committees that are statutorily required to undertake reviews, including a special committee to review FOIPPA that was appointed by the Legislative Assembly in December. A Special Committee to Review the Personal Information Protection Act has also been reactivated by the Legislative Assembly. There’s at least one other committee that’s required by statute to be appointed in the near future to review certain provisions of the Election Act.

There’s going to be no shortage of public consultation work undertaken by parliamentary committees in the coming fiscal year. This is just to account for the clerking team, administrative staff and also Hansard staff that may be required to travel, perhaps not in the remainder of 2021, or perhaps towards the end of 2021, but certainly, we hope, by early 2022, which will account for quarter 4 of the coming fiscal year.

[10:40 a.m.]

There’s been a reduction in professional services. That’s just as a result of contracts and technical advisers and specialists that have previously been retained by committees, including those retained by the Legislative Assembly Management Committee. Your committee would draw on funds under this budgetary envelope.

Information systems have also been moved. This is just coming out of that move of staff from Parliamentary Committees into Clerk of Committees and the supporting infrastructure that they needed. That’s just a move over. You’ll see that come up again in the Clerk of Committees operating budget.

There’s been a reduction of business expenses. Again, this is just arising out of an anticipated continuation of Zoom meetings by parliamentary committees. This virtual environment doesn’t require the same level of support and expenditure.

The next two categories — informational advertising and publications, and statutory advertising and publications: this is just a bit of an accounting fix in that things previously captured in the statutory advertising and publications STOB should have been in the informational advertising and publications STOB, so that $90,000 has just been moved up.

There’s also an increase, again accounting for the number of public consultations that are expected to be undertaken by parliamentary committees in the coming year.

Also, I will flag that the Ombudsperson’s term is coming to an end. I believe he’s eligible for reappointment, should the special committee appointed for that purpose decide to proceed in that manner. But should it be subject to an open and transparent competition, there is also budget set aside in that budgetary envelope to allow for advertising, should that special committee wish to undertake advertising in this recruitment process. So that’s also accounting for the increase under that budgetary envelope.

Travel, under Legislative Assembly members. This is just a slight adjustment for anticipated travel levels and to align with the baseline that we’re kind of anticipating and budgeting for, for staff as well, just so it’s on the same level for members and staff.

The other expenses are for matters such as legal fees that may be incurred by your committee, as has been the case from time to time. We’re just anticipating a slight decrease in that budgetary envelope based on usage over the preceding fiscal year.

Overall it’s a reduction of 55 percent or $784,000.

I’m happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? I don’t see any.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): The only thing I’ll flag, maybe, while I have the floor is that the committee, in the previous parliament, did express a keen interest in how parliamentary committees budget. I said: “It’s a bit of an exercise with a magic eight ball.” But I do anticipate — and I’ve had conversations with the Clerk of Committees to this effect — to have more active engagement with Chairs and Deputy Chairs of committees on a go-forward basis to try to anticipate committees’ needs and to make sure that they’re accurately captured in our budget submissions on a go-forward basis. We have not lost sight of that request that was made in the previous parliament.

B. D’Eith: Just a quick question. When you moved the budgets over, is it a straight one-for-one transfer of those budget line items, or are there any bumps that we should be aware of when we get there?

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): It is a straight move. The only thing I will say, Bob, is that it will be slightly higher when you see it in Clerk of Committees, and that’s only from the 2 percent proposed salary bump for staff. That is the only reason. Otherwise, it’s a straight move.

B. D’Eith: Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: Anybody else? No.

All right, continue.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): I think Minister Farnworth has a question.

Hon. M. Farnworth: No, I was just going to comment that when it comes to parliamentary committees, as much as we want to be as accurate as possible, the reality is that it is one of those things where, depending on what comes up, whether it’s a human resource committee or one that has to deal with an issue that the Legislature wants to be dealt with, there is going to be variation and the need for flexibility.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): That’s right, and that’s been factored into the budget to some extent while also trying to mitigate our desire, or to fulfil our desire, to not have as much of a significant underspend in our Vote 1 budget year over year. We’ve done our best to try, I think, to take a very prudent approach. But if there’s a need to come back to the committee in our quarterly financial reporting to the committee and the subcommittee on finance and audit…. If there are any areas that we might need to flag at that time, if there’s an anticipated committee activity, we will certainly do so.

[10:45 a.m.]

Mr. Speaker: Anybody else? No.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Then the last area is interparliamentary relations. This budget category is used to provide professional development opportunities for members, primarily, and also staff to some extent. It enhances knowledge and understanding of democratic governance, provides opportunities for members and staff to exchange information and share best practices with other parliamentary jurisdictions, and strengthens cooperation and support through formal partnership agreements that we have with parliamentary jurisdictions either in Canada or around the world. This is not an actual department. This budget is overseen by the Office of the Clerk.

I also want to flag for awareness that we do anticipate — members may have seen it on the work plan for the committee for the coming year — putting a formal interparliamentary relations strategy before the subcommittee on administration and operations and then to the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, just to cement our approach in how the Legislative Assembly undertakes its interparliamentary activities and fulfils those strategic objectives and goals.

There is an overall reduction in this budget. You’ll see that the current request for the coming fiscal year is $123,000. In the supplementary salary costs, we’ve put in $1,000, just in the event that we have training opportunities available to members and we wish to offer an honorarium to a guest speaker or to a presenter. We want to be able to use that funding.

“Employee travel” — also just bumped down to Legislative Assembly members only. This is a significant reduction of $31,000 and $67,000, respectively. This is just from a reduced travel posture that we are anticipating in the coming year.

Back up to “Professional services,” the $25,000. This is an initiative of the Clerk’s to continue engagement with the local First Nations, the Songhees and the Esquimalt, as the Legislative Assembly works with them and develops a reconciliation plan of its own. I know that it’s a priority for Kate and one that she’s actively working on. This is just to provide for some contract and advisory dollars in that category for $25,000.

Lastly, office and business expenses, a reduction of $50,000. That stems primarily from not anticipating any hosting responsibilities in the coming fiscal year — given, again, limitations on travel — and also takes into account a reduction of a one-time contribution from British Columbia for an interparliamentary conference that was included in the current fiscal year’s budget.

Overall it’s a reduction of $160,000, or 57 percent.

I’m happy to answer any questions that members may have.

Mr. Speaker: Artour, I just want to make a comment on this. We know that although we are a small player on the world stage as a provincial government, given the tension and pressure that we have seen around the world on democratic forces — democracies are under a huge challenge — it’s important for us, in our small way, to participate and encourage people to enhance democracies wherever we can. It’s absolutely fundamental that we do our share.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to reiterate that I think we are in alignment. You and our staff are in alignment in that objective. I think that you’ll very much see that reflected in the interparliamentary relations strategy that will come forward in good time.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Any questions?

All right, continue.

H. Woodward: Now we’re back to caucus support services. It’s a little bit of a different presentation for this particular piece, but it provides the overview of caucus support.

Mr. Speaker: Hilary, before we continue, just let me ask everyone: how are we doing with time? Anybody need a break? Can we continue? You’re okay? All right.

Continue, please.

H. Woodward: Great. Thank you for that.

I’ll provide a brief overview of caucus support services. Then what’s also included in this backup material for you are the caucus budget calculations.

Caucus budgets, as I mentioned previously, are formula-driven. They’re in accordance with policy 7520, entitled “Caucus Funding.” The main driver for the budget formula is the number of elected members each party has in the Legislative Assembly. The formula determines the total budget for each caucus.

[10:50 a.m.]

This is a visual representation of the caucus support services. As noted, as it’s a funding formula, it remains relatively consistent from year to year. In particular, for this year, it’s a $32,000 increase from $8.158 million to $8.19 million in ’21-22.

This particular slide provides the further detail and breakdown of the caucus budget by each of the caucuses. The NDP caucus for the upcoming ’21-22 budget has a total budget of $4.241 million. The Liberal caucus will have a budget of $3.401 million, and the Green caucus will have a budget of $548,000, for a total caucus budget for all three of $8.19 million in the upcoming budget.

As mentioned, the caucus budgets are based on a formula, so I thought I’d share the information on the formula. As you can see, this formula was approved by this committee. In particular, it is based primarily on the salary and benefits of a research officer, based on the BCGEU salary grid. In addition to that salary, there is an amount set aside for business expense. That’s $4,000 for private members and $2,000 for executive members. There also was an update to that, subsequently, in 2006 to increase that business expense category by a further $5,000, equal across both areas.

As you can see, as noted, the private members receive $96,000 per member. Those members that are part of the executive council receive $50,000 as part of the formula. Just additional background included on this slide is some of the dates of decisions that were made. This provides this committee with some background on how that formula was calculated.

Finally, the budget formula for office of the Leader of the Official Opposition and office of the Leader of the Third Party. As mentioned earlier, when I was going through the Vote 1 submission, it is based on the average ministerial office budgets. The ministerial average was slightly reduced from the prior year, so it is now down to $711,000. The office of the Leader of the Official Opposition receives $711,000, and the office of the Leader of the Third Party receives 50 percent of that amount, or $356,000.

