The committee met at 1:01 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): My name is Janet Routledge. I’m the MLA for Burnaby North and Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m joining you from the traditional, unceded territory of the Coast Salish people, the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Today we are meeting again with the Ombudsperson, Jay Chalke. He presented his budget request last week, and the committee has a few follow-up questions.

Now, I understand some specific questions were shared with you, Mr. Chalke, and that you would like to make some opening observations that you think will address most or all of those questions.

With that, I will turn it over to you.

Review of Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSPERSON

J. Chalke: Well, thank you, Chair, Deputy Chair and members of the committee.

I’m pleased to be joining you today from my office, which is located on the traditional, unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

With me today are deputy ombudspersons John Gresch­ner and David Paradiso and the executive director of corporate shared services, Dave Van Swieten.

I’m very pleased to be back in front of you to follow up with respect to any questions you have and make some supplementary comments.

I received a number of emails from the Clerk over the past few days. As I understand the committees’ questions, they really sort of fall under, mostly, three bundles. I thought I would just make some remarks about those three things. Of course, then, there might be other things that the committee wants to ask.

As I understand from the correspondence, questions fo­cused on three things: workload under the Public Interest Disclosure Act; office space requirements, both for the incremental staff requested in this budget request and in future following the pandemic; and a number of questions related to the case-tracker replacement project. Specifically, I want to address future requests from other independent officers who have similar business requirements.

Turning to the first issue, that of the 2½ incremental staff positions that we requested to anticipate the expansion by government of the coverage of the Public Interest Disclosure Act, which is B.C.’s new whistle-blowing law.

Just for background for the committee, the legislation was introduced with an intention that it would ultimately cover all public bodies and be similar in legislation already in place in provinces across Canada, in the territories and at the federal level, to create a path for public employees to disclose significant wrongdoing in their workplace and to protect them from reprisal in the event that they do so.

[1:05 p.m.]

B.C. has chosen a staged implementation of the legislation, which I support, where the B.C. government, some 30,000 employees and the independent statutory officers were the first public bodies covered. Then additional public bodies will be incorporated going forward, including health authorities, Crown corporations and other sectors, adding another about 350,000, so about ten times as many as are currently covered, to be covered by this legislation in roughly the next four years.

By the end of that period of time, coverage under the Public Interest Disclosure Act will be similar to the coverage that currently exists under the Ombudsperson Act or the public sector Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Under the new law, my office has a number of statutory functions, some of which relate to public bodies’ implementation of their responsibilities, and three key functions related to public employees.

One, we’re to provide advice to public employees who are contemplating making a disclosure of wrongdoing. This involves providing accurate and contextualized information to someone who may make a disclosure but who may also have other options and, indeed, may have other obligations with respect to the information. So reinforcing the importance of this stage, the statue recognizes that even the seeking of advice is itself a protected act from reprisal.

Second, and most substantive in terms of work, we’re to receive, assess and, where appropriate, investigate disclosures of wrongdoing. That initial assessment involves consideration of a number of criteria, many of which are subjective and therefore need to be made on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether any of the mandatory bars that are in the act or discretionary criteria that would preclude or make an investigation unnecessary or inappropriate apply.

We take that initial assessment phase very seriously, recognizing the significance of conducting or even commencing wrongdoing investigations. Then, in the event that we decide to commence an investigation, there are investigators doing things like requesting documents, making site visits, interviewing individuals and the like. The statute requires that in receiving, reviewing and investigating disclosures, we act in a manner that’s expeditious, fair and proportionate, as is appropriate in the circumstances of the case. So this statutory requirement recognizes that no two cases are alike.

Third, we’re to receive, assess and, where appropriate, investigate allegations of reprisal. Reprisal means some form of retaliation for seeking advice, making a disclosure or cooperating with a disclosure investigation, whether that’s conducted internally by a public body or by our office. Again, there are statutory preconditions to commencing such an investigation, and a careful assessment on a case-by-case basis and individualized investigations are required.

Turning to volumes, as I reported last week, our first annual report covered the first four months, following the coming into force of the Public Interest Disclosure Act on December 1, 2019, through to the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2020. This annual report was deposited in the Legislature in May.

It indicated that over those first four months, we’d received and taken action on 57 matters related to the act. This included some inquiries, such as a person employed by a public body not yet covered by the act inquiring if it was possible to make a disclosure yet. Then we had some 39 requests for advice and disclosures that were made to us and required the sort of activity described above when someone seeks our advice or seeks to make a disclosure.

The pace of about ten new matters a month has continued for the first ten months of this fiscal year, resulting in about 100 Public Interest Disclosure Act matters from April 1 through January 31, in addition to the ones we received before the start of the fiscal year. As during the first four months that the act was enforced, these matters covered requests for advice, general inquiries, disclosure, reprisal complaints and inquiries from public bodies.

Because the act contains very strong confidentiality provisions, I can’t discuss outcomes with you, although some of that will be in our next annual report, to the extent that it’s permitted by the act. But I can tell you that with that workload, which is considerable, our small public interest disclosure team are fully tasked out with investigations and the other roles under the act.

[1:10 p.m.]

Our Public Interest Disclosure Act–related budget request in front of you is not for work related to the current coverage of the act. So far, it appears that we have accurately predicted — and this committee, in prior years, has appropriately funded us to manage — the workload arising from ministries and statutory offices. Rather, it’s to anticipate the work that comes with the government’s written indication about the upcoming fiscal year, foreshadowing expansion of the act to cover additional public organizations.

As I mentioned last week, the government has advised us that feedback from consultation with public bodies, “along with government’s public commitment to expand PIDA’s application across the broader public sector, supports an expectation that the Ombudsperson’s office will need to allocate resources to support implementation in the coming year.” The government has not yet advised us specifically which public authorities would be covered next, as this matter has to be considered by cabinet.

However, I would highlight something that’s in the public record. That is recommendation 11 of the In Plain Sight report regarding Indigenous-directed racism in British Columbia’s health care sector, released in December and then reiterated last week with the release of the associated data report.

In those reports, Dr. Turpel-Lafond recommended, and I’m quoting her recommendation 11: “That the B.C. government continue efforts to strengthen employee ‘speak-up’ culture throughout the entire health care system so employees can identify and disclose information relating to Indigenous-specific racism or any other matter, by applying the Public Interest Disclosure Act to employees throughout the health care sector without further delay.”

The Minister of Health has expressed his support and that of the government for Dr. Turpel-Lafond’s recommendations generally. However, no decision has yet been announced by cabinet. It’s worth noting that health employees employ over 70,000 staff, roughly double that employed in all the government ministries and independent offices combined.

