The committee met at 12:04 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): We are continuing with the mid-term check-ins with the statutory officers.

[12:05 p.m.]

Before turning to the Police Complaint Commissioner, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m joining you from the unceded, territorial lands of the Coast Salish people, the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh. I also want to acknowledge that for me, this is more than a formality. In making that acknowledgment, I’m reminding myself of the tragic relationships that have developed and to commit to be part of the ongoing process of reconciliation and healing.

With that, I would like to invite Commissioner Pecknold to present his mid-term update to us.

Financial and Operational Updates
from Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE POLICE
COMPLAINT COMMISSIONER

C. Pecknold: Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much for that introduction.

I’d also like to acknowledge that I and my staff are speaking to you from the traditional, unceded territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples and of the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. We also would like to acknowledge the very important work that our office must do and must try to do to achieve true reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, so thank you very much for that prompting.

With me should be Mr. Dave Van Swieten, the executive director of our corporate services; the deputy commissioner, Andrea Spindler; and our executive director, business operations, Amie Foster. They’ll be available to answer any questions should you wish them to and to provide me some support, because, simply put, I can’t know it all.

Traditionally, we tend to try to give the committee a little bit more in-depth understanding of some of our work at the spring meeting. But certainly we are here to answer any questions you put to us. I certainly refreshed my memory from the report to the Legislature that followed our last appearance, so we’re prepared to answer any questions. If we can’t answer any specific questions today, I’ll be more than happy to follow up with the committee at your direction and pleasure.

Just as a little bit of a background — and I realize that this may be somewhat repetitive — I think it’s important to emphasize that under our statutory framework, what we do at the OPCC is provide an oversight over what is a quasi-judicial disciplinary process. We, unlike the IIO, are not an investigative agency. We oversee the disciplinary process essentially from the investigative stage all the way through the adjudicative stage.

In performing that oversight function, we have certain powers and authorities over the investigations, which are conducted by police agencies themselves to ensure that they are thorough and complete and to ensure that they meet the requirements of the Police Act. In doing that, of course, we operate under very considerable confidentiality provisions that are mandated.

These are mandated within the statute, but they also, for very good reason, are there to protect the very sensitive privacy of many persons who are involved, either affected persons involved in matters under investigation or the police officers themselves, because these are, as you know, investigations that are primarily in relation to conduct and have a human resource aspect to them.

That said, of course there are various points in which matters become public. Those include, for example, some of the adjudicative proceedings that are called at my order. These include public hearings and adjudicative proceedings such as reviews on the record. Both of those are proceedings that happen externally from the OPCC in the sense that they are at arm’s length. They’re overseen by retired members of the judiciary, who are appointed in consultation with the Associate Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The confidentiality also extends to investigations because some of them may be parallel to criminal investigations and parallel processes, such as the independent investigations office investigations and other matters that are highly sensitive.

[12:10 p.m.]

The span of matters that we deal with, as you may know, can go from relatively minor things, such as a complaint of discourtesy — say, for example, during an enforcement action such as a traffic ticket — all the way to serious criminal misconduct. We deal with that broad stretch of matters.

Moving back to the way that we ended the year, I provided, for the committee, a little bit of a snapshot of how we ended up the year. I would thank the committee for its due consideration of our challenges last year in terms of our dedicated funding. We were able to offset some of our requests for contingency by some operational savings, to the tune of approximately $114,000. These figures are yet to be completely finalized — Mr. Van Swieten could provide any further information that’s needed — but we did extend approximately $384,000 of the request for contingency.

You’ll see that we’ve provided a table in the report. The table shows this past fiscal year, 2021. You’ll note that the two prior fiscal years also show a deficit, but I would note for the committee that we were able to manage those two prior years in slippage within our existing operational funding. That slippage tends to be things like unspent contracting money or unspent travel money — especially as a result of the pandemic, we’re essentially at nil travel, as most people are — and some of it would be salary slippage.

I’ve included in the report a little bit more about adjudications, obviously, because it’s a pretty significant part of our business. I would like to highlight for the committee that, partially related to delays caused by the pandemic and partially related to delays caused by a very lengthy process of the courts, which I’ve highlighted on page 7 of the report, we’re in the unusual situation of, this year, operating two public hearings. I don’t know if it’s a historical record — perhaps the deputy would know that — but it is significant.

We are an organization, as you know, of 25 FTEs, approximately, as of June. Managing these public hearings has been significant. We just finished one public hearing this past year that was called before the pandemic and was completed during the pandemic. As I believe I highlighted in the fall, we lost our access to the court system — to the courts over in Vancouver — and we had to go look for a location. Obviously, in the context of public health orders and the complexities of bringing people together, that was quite an undertaking.

Ultimately, the hearing concluded with a decision of the adjudicator, which has been publicly reported. With the assistance of the Coroners Service, we were able to use their facility during that public hearing. It was, of course, a lengthy public hearing. It was subject to a number of delays, also related to the pandemic.

Coming up this year, we have two public hearings, one that was called by me shortly after I was appointed, in 2019. That has been delayed due to the pandemic. There are some orders of the adjudicators restricting publication around these matters, so it’s difficult for me to talk about them while they’re ongoing.

Another matter which I’ve provided for you at page 7 is the matter referred to as “Diaz and Hughes.” That matter is scheduled to go ahead as well this year.

In addition, I can talk about a review on the record that was recently completed, through an adjudicator, during this pandemic period. This one has been publicly reported, although again there are some restrictions imposed by the adjudicator with regard to reporting. That matter involved the occasion of some intimate-partner violence that occurred outside of the country. It resulted in a lengthy investigation and lengthy proceedings which ultimately resulted in the officer’s dismissal. That was publicly announced this week. That material is available to the committee publicly, and the redacted decision is available on our website.

[12:15 p.m.]

I emphasize those two matters just for two reasons. First of all, all of these matters involve serious misconduct: matters such as intimate-partner violence, violence in relation to a wellness check and matters related to concerns with respect to discrimination, excessive force and sexual offences.