P. Milobar: Mr. Chair, a quick question?

Mr. Speaker: Peter.

P. Milobar: I get that this is all historical and averages and all that, so that’s not really…. I’m just wondering why there are such massive swings at the ministerial offices. I mean, there’s one in seven digits there.

H. Woodward: I can’t necessarily speak to how the ministerial offices are determined, but I can say that, in some cases, if there are ministers of state, those are added to ministerial offices, which could drive the increase or the year-over-year swings.

Mr. Speaker: Any more questions? Sonia.

S. Furstenau: I know that we’re going through the budget for the next year, but just looking at the documents that we got for the ’20-21 budgets and actuals, I was a bit confused about some changes from our previous finance and audit meeting and these numbers and what we have today. Are we going to get to those later, or is this the right place to ask about that?

Mr. Speaker: We will be, I think, dealing with that later on. Kate?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Sonia, is your question about this slide here?

S. Furstenau: No. Just because we’re discussing caucus budgeting, I’m just wondering when we’ll get to document 10B in our package, which talked about the operating budget but also looks at the actuals and the budgeted for this year. Are we going to be specifically looking at that document separately, or is this the time to ask questions about that?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): For caucus support services, I believe that we have some slides in this. Is it just preceding these slides, Artour? I think that might be….

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): No. To answer Sonia’s question, if I may, Mr. Speaker, I think this would be the time to raise it, because the question is: are we going to look at tables 1 to 5 separately? I believe the answer to the question is no.

I think, Sonia, that this would be an appropriate time to raise any questions that you have.

S. Furstenau: Okay. Thank you, Artour. Mr. Speaker, if I may….

Mr. Speaker: Sure.

[10:55 a.m.]

S. Furstenau: It’s in document 10B that was part of our agenda package. It’s the operating budget document, and member services is at the top. It’s just in 2020-2021. I’m curious about the budgeting. If we start with the NDP caucus, the budget was $2.841 million, but the forecast is for $3.466 million, which is a 122 percent spend on that. I’m just curious about that in that when I go back to our finance and audit, the documents didn’t appear that way. So can I get an explanation for that significant overspend?

Then just a question — I guess, a process question — about what the process is when there is that level of overspend in a caucus budget. Is it expected to be addressed in the following year, or is it just that it’s allowed to happen?

Mr. Speaker: Kate, who wants to take a lead on that?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): I’ll ask Hilary to confirm, but my impression is that that revised forecast may reflect the change of caucus members following the general election and the resulting budgetary impact. The formula-based budget would have been initially set based on caucus standings prior to the general election. I’m presuming, and I’ll ask Hilary to confirm, that the adjustment here reflects the changing status in terms of the numbers of private members, in particular of the government caucus.

H. Woodward: Thank you, Kate. I can confirm that that is correct. So every time there is a change in the caucus membership, the caucus funding formula is adjusted. This is taking into account that adjustment. At the time when the budget was set, the formula and membership makeup was, for example, in the NDP caucus, lower than it is now. I’m going to ask Mike just to confirm. If I believe that forecast is not the quarter three forecast that you would have…. Maybe I’m not…. Sonia, I am noticing a slight variation, so I might have to come back to you on that particular question.

M. Burke: Hilary’s correct. It’s as a result of the change in membership as a result of the election. But the forecast is not the Q3 forecast. It was done previously, when the budget was first set up. So it’s not complete alignment because it’s not the Q3 numbers.

S. Furstenau: Okay, thank you. That helps.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Just for awareness, Members, that as a result of changes that were evident, obviously, after the general election, we recognize that the formula, which takes effect immediately following results on voting day, can make for unforeseen pressures within caucus services. This is an area of election planning preparedness that I’d like to engage with subcommittee members on in the year ahead.

I know that the organization has previously had this four-year budget cycle with respect to election impacts. I think that there is likely a way that we can better transition through election periods to better sustain some more support for caucuses, given the numbers may fluctuate in either direction as a result of electoral outcomes. So it’s an area that we would like to spend some more time on in the year ahead.

P. Milobar: I’ve appreciated not being overwhelmed with all of the slides that we’ve had presented today that weren’t part of the packages, at least that I’ve been able to find ahead of time. I appreciate that they’re summarized in what we were provided ahead of time. Are we able to get the overall slide packages that we’ve been walked through today that we didn’t have sent out to us prior to this?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes, we’d be happy to follow up with any additional information. There was a supplementary package, including the slides, that was distributed yesterday, so you should have that in the email. But if there is anything here that you don’t have close to hand, even during the meeting, Peter and Members, we’d be happy just to keep those in circulation by way of email.

P. Milobar: Okay. I’ll keep looking. There were so many emails coming in. I thought I’d opened them all.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Of course.

P. Milobar: I just found it. We’re all good. Thanks.

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

[11:00 a.m.]

Mr. Speaker: Anybody else? No.

All right, continue, Hilary.

H. Woodward: That concluded my remarks on caucus support services, unless there are any other further questions.

Mr. Speaker: All right. Thank you so much, Hilary, for that.

Kate.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): I’ll take this one, Mr. Speaker.

Our respectful workplace office. This budgetary provision, which completes the initial portion of the member services part of the budget and member-oriented services, is the provision for a contracted service to provide an independent office to support and promote respectful workplace interactions between all members of our Legislative Assembly community.

This contracted service has been in place since April of 2020 and follows a decision by the Legislative Assembly Management Committee in July 2019 to adopt a respectful workplace policy for our organization.

The next slide will show that the contracted budgetary allocation here remains steady at $250,000 for the year ahead. The final slide will show that that STOB line, as we call it, the professional services advisory, is the entire package of this entity.

For the information of members, you may recall, at your first meeting as a committee in December of 2020, that there was a working group established to sustain our ongoing work with this policy area. Just as a reminder, we will be reaching out in the weeks ahead to Michele, to Peter, to Sonia. We have some proposed refinements to the policy, and we’d be happy to give you an update on training plans as they are anticipated to occur in the months ahead.

I’m happy to answer any questions on this area of expenditure.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? No.

What’s next?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Great. The next category of expenditures proposed for consideration by the committee are in this broad category called legislative support services. You will see, Members, that there is a projected increase for 2021.

The next slide gives you a high-level overview of all of the many departments that comprise the legislative support services budget, and we’ll be stepping you through each of those one by one, beginning with the Office of the Speaker.

I would note that, of course, members will be familiar with the Office of the Speaker. This slide gives an overview of the responsibilities, of course, of the broader office, which continues to have an FTE count of three employees in the office. The total FTE count is not projected to change in the next fiscal year.

The next slide indicates that there is a reduction from the current fiscal year to the fiscal year ahead, moving from $504,000 to $425,000.

The next slide provides us with some detail of where those changes come into effect. There is a continuing provision for the ongoing three staff positions in the office. Those base salaries, as outlined, have not changed in the first item there.

There is a reduction here in employee benefits to reflect some additional work undertaken by financial services. We’ll see this in a number of departmental areas where our projected needs for employee benefits are adjusted on a five-year average, as well as actual expenditures. A combination of both has resulted in a $2,000 reduction to this area.

Employee travel remains consistent at $15,000. We also see a number of adjustments, decreases, in the remaining STOB lines. Those primarily relate to changes to expenditures that are no longer required for the initiative of the former Speaker — the Speaker’s Forum project, which had been in place. The reductions therefore apply, because the program is no longer continuing in that form — for a $20,000 reduction in contracted services — as well as a reduction in office and business expenses of about $25,000.

Based on actual usage, the information systems operating STOB line has also gone down by $2,000. That’s usually cell phones for employees.

[11:05 a.m.]

The grants provision for the office. It previously was in place for $10,000. Members will see that that has been removed at the request of the Speaker. We will be covering…. If there is an appetite to look at any grants in the fiscal year ahead, we will be providing those funds by way of a central budget.

Other expenses, I note at the bottom of the screen — I believe for legal expenditures — have also been removed, for an overall decrease of approximately 16 percent, or $79,000.

Mr. Speaker, did you want to add any other comments on your budget?

Mr. Speaker: No, I think I’ll live with it. This is good. I just want to say that we went over my office budget very thoroughly, and we realized there were certain items which were dealt with in the past that we may no longer need. As a result, we adjusted the budget.

However, we never know what may happen in the future. As you know, we may have to come back to the committee to get further adjustments — either going to increase it or to bring it down. That would be for future discussions and debate. This one is the budget for the Speaker’s office, and I really appreciate the support I got from Hilary’s office and the Clerk’s office.

Any questions on this fund? Any clarifications? Okay. None.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Mr. Speaker, next we have the Office of the Clerk. This budget includes staff salaries and benefits for my position as Clerk, our Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, our Clerk Assistant, Parliamentary Services and five other positions that support the overall work of our office. It also includes employee travel, legal and other contracted fees, and general administration expenses for the office.