It’s obviously not a sure thing that health authorities will be brought under the act next. So for the cabinet to pursue another direction, and depending on the number of public bodies involved and the number of employees covered, workload will vary. While 2.5 staff would not, in the long term, be sufficient to address my office’s workload arising from the health authorities coming under the act, it appears to be the minimum necessary in any implementation scenario in which government maintains the intention to cover the broader public sector over the next four years.

The second issue which the committee has identified as requiring more information concerns our office space utilization in the context of the current pandemic. In the previous parliament, this committee had the opportunity to come visit our office and see our space-sharing arrangement among my office, the Police Complaint Commissioner, the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Merit Commissioner. Certainly, post-pandemic, we’d be anxious to receive you again.

The committee was able to see our space-efficient common reception services, shared boardrooms and, of course, the support provided by corporate shared services. It’s an efficient setup, and certainly, until the third week of March last year, it was quite snug. However, with the advent of the pandemic, we’re observing the encouragement of the provincial health officer, and currently, the vast majority of staff of my office work at home. The transition, like for many organizations, was sudden, but I’m very proud of the way our staff responded to the challenge, and we’ve maintained our oversight of public services throughout.

Prior to the pandemic, we had a work-at-home pilot project with a few staff. However, since last March, I think we have what I can no longer describe as a pilot project but pretty much a whole project of people working at home. We’ve started thinking about what our post-pandemic work-at-home policy will be, and its impact on our space utilization. That is still early in development. We’ll be drawing on our learnings from the pandemic period, both the opportunities and the challenges. There have been both.

In any event, my three statutory officer colleagues and I are in a current lease arrangement in this building for the next few years. By the time our lease expires, I certainly hope the pandemic is well behind us and that we’ve been able to develop any associated space utilization changes. Our normal practice, when seeking budget for additional staff, is to include the associated office accommodation costs. This ensures that we have sufficient space in the event that the request for staff is approved.

However, I want to advise the committee that we departed from that practice this year, and we have not included incremental accommodation costs for the incremental staff we’re requesting. We don’t need it in the short term because, as I said, most staff are working at home, and we don’t yet know about the longer term. In that sense, this request for staff is more trimmed down than what would occur if we were also needing office space for them.

[1:15 p.m.]

Turning to the committee’s questions about our proposed replacement for our Case Tracker System, I very much appreciate the Clerk distilling the committee’s questions into a list that we were able to review last night and this morning. I’ll address the questions one by one and then, of course, I’ll be happy to entertain any further questions. Just before I turn to the specific questions, I want to give you a bit of background about how we got to this point. I didn’t do that last time, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what we’ve done over the past few years.

In March 2016, we carried out a joint threat and risk assessment as part of a joint disaster recovery workshop that we did, with a focus on information technology. That was facilitated by an external contractor, looking at all the potential vulnerabilities in our IT infrastructure, including hardware and software. Out of that, two of the top three vulnerabilities related to CTS specifically. The vulnerabilities at that time were identified as medium-risk but high-impact.

They included having a single point of knowledge — the single staff member who would support the system and has supported it — and use of legacy software that’s some 30 years old. With that medium-risk assessment, we continued to plan for a replacement system and then, more recently, with our long-term business analyst staff member announcing her intention to retire, that risk moved from medium to high in terms of our need for support.

In early 2019, we commissioned an external review to identify some options and software alternatives for replacing CTS — to go out and look at the market. In the latter part of 2019, there was a joint decision by the four officers to retain one in-house expert but move to a customizable, off-the-shelf solution from a commercial vendor. Work on an RFP began. We issued that RFP in August of last year and identified a lead proponent by December. That hopefully brings you up to the current time.

Turning to your questions, the first issue raised was whether the Case Tracker System could be expanded or modified to include other statutory officers who now operate separate IT systems and who were seeking to upgrade those. The short answer is yes. We issued the RFP with wording that would allow for other jurisdictions or other offices to take advantage of the work under the RFP, and we’d be happy to share the results with others who express an interest. If additional officers were interested, of course, they would have the ability to pursue a direct relationship with the successful vendor.

As for whether our office was to be directly responsible for support or implementation of such an undertaking in a similar way to the project request before you, that would require, obviously, further discussion with anyone who expressed an interest — subject to timing and, of course, our ability to effectively roll out the replacement — given that I fully anticipate that in the next two years we are going to be fully occupied with rolling out the replacement to the four offices that are before you.

The next issue that you wanted to hear more about was really an overview of why the replacement is needed, why it’s needed now and why we’ve chosen to move forward with this particular system. In terms of why it’s needed, really, it was that threat and risk assessment done in 2016 regarding IT infrastructure and its identification of two of the top three issues that the four offices face, being related to CTS. That risk assessment, I think, really focused our minds on why it was needed.

Why it’s needed now is really a combination of three things. The pending retirement of our business analyst moves the assessment into the high-risk category. The corporate knowledge held by that staff resource is incredibly rich in expertise, as you can imagine, over the past three decades, knowing the business of the four offices and how the technology has been set up to meet those needs. Thirdly, a technology risk of using legacy software and, really, a business risk of falling further behind technology advances with digital evidence files [audio interrupted].

Why this particular software? That path started with advice we received in early 2019 and the following deci­sions we took as we designed an RFP.

[1:20 p.m.]

At a high level, the advice that we got was to avoid the IT vulnerability of having an entirely build-yourself system reliant on, say, one staff member who is building and maintaining the system. The approach was to have a commercial vendor provide customizable off-the-shelf software, as opposed to building it in-house. We then carefully designed an RFP document that best set out the requirements of the four offices. That request for proposal was placed on B.C. Bid, in accordance with standard procurement processes applicable in the B.C. public sector.

Evaluation of the responses focused on company background and experience, functional requirements, technical requirements, support and maintenance, training and, of course, price. All of the assessments that were made were verified through detailed reference-checking with public bodies that were already using the software. Three shortlisted vendors were invited to provide a one-hour demonstration video on what the software could do. The evaluations are now complete, and we’re working with the lead proponent to finalize an agreement — all, of course, contingent on a funding decision.

The next issue that I understand the committee was interested in relates to the vulnerability of the current system and the risks of not proceeding. As I mentioned earlier, vulnerability is related to the age of the legacy platform as well as the impending retirement of the business analyst who has supported the system for decades.

As for the risk of not moving forward now, the bottom-line risk is increased cost for the project overall and continued delay in implementing the business improvements needed to keep up with technology and evidence collection — the sorts of things that we talked about last time. The project is projected for two years, and for some of our offices, that’s two years until they can achieve a more modern system to support the business processes now used.