One of the important points that I would reiterate for the committee is that we operate within the statutory structure, but we operate, of course, within how that is determined by the courts. The courts are providing us with guidance as to our decision-making. Most recently, the Court of Appeal has issued a further decision affirming — in a case referred to as “Chu and Wiebe” — that I am not allowed to, essentially, leapfrog the process in any way.

That means that, through these processes — the discipline process, and the other processes that might lead to an adjudicative proceeding — we at the OPCC are somewhat limited with respect to our ability to intervene in those quickly. I highlight that for the committee because we are working with government as a result of the special committee report from 2019 — that’s the Special Committee to Review the Police Complaint Process — with respect to their recommendations for legislative reform.

That work has been and is being continued in the context of the other special committee, which is doing its work right now, with respect to modernizing the Police Act. We have been consulted by government, and we continue to be consulted by government, with respect to implementation of legislative reform coming out of the 2019 report, and the anticipated legislative reform that I would expect will flow out of the other committee’s work — the committee that is sitting right now.

There are two important recommendations that I continue to highlight for government. One is the ability for me, as commissioner, to call a public hearing earlier in the process and to statutorily, perhaps, ameliorate some of the impact of the court decisions, which mean that these cases can go on for a number of years before I have the opportunity to call a public hearing and put it in the public sphere. The Diaz case I highlighted for you in the report is a perfect example of that. That took some ten years to wind itself through the court.

The special committee from 2019 made the recommendation that the legislation provide for a public hearing earlier in the process. You could appreciate that when you have an affected person, when you have these serious matters that affect public confidence in the police, waiting ten years for a public accounting is problematic to supporting confidence in police within British Columbia.

The other important recommendation that came out of that report was with respect to enhancing the powers of my office to do systemic reviews. Now, there are some authorities within our legislation to make recommendations to governments, recommendations to police boards, especially with respect to policies and procedures that may, for example, perpetuate systemic racism or discrimination.

We have limited ability to do that type of systemic work both in terms of our staffing, because the legislation doesn’t overtly give me the authority to do systemic reviews — unlike, for example, my federal counterpart in Ottawa. I can, of course, make these non-binding recommendations, but neither police boards nor governments are obligated to follow them.

The benefit, of course, of that recommendation, which I believe that the committee has accepted, was that there is certainly a preventative aspect to being able to do systemic reviews. If we can identify misconduct, if we can identify the underlying training issues or the underlying procedures that may contribute to misconduct or repetitive misconduct — which, in turn, undermines public confidence in policing — then, from my perspective, that is energy well served.

You can see very clearly that the adjudicative processes are expensive. They are lengthy. They are sometimes obscure to the affected persons and complainants, because they’re highly legalistic.

The ability to do more systemic and take more systemic preventative approaches, I would suggest, respectfully — and I have suggested to government on many occasions — is both a benefit from an efficiency perspective and, ultimately, a substantial benefit from a public-confidence perspective, most especially in light of the ongoing public dialogue on accountability in policing.

[12:20 p.m.]

Moving on a little bit, in terms of our stats, we traditionally have dealt with a relatively small statistical sampling of information. We deal with a small snapshot, if you will, of the overall conducts or incidents of involvement between the police and between the public. There are literally thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of interactions every day between the police who fall under our jurisdiction and the public. We deal with a very small snapshot of that. We acknowledge that.

It is clear from our stats for this year that there continues to be an increase in the number of complaints to our office. As an aside, what’s interesting is that when there’s broad public reporting of an incident that, perhaps, seizes the public’s attention, we get multiple complaints on the matter, not just from British Columbia, or not from the area of jurisdiction — from, sometimes, nationally, and I suppose, occasionally, internationally. Those are, you may be interested to know, still considered third-party complaints. So an individual can witness something in the media and still make a complaint to us.

There is the ability to consolidate that — and we do — into the ultimate investigation, but it does give you some indication that when matters catch the public attention through video or otherwise, there is a very significant resource impact to us, just managing the intake of those types of matters. The act is a low-bar access intent, so we are obligated to consider those. We are obligated to look at them. The intent, of course, is to provide the public, especially those who are most vulnerable in our communities, with access to some sort of redress to the police complaint process.

The other point I would make on our stats, just quickly, recognizing the time, is that we’re also noticing a pretty significant increase in what are referred to as reportable injuries. The police are required to report to us in certain circumstances when they have an interaction that results in a reportable injury — for example, someone is taken to hospital for treatment. That most often tends to be something that results from, for example, a dog bite or a use of force that results in hospital treatment.

Now, in those cases, it doesn’t always result in an investigation. It’s an obligation on the police to report it to us. But we are seeing an increase in those reportable injuries. The reason for it, frankly, we haven’t dug into. We don’t know the answer for it. But it is an area of concern. It can, of course, highlight increased reporting from the police, which is a good thing, because it is a matter of their obligation to report. But it may also highlight that there are more and more serious interactions between the police and the public that are of concern. I do know that there has been some reporting by police leaders about their concern about the increase of violence against their officers.

Those reportable injuries, when they reach a certain threshold under the act, are mandatorily investigated. That means I have no choice but to order an investigation under section 89. Those would involve, primarily, areas where there is a death or serious injury. So for example, when a matter meets the threshold of the independent investigation office, almost invariably, we’ll have a parallel investigation. Those investigations are generally suspended while the IIO completes their matter. Then we reinitiate those. There have been some high-profile and public incidents that are presently within our purview that we’re examining carefully.

Just on that point, and I’m sure the committee would be well aware of this, but the IIO, of course, is a police investigative agency, so it has to operate within the rules of evidence that cover criminal investigations. We, of course, are an administrative organization, so we operate under civil rules of evidence.

That being said, even if the IIO concludes their matter — without charges, I should say, to the officer — that doesn’t necessarily mean the officer didn’t commit some level of misconduct. That’s why it has to be looked into.

[12:25 p.m.]

Then I would take that back to the very important aspect of preventative. So from those investigations, we can often learn things where there can be some measures imposed to try to prevent these incidents from happening again.