You’ll see here that we continue to have some movement of FTEs. That’s including three positions that were transferred from the Clerk of Committees office due to the recent reorganization, plus the addition of the Clerk Assistant position, for a total FTE count of four.

On the next slide, you’ll see that in this fiscal year we’re projecting an increase, which is primarily due to this reorganization, with the additional positions in the Office of the Clerk and the increase in the number of Table Officers to support the necessary functions of the House and for the Legislative Assembly in general.

The next slide notes that we are proposing an increase in a variety of areas here. As mentioned, we are anticipating an overall increase of $257,000 over the previous fiscal year, or 22 percent. As noted, this is primarily due to the reorganization of leadership positions and staff to support the strategic priorities identified for the Vote 1 budget overall, our new position — as noted, the Clerk Assistant, Parliamentary Services — and three positions transferred from the Parliamentary Committees Office.

Additionally, position responsibilities have been adapted to ensure that we meet our commitments with respect to policy development as well as general research support. This office now has a staff complement of eight FTEs. Our travel has been greatly reduced, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the expectation that any planned meetings or seminars would primarily be conducted on a remote or virtual basis.

Our professional services category has been increased to provide support to Legislative Assembly administrative initiatives. We had previously had, for example, a financial consultant available from time to time to contribute subject-matter expertise. We are anticipating that we may revive some aspects of those contracted services. There is no change in our information systems operating budget line, which is primarily cell phones and related expenses.

Then, in addition, in relation to our organizational priority to support investment in staff learning and development, the office and business expense line has been increased to provide support for a number of professional development and training opportunities. A reduction in contingency fees, there at the bottom of the slide, is for a projected decrease in legal expenses.

I’m happy to take any questions from members on any aspect of that budget.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? No. Thanks, Kate.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Mr. Speaker, if I may, the next department is one of my areas of oversight.

[11:10 a.m.]

As members may be aware, the Parliamentary Committees Office — sometimes referred to, certainly in our budget documents, as the Office of the Clerk of Committees — supports the work of parliamentary committees established by the Legislative Assembly. We also have part of our Table team that is based in that office and that supports the House and Committee of Supply operations. A number of interparliamentary activities are also coordinated through that office.

As was previously mentioned on, I think, several occasions now, there are seven FTEs that were transferred from the members services budgetary envelope under parliamentary committees — that research staff — over to the Clerk of Committees office. I think that better aligns with the organizational structure of the office and the team.

There is no net change of FTEs actually working in the Parliamentary Committees Office. I just wanted to make that clear. When I go to the next slide, it looks like there’s a massive jump. This transfer of the seven FTEs is pretty much the reason for the jump.

As noted here, the proposed budget for the coming fiscal year is $1.393 million. That’s partly from the $611,000 increase in staff salaries that was transferred over from parliamentary committees. Also a resulting increase in benefits as a result of that change.

The elimination of legislative salaries and indemnities. This is just an accounting thing where permanent officers are captured under this category. Like the elimination of the Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees position, this line item is no longer required.

Employee travel has been reduced, just to align with the organizational posture that we’re taking in light of the pandemic.

Operational services have been adjusted, just to align ourselves with past trends. There is also a bit of an increase here overall. Not in the overall budget line. There has been an increase in professional development, under professional services, for staff.

Information systems. Again, just adjusted based on past trends.

Office and business expenses have been increased just slightly to account, again, for the transfer of the seven FTEs from parliamentary committees to the Office of the Clerk of Committees. The overall difference here is $411,000 or 42 percent.

I see Peter has a question, which I’m happy to answer.

P. Milobar: Yeah. Thanks.

I’m just wondering. With employee benefits, it seems to me that there was a $155,000 reduction. The base salaries are about the same, transferring over. It was like $630,000 or something.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Yes.

P. Milobar: Employee benefits was about $155,000. That should have transferred over. I can’t believe I’m saying this. But why is it only $60,000? Did we miss a 1 there?

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): No. Peter, I asked the same question. We didn’t. At least, I’m assured that we didn’t. I did ask the same question when we were preparing our budget submission.

The reason for this, as Hilary noted at the beginning or near the outset of the presentation, is that some of the way that we calculated benefits was based on previous trends. There’s this new formulaic approach that we’re taking, with a baseline, to just adjust where we are with benefits.

My understanding, from when we went through the budget with our team, is that this is just taking into account that baseline percentage of salaries that we’re applying for all positions at the Legislative Assembly and that this new figure should align with the actual trend of what the costs are expected to be under this line item.

Mr. Speaker: Anybody else? No.

Continue.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Legislative documents. Members, this is another…. It’s not a department. It’s just an area that’s managed by the Office of the Clerk.

The legislative documents area covers the documents that are required to be produced either by statute or by the standing orders. That includes bills, statutes once they’re adopted by the Legislative Assembly and receive royal assent, Orders of the Day, Votes and Proceedings, the Journals. There are also some other functions that are undertaken in light of the obligations of the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act, candidate disclosure statements, as pro­vided by Elections B.C., and also a slight cost of about $4,000 for document storage and archival.

The budget is staying flat at $245,000 from the previous year. As noted, the office and business expense, the $4,000, is for document archival and storage. Then another $241,000, staying flat, for the production of legislative and parliamentary documents.

Again, I’m happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Anyone? No.

Thank you. Artour, continue.

[11:15 a.m.]

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): The next one is not me.

H. Woodward: Oh, it’s me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will speak to financial services. Financial services provides end-to-end financial management and administrative support to members, assembly executive and de­partments, caucuses and constituency offices in a number of the areas, as noted on the slide. Financial services currently has an FTE complement of 14, and they’re requesting one additional FTE in the form of a financial analyst in support of increased workloads. The proposed net increase for financial services is $85,000, or 6 percent over the prior year.

I think, Artour, it’s in the next slide, please. That’s showing the historical trend for financial services and then, of course, the $85,000 or 6-percent increase from the prior year.

I’ll just quickly go through the actual year-over-year changes and requests for financial services. The first area is the salaries and budget. It includes the addition of the one new FTE and a proposed 2-percent compensation increase for staff. That, of course, has been offset by the 2-percent vacancy discount to account for hiring lag. The benefits, as Artour has noted, have been further reduced. That’s following the employee benefits review conducted by financial services and the resulting change in formula.

Just for the benefit of this committee, employee benefits were previously calculated on a five-year historical average per department. There was also a 2-percent cushion applied to that amount, and that was driving the budgets that were in excess of actual. Going forward, the review identified a change in that formula to actually have benefits based on the most recent available actual data, which in this case would be 2019-20. That’s why, as we go through these presentations, in some cases you will see significant decreases and other, smaller decreases in employee benefits. Essentially, we’re right-sizing that area for the departments going forward and addressing a chronic underspend area.

Moving on to employee travel, the reduction in travel from $7,000 to zero, again, is in anticipation of reduced travel due to COVID-19 and the cancellation of conferences. The remaining reductions are a result of the review undertaken by the department, identifying where they could make reductions in discretionary expenses. Again, the overall requested increase is $85,000 over the prior year, or 6 percent.

Happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? None. Thank you.

H. Woodward: Okay. So the next office is the executive financial officer. The executive financial officer is the assembly’s senior financial employee, part of the assem­bly’s Clerk’s leadership group and audit working group. The EFO provides direction to a number of departments, including financial services, the parliamentary dining room, legislative facilities services and capital planning and development.

The total FTE count for this department is 2.5. It’s requesting an additional 0.5. The 0.5 is to increase the analyst position that was previously approved last year by this committee to go from 0.5 to one full-time FTE, and also to reclassify that position from a GL 18 to a GL 27, in large part to recruit the right talent to that position.

As you can see, the overall budget for the office of the EFO has gone from $524,000 to $464,000, with a reduction of $60,000 from the prior year. Let me just move to the chart.

In terms of the year-over-year changes, the salary and benefits budget includes the request for the additional 0.5 FTE to bring to a full-time position and the proposed 2-percent compensation increase for staff — and that’s, of course, offset by the 2-percent vacancy discount to address the hiring lag. Employee travel has been reduced to zero. Professional service has been reduced from $150,000 to $25,000 to reflect the budget transfer of the internal audit budget, which previously was housed in the EFO’s budget, to the general central expense budget.

The information systems and office and business expenses have increased over the prior year in anticipation of additional costs for the support position and professional dues and training requirements for both the EFO and the support staff.

[11:20 a.m.]

Overall, that would be a $60,000 reduction, or a decrease of 11 percent from the prior year. Happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions?

S. Cadieux: I have one, Raj.

Hilary, just back on the slide before that — the graph of the projection for 2020-2021, including election costs. What are election costs?