Thirdly, a risk is loss of corporate knowledge. If we defer implementation, it will mean we won’t have our in-house expert to assist with the conversion, and this will add significant time and costs to the application conversion. I know we had a brief discussion about conversion last time and how that can be an expensive process. Certainly, having our current business analyst here when that happens will assist and mitigate costs.

The risk is that if we don’t do that, it will impact progress on the new system. We won’t have someone to assist with design, data conversion and user-acceptance testing. Be­cause we’re on a track here, even delaying by six months won’t provide enough runway in order to convert the four applications without having that increased cost.

Replacement and support are extremely expensive, as verified. We’ve tested the market. For example, three years ago we needed to contract out database administration for the Oracle platform, and through a procurement process three years ago, we were able to secure a resource with a daily rate of over $800 a day. That’s the kind of expense that it is.

By tendering the support, two factors happen. We’d end up paying a market rate for this type of service that easily costs up to $1,000 per day, given the scarce knowledge of this software. We would be required to contract for support that would not have the current knowledge of our business, unlike our current business analyst, and really a deep understanding of how the program has been used to support our business. So it’ll take, probably, twice as many resources to provide the same level of support.

All of this just results in us investing more money in a technology that’s no longer viable or able to keep up with our business needs. Certainly, we would anticipate that support costs would be going up somewhere in the neighbourhood of double to support the four applications in the event that we didn’t proceed. Those are the risks.

As a result, the consequences would be twofold. In terms of the business, we’d be continuing to function with outdated software that’s struggling now to keep up with the business needs of the four offices and how we interact with the people who rely on the services of the four offices. For my own office, it’s requests from the public and requests from public bodies for more than we’re able to deliver now with our 30-year-old program.

Deferring the project will significantly increase costs. Really, everything is kind of in alignment now to provide the best value for money in improving the business processes for all four offices. We would have to replace our current expert resource. That alone will lead to, probably, doubling the costs for doing that.

[1:25 p.m.]

We’d have to hire someone to replace…. They would have to then, of course, learn the business of the four offices and how it’s all been implemented over the past 30 years. Of course, we’d still have the need to have someone providing support to the application. The cost and efforts that we’ve invested to date in the current RFP would be forfeited, and we’d probably have to re-tender at a later date.

We did look for alternatives, as I said, and we sought external opinions. I think we’re ready to get going on this pending funding approval. We did examine rebuilding the system in-house. We dismissed that, as it really replicated a risk we’re trying to eliminate. I’m just thinking about the options. That was one.

A report we commissioned in 2019 was to go look at the market and identify alternatives in approach in software. It identified several technologies that could be adopted for our purpose. All of the options involved commercial vendors.

At that point, we anticipated we were going down an RFP path. We looked at software used by other public bodies and used criteria to look at them. We didn’t want a custom in-house-built solution that someone else had. It needed to have commercial support available.

The technology had to be relatively recent to maximize the lifespan of the product, thereby providing the maximum return for the effort. On the other hand, we weren’t interested in a cutting-edge, untried platform. So we were looking for something new but not brand-new.

Whatever solution we chose, we needed to have the confidence that the independent and confidential work of our office would not be compromised. We looked at other independent offices, and we looked at the B.C. provincial government. We scanned software in use by the other independent offices.

Most of those scans did not meet those established criteria, and the ones that did required an RFP to get to solution, which is ultimately the route we took. Of course, we have to, when making a purchase of this type, comply with interprovincial and international trade rules, not directly award a contract to purchase a solution, so we went to an RFP.

I gather there was a question about potential future efficiencies and whether additional staff will be required in the future to manage and maintain the system. The answer to the second part — will there be additional staff required in the future to maintain the system? — is no. Once the conversion project is complete, we’re going to continue with one expert resource to work in the office. So no change is happening there.

In terms of future efficiencies in the business, yes, I think that is anticipated, through increased automation of input and generation of reports. Probably the biggest impact will be through the intake of complaints and information.

It’s difficult to quantify at this point, but it’s definitely something we’ll be looking at as we move forward. My expectation is that those efficiencies will be realized through streamlining work and less time on administrative tasks for our investigations.

Finally, there was a question about post-implementation going forward, incremental costs. It works out to about $326,000 for all four offices, so about $80,000 for each of the four offices divided equally.

I think that’s it. We did receive a few questions just about an hour ago which I can touch on as well. I’m also happy to take questions. I’m in the Chair’s hands.

J. Routledge (Chair): Why don’t I ask if there are additional questions related to what you have spoken about already and then move on to the more recently submitted questions. Does anyone require clarification?

G. Kyllo: Commissioner Chalke, thank you for the additional information provided.

You indicated that in March 2016, you had undertaken a joint threat and risk assessment. At the time, I think you indicated that one of the potential risks or the concern was the fact that there was a single business analyst that had the majority of the knowledge around the existing hardware or software that you’re currently using.

[1:30 p.m.]

What efforts were undertaken back in 2016 to ensure some form of redundancy or alternative training for other individuals, rather than just rely on the single business analyst that appears, at this point, to be the only one that has the knowledge to manage the program?

J. Chalke: Sure. Dave can speak to that. We did do some work at that point in time.

Dave, I think you can speak to that.

D. Van Swieten: Thanks, Jay. Certainly.

One of the things we did at that time was recognize that it wasn’t…. The analyst, as far as we knew in what she was sharing with us, wasn’t ready to entertain retirement. So we beefed up support for the system through the contracted resource, the database administrator that we had contracted for.

We were confident that database administrator could assist in kind of emergency fixes if something broke. Given the risk was only a medium back then, we decided not to actively pursue a replacement system but just kind of manage at that medium risk.

What the contingency plan was…. If we did lose our business analyst, we would have to freeze the application and do an emergency break fix, and if there was a change in legislation or investigative procedures we had to deal with, we would’ve had to entertain paying the higher fee of bringing someone in to learn the system and then make the changes.

It wasn’t until recently that we started accelerating down the RFP passes, as Mr. Chalke explained.

G. Kyllo: Thank you. You referenced a database administrator that you had brought in to provide some assistance to the business analyst. What was the knowledge of the database administrator? I’m not familiar, obviously, with the software that you’re using. But I’m just wondering why it was determined to outsource that service rather than provide cross training within the organization to ensure that you had some form of redundancy.

J. Chalke: Go ahead, Dave.

D. Van Swieten: I was just going to say the position actually was a staffing position prior to my arrival in 2015. Before my arrival, it was determined that there wasn’t enough work for a full-time employee and recruiting a half-time employee would’ve been difficult for that role.

At the time, the decision was made to outsource it. Without getting too technical, a database administrator focuses on the technical structure of the database and the technology versus the business analyst and programmer that we have on staff, which actually use the code and the system to build screens and investigative profiles that our staff use.