The committee, I know, was very much interested in our response to and the impact of the pandemic. I’ve alluded to that somewhat. Clearly, like every organization — here we are yet again, speaking remotely — it’s been somewhat of a challenge with our staff. They have adapted. We have a young staff, primarily, and they’ve adapted very well to the virtual environment. Me, less so, I admit. But we have captured some learnings.

We’re in the process of capturing those learnings. We actually have a process underway right now where we’re examining, very closely, our future working environment and how we can incorporate the learnings from this period into the next environment. I think it’s fair to say that it will look different. In fact, I’ll speak in a minute about our recruiting for our analysts. But I do think that our future will look different.

This will be important as we’re analyzing our fall submission to you and our need for physical space. We have outgrown our present physical space. We are looking at options to occupy some space in Vancouver, not just for staff and for operations but for adjudications, because we anticipate…. We are trying to ameliorate, frankly, the challenges we had, as a result of the pandemic, finding space for adjudications.

The future will look different in the sense of our staffing. There are a number of schools of thought we’re examining. I do think there are some functions that can be, more or less, fully remote, but there are other functions that we may need in-house and other functions where there could be a combination of both, especially with respect to the on-boarding of new staff and new analysts as we consider growing. There is a certain benefit from having people at close quarters to share information, to support each other and to organizationally support teamwork.

We are looking at that very closely, and we will be coming to you in the fall with our analysis of our future requirements around physical space. We’ll have incorporated a long-term plan with respect to our working environment. But we do anticipate that there will be a different approach, frankly.

A little bit more on Surrey. We are fully engaged in examining and planning. There are, I think it’s fair to say, continued questions and uncertainty with respect to the Surrey transition. We are going on our best possible assumptions. We have a contracted resource engaged who is performing outreach for us to the planners out in the Surrey police force. They’ve hired, last we have on file, somewhere around 40 sworn police officers, plus civilian staff — around 80.

The chief continues to suggest a soft launch this fall. I think we’re on the planning assumption that next fiscal would be the largest potential impact to us. Again, we’re approaching this iteratively, almost in real time, and we plan to come to you, as we committed to, with a revised plan based on the best available data at the time.

I have reached out directly to the mayor and to the chief of police. Our contracted resource has reached out to them to stay connected. There is, I acknowledge, considerable controversy around this decision. We’re doing our best to stay above the fray, to give you the best possible information when we come and see you in the fall and do our planning in the most responsible way based on the best information available to us.

There has been some public reporting — I’d like to hit this straight on — that somehow we’ve been inundated with complaints. We have not. When I saw that media reporting, I went and checked, and we have not. Certainly, that’s not an invitation to anyone to inundate us with complaints. Given that the small complement of sworn officers are not actually out there performing police work, I don’t anticipate we would get some.

[12:30 p.m.]

Clearly, the public can make complaints about the services and policies. As that organization grows, we will examine those as they come forward. But service and policy matters are generally referred back to the police board to deal with in any event. The impact on us at this point has not been significant.

We continue to promote our alternative dispute resolution program. There have been some challenges with that, again as a result of the pandemic. Those challenges, of course, are that the resolution of these matters sometimes is best done with a face-to-face relationship between the police officer involved and the public member involved. That’s posed a challenge, just as it’s posed a challenge for some of the investigating agencies to do their work.

Traditionally, of course, many of these statements and this work that is done in investigations is done in a face-to-face way. But police have been quite adaptable, and we have tried to work with them to make sure that we can complete thorough processes, whether it’s ADR or otherwise, using virtual means, and we’ve adapted in that sense as well.

We continue at our intake level to have a No Wrong Door approach. We will likely continue that moving forward. What we don’t want to do is have people, especially those who are challenged to make a complaint to us, being turned away at our door because, for example, they want to make a complaint about an RCMP officer and we don’t have jurisdiction. We do our best to facilitate their contact with the appropriate agency.

This also came to the fore when we became aware and worked with government to understand the added authorities that were being granted to special provincial constables and other enforcement officers to enforce public health orders. We wanted to make sure that if a member of the public came to us to make a complaint, we were able to navigate that and send them to the appropriate agency, because we don’t have jurisdiction over that.

So you can imagine that when government is utilizing extraordinary powers, as has been necessary during this pandemic, there is the heightened concern that there be an appropriate level of oversight and redress with respect to any abuses of those powers and authorities.

We’ve provided you within our report quite a few of our stats, and the deputy commissioner is there to provide any information you like with respect to that. I will highlight for you that we haven’t released our new demographical information yet, because I think one of the learnings that we are taking from the report from the Human Rights Commissioner and from our work presenting for the special committee is that as we look at releasing our race-based data, we do so in the most sensitive and context-specific way.

So we’re taking our time to incorporate the learnings of that report in terms of reporting our race-based data. Last year’s annual report was the first time that we reported race-based data. We plan to work very closely with government, who, we understand, is working on a piece of legislation, or at least planning for legislation, related to race-based data, and we’re taking our advice where we can in terms of how we can properly contextualize that information.

This year we continued a pilot project we had last year to involve an Indigenous cultural safety adviser. We continue to grow that program on a contracted basis to provide support and advice with respect to complaints that come our way involving Indigenous-affected persons. And we have utilized those services to great benefit on a number of files that are outstanding at this point but are not in the public sphere. We hope to incorporate that work more fulsomely in our program.

Just a bit of a word on our hiring program. We’re just in the final throes of signing off on offers of employment to a cadre of analysts. We’ve had a couple leave us. Plus, we are hiring new analysts, a new complement, as the result of the support the committee has given us in our budget support. We took a very broad approach to our analyst competition on this occasion, going much more broadly to non-traditional organizations, searching for interested applicants. We had somewhere just south of 200 applicants for, at this point, I think, four positions, and we went through a very detailed process.

[12:35 p.m.]