H. Woodward: Yeah, I think, actually, seeing that…. There are no election costs in the departments’ budgets. I believe the only ones that would have election costs would be legislative facilities services, from a department perspective. Most of the election costs are in members services, for transitional assistance. Thanks for pointing that out.

Mr. Speaker: Before we continue, shall we have a recess? Okay. Let’s have a five-minute recess, and we’ll be back in five minutes. Thank you.

The committee recessed from 11:21 a.m. to 11:29 a.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: We will continue.

What’s next, Hilary?

H. Woodward: Mr. Speaker, just before I start with the parliamentary dining room, I just wanted to follow up on Stephanie’s question regarding the election-related costs. I believe I just mentioned legislative facilities services. I neglected to include information and technology, which of course, as part of following every election for a refresh, has both operating and capital implications. I just wanted to address that. Sorry for missing out that department.

I will move on now to the parliamentary dining room. The parliamentary dining room provides dining services to members, Legislative Assembly employees, caucus em­ployees and the public.

[11:30 a.m.]

The dining room budget sales revenue. They’ve been very hard hit because of COVID-19 and the closure of the building. It is now open to the public, so that definitely has improved, but we’re certainly not at the levels that we’ve seen previously. As a result, the dining room budget includes a reduction of 2.5 server positions. That’s in response to the reduced patron volume in the dining room as a result of COVID-19. The total proposed budget for the dining room is $588,000, a reduction of $14,000 as compared to the prior year, or 2 percent.

I’m just going to move to the table. Over 57 percent of the proposed reductions before recoveries are a result of the reduction in staff, the 2.5 servers. The salaries and benefits include the proposed 2 percent compensation increase for staff and again offset by the 2 percent vacancy discount. Over 40 percent of the remaining reduction, before recoveries, is in projected food costs due to lower volumes.

A similar reduction in revenues, almost 40 percent, is also contemplated for the upcoming year, based on, again, our budget assumptions regarding travel restrictions and the opening of the building. Essentially, the assumptions used in the building, the dining room budget, assume similar sales volumes to those incurred in ’20-21.

Any questions on the dining room?

Mr. Speaker: Any questions?

B. D’Eith: Just had a quick one, Mr. Speaker. With the Legislature coming back in March, I’m wondering how that’ll affect operations, in particular in regard to this budget.

H. Woodward: We definitely see a takeup in sales when members return to the House. A lot of that is still in takeout service versus actually sitting in the dining room. This does take into account the past history that we’ve seen in ’20-21, in terms of both food costs and revenues.

B. D’Eith: I was wondering because, I guess, last year, we didn’t have a spring session, just the shorter summer session. We’ve got this longer spring session. So you’ve taken that into account. Okay.

H. Woodward: Correct. I’ll also add, because this is one of two areas in the Vote 1 budget that is dependent on revenues…. The higher the revenues we can offset in terms of expenses from the auxiliary staff position. If the building opened, or we’re seeing the volume increases, we can respond. In response, we would bring back those positions. But at this point, we’re forecasting that they’re not required.

Mr. Speaker: Any other ones? No more questions?

Thank you, Hilary. Continue.

H. Woodward: I believe it’s over to Jamie Hanly to speak to human resource operations.

J. Hanly: Good morning. With HR, we provide generalist HR services and payroll services, including benefits, to 330 permanent and auxiliary Legislative Assembly employees. Then we also provide payroll and benefit services for members, caucus and constituency office staff.

We have a total right now of nine FTE. We are requesting, for HR, 1.5 FTEs. One of the FTEs is to support member services, and the 0.5 is an admin position, which is going to be shared between IT and HR. It’s actually a full-time position that’s split between those two areas.

Then we’re also requesting a temporary co-op student as a three-month placement. The chief HR officer position has already been approved, but the budget is going to be now allocated into HR’s budget.

You can see that we are actually asking for an increase to our budget for ’21-22 of $466,000, which I will outline in the next slide. The majority of the increase for the HR budget is coming from the salaries. One of those positions is the chief human resources officer salary. The other salary is for the member support HR position. The co-op position…. We’ve also asked for a reclassification for one of our positions, and then, again, the addition of the admin support. That’s the majority of the salary line.

[11:35 a.m.]

Supplementary salary costs. There has been a small increase that’s due to a maternity leave. Employee travel has decreased. Professional services operational has decreased by $18,000. However, we have added into professional services advisory. Those costs into the professional services advisory are really attributed to an increase in learning and development spending. That is directly related to supporting the workplace review initiative, specifically around things like creating a learning and development strategy, leadership development, management development, implementation of an employee engagement survey for 2021.

We also had some additional costs related to strategic planning, which is work that we are anticipating we will have completed by May. The other expenses are related to a small increase in our legal fees.

Any questions?

Mr. Speaker: Anyone? No.

Continue. The next one, I think, is IT.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Mr. Speaker, at this point in the meeting, I’d like to take the opportunity to also introduce Carolyn Chorney, who has joined the meeting. Carolyn has recently taken on the role of acting chief information officer, and she is pleased to assist me with this discussion of the information technology investments for the forthcoming year. I’m grateful to her help for the preparation of these materials.

This slide gives us an overview of the departmental areas of responsibility. I’ll also note that at the bottom of this slide, there is a change to the FTE count for this department, moving from a base number of 14 positions and adding three new positions in the upcoming fiscal year: a senior systems support in desktop services, a senior web analyst position and a new admin support financial analyst position. So a total of three additional positions are being projected.

The next slide will show the significant focus that we’ve brought to the IT departmental budget for the year ahead — so a very significant increase. I will note, as well, that in light of the development of this budget, Carolyn will be working very closely with me, with the department and with all members on managing some of the initiatives that this additional investment represents.

With respect to Carolyn’s role, I should also mention that I’ve asked her to undertake a number of key areas of focus during her time with the Legislative Assembly. We are continuing, of course, our recruitment for a permanent chief information officer, but in this interim period of time, her focus is really on ensuring the successful and stable completion of all workplace technology deployments that are currently underway, including the establishment of effective ongoing support models.

We’re also going to be working together to assess and establish both the immediate and near-term IT priorities to guide departmental work and investment, based on ongoing feedback from members, from constituency offices and from assembly administrative staff. A central theme of the budget priorities will be really focusing on the smooth and secure operation and support of all workplace devices, IT infrastructure and cloud-based productivity tools. Achieving a stable and secure environment is really foundational to these investments.

Carolyn will be ensuring that our priorities are also reflected in a near-term road map for the months ahead, which may result in some adjustments to these initial operating budget projections. I know last week the subcommittee on finance and audit had an opportunity to have a more extensive review of the capital funding investments targeted for next year, but we will be working closely together to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of the organization in the year ahead.

In many ways, this budget is a preliminary road map, as best that we can envision at this point in time. We will be working to validate and to prioritize investments and may require further adjustments that we will be bringing back to this committee.

[11:40 a.m.]

On the next slide, we see an overview of some of the areas of key activity for the department in the year ahead with respect to their significant budget adjustments. They are continuing to be, of course, responsible for the day-to-day support, management and security of workplace technology throughout the assembly. That includes desktop and mobile technology, cloud-based tools and the service desk. The intranet web development project is also anticipated in the year ahead.

In light of this significant budgetary increase, we’ve aligned the next few slides along key areas of investment on a thematic basis. As you will see, we’re focused on continuing to improve day-to-day productivity, experience and technology services for members, constituency offices and staff. We also are retaining a focus on life-cycle replacements, ensuring a currency of our equipment that’s so essential to reliability and security of our technology and infrastructure at the precinct and throughout the network environment. The final theme here, as noted in the slides to follow, is really a focus on ensuring that the departmental staff capacity maintains the capacity, the skills and engagement to effectively support the services that are required.

The overall operating expense request for the year ahead is $5.66 million, which is broken down in some detail in the following slides. Here we see a thematic breakdown at the bottom of this slide. The day-to-day productivity, looking ahead to the end-user experience: a $1.686 million expenditure.

I’ll also note that that includes a budgetary transfer of $504,000 for the Xerox contract. That centralized contract was based previously within the assembly’s centralized budgetary area. As the information technology department has responsibility for oversight of that contract and services, that budget has been transferred here, so it’s part of the increase in that thematic area.

I’ll just note here that the life-cycle replacement to ensure the infrastructure is reliable, secure and up-to-date is coming in at $600,000 and the IT staff capacity component at $328,000.

The next slide continues on….

Mr. Speaker: Kate, hold it. Peter has a question.

P. Milobar: Sorry. Just back to employee benefits again. Hopefully, this is the correction year, because the base salaries and overtime are twice what the transfer was in the other one. The transfer in the other one was $60,000 in benefits. This is a $300,000 expenditure. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency of ratio of expense of benefits versus wages. It seems to be totally out of sync. If this was the same ratio as that other $630,000 or $611,000 that got transferred, it should be, like, $120,000. Instead, it’s a $295,000 expense. Hopefully, this is a one-year correction year, or is this what it’s like every year, with benefits? I’m just new to it.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify, because I, as well, had the same inquiry into different departmental impacts. As Hilary mentioned, we did do an adjustment on the benefit rate of all departments to their actual percentages from the last fiscal year. Previously, we had used a five-year average only and then an additional buffer built into that. But in some departmental areas, Peter, there were significant underspends year over year. The formula just wasn’t meeting — was certainly oversupplying — what the actual needs were in benefits.