So they are slightly different resources. We believe that the database administrator would have had enough technical knowledge, or could gain it, that they could make their way through to fix anything that broke. Not the best solution in the world, but we weren’t prepared for a full RFP and replacement of the system at that time.

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you.

Madam Chair, can I ask just a few more follow-up questions?

J. Routledge (Chair): Go ahead.

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you.

What is the estimated cost of a business analyst programmer? Is that like an $80,000-a-year position?

D. Van Swieten: You want me to tackle that one, Jay?

J. Chalke: Sure, Dave.

D. Van Swieten: The annual cost, when you factor in the salary and the benefits that are common in the public service, is about $125,000 as a staffing position.

G. Kyllo: Okay, great.

You indicated the ongoing cost of around $326,000 a year. Would there still be a requirement for a business analyst, or would that position cease to be necessary, going forward?

J. Chalke: We would be retaining the one…. Obviously, a different profile of business analyst, but we would be retaining one person. The difference would be is that they would be supporting a customizable, off-the-shelf system as opposed to something that was uniquely designed for us.

We still need somebody to be able to generate the customizable part, if I can call it that, going forward. But we would not be anywhere near as reliant on that person, going forward, as we are in the current situation.

Dave, do you have anything else on that?

D. Van Swieten: That’s exactly it, Jay, and why we’re looking to a commercial vendor that would be able to support their own product versus us having to go to market and find someone that could work with the technology and the database design that we’ve customized.

G. Kyllo: Fantastic.

Just one follow up on that, if I may, Madam Chair.

[1:35 p.m.]

You referenced that for the lead proponent, there were a number of clients that they provided, I guess, as references. Are you able to share who some of those clients may be or any of these names of clients? Anyone that we might be familiar with?

J. Chalke: I think, for procurement reasons, we probably can’t do that at this point. I can tell you that we did check those references. A number of them are in fields that I would describe as quite analogous to ours. That certainly made that reference process feel quite positive to us.

G. Kyllo: Okay. One of the other statutory offices we had an opportunity to canvass their budget submission on was the Representative for Children and Youth. It’s my understanding that they have a program that sounds to me as if the requirements of this system were very similar.

Did you guys reach out to any other commissions or other government agencies to see what other software might be currently being utilized?

J. Chalke: Yes, we did. We certainly looked at other org­anizations’ software. When one takes into account the fact that you then have to make it work for your business, then the question is: are you really just ending up with some­one else’s older software, having adapted it, going forward? So lots of conversion costs. Then the question is: what have you gained?

Dave, do you want to talk about some of the scanning work that we did, including the work that Softchoice did?

D. Van Swieten: I think you covered a bit of this in your opening comments, Jay, where some of the research we did, for example, with the RCY…. They do have a commercial vendor supporting their product. By the time we look at converting four other instances into a different product, the dollar value becomes significant enough that we would still have to go through a tendering process.

Rather than focus a tendering process on a specific technology or solution to convert it, it was just put out to the open market to say: “These are our requirements. This is what we’re looking for.” We’re entertaining bids from proponents to see what the best solution is for the best cost.

G. Kyllo: Was the Representative for Children and Youth…? You indicated that they had a database for an administrator or a contract provision. Was the contractor that’s providing the services for RCY part of the rollout or the opportunity for submissions?

J. Chalke: It certainly would have been part of any op­portunity.

Dave, I don’t know if you want to speak to that. I mean, obviously we can’t speak to some of the details of the procurement. Dave, do you want to speak in general?

D. Van Swieten: Sure. It relates back to an RFP approach. It’s published so anyone worldwide can participate. Certainly any vendor supporting any other system that’s similar in nature would’ve seen it and provided a response if they felt they would have been competitive in that market space.

G. Kyllo: Great.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

L. Doerkson: I had questions — only a few, to be honest. We discussed or debated the word “critical” at length the other day. I just wondered if you could expand on that. What would happen if this new technology was a year away rather than this year?

J. Chalke: I think that if we were a year from now, we would be coming to you with a proposal that probably cost more because we would have had to manage the departure of our current business analyst. So we would have been faced with, as we went through that process, higher costs related to conversion. We would obviously have to keep…. The heart keeps pumping until you actually convert. So we have to keep delivering that service.

[1:40 p.m.]

We would’ve had to somehow come up with a way to support the current system — as I indicated, we anticipate that support cost will roughly be double what it is today — and then have a replacement project planned. The effect of delaying a year is probably to increase costs, not just inflationary costs but actually support and management costs for our current system, and, I think, also to increase risk. Any business analyst that we would have on board wouldn’t have the 30 years of history that the current one does and be able to, quite uniquely, support that transition through her experience.

L. Doerkson: You had mentioned the additional costs that might happen if we do wait for a year.

I guess my question is around that word “critical.” I mean, what is the system…? Are we looking at significant issues with a collapse of the system? Is it not functioning properly? That’s what I’m more interested in understanding.

J. Chalke: I don’t think we’re at a point where the system is going to collapse in the next year. I think we’re at a point where it makes good business sense.

Not surprisingly, it’s 32 years old, and in the world of technology, that is not nothing. That’s a lifetime or a couple of lifetimes in the technology world. We’re simply not taking advantage of new technology.

As the Police Complaint Commissioner has indicated, there is certainly the move in his world to increasing volumes of digital evidence. It’s changed the business.

Case Tracker, 30 years ago, very much didn’t include some of the document management features that we’ve added over the years. We’ve really kind of added and added things over the decades to try and make it as useful as possible.

Certainly, I don’t have any expectation that the system won’t survive in a year, but we’ll be back to you with a more complex, more costly transition that we have to face. Right now a transition that, for $2½ million, really covers four offices, brings them, from a technology perspective, up to date…. When you lay four offices times 32 years, that’s, on a per-year basis, a pretty reasonably investment.

D. Van Swieten: Jay, I could build on your answer for a moment.

If that’s okay, Madam Chair.

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes, please go ahead.

D. Van Swieten: I also want to say that the order that we selected the offices to implement this system is reflective of the workload that we anticipate hitting the offices.

Jay spoke earlier of up to 350,000 public servants being added to the mix under the PIDA legislation. We anticipate doing the ombuds office conversion first so that we can get the system lined up and ready to roll before those public servants fall under the jurisdiction and create what I call a business-focused workload as opposed to a focus on changing the system.

The second rollout is targeted for the Police Complaint Commissioner, who spoke to the committee earlier. We’re well aware of the issues there in terms of Surrey coming under the jurisdiction and the workload issues that may follow there.

To get these systems converted before those significant workloads hit those offices was deemed a prudent schedule to implement now, in addition to what the Ombudsperson spoke to on the costs and the technology changes.