We actually added some preferred qualifications with respect to experience with working with vulnerable groups, with trauma-informed approaches, and with racialized communities. We are continuing to move towards a predominantly civilian organization, and the vast majority — in fact, I would say somewhere around 90 percent — of all those applicants have no prior policing experience.

We will continue to need, just like the IIO, some employees with policing investigative experience for those very high-end, complex and parallel-to-criminal-investigation types of investigations we have, but we are certainly continuing to move towards a primarily civilian organization. The applicant pool was quite impressive — a lot of people with high levels of education and experience.

But as I’ve outlined probably more than I needed to, this is a very complex piece of legislation, and it takes some time to bring people up to speed in understanding it. We are under very significant timelines that are statutory and that I have no ability to waive. If we miss a timeline, we lose jurisdiction. Unlike other administrative tribunals, I don’t have the authority to adjust those timelines or to, essentially, create my own processes. We are under very strict statutory timelines and requirements.

Then finally, I would just note that we continue to work collaboratively with our corporate services on the rollout of our CTS project. As that rolls out — and I know that the Ombudsperson will be giving a more detailed update on that — I will be thinking about our capacity and when we will be rolling out that CTS project. We will work very closely with the planners.

That’s a pretty significant project and a very important project for us. We are highly reliant on our system. It is mission-critical, especially related to making sure that we meet our timelines under the statute.

I think I will stop there, looking at the time, because I think I just went over my time. We’ve provided you a fulsome report, and I’m happy to answer questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Commissioner.

Just before I open it up for questions, I’d like to thank you. I appreciate that you have made your report by keeping in mind the context of what are, in fact, changing public values and expectations when it comes to policing. What we can read into your report is a will and an intention to try to get ahead of the curve and anticipate what the public expects in terms of police and the accountability of police. So thank you for that.

I’m sure there are many questions. Who’s first?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Commissioner, for your report, as usual.

It sounds to me, from the tone of what you were just talking about, that the legislative constraints that you have on the process…. Obviously, it’s a driver of the cost. Have you got any recommendations to the committee as to where the oversight of the act on your particular role would…? It might be helpful if there were some consideration passed on to the relevant minister.

C. Pecknold: Yes. Thank you for that, MLA Stewart.

I will say that the ministry has been very good at consulting us. They have a major project underway to modernize the Police Act. They have looked very carefully at the very detailed recommendations that came out of the special committee from 2019 on legislative reform, many of which are directed at improving efficiency and improving more timely outcomes — for example, the ability to consolidate multiple complaints.

[12:40 p.m.]

There was also a recommendation within that report to look very carefully at the timelines. As I put in my report, the courts at the Court of Appeal level have referred to this as dense and confusing legislation, and it can be. If three Court of Appeal justices are having trouble with the legislation, you can imagine somebody living on the streets in the Downtown Eastside and their challenges.

When I appeared before the committee looking at reforming the act, I asked them to consider focusing on reform to the legislation. I understand, from my speaking to the ministry, that they are looking deeply at the possibility of having a single statute that would bring both the IIO and us into a single oversight statute. I think that’s an interesting idea.

This legislation’s ten years old. I was part of, at the time, responding to the review that was done by Mr. Josiah Wood. The purpose of the legislation, at the time, was to increase the timeliness and the accountability of these investigations. I think, in many ways, it succeeded, but in some ways, by putting everything in legislation, there’s a lack of flexibility at times, which contributes to costs and which contributes to these types of long, involved litigious outcomes.

I do think that there are some immediate…. Well, I will be frank. I’ve asked government to consider doing some immediate short adjustments to the legislation, rather than wait for a wholesale change to the Police Act, that would ameliorate some of these immediate costs. One of them would be to amend the act to give me the authority to call a public hearing earlier in the process.

You can imagine, as I’ve highlighted in the report, that the Diaz matter, involving a very serious use of force that resulted in a criminal conviction against a person of colour…. There’s very much a public interest that that matter be fully aired, but here we are ten years later.

I would hope, and I’ve asked government to consider, in an omnibus piece of legislation, bringing in some quick amendments. I hope that’s not too subtle of an answer, but that would be my goal.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

M. Starchuk: Commissioner Pecknold, it is the time and place and era with social media driving your business, so to speak, with the way you’ve explained it.

I just wanted to touch on…. Being an MLA in Surrey, I’m hearing on a regular basis as to what’s going on. I really like the fact that you have kind of done the myth-buster thing with the number of complaints that have come in…. Specifically, when I take a look at the service plan that’s there, I’m just wondering where we are in relationship to the police board and the outreach activities at an earlier stage while they’re growing. You did mention that there’s a contracted resource that’s out there.

It would be interesting to find out just exactly what those kinds of indicators that you’ve put inside of that service plan — where they sit right now in the infancy of building the Surrey police department.

C. Pecknold: The Surrey police board has been quite responsive to us at this point. I’ve gotten a quick response from them. We have an invitation. We have provided some training to the board. The ministry arranged that when the board was first appointed. We participated in that training. In addition, we have been invited to meet with the board to provide additional training. As they’re standing up their professional standards section, they are reaching out to us, and we are working with them. We will provide any training we can to them, within our resources, to assist them.

We’ve had, with their hired executive…. Many of them have come from other agencies who are used to operating within the B.C. Police Act. It will provide some level of, I think, continuity, hopefully.

[12:45 p.m.]

We anticipate that we will ramp up our involvement in terms of working with that department at the front end as they hire and as they develop their programs — most especially around things like policies; matters that can prevent misconduct; systems within the organization that can prevent misconduct, whether it’s supervisory programs or other areas.

I will say that we’re going to do that…. Well, there are two limiting factors, I suppose, with respect to the depth that we can do that. First of all, we are, arm’s-length, an oversight agency with respect to them, so we must be careful that we maintain that distance. The second is, frankly, that we are a small organization with about 25 FTEs who are just trying to deal with what’s on our plate and trying to plan our growth in a mindful way and in a way that is responsible for the taxpayer.