This is an example of a departmental area that I feel has been set correctly now. We will certainly be happy to report out on that to see how successful our projections are. But I feel that the new approach taken by financial services should be much more accurate to the actual needs of the departments.

Mr. Speaker: Anybody else?

[11:45 a.m.]

B. D’Eith: Just a quick question. We talked about this in the subcommittee, obviously. But just for the benefit of the other members, even with these increases, there’s still significant work that needs to be done on the IT side. I just wouldn’t want to leave members with the impression that the increases here are going to solve all our problems. This is a starting point.

It’s more just to flag that, because presumably, after a whole review is done and we can look at what it looks like, what the needs are, we may have to come back, let’s say next year or in supplementary, in the middle of the year. Is that accurate, or…? Maybe you could just address that, because it is an increase, and I just don’t want members to think that suddenly this is going to solve all their problems.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you for the opportunity, Bob. As you noted, the subcommittee on finance and audit had an opportunity to look, at a very detailed level, at some of the considerations that are shaping these initial projected expenditures for the year ahead. There are some important capital expenditures that have been put forward to date. But as you note, there are many considerations to ensure that we have the kind of system that is as secure and reliable as we would expect it needs to be to sustain the work of the institution.

We have had a number of recent detailed reviews to assess the infrastructure. I know there are many areas of the infrastructure that require updating, but because of the breadth of review that we are currently of the midst of….

With Carolyn’s and the team’s help, we will definitely be ensuring that we validate all of the projected expenditures in the year ahead. All of the identified projects will also be subject to detailed planning to ensure that we are confident with the resourcing identified for each area of investment. Any significant changes…. We will be working very closely with members to ensure that the identified projects and their impacts both on members and constituency offices align with the foundational components of the key themes that we’ve mentioned.

Bob is quite correct. We have a lot of work to do together in ensuring that we address, both in this fiscal year and in upcoming fiscal years, a much more robust and proactive approach to IT investments.

M. Babchuk: Thank you for that clarification. This subset of the budget piece was one that I had some big concerns about as well. I’m really happy to see, as we’re moving forward, that $5 million amount actually projected going forward, knowing, of course, that those services are going to have to maintain if we are going to move forward with the capital expenditures in table 3, in regard to upgrading the system that we have.

My concern, actually, was that there was not enough money there. But I look forward to, maybe, a more robust presentation of what the actual plan is to get us to where we need to be.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much, Michele. Yes, I completely agree. I have not lost sight of a commitment to members of this committee to bring forward a very detailed assessment of circumstances that led to some of the challenges that we’re continuing to work through now.

In recognition of the fact that we’ve had the opportunity to bring in a lot of additional IT expertise, I see many opportunities to ensure that we take a much more effective and client-oriented approach to our IT planning on an annual basis. In the past, the approach that we had taken to, let’s say, equipment assessments was very much focused on a four-year cycle, which is not always a very effective way to keep up with the changing needs of members or their offices. So I really look forward to taking a new approach, as well, even to the tools that we use to manage the service desk and also to manage client relationships. I think this is an area where we will see a great deal of change.

I certainly know that Carolyn will be returning to your committee with some of these initial findings as she prepares an interim road map as we transition to a permanent chief information officer position.

Mr. Speaker: Anyone else? Nope. Thank you.

Continue.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): We’ll continue then, Mr. Speaker. On the next slide is a breakdown of some of the key projects that we’re anticipating in the year ahead. Some of these have already been canvassed by members with respect to the capital components of the expenditures.

[11:50 a.m.]

The first significant project that is noted here is a major upgrade to constituency office network infrastructure. There’s a combination there of both capital and operating investments that are projected for the year ahead. With respect to this particular operating investment of $697,000, that is a very significant project which, again, will be subject to careful planning and partnership with offices.

Just to break it down in a more detailed format, this includes installation services for hardware replacement, as is noted on the slide, as well as maintenance costs for the hardware to improve end-user connectivity. Some other hardware costs may be coming in here that, if they don’t meet the capital threshold of $1,000…. They are also part of the $697,000.

The overall objective of this project, of course, is to ensure that you have reliable, effective and secure connectivity with the Legislative Assembly network throughout the province. There is a very active project underway that we will be briefing the members of the IT resumption committee on. So you have a sense of timing. You have a sense of what the deliverables will be and the impact in the constituency offices. We certainly look forward to modernizing and upgrading these important services within your offices.

I’ll note that the next project, as we continue on this slide, is one that is of particular interest to me: the client relationship management engagement. A $75,000 investment is proposed here. This is a review which is intended to help the Legislative Assembly establish a more client-centric approach to future development and delivery of IT services. This review will also provide recommendations on organizational changes to shift to a more proactive approach in partnering with members and their staff, as well as departments within the Legislative Assembly staff.

Moving down the slide here, we have a number of investments related to a cloud-based productivity tool. These new tools will shift the support of software and the underlying technology to the cloud, allowing the information technology department to focus on the administration of these tools in supporting effective use. We also have a number of other cloud-based components there. I’ll note the bottom of this slide…. I mentioned earlier the shifting of the multifunction Xerox contract to this area for $504,000.

That is the overview of the theme with respect to productivity.

The next slide has a number of projects that are currently proposed with respect to helping us maintain currency, security and reliability. These are investments with respect to life-cycle replacements for a number of pieces of hardware. The first line item there is primarily a capital investment. These are new mobile devices to refresh workplace equipment, primarily for a real range, a broad range of staff within the Legislative Assembly organization, coming in with capital at $450,000 and operating costs at $87,000.

We also see a security-related project to replace the remote access gateway, which is part of the network connectivity from constituency offices, projected to be at $6,000 in the year ahead. Also, another network, a gateway life-cycle replacement project to follow, which is based here on the precinct and includes a number of network switches, Wi-Fi access points — capital funding of $75,000 initially projected and operating costs of $20,000.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Kate, if I could just interject to remind you that we shouldn’t be stating the capital expenditures on the public record, the dollar value, just for competitive bidding processes.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yeah. I’m happy to do that. I had consulted with Hilary as well on that point, and we had felt generally comfortable, but I’ll take your caution. Again, members have delved into many more of the details of these project lines at the meeting on Friday, so I will just acknowledge that there are some components here. But the focus of the presentation is, of course, our operating expenditures.

[11:55 a.m.]

With respect to life-cycle replacements, generally speaking, the operating funds are not as significant as the capital, as you can see on this slide, but it does ensure that we are able to renew the IT infrastructure here at the precinct and ensure remote secure access.

I’m happy to take any questions on that slide if members have any.

Mr. Speaker: Anyone? No. Thank you.

Continue.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Continuing, a number of operating proposed expenditures for the year ahead here. Two are security-related. The first, of course, is maintenance for our server backup solution — hardware maintenance, a $40,000 investment.

We also have projected here an operating expense of $160,000 to deal with disaster recovery, a cloud-based backup solution for off-site backup data and applications. This is a project that we have started in the current fiscal year, so this projected operating expense relates to maintenance costs.

Enhanced technical support will be provided in the year ahead from a Microsoft expert team to ensure that we have a high level of awareness of any technical risks in our environment and to ensure that we have a much more effective and quick response time in the event that we have another outage event.

Finally, as part of the ongoing program to ensure high-level cybersecurity, we also have additional reviews anticipated to cover a number of other system areas. That is estimated to be a $40,000 investment next year.

If there are no questions on that slide, I’ll just wrap up the final slide here in this slide deck. I’ll also invite Carolyn, if she has any additional comments to add.

This final theme, I mentioned at the outset, is to invest in the capacity and skills of our information technology departmental team — a total investment here of $328,000. Note that as part of the road map that we are developing, we will be ensuring that we have an awareness of any key skills gaps that we might require to resource in the years ahead. We will be looking at recommendations on how to best address any gaps that might arise.

To date we have an operating estimate for the IT departmental employee cost of $303,000, and then a number of strategic training initiatives to ensure that we maintain the skills of this talented group, coming in at $25,000 for the year ahead.

Carolyn, is there any other aspect or comment that you would like to share with committee members?

C. Chorney: No, I think that you’ve covered it, Kate.

I think our near-term focus of developing the road map is critical. As Kate mentioned, I’m very focused right now on ensuring that we do complete initiatives that are underway. I look forward to building that road map, which will then also speak to any staffing gaps, so we’ll be back with that at some point in the near future. That’s it. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? No. Before we move to the next department — now we have reached the mid-point; it’s 12 o’clock — should we break now for half an hour, or do you want to continue for a while? What’s the verdict?