L. Doerkson: Thank you for that.

Madam Chair, one more, I think.

J. Routledge (Chair): Please go ahead.

L. Doerkson: I wanted to understand, also, the fees going forward. If I recollect — my apologies, I don’t have it on my screen — it was around $2,000 per user. I wonder what we’re paying now under the current software that we’re using and if that number has been taken out of the budgets going forward.

J. Chalke: The answer is about $30,000. We pay Oracle $28,000 for software licensing. Yes, that amount has been taken out going forward. So that is an offset to the costs going forward.

Of course, when you’re investing in a customizable program, an off-the-shelf program, licensing costs are higher because there’s more in the program than just the structure of a database that you build yourself.

[1:45 p.m.]

L. Doerkson: Am I right in assuming…? If we’re talking about $28,000, are we talking about 10-ish percent, then, of what it’s going to cost going forward? Is it really that much more?

J. Chalke: Yep. It’s in that order of magnitude.

L. Doerkson: Hmm. Okay.

J. Chalke: I think we benefit from a, first of all…. As I said, it’s not an apples to apples comparison, right? You’re comparing Oracle Forms and Reports, which is basically the structure on which we have built our own program….

We’re paying for the infrastructure part of the house that we built on top versus a customizable off-the-shelf program where you’re licensing most of the house. You’re making the adaptations to make it your house, but you’re getting a lot more in terms of the program itself.

L. Doerkson: Right. That licensing pretty much is for­ever, as long as we use the programming. It doesn’t drop after five years, or the cost doesn’t decrease.

J. Chalke: Well, I guess we’ll see.

J. Routledge (Chair): Deputy Chair, did I see that you had a question?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to be clear. In that last answer, Ombudsman, the question was what the licensing fee was per user. I didn’t hear the answer to that. I heard $28,000, which is the current licensing fee that you’re going to recover. Is that correct?

J. Chalke: Correct. Then the licensing for the new software is about $249,000.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Right. That is in your budget, $249,000. How many users does that give you?

J. Chalke: How many licences, Dave? Did we say?

L. Doerkson: I thought that number was 120. Was it not?

J. Chalke: Dave, do you want to speak to…?

D. Van Swieten: Yeah, 120 is about right. I don’t have the exact figure in front of me, but the 120 sounds about right.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Okay. I guess the question on this type of…. I mean, considering the size of the four statutory offices, their staffing component, etc., was there any other advice sought out from the chief information officer in terms of…. I mean, you talked about this in your assessment, etc. Were they a part of that?

J. Chalke: Yes.

Dave, do you want to talk about our conversations with government? We certainly had those.

D. Van Swieten: The conversations we had with government were around similar systems that they’ve developed. Where the conversation landed was…. They were more interested in allowing us to join their instance of a software solution.

That means we’d be storing our data on government servers and using government staff to help manage our database and build any customization we needed. Given the independent nature of the offices, it’s just not viable for us to consider anything like that option.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Just back to yourself, Dave, being that that’s your area of expertise. I guess with the conversion that we’re all experiencing with the Legislature going to iCloud, I’m assuming that government is doing the same thing with storage. I don’t know. Is that still an issue?

D. Van Swieten: I’m not quite sure I understand the question. What I think you’re asking is about storage in the cloud.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, yeah. That’s really…. You’re talking about privacy and the degree of separation between statutory offices and government. It’s my understanding that the cloud-based storage gives very much protection around that so that we can share in a common kind of…. I mean, that’s the idea, right?

We’re a government to try to find efficiencies for everybody and put the most resources where we see that they’re best used. I mean, if we can do that.

I guess the question is: has anybody checked that? It is five years since you started having these discussions. I guess the question is, really: is it more relevant today than it was a few years ago when these discussions took place?

J. Chalke: Certainly, it was open to anybody who is a supplier to government to respond to the RFP. We, obviously, would have requirements of confidentiality. So it’s open to those vendors to have entered a bid, and it’s the same for any others.

[1:50 p.m.]

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Okay. On the Case Tracker, those are all the questions that I have. We do have some other ones on the other matters.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Are there any other questions on the case-tracking system?

No? Okay. Then Ben, why don’t you proceed with your other questions.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I think, probably, I may just suggest that….

Lorne, you have come up with a lot of these questions and the background on it. How about if I ask you to go through them? Then we’ll add in or leave it to anybody on the particular issues about budget, staffing, etc., that weren’t covered earlier.

L. Doerkson: Certainly I’d be happy, Ben, to do that.

Mr. Chalke, my apologies that these did not get to you. We were trying to get them to you. I think they got kind of derailed this morning. But if it pleases our Chair, I have about four or five questions.

I guess the first question is…. I’m not sure exactly what you received, Mr. Chalke, but I’ll read them one at a time. Budget in 2017 for your office was $6.653 million. Now we’re heading for $10.4 million, which is obviously a 56 percent increase over those years. During those years — that doesn’t include, of course, the case-tracker software; that’s just by itself — the completed answered files were 6,597 in 2017, compared to 2019-2020, when the files were 6,631.

During that same time, we had a 37 percent increase in the staff, from 59 to 81. That included, I think, about five new management positions, which was one Deputy Ombudsperson, two new directors and two new managers. But generally speaking, we went from 59 to 81 overall, and really the complaints have actually gone down over that time.

J. Chalke: That’s very helpful. Thank you for the question.

When I look at the changes happening between 2016 and 2021, it really falls into two programs that don’t relate to complaints under the Ombudsperson Act directly. Those are the establishment by this committee — or funding approval by this committee — for my office to establish what was then known as the prevention initiatives team and is now the public authorities consultation and training team.

The purpose of that team — and my hope is that if they do their job right over the next ten or 20 years, that number of complaints you’re citing will go lower, not higher — is to work proactively with public authorities to make their services more fair and, when they do have a complaint, to develop complaint-handling systems so that those complaints are dealt with as expeditiously as possible.

I think that’s a win-win-win. I think that’s good for public authorities. I think it’s good for the public. And I think it’s good for us, because we can reserve our scarce resources for complaints that merit investigation and haven’t been able to be resolved by the public authority.

So a small team was established. It was subject to an independent review after three years. That review was presented to this committee last year, and permanent funding was established for that team.

It basically does a number of things, but the two big things it does are…. It consults with public authorities. When government or any public authority is doing something new, they can come to us and seek our advice about how they can establish that new program in a way that doesn’t raise administrative fairness issues. So it’s our job to help governments be fair right out of the gate.

[1:55 p.m.]

We’ve had all manner of ministries and Crown corporations and tribunals and others come to us for assistance — everything from, I guess, the Mental Health Review Board and others who have sought our assistance and advice for how they can change their administrative practices so that they don’t have recurring instances of unfairness, whether they be complaints of or just complaints to them from unhappy members of the public.