Where we are, I would say, is still relatively in infancy. But we’re further along than we were six months ago, and I expect to be further along when we see you in the fall.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for that response. More or less a comment before a question. I think some of us…. Last time we were talking about the hiring process and the type of specialty that was there. I’m pretty happy to see that you had added qualifiers, and you had 200 applications for four positions. So I’m assuming that [audio interrupted].

When we talk about…. Again, back to the Surrey board, there’s the opportunity for people to have service and policy complaints that go to your office. The examples that you’ve given are that there are resource allocation program delivery policies or other things that are there and that you’re seen to oversee that. [Audio interrupted.]

Is there the ability to give an example of just exactly what that is, or is it too early?

C. Pecknold: I caught the end of your question. I didn’t catch it all, but I think I got it.

The definition of service and policy is very broad if you look at it in the act. It could be resource allocation. It could be matters of their actual policies. You can imagine that, given the complexity and given the controversy, frankly, of this decision, there may be those who want to perhaps challenge the decision within the service and policy process.

We are alive to that, frankly. It is not our role to be utilized for political means. We have a statute we operate under, and we’re very careful to make sure that as we analyze these things, we analyze them against the statute. I’d like to share with the committee that I am very mindful of not having our processes abused or misused.

The second thing I would say is that there are legitimate questions for the community that the board has to be able to respond to. Whether it’s the Surrey police board or another police board — for example, Vancouver police board — there are very important considerations about policies such as handcuffing, policies such as how they police vulnerable communities. Those are very legitimately within the ambit of service and policy matters, as they will be for the Surrey police board.

An example, a very clear example, would be the very publicly reported use of handcuffs on individuals from a racialized community. That’s squarely within the authority for the police board to think about from a preventative standpoint, from a policy standpoint and from an organizational standpoint.

In addition, complaints such as how a particular community is policed — for example, in a community where there is a high preponderance of persons suffering from vulnerabilities such as drug addiction or other mental illness vulnerabilities — and how those resources are allocated is squarely within the responsibility of police boards. That’s a matter that might come our way.

I should emphasize that we monitor the board’s response to those processes, and I have some authorities, then, to make recommendations to government or back to the police board. But the police board is the governing body that’s ultimately responsible for that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Ben, I think you had another question.

[12:50 p.m.]

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to go back to our earlier discussion about the increase in funding that was allocated at your request, Commissioner. A lot of that was for ramping up people, etc. Are you on the same trajectory that you were on when we met last in, I believe, January or February in terms of hiring? I guess what I’m kind of…. I got the impression when we met previously that Surrey was going to be hiring like 800 members in the next 12 months, which is going to put all this pressure onto you and all the other things.

It sounds to me that there’s a much more modest ramp-up to this. I’m just wondering. What’s your plan in terms of the way that they’re performing at this point and the progress that they’ve made on following through on their plans?

C. Pecknold: I think speaking to, perhaps, the out years — so the multi-year, going forward — there are still some question marks as to what those resource requests will look like in the out years. As you know, we committed to coming back to you in the fall with more, perhaps, honed projections, with more information.

What I would say with respect to this year: we are focusing on putting those resources in place to be able to receive and to process the matters that come our way based on their present projections. Now, when I look at what they’re projecting — a soft launch in the fall — I am on the assumption that our ramp up of work would likely start in next fiscal year, not necessarily this fiscal.

However, to qualify that, as I alluded to MLA Stewart, there is that period where we need to recruit the analysts, train them, bring them up to speed and be ready for the work. Then, of course, there are the systems to support that. For example, we have not had a dedicated training individual. It’s all been done off the corner of the desk and by remote — by osmosis, perhaps, or a little bit more formal than that.

The reality is when you’re doing a larger cadre like this, we’re going need more dedicated resources. So we’ve already put that in place, and other systems that we’re putting in place to support this work, and, in addition, put the systems in place to support the policy framework that we need to do, because you can imagine we have all complex policies. We want to be able to support better use of our data as we build up on CTS.

But to get to your question directly, I, at this point…. In the fall, we’ll come back with some better numbers. My sense is that next year would be the year that we would expect to see the most inputs to us, assuming that the progression of Surrey, as they’re publicly reporting, continues the way it is.

Again, I hope to have better numbers. That may well be that we come back to you with a plan that goes beyond the next two fiscal years to a further three or so. We are working, of course, on planning our hiring and staging it within our existing allocation for this year.

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

J. Routledge (Chair): Any further questions?

C. Pecknold: I should add, Madam Chair, if you don’t mind…. I always feel a little uncomfortable when I’ve answered a question and I feel I haven’t fully answered it.

What I would say to that — to add to my answer — is that we’re doing our best to understand what is a process that has a lot of contingencies around it. We’re doing our best to tie into that. I’m always hesitant to give you certainties on what continues to be quite a contingent process that we’re following, but we are continuing to do our best.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Commissioner. I think we all appreciate that. That’s what our life has been like for the last year and a half.

Let’s conclude. I would like to, once again, thank you for your very thorough report. I’d like to thank you and your staff for framing your work in this particular moment in time and with a clear appreciation that it will shape our future.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, everybody.

J. Routledge (Chair): I understand we’re waiting for at least one person for our next report. Should we take a five-minute recess? Okay, thanks. We’ll recess for five minutes.

The committee recessed from 12:55 p.m. to 1:02 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): We are about to hear from the Auditor General. This is an opportunity to give us an interim report, a mid-year check-in.

Over to you, Auditor General.

OFFICE OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL

M. Pickup: Thank you so much for the introduction and the opportunity. Joining me today are Russ Jones, Deputy Auditor General, whom most of you know well by now; and Sheila Dodds, assistant Auditor General and chief financial officer of the office, whom you are getting to know more and more.

Also with us are John McNeil, manager of finance and administration, and Elaine Hepburn, executive operations lead as well. Not joining us, that was on your invite schedule, is Nicholas Johnson, the manager of communications, who gets the joy of being home now with a new baby — so wonderful for him.