S. Furstenau: Can I request that we break, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: Okay, let’s break. Is 30 minutes enough time for everybody?

G. Begg: Could we have an hour, Chair?

Mr. Speaker: No.

S. Furstenau: Forty-five minutes?

Mr. Speaker: Let’s do 45 minutes. So we’ll be back at 12:45 p.m. Would that be enough?

G. Begg: Not for me, but that’s good.

Mr. Speaker: No, no. We can do it for one hour if that’s the….

G. Begg: I have a commitment from 12 till one.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. Let’s meet back at one o’clock then.

The committee will be in recess until 1 p.m., and we will start at 1 p.m. sharp.

The committee recessed from 11:59 a.m. to 1:03 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Let’s continue. We were on page 64, last time I checked.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Yes, Mr. Speaker. We are on to the parliamentary education office — another area that I oversee — which, of course, promotes public understanding and access to the Legislative Assembly and the Parliament Buildings. It provides educational and promotional materials to schools and constituency offices. It coordinates school visits and visiting delegations, manages a variety of educational programs and coordinates member and public use of the legislative precinct.

[1:05 p.m.]

I will note that the department, much like Hilary has noted of another department in the assembly, is very public-facing, so of course, there have been a number of impacts on its operations stemming from the pandemic. We’re just recognizing that some of its operations are going to shift, certainly with respect to the tour program and its operations this summer. There is a reduction of three FTEs, which is a number of part-time positions, due to the pandemic, and another slight staffing adjustment at the request of a staff member, which has been accommodated. Overall, the budget for the department is decreasing to $1.425 million. I’ll just speak to that in a little bit more detail on the next slide.

I do also want to note that the department, of course, has sustained a very physical presence on the legislative precinct, with visiting groups and tours. It has had a lot of success in the current fiscal year, and I trust that that will continue into the next fiscal year of pivoting, of driving our programs into an online and e-learning format. Staff have been really innovative in repositioning the department to be able to offer its programs in that venue. I just wanted to note that. I’m very proud of them, because I think it’s taken a lot of work, and they’ve had a great deal of success.

Base salary and overtime is being reduced. This is, again, just as a result of not hiring the full summer tour program. I’m going to group supplementary salary costs and employee benefits — because this number keeps on popping up — into one category. The reason that supplementary salary costs…. There’s an increase there of $11,000. There have been some reductions that have been identified as part of that budget line generally. But because of a known maternity leave that is being budgeted for in the department that’s already started but that will continue into next fiscal…. That’s where the $11,000 bump is essentially coming from — that maternity leave.

Employee benefits have been adjusted partly because of the overall work that we’ve done in this area but also because of the reduced staffing levels for the summer tour program this coming summer of 2021. Employee travel has been reduced to align with our organizational posture in this area and also to remove a one-time trip that was taken in the current fiscal year.

Professional services are being increased. This is just a result of updating publications that are out of date, and this is for the printing and publication costs of those publications. Professional services advisory are staying flat at $7,000. This is professional advisory services that are used for things like the B.C. teachers institute and the education steering committee. Also, there’s a historical character, for example, under development as part of the Parliamentary Players program. We just seek historical expertise to make sure that the framing of that character is appropriate in the context of that period of time.

The IT, the information and systems operating, is being reduced by $12,000. Some of those costs are just an alignment with our new IT posture. Many of those are being captured under the IT budget. That’s for a number of software and maintenance fees. The cost has just been transferred to IT for management.

The increase of $15,000 under business expenses. As I noted, there are a number of publications that are going to be updated in the coming fiscal year. Some of that stems from the election period and will continue into the new fiscal. This is primarily just for graphic design services for those new publications.

On informational advertising, I just want to tie it into the next line — the informational advertising utilities, materials and supplies. The department is asking for an increase of $4,000 for advertising its programs. But as a result, the utilities, materials and supplies to support on-site tour programming…. Obviously, that same budgetary need is no longer there. So there is an increase to promote its programs and online learning, but as a result of that, there’s a decrease under utilities, materials and supplies to offset that increase. There’s no longer that need for the programming that’s offered on site, because it’s suspended at the current time.

The other expense reduction is just as a result of reduced gift shop purchasing and inventory. The recoveries is also being reduced because of lower than…. Well, it’s just a projection of lower gift shop sales, essentially. Overall, it’s a decrease of $208,000, or 13 percent, over the previous year. I’m happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? None.

Continue.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): I will continue the slides, Mr. Speaker, and I believe it’s back to Hilary.

[1:10 p.m.]

H. Woodward: Thank you, Artour and Mr. Speaker.

I’m going to speak to legislative facilities services. Legislative facilities services is responsible for maintaining the buildings and grounds of the legislative precinct. The total FTE count for this department remains unchanged from the prior year, at 22.5. The legislative facilities services proposed ’21-22 budget is $3.775 million. It’s a $4,000 reduction from the prior year, at $3.779 million.

I will now speak to the individual areas, the year-over-year change. Salaries and benefits include a proposed 2 percent compensation increase, offset by, of course, the 2 percent vacancy discount. Employee benefits have been reduced in response to the review of employee benefits by financial services. Employee travel has been reduced to zero in response to COVID-19. The professional services, information systems, office and business expense categories have all been reduced following the review of discretionary expenditures and the elimination of contingency amounts undertaken this budget cycle.

We do see an increase in utilities, materials and supplies. It has increased by $50,000. This increase is externally driven as a result of annual inflation, but this particular category includes annual maintenance costs such as hydro, water, sewer, cable and steam, trash collection services. It also includes materials and supplies budget for in-house staff to perform general building maintenance and repairs.

The next item, the building occupancy charges, are a major asset. Maintenance is a budget request — an increase of $40,000. This particular category reflects anticipated costs of planned maintenance projects in the upcoming year and reflects the projects that have been identified by this department.

Finally, in terms of recoveries, we do have some leases for those on the precinct — for example, some of our media as well as the Conflict of Interest Commissioner — and as a result of the discretionary expenditure review, there is a small reduction of $2,000 in that category.

Overall, taking all of those adjustments into account, the budget is reduced by $4,000 — so, essentially, flat for this department.

I’m happy to take any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions or clarifications? No.

You’re good to continue.

H. Woodward: Okay. The next category is general centralized expense. It’s not an actual department. Rather, it is a centrally managed pool of funding that includes a number of items. It includes shared or common assembly costs. Those are noted on the slide. It also includes contingency funds, amortization, expenses for capital assets and lease costs for the Vancouver office space for the official opposition leader’s office.

The budget request for general centralized expense for ’21-22 is $3.7 million. That’s a $1.3 million, or 25 percent, reduction from the prior year.

I will speak now to the year-over-year changes for this area. Base salaries. You’ll see a $500,000 increase to salaries. This is a contingency reserve should additional resources be required, in particular with respect to the earlier discussions regarding work currently underway with respect to information technology investments.

The next line, professional services operational, sees a reduction of $238,000. That’s a removal of the prior year contingency funding, to be replaced by $145,000 in ’21-22. The $145,000 is for the assembly’s internal audit services, which was transferred from the budget of the executive financial officer.

The next item is professional services advisory, and that’s an increase of $200,000. That is a contingency reserve that is included. It is for consulting dollars for the review of the existing systems and business supports, in particular in finance, human resources and payroll, and for the planned centralization of procurement services. Those are consulting dollars set aside.

The next line item, information systems operating. You’ll see a reduction. It’s going from $386,000 in ’20-21 to zero in ’21-22. This reduction is tied to the budget transfer of voice over internet protocol, or VoIP, monthly charges to the information technology department. These costs were previously held centrally.

Office and business expense — a $668,000 reduction over the prior year. The reduction is for the removal of funding provided to the former service provider for the copy centre and the multifunction devices.

[1:15 p.m.]

As previously noted, $504,000 in funding has been transferred to the information technology department to cover those costs as related to the new service provider. Funding for this contract was previously held centrally.

I’ve spoken previously on amortization expense. Amortization expense is held centrally. The reduction reflects some adjustment to better align the amortization budget with existing and anticipated capital requirements.

The building occupancy charges. There’s a reduction of $15,000. This is a result of the review of discretionary expenses and aligning the budget to reflect actual lease costs. The grant line — you’ll see an increase of $10,000. The previously mentioned budget transfer from the Office of the Speaker to the central expense budget has resulted in that increase of $10,000.

Finally, other expenses. This primarily relates to legal expenses. There’s a $250,000 reduction from over the prior year, and that’s in anticipation of reduced expenses related to external legal services. In combination of those adjustments, there is a $1.2 million, $1.3 million reduction to general centralized expenses. On a percentage basis, it’s just over a 25 percent decrease over the prior year.

Happy to answer any questions.