The other thing we do relates to public servant training. You can certainly make the argument that that really…. You know, why is that the Ombudsperson’s responsibility? We saw a real need for training among public servants in how to deliver services fairly, so that team runs a number of training seminars. They can do it on request by a public authority.

Say, back in the day, when public authorities would have an annual conference…. For example, shortly before the pandemic, we delivered training to all the adjusters at WorkSafe B.C. on how they can make their service more fair. Since the pandemic, we’ve been doing a lot of that work remotely, of course.

Recently we held a webinar with respect to that new guide that was tabled in the Legislature in December about complaint handling, helping public authorities establish complaint-handling systems. We held a webinar, and we had nearly 500 people, 500 public servants, attend the webinar on how to make their complaint-handling systems better.

That was about a third of those new staff, and then about two-thirds of the staff were staff to get ready for and carry out the first wave of the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

That’s most of the difference. Our complaint-handling teams, back in 2016, typically were comprised of six investigators per team and one manager. That was then, and it’s pretty much the same now, some quarters later.

L. Doerkson: I guess, perhaps, that brings up more questions. Again, the complaints back in 2017-18 were 6,611. Those complaints last year were only 6,562. There were actually 49 less complaints, and your office really only completed 34 more files. That was completed files.

I guess I’m trying to get my head around how we had 59 employees then and 81 now, which is close to a 40 percent increase in staffing levels, but we only completed 34 more files.

J. Chalke: The short answer is because they weren’t working on those files. They were doing different things. They were working on public interest disclosure, which is not included in those numbers. That’s subject to a different annual report. And they were doing the public authority consultation and training — that proactive work with public authorities to increase fairness proactively and thereby preclude complaints.

L. Doerkson: Okay. Would that, then, fall into the outreach numbers that you presented to us? Your outreach targets fell quite a bit short too. I mean, you had hoped for…. The presentations goal was to be 30. You achieved nine. Presentations to authorities was hoped to be 50, and we achieved 13.

J. Chalke: Well, those are numbers…. I’m sorry.

L. Doerkson: Sorry. That was the question. Is that outreach that you’re referring to?

J. Chalke: Those numbers are for the current fiscal year. Obviously, the pandemic has had a major impact on our ability to deliver sessions to the public. Our traditional way of delivering those sessions has been public libraries, community centres across the province. That’s how we traditionally carried out those presentations.

With the pandemic, obviously, that’s not been possible in that traditional way, so we’re moving to webinars. We’re doing a webinar this month and again next month to invite the public to hear about the role and mandate of the office. So we’re trying to shift in the context of the pandemic. It’s also a partial year, as you know. It’s through only until now. It doesn’t include the rest of the fiscal year. So that number, by the end of the fiscal year, will be a little higher. But I think we will not hit 30, because that was a pre-pandemic target established before our current situation.

L. Doerkson: What do those targets look like for next year?

[2:00 p.m.]

J. Chalke: Going forward, we’re currently in the middle of a five-year strategic plan. On top of these three-year service plans, we also do a five-year strategic plan, and the five-year strategic plan expires at the end of March.

We’re looking, actually, at a whole new way of reporting performance rather than, if I can call it, “output” kinds of measures, or certainly only output kinds of measures, really trying to assess impact of our office’s role. That is definitely what I think most good thinking on performance measurement really tries to contemplate.

It’s difficult to do in an oversight world. Certainly, a number of my colleagues around the world have been trying to come up with how you measure good impact of oversight. But it’s something that we’re doing in the context of the new strategic plan. So going forward and hopefully by the end of this fiscal year — in other words, by the end of next month — we’ll have a five-year strategic plan that will lay out the framework into which we will build those performance measures going forward.

I don’t have a good answer for you so far. We’re going to keep using current output measures until we have good outcome measures that we’re satisfied with. But I hope to be in a position to come back to this committee with something that really shows the impact of our office, as opposed to, if I can put it, more just the work product. I don’t think that really tells you the story that you need to hear.

L. Doerkson: I also had a question about…. This may be more of a clarification. I couldn’t understand the First Nations liaison position — if it had been filled already, if it is about to be filled or if there are going to be two.

J. Chalke: My apologies if that wasn’t clear. Last year this committee funded a temporary staff position for two years — so the fiscal year we’re in now, ’20-21, and next year, ’21-22 — on the contemplation that we would return in the budget process for ’22-23 — in other words, later this fall, November or December, whenever we’re back in front of you for next year’s budget — with an Indigenous community services plan. So the staff position is in the budget.

What we’re asking for, incrementally, are some non-staff dollars. What became apparent to us through the last few months is that…. I very much want to develop this plan in respectful collaboration with Indigenous communities. We need some non-staff dollars in order to properly ensure respectful consultation with Indigenous communities, things like honoraria, meeting support, etc. We just don’t have that funding in our budget.

We didn’t ask for it last year. I think we probably should have asked for it last year, although I think if we’d asked for it last year, we probably would have had a lot of that money in this year. Then it would have been unspent, because we haven’t been able to go out to Indigenous communities because of the pandemic.

We’re going to back-end-load that, in any event, because of the pandemic. I’m hoping that we’re able to do that type of consultation in person later this year and, in time, come back in front of this committee at budget time next year.

L. Doerkson: So that was non-staff dollars that you were referring to. Was the position filled, then? Do we have a liaison?

J. Chalke: Yes. We absolutely do. I have an Indigenous liaison officer. For that position, we sought and obtained approval from the Human Rights Tribunal in order to designate that position as Indigenous only. We obtained that approval. We staffed the position accordingly, and we have someone in place.

L. Doerkson: I had a number of questions around the case counts. I wonder: are you able to give…? I know that you intend, or your office intends, to see more through the Public Interest Disclosure Act. Are you able to predict? I mean, if we were looking at case complaints of around 6,500 last year, where do you expect those to go to this year?

There was a peculiar drop in 2018-19. I wondered what happened there as well. It actually dropped by nearly 1,000 complaints.

J. Chalke: And then rebounded the following year. That’s the work that’s hitting our front door. That’s not our work product. That’s people coming to us. It went down and then went back up. We weren’t able to really determine why that occurred, but it’s been relatively stable but for that one year.

[2:05 p.m.]

I think that any workload under the Public Interest Disclosure Act is always going to be far smaller than the workload or the case volume under the Ombudsperson Act. They’re not really, necessarily, comparable.