Before I turn it over and ask Sheila to walk through a brief presentation with you, I would like to acknowledge that today I’m coming to you from Victoria, in our office, the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. It’s important for me to remember that every day, as I enjoy this wonderful area and this wonderful province that I find myself in. So I do want to acknowledge that.

I also want to mention a big thank you to the folks that are with us here, today, but equally, a wonderful thank you to some folks who aren’t with us here today who help us prepare for this type of information and this type of presentation and dialogue with you. Those include Jodi Eves, a financial analyst back in our office; Colette Schafer, contracts and facilities coordinator; and Lisa Thorne, finance and administrative clerk, who helps us prepare for days like today. So a big thanks goes out to those folks who aren’t with us here today.

I did mention…. In acknowledging the territory, of course, I also want to acknowledge, before I turn it over to Sheila, that June is National Indigenous History Month as well, and we just celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day this week.

[1:05 p.m.]

As an Indigenous person myself and a member of the Miawpukek First Nation…. As far away from Victoria as you could possibly get, probably, and still be in Canada, from a First Nations perspective, because it is literally pretty much on the far end of this country, beyond Nova Scotia and all the way over in Newfoundland and Labrador as well.

I did want to mention that while we mourn and are sad on a number of things, I think that many of us are also proud and hopeful of what Indigenous People have and continue to contribute to the world. I’m particularly proud of that and do want to mention that as well.

I also want to recognize that June is Pride Month in B.C. and in Canada as well — a time for us to celebrate diversity and LGBTQ2SI+ communities as well, and acknowledge the history and hardships that have happened, and again, be hopeful. Again, as a member of that group as well, it is particularly important to me, as a leader, to give hope for people who may belong to these communities, to say: “You too can end up in jobs like this and positions like that.” Assuming, as I believe, that this is a good thing — to end up in jobs and positions like this. I like to offer hope to people as well. Certainly, we all look to lead our office to be as open, diverse and inclusive as we can, both internally and externally as well.

That was a bit of a long intro before the presentation by Sheila, but I did think it was an important time to mention these things, because they are important to me/us here at the OAG.

On that note, I thank you for the opportunity to do that, Chair.

On that, I’ll pass it over to Sheila Dodds, to walk through a presentation.

S. Dodds: Thank you, Michael.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. I’m just going to walk you through the highlights document that we’ve prepared and circulated in advance. I’m sure there will be a number of questions afterwards.

One of the first areas was on staffing resources. Staff is our primary resource, and 70 percent of the budget you’ve approved for us is for staff. We are actively recruiting to ensure that we have the appropriate cohort of financial and performance auditors. As we had planned, we are working to recruit a communications team.

Nicholas Johnson, who’s home with a new baby, is our new manager of communications and joined us right before the end of March. We have closed three competitions for the other communications positions and are interviewing for one of them this Friday. So very excited to have that group.

We are also continuing to recruit to get the IT expertise that we need to support the transformation to the cloud-based systems that we’re working through right now. We are forecasting, as of the end of May, to be underspending on that salary budget by about 3 percent, which is due to vacancies as we’re trying to recruit. Recruitment is very active right now, and as we get further into the year, I anticipate that that forecast will decrease over time.

In terms of office occupancy, it’s an interesting time to be talking about how we’re making use of our office and how we’re returning to work with such positive results in the province, with numbers going down and restrictions looking to be reduced quite drastically on July 1. Right now most of our staff are continuing to work full time from home.

We probably have, I would say, 10 percent, 12 to 20 people on any given day that are in the office. That group of people does change, but they’re in the office for a variety of reasons. We have very solid technology in the office. If you want to have good Wi-Fi for meetings, this is where you want to be rather than at home, quite often.

There are some opportunities for face-to-face meetings and for teams to get together. We do have safety protocols in place, and I think people are getting more comfortable with coming back into the office. So we are seeing that increase a little bit right now.

In March, Michael provided a communication to all staff to anticipate the return to work, and to give all of us an opportunity to plan our lives with an idea of when we were likely to come back to work. So in March, the goal was September 7. After Labour Day, we are expecting everybody back in the office a minimum of two days a week for all of our Victoria-based staff. This is all subject to public health officer orders, but as we’re seeing, our September 7 date was a very appropriate date to be targeting for.

[1:10 p.m.]

As a group, we will be working through September to December, collectively figuring out how we are going to work in the future — so for the nature of work, the workplace of the future — with the goal to, in January, having a plan implemented in terms of how we’re going to balance remote, on site, leverage the technology and the office space, make the best use of the office space that we have.

Throughout the summer…. Like I said, we are seeing the numbers of staff on site increasing, and the mix is shifting day by day. Staff are welcome to return as much as they want through the summer, because again, we do have those safety protocols, and we do confirm how many people are in the office on any particular day. But we haven’t hit any of those thresholds yet.

Also, as we start to look at how we’re going to work, going forward, we have to look at how we’re going to make best use of our office space. I think, when we spoke the last time, we talked about how we’re in a 20-year lease. We’re five years into it, but we have a fair bit of space here. We are sharing space with the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, and we are going to be increasing the amount of space that we’re making available to them later on this year.

We have connected with Citizens’ Services, the B.C. government’s workplace strategies and planning team, to provide some input into how we could better use the space that we have in the office and if there is additional space to be looking to share with others as well. That work will feed into the initiative we have underway through the fall to figure out how we’re going to use the space, how we’re going to use our tools and how we’re going to create that modern workplace, starting January 2022.

In terms of our deliverables and our product, in the last fiscal year…. We are just getting ready to release our annual report, next Tuesday. In that report, you’ll see that we have completed 40 audits of financial statements and other financial information. We deposited six performance audits and three information reports. For the current year, as we’re going along, our financial audit team are in the thick of it still. This is the height of the busy season for financial audit, so they are delivering on the performance audit coverage plan that was put forward earlier this year.

In terms of our performance audit portfolio, in the first three months, we have delivered a performance audit each of those months. We provided the Avalanche Safety on Provincial Highways in April and the Management of the Conservation Lands Program in May. Community Living B.C.’s Framework for Monitoring was released in June.