P. Milobar: I noticed it in this one, but it’s come up in almost every other department as well — or sheet like this. Why is there such a drop in legal expenses this year anticipated? Was that the change in the Speaker’s chair? Why were we expending so many hundreds of thousands of dollars, now, at this point, on legal fees last year that we’re not expecting to expend this year?

H. Woodward: Kate, would you like me to respond, or would you like to start?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you. Yes. Just based on operational awareness of various risk areas and the completion of some processes that were in place in the previous parliament that are no longer operational, there was a projected decrease. We were trying to manage, as carefully as we could, a consolidated approach to legal expenses as well. We had centralized a number of those expenditures within the central budget.

I would be happy to address that in more detail if you wish, with respect to legal considerations, in the in-camera portion of the meeting, Peter.

P. Milobar: Yeah. I mean, I’m glad to see the numbers are going down. It’s just that I’d have to go back to every slide to figure out how many…. This alone is a quarter million dollars less. So I know it’s come up on a lot of other slides too about lower legal costs. It would be interesting to know what the aggregate number is, in terms of lower legal fees, over one year to this year coming up.

Mr. Speaker: We’ll be talking more about this, Peter, later on, at the next item.

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

Mr. Speaker: Okay.

H. Woodward: Any other questions? Okay, great.

Capital planning and development. This particular department is responsible for planning, development and delivery of major capital projects in the legislative precinct. It is also responsible for procurement, advisory and support services to the departments, as well as management of the assembly’s business continuity program and support to departments in developing their business continuity plans.

The capital planning has a current staff complement of three FTEs and is requesting one new FTE be added to support business continuity planning and coordination. Previously, this support has been provided through a contracted resource. The proposed budget for capital planning for ’21-22 is $1.3 million, a decrease of $276,000 from the prior year. The budget proposes decreases in all areas, with the exception of base salaries, which reflects the addition of the one new FTE. Salaries also includes, of course, the 2 percent proposed compensation increase for staff, offset by the 2 percent vacancy discount.

As you can see, employee travel has been reduced to zero in response to COVID-19. The professional services has been reduced by $250,000 based on historical actual trend for the department and needs requirements for the upcoming year in terms of planned projects.

The remaining reductions in information systems, office expenses and utilities, materials and supplies category are a result of the department’s review of discretionary expenses and, of course, the resulting reductions.

[1:20 p.m.]

In the last category, operating equipment, there are no anticipated changes to that particular budget.

In total, that’s a $276,000 reduction over the prior year. In percentage terms, it’s a 17 percent reduction.

I’m happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Speaker: Any questions? None. Thank you.

Continue.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): I’ll pick it up from here, Mr. Speaker. The next four departments fall under my leadership, so I have a lot of paper on my desk that I will get through as we complete out the departmental budgets for the afternoon.

We’ll begin with the digital information office, which, as members can see from this slide, has an organization-wide mandate to support our investments in information management and governance. Given that at the outset of the presentation this morning, we identified some priority areas of investment to enhance our capacity to effectively manage data, records and information management, this area will see a significant increase in the year ahead.

With respect to its FTE count, the new chief information officer, once recruited, will be part of the small office team. We’re also recommending the establishment of a new position: an electronic records management system administrator role, which we project will start around quarter 2 in the year ahead. We’ve got a half salary for that full-time position within the budget.

On the next slide, we’ll see a little bit more about the growth of this small office, which was established in 2019. With the addition of the extra salary positions, there’s a total being sought here of $670,000, which reflects primarily the changes to the staff complement for this office of two, currently.

On the next slide, we see the breakdown by STOB line of the different areas of investment. As I mentioned, most of the increase here relates to the additional investments in new staff salary positions. The electronic records management program, which the administrator will help support, has been partially identified in our capital project summary, shared with the subcommittee on finance and audit the other day. But the administrator will, for the first time, help the assembly establish an organization-wide records management program, which is a fairly significant undertaking for our organization. It’s always surprised me that an organization of this size doesn’t have a coherent records management system. So we will be, with the help of this departmental team, approaching that goal in the year ahead.

With respect to other investments on this side, there are a number of contracted services, professional services operating and advisory on this slide. Those are a combination of one-time, non-reoccurring costs with respect to external expertise related to information access and privacy questions. There is a small investment, reduced, in information systems operating for desktop scanner and cell phone use for the team. As well, in office and business expenses, a number of savings have been identified, but the remainder covers conference fees, professional memberships, the purchase of ISO standards, and records and information management resources. So an overall increase of $365,000 for the fiscal year ahead.

Are there any questions on the digital information office and their investments for next year?

Mr. Speaker: Anybody? No.

That’s it. Thank you.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): We’ll proceed, then, to the office of the Sergeant-at-Arms. The members will know that this office provides security of the Parliament Buildings and the precinct grounds and ensures the safety and security of members, staff and the public. The office also provides a number of other services, including sessional in the gallery, corridor services, as well as mail room services for the precinct and emergency first aid response.

For the year ahead, we are anticipating that the FTE count will remain stable with a slight adjustment to two sessional supervisory roles, which is simply just a small adjustment to ensure that the FTE count aligns with the actual hours required for the sessional and corridor teams to be available during sessional hours. On the next slide, we’ll see that the overall budget impact for the group has gone down from projections currently in place this year, so an overall reduction of $214,000 or approximately 3 percent.

[1:25 p.m.]

I would like to note that the Sergeant-at-Arms’ budget team very much took a team approach. I wanted to thank them for their efforts in presenting this operating budget.

I understand that in addition to Greg Nelson and Laura Lemieux, the team assembled to work on this budget, which identified significant savings…. You’ll see that on the lower half of the screen. I just wanted to acknowledge Mike Hamilton, Vance Capron, Tyrone Simmonds and Angela Hemming, who also contributed to identifying a number of cost savings in some of those areas on the screen. So a special thanks to them.

In looking at the overall budget, I’ll just step us through some of the major areas of investment. You’ll note about 90 percent of this department’s budget is in its people, its personnel, salaries and overtime costs.

In the first line there, we have, as I said, an adjustment to those sessional hours, just to get a better fit on the sessional supervisory roles. So basically, a stand-pat adjustment, slightly up to $20,000. Members will note, as well, a significant savings in employee benefits as a result of the review that was undertaken across the organization.

The Sergeant-at-Arms’ position is provided in the legislative salaries and indemnities line there. So that’s a hold pattern from the previous fiscal year, including the projected 2 percent increase for all staff.

Members will note a reduction in employee travel, of course, which is common throughout the organization, due to COVID.

With respect to some of the other areas of expenditure, I’ll just note that savings, as I acknowledged, have been found in most of the other line items in this budget.

For professional services, we have a number of contracts that are renewed on an annual basis. This includes our external partnership with the Victoria police department, training-related external expertise and X-ray machine services. So that is in the professional services category.

In information systems and operating, there are a number of software costs, cell phone supports and, also, an upgrade to the Versatech security monitoring system. So we see a slight increase in that budget line for the year ahead to ensure that the hardware and software that support our security monitoring system here at the buildings is kept current with the standards required for that service.

A couple of other line items there. Office and business expenses includes safety equipment, uniforms and training. Some cost decreases there, as identified by the team.

Utilities, materials and supplies for this group represent investments in uniforms and ammunition. Again, the team has found a number of savings there. Much appreciation to them.

A slight increase in the final line item on this screen: operating equipment and vehicles. The increase there reflects a capital investment that we discussed last Friday, and that is the integration of the department with the CREST communication software network. That is a capital regional district regional emergency radio network. The costs associated with us joining that network are outlined in that final line item on the screen.

I’m happy to take any questions with respect to the office of the Sergeant-at-Arms.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Just very quickly, in terms of salaries and overtime, there has been…. We, I gather, had some issues with a number of vacancies. How are we doing in terms of strength of the department? Do we still have a problem in terms of vacancies not being filled?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Yes. We do have a number of funded vacancies within this budget environment, but I’m pleased to advise members that the overtime costs have been carefully presented here as a part of that. The team has been working very carefully to ensure there’s a significant reduction in overtime costs.

For member’s information, from time to time, due to staff shortages and as a requirement of training-related absences or protest coverage or other shift extensions, there had been a lot of pressures in this department. We’re projecting approximately $316,000 set aside for the year ahead, but that is a significant reduction over prior years.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Thanks.

Mr. Speaker: Anybody else? No.

All right. Let’s continue.

[1:30 p.m.]

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you very much. We’ll continue, then, with the team at Hansard Services.

Members will know, of course, that this team produces the official written record of debate of the Legislative Assembly and all committee proceedings. The Hansard Services team is a diverse and talented group. They are also responsible for operating the audio and microphone-switching systems of the Legislative Assembly chamber and its committees and are responsible for audio and video recording of all debates, closed captioning and telecasting of proceedings and distributing the live signal of proceedings via an uplink to a satellite.