I’m just saying one would never expect public interest disclosure work to approach anything like the kinds of numbers that we get under the Ombudsperson Act. Part of it is because of the cohort of people who can complain to us. It’s anybody in British Columbia who can complain to us under the Ombudsperson Act, so five million people, whereas under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, it’s currently 30,000 people. But it also goes to the amount of time and staff hours that a typical Ombudsperson complaint would require versus what one would see under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

No two cases are alike under either statute, so there’s always an element of flexibility or an element of difference between them. Certainly the work under the Public In­terest Disclosure Act is, on a per-case basis, more substantial, but the case numbers are much smaller.

L. Doerkson: Madam Chair, just a couple more, please.

J. Routledge (Chair): Just before you proceed, I want to point out that it’s 2:06 [audio interrupted] question from Greg. So just keep that in mind.

L. Doerkson: Okay. This will be a simple question.

Are you currently paying staff any extra to work at home? Are you covering Internet costs or those types of things, and is that reflecting in any savings in the office?

J. Chalke: Staff who currently work at home do so voluntarily. They’re not required to work at home, but we certainly encourage it in accordance with the provincial health officer’s encouragement. The vast majority of our staff do work from home. They don’t receive any incremental pay.

We have had some costs — for example, purchasing SIM cards, etc., in order to make some staff able to have work cell phones from home. Typically, all our staff didn’t have work cell phones, but they needed them in order to work from home. We had minor costs in that regard.

Our basic cost at the office is the office. It’s our lease cost, and that’s, of course, unchanged, so no appreciable savings there. It isn’t really a fiscal issue, working at the office or working from home. At any order of magnitude, it’s not significant.

L. Doerkson: One final question. That is: what will the members of this committee…? Should we approve your budget ask, what would the committee members be able to say to the public with reference to the final services that you’ll offer over the next year? I mean, will they be greatly improved? Will there be a noticeable bump for the 15 percent increase that you’re asking for?

J. Chalke: I would note, just with respect to the reference to the 15 percent, if you look at the actual details of the ask set out on page 6, the non-inflation elements in the budget request are Case Tracker, public interest disclosure, Indigenous community engagement and the motor vehicle accident compensation changes.

Except for the public interest disclosure request, all of those other requests are either in whole or in part temporary. Overall, yes, I appreciate that the bottom-line number is 15 percent, but in terms of a permanent lift, it’s really only with respect to the public interest disclosure matter.

In terms of what the public can expect, as British Columbia changes its scheme with respect to auto insurance — that people who are unhappy with the new scheme have somewhere to go and that there is an ability to accommodate the broader group of public authorities that we have jurisdiction over who will be deciding disputes with respect to auto insurance. With respect to the Public Interest Disclosure Act, we will be ready and able to accommodate the changes that government has told us that we can anticipate and that we should be staffing up for to be ready next year. As they proceed to expand coverage of that act, we have to be ready.

[2:10 p.m.]

With respect to Indigenous people in British Columbia, I think they will know that we have been able to design, in respectful consultation with them, a new Indigenous community service plan, which will come back to this committee this fall, to consider how we can improve our services to Indigenous people. You’ll have another look at the actual plan and know that that plan has been developed in consultation with Indigenous people.

I think, at the end of the year, all of those things will help our ability to serve British Columbians and will do so in a way that forecasts two significant government changes — public interest disclosure and motor vehicle accident changes — and also lives up to the commitments that government and, really, everybody…. Certainly, I’m committed to improving our services to Indigenous people.

Those would be the highlights. Of course, we’ve talked about Case Tracker. It’s an important change. It’s really a two-year project, and I hope to be able to report back each year, for those two years, on how we’ve been able to manage that change and our expectation that that will, then, set us up for the next 32 years with the new system.

L. Doerkson: Thank you, Mr. Chalke.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you.

Greg, you have another question.

G. Kyllo: Yes. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. Ombudsperson, what’s the most appropriate way to reference your position? Are you a commissioner, ombudsperson?

J. Chalke: I’m the Ombudsperson.

G. Kyllo: Okay. Sorry.

J. Chalke: I know. It is a complex Swedish word, but that is the way it is.

G. Kyllo: Well, Mr. Ombudsperson, you referenced the current process of, I guess, documenting and tracking the work product versus the actual impact of the office. Do you do any internal survey work of clients post contact to determine what their level of success has been and their overall satisfaction with the performance of your office?

J. Chalke: Some ombuds around the world have been trying to assess that question. I think the general take, if I can speak for some of my colleagues in other jurisdictions who have gone before on that, is….

That’s a very difficult exercise. One ends up assessing, if I can call it, the attributes of good service as opposed to, if I can call it, the content of the investigation. What often happens is many people are quite outcome-focused. If we agree with them, if we support their complaint that they’ve been treated unfairly, then they feel like the Ombudsperson has done a good job. If we side with the public authority — of course, we’re neutral on these questions — then maybe our service wasn’t so great. I think that’s certainly…. But it is an indicator.

I am anxious to do more surveying, and I think we can do that. Certainly, I used to be the Public Guardian and Trustee. We surveyed judges about what judges thought about our functions where we were giving advice. We had some functions, various attributes, when I was the Public Guardian, to give advice to the court about certain things. So we surveyed judges.

I absolutely think that we can survey more intently. There’s a law in surveying. I think we can survey public authorities as well as the public.

There are other questions — for example, awareness of us. We’ve done some surveying on the question of awareness, particularly when one looks at subgroups. Certainly, for some people — say, new Canadians, for example, or young people — their awareness of us is surprisingly low. So we’ve been trying targeted outreach over the past few years to reach out to those people more effectively.

I think surveys can definitely help in assessing impact. I think there are other ways, too, that impact can be assessed, and we want to develop some of those. But it is difficult. Oversight bodies…. It’s not an easy thing for me to be able to determine, with confidence, and to be able to present to you performance on an impact level, but that’s what we’re going to try to do.

We’ve done a bit of work so far. We’re not starting from zero. I’m very pleased by that. But it is complex. There is no magic formula out there, around the world, among my colleagues.

[2:15 p.m.]

G. Kyllo: Right. But currently there are no real client satisfaction surveys that are being undertaken annually?

J. Chalke: Not on a regular basis. We don’t do it on a regular basis, but it’s certainly something we’re thinking about, going forward.

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you very much. Then just one final question, if I may, Madam Chair.

With respect to the current year, I know that travel has been down. It’s considerably less, obviously, due to COVID. Do you see any budget surplus or any unspent surplus at the end of this year?

J. Chalke: We track our budget very carefully. It is true, obviously, that travel has been an area where we have been able to obtain some savings. On the other hand, we have had some other incremental costs.

I don’t know, Dave, if you want to talk about it. Basically, we’re forecasting coming in very close to the number. Obviously, if we’re underspending in any way, that money gets returned to the consolidated revenue fund. But we’re trying to make sure that we’re able to manage to stay below, obviously, our budget allocation.