Now, we are continuing to actively manage risks to being able to deliver our planned program of performance audits, including staffing availability risks and auditee readiness for us to be coming in and doing the work, given the pandemic and the COVID-related impacts. We are working very hard, within our performance audit portfolio as an office, to support them, to really actively manage these risks so that we can deliver on that commitment.

In March of this year — but for the last fiscal year — there was a unique report that we provided, which is the Auditor General’s Status Report. That report identified five audits that were postponed. Those audits did feed into our performance audit coverage plan. Four of those audits are going to be starting again later this year but are scheduled to be reported the following fiscal, in ’22-23, and one of those audits is on the list of future topics.

In October, a new report that we will be providing is going to be an expanded report with results of the financial audit work. It’s going to be including information on the operating effectiveness of selected financial controls from government on three areas of COVID-19 expenditures. In addition, it’s going to outline the results of a fraud-risk survey that we sent out to entities in the broader public sector.

Also, a big accomplishment early in this year is that we did establish our external thought leaders group to provide perspectives and input on a variety of issues to the Auditor General and the team. We have identified and recruited five very diverse individuals with a really interesting perspective, life experience and a real range of backgrounds of where they’re from, and even age. I think the age range is from 28 to 77, so we get a great deal of variety there.

[1:15 p.m.]

We had our first meeting on June 9. It was a really good foundation for starting to build the relationship with this advisory group and explaining to them the work that we do and the areas that we’re interested in — their thoughts — which is really understanding the communities that they’re part of and how they are seeing programs.

In terms of our finances, for the ’20-21 fiscal year, we used 99.5 percent of our budget. We really maximized the dollars that were available to us to be able to prepare ourselves for this new year, going forward. We initiated a fair bit of work around building the capacity, in terms of the audit and the support functions there.

For the current year, we are still looking very closely at the impact, really, of the pandemic. In sort of rolling out of the pandemic, I think some of the studies out there are talking about…. There could be movement of people as we start to come back to this post-pandemic way of working. We’re really closely monitoring any impacts on our staffing budget, our travel budget and our professional services contract budget.

Where we’re at, it’s two months into the year — pretty early — but we are, I would say, actively managing any of those risks, particularly the staffing risks. The recruitment activity in the office right now is very high.

Another initiative we have been working on since January is developing a new strategic plan, with a new Auditor General, looking at what our directions are as we go forward for the next seven years left of the mandate. We’ve gotten into a lot of really good work. We have developed a strategic plan that we’re working through on how we develop the implementation plan and what the key strategies are for the first year and then the priorities going forward. The plan really focuses on developing our people and then delivering value for money for the products that we are providing to the Legislative Assembly.

We were targeting July to be issuing the service plan. The service plan is very much based on the strategic plan. We are still involved in doing some work to finalize the strategic plan. We’ve made a decision that we are going to launch the strategic plan and the service plan on September 7 as a way to celebrate coming back together as a community of the Auditor General’s office and a shared vision on where we’re going forward.

Our timing has shifted slightly, but I’m really excited about the opportunity to celebrate getting back together and looking forward to how we support developing our teams and providing great work for the Legislative Assembly. Just a sneak peek into our work. Our new vision and mission statements that have been developed as part of this pretty robust strategic planning process are on the highlights page that we’ve provided to you.

I think that’s the broad strokes on where we’re at right now. Before I turn it back to Michael or the Chair, I just wanted to know if John or Russ had any highlights they wanted to add that I might have missed.

J. McNeil: I’m happy with what you had to say there, Sheila.

S. Dodds: Thanks, John. Thanks for helping write it.

M. Pickup: Thank you, Sheila.

I think, Chair, that was going to be our presentation. I’m happy to take questions, comments from the committee.

R. Jones: I didn’t have anything to add. That’s fine. Thank you.

[1:20 p.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, before opening it up for questions from the committee, I just want to make a personal observation. I really appreciate your hopeful opening words and how you linked that with the culture of your office. I think it was very apparent in the energy of the report and what you had to say about where you’ve come so far and where you’re heading.

This is great. Thank you very much.

I will open it up to questions.

M. Starchuk: With regards to the report that was there, Sheila, when you were talking about the office and getting it back to normal, what is the plan? Is there a plan for the future?

I think I had mentioned yesterday about having a 30-something child in the two-dimensional Zoom world. She’s so looking forward to getting back to the ability to speak to other people that are directly beside you or near you, for those coaching things that you either receive or give to somebody else as you mentor somebody. And for what everybody thought was the 50-somethings that would never be able to adapt to it, they seem to have adapted to a lot better than the 30-somethings.

Is there a format that you’re hoping for, or is it just: “We’re going to wait and see what happens”?

M. Pickup: I’m going to try and respect your time. I could probably talk about this for the next 30 minutes because it is so important to each and every one of us, I guess. Your timing is wonderful because we had an all-staff meeting yesterday, in fact, virtually, to have another discussion around this.

I would go back to just something that Sheila Dodds pointed out in all of the information that she was giving. What we said to folks back in March…. March may seem like not that long ago, but in many ways, it was a long time ago when we think about all that has changed since March, during the pandemic.

Something we wanted to give to people in March was some sense of certainty, in an uncertain world, as to what they could plan for over the next six months, both personally and professionally. So what we did is we laid out, back in March, to everybody…. We said: “Here’s what we’re going to do from now until the end of December.” So we laid out, sort of, the approach. And the approach meant that up until the end of July, people could continue to work remotely like they were doing, with opportunities to come in if they wanted to, safely, according to a plan, which some people had to do.

Then we said that come September — so people had five to six months notice of this, which they really appreciated — we’ll come back into the office. Everybody is to come back a minimum of two days a week for the September to December period. If people want to come back more than that…. In some cases, people would have to come back more than that, depending on the role they’re in.

During that September to December period, what we said would happen is that we would then take a human-centred approach to figuring out the science-based information and evidence. How are we going to work together in the future from 2022 on? What is working together going to look like?