The FTE count in this group will remain basically steady this year with some adjustments, as outlined on the screen. The most significant investment, really, is in the Hansard reporting line. You’ll see a 0.7 FTE, so slightly additional FTE hours in that part of the organization. That is significant. Although it appears on the screen as a relatively small investment, it’s significant to the auxiliaries working, the editors who are part of the production team.

Members of the committee who have continued from the 41st parliament may recall that both in the workplace review report and subsequently, in engagement with Hansard employees directly, there was a recognition that we could better support this sessional team with some assurance of special-project work and assured hours. In response to those reports, an additional investment has been made to sustain the ongoing nature of their contributions on special projects of an interdepartmental nature.

The next slide will show, overall, the trend line for Hansard Services, a slight reduction this year. There have been a lot of savings, identified on the following slide, with respect to some of the areas that we’ve noted on previous departmental slides — a significant reduction, in this regard, with respect to travel. As we noted earlier, we are not anticipating any employee travel to professional development events or conferences until January of 2022. So in this area, a significant savings was identified.

In terms of information systems, there are a number of technical components here, covered by this line item. We see an increase of $18,000. These costs mostly relate to software, support, maintenance for the technical systems in the Hansard department and satellite costs, equipment and support.

Are there any questions with respect to the Hansard submission?

P. Milobar: To Kate, I guess, we’ve had some preliminary discussions about the kind of want to try to have a hybrid session for estimates in both Houses. Is there enough wiggle room, if there’s an increased cost, built into this budget to account for potential extra costs that may result in trying to make sure that we can have that kind of similar estimates experience that people would normally expect, as opposed to the pure online virtual that we had last summer? That wasn’t overly effective.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): Thank you, Peter. The question, which you placed with me a couple of days ago, is now in the hands of my colleagues in Hansard Services. We’re examining options to enhance, at Peter’s request, exploring the notion of our capacity to deliver a concurrent hybrid broadcast, if indeed it is the decision of Members of the Legislative Assembly to broaden out that approach. There are a lot of implications to that question that Peter placed in my hands, so we are doing that assessment right now.

I would suggest that if the operating budget as it is currently outlined here is not sufficient, then it could well be something that we fund from contingencies within Vote 1, if it is seen to be desirable.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Let me make just a quick comment for members. If we decide to do something, to go down this route, we will be able to fund it. We will fund it.

P. Milobar: Okay, thanks. Not knowing how we get in supplementals or not, I just wanted to make sure that there was a notation for money available, if that’s where we land.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Yeah, funding will not be a problem.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): I’d be happy to update all House Leaders on the progress and information that I receive from my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker: Good, thank you. Okay, any further clarifications or comments? No.

All right. Let’s proceed.

[1:35 p.m.]

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): I believe the Legislative Library is the last departmental group to be offered to you this afternoon. Members will know that the Legislative Library provides information services to MLAs, caucus staff, assembly staff and other clients. They acquire, process, digitize and preserve books and other materials as well as use electronic and digital information throughout.

The proposed FTE adjustment for the library for the year ahead formalizes their longstanding practice of retaining co-op students, usually from the University of British Columbia, to augment their team on a four-to-eight-month basis. That practice has been intermittent over the years, but the library is keen to ensure that the co-op position continues. Although not separately funded, it is a recognized FTE adjustment for this group.

The next slide will show, basically, a slight reduction for the operating budget for the Legislative Library for next year, representing about a $61,000 decrease or 3 percent. We’ll see how that breaks down on the following slide in a bit more detail. The base salaries and overtime position is essentially held steady. The adjustment that we see is likely a result of the vacancy discount that Hilary mentioned earlier in the presentation today. Again, we see a right-sizing of the employee benefits projection for the year ahead, for a reduction of $63,000 — also, as with other departments, a reduction in employee travel due to the pandemic.

Operational contracts and professional services provide the library with expertise in digitization initiatives and bookbinding services. There are a number of investments there for software and support for information systems. Some of the office and business expenses within the library budget include off-site record storage and office materials. The utilities, materials and supplies line item, the last one on your screen, is really subscriptions to a number of journals and other library materials.

In essence, a hold-pat budget for the Legislative Library team at $2.2 million — $2.3 million, almost. Are there any questions with respect to the library’s initiatives for next year?

Mr. Speaker: Anyone? No. Thank you.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of the Legislative Assembly): That completes that very lengthy presentation. Thank you all, Members, for your interest and your review at such a detailed level. We appreciate your interest very much.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. Now, if there are no further questions or discussion, that concludes our consideration of the Vote 1 budget submission for next fiscal year.

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Sorry, Mr. Speaker. I do think that Hilary’s going to provide just a very quick overview of the capital budget that was considered by the subcommittee on finance and audit last week.

Is that correct, Hilary — this very short slide deck?

H. Woodward: Yes, I certainly can. I did touch on it at the top, at the beginning, with the submission, but I’m happy to go through those few slides, if it’s of interest to the committee.

Mr. Speaker: Is anybody interested?

B. D’Eith: Let’s do it.

Mr. Speaker: Let’s do it.

H. Woodward: Great, okay. Thank you — make me feel better.

This is basically a selection of a few of the slides that were presented to the subcommittee on finance and audit last Friday. I promise I will be quick.

Essentially, for the ’21-22 capital budget, we’re asking for $6.3 million. It’s comprised of 50 projects. Those projects span the three caucuses as well as nine branches. The box to the right on the slide identifies the projects by category. You can see that we will have 16 projects in new systems and specialized equipment, 21 in life-cycle replacement, seven regarding safety upgrades, four for building infrastructure upgrade and two in the category of security enhancement.

[1:40 p.m.]

To the next slide, please. Again, similar on the themes approach, this does provide a bit of a snapshot of the year-over-year capital spend by theme. Again, the $6.3 million request is $300,000 over last year’s $6 million budget.

I was just going to touch on some of the changes for folks to see. In terms of safety upgrades, the increase over the prior year from $1.4 million to $2 million is reflective of the actual moving to construction for a number of the projects that began in this current year and are continuing into next. A lot of this work was design and planning, and we will be moving to construction. An example of that would be the two fire safety exits at the back of the building in both the Clerk’s courtyard and the Speaker’s courtyard.

Life-cycle replacement. You’ll see, from a $647,000 budget in the current year, to the proposed ’21-22, is now up to $2.2 million. A high amount, a significant contributor to that increase is for the investments in IT infrastructure that you received an update on from the operating side today and for the subcommittee last week, on the capital investments.

Building infrastructure upgrades. Again, similarly moving from planning and design to construction. New system specialized equipment is up by half but specific to certain projects. Contingency reserve remains unchanged from the prior year at $500,000.

The one of note is the security enhancements. We’re going from $2.7 million in the current year down to $155,000. The bulk of that project is, of course, the landscape and security enhancement project at the front — the north edge, Belleville Street side — of the precinct. That project is expected to be complete by March of 2021.

Again, you’ve seen this slide before, but essentially, it’s showing the historical spend. I think I’ve said, in past meetings on budget submissions, that it took a bit of time, particularly for our major capital projects, for us to kind of align our planning with our construction. But you will see that we are getting better in terms of our budget versus our spend, actual and forecasted. Of course, it was helped a bit this current year with the election and the refresh of IT, but I just wanted to indicate that we are getting more refined in terms of our cost estimates, going forward. And again, just referencing the $6.3 million request for ’21-22.

This is just a snapshot for the committee to see where the capital budget projects are by department. As expected, capital planning and development — these ones are significant projects — is the highest amount at $3.4 million. The next highest is $1.2 million in information technology, again related to the infrastructure upgrades that are ongoing and will continue. And then Hansard Services is primarily to do with life-cycle refresh. Sergeant-at-Arms is to do with security enhancements.

The rest are fairly minor in comparison. Of course, we have the contingency reserve. I will point out lastly that the caucus support services have been increased from a budget of $100,000 to $115,000. In addition, the formula for calculating that capital allocation between the caucuses has also changed.

Mr. Speaker: All right. Any questions?

Anything else we have to deal with, Artour, before we move to the motions?

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): No, we can move to the motions, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: We have two motions to deal with, Members. Let’s do them one at a time.

Can you read that motion, Artour?

A. Sogomonian (Clerk Assistant): Minister Farnworth wants to move it.

Hon. M. Farnworth: Yup, I’ll move it.

I move:

[That the estimates of expenditure for fiscal year 2021-22 for the Legislative Assembly for Vote 1 be approved, as presented.]

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Next one. Somebody to move it?

G. Begg: I’ll move it.

I move:

[That the Speaker transmit the estimates of expenditure for fiscal year 2021-22 for the Legislative Assembly for Vote 1, as presented, to the Minister of Finance on behalf of the committee.]

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Okay. So that is done.

Now, anything else we need to discuss before we move on to the next item? No. Okay.

The next item is item 11. May I have a motion to proceed in camera, please.

Hon. M. Farnworth: So moved.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 1:45 p.m. to 3:12 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Is there any other business? No.

Motion to adjourn.

P. Milobar: So moved.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:12 p.m.