Dave, do you want to talk about the puts and takes that have arisen from pandemic? Definitely, travel has been an area of some savings. Just before Dave comments, we actually don’t have a very large travel budget, to be candid. Our investigators aren’t doing as many on-site visits, which is really the big draw on that travel budget.

D. Van Swieten: Jay, you’ve nailed it there that travel is where we’ve seen some savings. Those savings have been offset, as well, through increased costs in IT support, in supporting our remote workforce. For example, we had to purchase more Citrix licences, which allow people to log in remotely to complete their daily activities. We’ve had to have more support from our helpdesk to assist those who are trying to make technology work remotely and function properly.

The impact, as Jay said, is that we anticipate coming in really close to how much we’re going to spend for the year, in terms of being on budget. We won’t be going over, and we anticipate a small surplus at the end of the year.

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you very much for your time.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Jay, to you and your team. I’ve likened, at my age, looking at the records management system that you have…. It’s like that old Fram oil filter commercial: “You can either pay me now, or you can pay me later.” Either way, we’re going to pay, and I think you’ve made it abundantly clear that it’s the earlier of the two stages.

I have a question with regard to the proactive part of the programming that you’re talking about. Lorne had kind of touched on it a little bit, but I wondered if there was a direct correlation, like a teeter-totter, that the more outreach that you do, the less case files that are there. I understand and appreciate the fact that in many cases, when they’re complaint-based issues that come forward…. You know, people don’t like lime green, for whatever reason, and you’re going to be inundated with lime-green kinds of things, for lack of a better analogy.

Is there that direct a link between outreach and case files?

J. Chalke: I think what we would hope is that there is direct link between outreach and people being treated fairly. That’s what we’re trying to achieve. Ultimately, one can imagine a world in which we would actually see reduced complaints to the Ombudsperson as a result of that, but one of the things, for example, that happens is that public bodies become more conscious of fairness.

One of the things that many of them will do is to say: “If you’re still not happy, you know that you can go to the Ombudsperson.” They’re doing a better job about being fair. One of the things they’re doing is that they’re telling people: “Well, if you’re not happy, you can go to the Ombudsperson.” That, of course, just means that we may end up with more people coming to us.

A good example — it doesn’t come from the PACT program, because it’s long-standing for many years — is that my office has jurisdiction over the professional regulators. Anything under provincial law that’s a profession and that’s regulated. Well, typically, the highest-volume regulator that we get complaints about is the Law Society of British Columbia, but the Law Society does a very good job, when they are finished dealing with a complainant — whether that’s a lawyer who’s complaining or a client who’s complaining — of saying: “And if you’re not happy, you can go to the Ombudsperson.” So we typically see them as being….

[2:20 p.m.]

Of all the regulators, we get more complaints about the Law Society than we get about other regulators. It doesn’t mean that they’re being unfair. It does mean, though, that they’re more upfront about people’s recourse to us. I think ultimately, one can imagine a world where that does happen, that the work of that PACT team can reduce the volume. But really, what we want to do is help government deliver better service right out of the gate. Hopefully, that way, yes, in the long run, complaints might drop with us.

Really, people are getting better service, and the complaints that do come to us are real complaints that shouldn’t have come to us in the first place. The sorts of ones that have to come to us, do, and the ones that don’t need to come to us are dealt with at the front lines.

J. Routledge (Chair): Ben, I think you have the final questions, final comments.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks to everybody for their questions.

I just want to go back to a comment, Ombudsperson, that you mentioned about the fact that a lot of the staff are working remotely, and they choose to, or prefer that. I don’t know the role or what it’s like to be an analyst, etc.

In your inflationary increases, you mentioned salaries and benefits plus building occupancy costs. Obviously, these things…. Considering the impact of the COVID-19 pressures, people having to rethink things, etc., have you given consideration to rethinking about the office space and whether leased space could be either foregone, reduced, sublet? What’s your current status on that?

I have no idea how many square feet you’re leasing for, but I’d just like to know more clearly on that.

J. Chalke: We have one lease for the four organizations, number one, so the four offices — ourselves, the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Merit Commissioner and the Police Complaint Commissioner — share various parts of that space. We reduce our square footage that way.

We’re in a current lease arrangement. That lease arrangement runs until 2025. We’re in a lease right now. As I said before, one of the things we will be doing is looking at, coming out of the pandemic, how we utilize space, whether there are efficiencies we can gain. I think the pandemic has been a learning experience for many organizations in terms of the feasibility of working from home or working remotely, both its pluses and its minuses. Both are real. I think I want to take a realistic assessment of what that looks like, going forward. But I think it has indicated that, certainly, much work can be done, not necessarily in an office premise.

We’re definitely going to look at that. We’ve already started some policy work about looking at a post-pandemic work-from-home structure. Of course, once you look at that question, you say: “Well, if people are only coming into the office a certain number of days a week, do they need to have a physical office that’s there five days a week?” So one can ultimately look at the potential for some reduction in lease costs, going forward.

First of all, that thinking is at a fairly early stage right now. We’re going to have to figure out what the post-pandemic environment looks like. I think, also, it’s a question that, in terms of…. Your question about subletting…. I expect that that won’t be a particularly great market in the immediate future, given that in downtown Victoria, where we are, there’s obviously lots of public space where those same questions are going to be asked.

I think in the medium term, what you’re raising is a very good point and something that we’re thinking about, going forward. I think there are definitely opportunities there.

J. Routledge (Chair): That looks like that is it for our questions. Thank you, Mr. Chalke. We really appreciate that you and your team have come back to meet with us again and to very thoroughly respond to the questions and concerns that have been raised.

[2:25 p.m.]

I think we all want to put your budget request and the questions and the answers to the questions in the context of you reminding us that your primary role is that people be treated fairly by their government and be seen to be treated fairly by their government.

I think that as MLAs, we all know that we have calls to our office, visits to our office — we used to have visits to our office — from people who feel alienated from the system. You and your staff play a critical role in making them feel like it’s their system and that they get what they need from it.

Thank you so much for your time.

J. Chalke: Thank you, Chair. If the committee requires anything further, we’re at your disposal.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll give our guests an opportunity to leave us. We’ll go into camera, but I think maybe there’s been an indication that we want to take a bit of a break first.

Let’s take a five-minute break. Then, when we come back from the break, we can go in camera.

The committee recessed from 2:26 p.m. to 2:35 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): If we could have a motion to go in camera.

G. Kyllo: So moved.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 2:35 p.m. to 4:06 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re back into public session.

I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): So moved.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Seconded by Pam.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:07 p.m.