I’m often fond of saying to folks: “I get it. It’s never going to look exactly like it did pre-pandemic. It’s probably not going to look like it did during the pandemic. It’s probably going to be some hybrid combination of everything from A to Z, depending on what the person is doing, the time of year it is for that person.”

We will come and get people back in September. Then we’ll start studying it. We’ve already…. Even as early as yesterday we sent out a survey to folks to start gathering some of that science-based information to look at what the risks are. One of my perspectives on it is that there will be a number of risks to how we work together in the future, but that doesn’t mean we don’t do A, B or C. It means that we identify the risks, and we manage them well. So we’ll figure that out over the September to December period.

[1:25 p.m.]

I completely take your point that some of the information we’ll be looking at in evidence is not just what, perhaps, as a leader or supervisor, is easiest for us, but what do people need? That could be more junior people. It could be younger people. It could be a variety of people.

I know I’m even hearing things from working parents, parents with kids, right? Well, parents do have kids, I guess, but you know what I mean. Parents still with kids at home, perhaps, that say: “You know, actually, it would be easier for me to balance my life if I had a hybrid, where I’m working from home sometimes but actually in the office at other times.”

So we have to look at all of these things, I think, and put it together. Probably not surprising for an auditor bunch of type people, we’re going to take a fairly scientific/analytical approach and not rush into anything and say what will really work here and what does that look like, both for people internally and also for people externally, right?

We’re not in a factory building widgets. We’ve got to think about those we audit. What might have worked during the pandemic for people we audit may not work for people outside of the pandemic. It may be that many of the people, the clients, the organizations we audit, will want more on-site presence, rather than us doing things remotely and doing things by computer, which I’m guessing eats up a lot more of their time than if we’re there with them in the same building and they’re giving us access to documents, giving us access to people, giving us access to systems. I’m guessing that it’s probably easier for the people we audit.

It’s going to be an interesting period, I think, through September to December. But as I said to staff yesterday, I’m certainly all about a modern workplace that works for everybody and that we figure that out and that it works for everybody, internally and externally, as well as recognizing there’s likely no one-size-fits-all here.

I said it would be a long answer, and I think it was a four-minute answer. That’s my short version of the answer.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Michael.

L. Doerkson: Thanks very much for the presentation. Just a couple of questions.

Some of the other offices are looking like they’re trending toward having some surplus in their budgets. I wondered where you folks feel you’re going to land or where you feel, at least, that you’re trending.

Secondly, I think you mentioned four audits that were stopped, or perhaps they didn’t even get started. I wondered why they were stopped. I think you mentioned that they’d start again in the fall. Is there a reason for that?

M. Pickup: Sure. Sheila, why don’t I start, and you can correct me/supplement my answers. Folks know me well enough now in the office that they know to correct me if I say something that needs correction.

Maybe just to start from the money perspective. I’m not trying to avoid the question. We will have a better idea, I think, come second quarter, as to where we are.

I think the biggest challenge for us is we have a number of vacancies that are taking time to recruit and to fill. In my view, we have to look at alternatives to service plan delivery to say if we want to deliver to all performance audits. Having people in seats and having people internally is ideal, but sometimes, in the short term, there are other alternatives we can look to, in terms of making sure we continue to deliver on the service plan.

So if we have an audit where we’re down one or two people, it’s not ideal, necessarily, to go hire contractors or to bring in temporary help. But short term, that might be something we look at doing in order to be able to deliver on the service plan.

I would like to really be able to deliver on the service plan and the number of performance audits that we have planned, for example, as well as the financial statement audit coverage plan. I think, in order to do that, we’ve either got to use up what we thought we’d need, salaries and budget-wise, or we have to look at alternatives, including temporary assignments, contracting and things.

I think we’ll have a better idea as we move into second quarter, but it is probably one of the biggest risks we’re managing right now — the tie-in of people and filling those people who have left. Recognizing, as Sheila said…. Who knows what’s going to happen? Much of the current literature is suggesting that one in four Canadians are thinking about a job change. That’s not because they’re disgruntled. That’s because the pandemic has given them time to think about things and perhaps to look for some change. Something like that would happen.

[1:30 p.m.]

We can’t fill positions on a dime; it takes time to do so. We’ll be watching that.

If I recall, we significantly reduced the travel budget in the approved budget for this year — way, way, way down. We’ll see, as things come back in the fall.

It goes to something I said earlier. If we have a bunch of organizations we audit where they say, “Yeah, that’s very nice that you prefer to work at home, but we want you here,” then we would accommodate them. If the organizations we audit want us present, then we will have to be present and do the audit that way.

There may be some risk that we’ve underdone it on the travel, depending on how things come back. I don’t think the travel is ever going to go back fully to the way it was. Some risk there that we probably have under budgeted on the travel, but I think we’ll get a better idea on second quarter.

To go back, I guess, to wrap up the question…. Are we forecasting? Well, we say for now we’re looking at, for sure, a surplus. I hope not, because I think if we were to end up in surplus, we’re going to end up not delivering on a service plan for a whole bunch of other reasons of things that happened. I’m really hopeful that we’ll actually use it, because that means delivering fully on the mandate as we envision it.

Sheila, I will take a breath and pause in a second, so you and John or Russ — if you want to add anything.

I think, to go back to the audits that we had reported in the status report in March as being delayed, when we put the Performance Audit Coverage Plan out, we had already factored that in — that most of those were in the ’22-23 schedule anyway. They weren’t going to be reported in ’21-22, so it’s not causing an issue on the Performance Audit Coverage Plan. But I will give you a couple of examples of those, and then my colleagues here can supplement.

For example, one of those was Site C, where we had delayed. Now we are getting back up to speed on that. That was in the plan for ’22-23, but we had reported it in March as a delayed audit, because it was in fact delayed for the reasons we had indicated.

If we take the audit of the management of substance use as well — that was another one that was delayed at the request of government, as they were dealing with the pandemic. We thought that was a reasonable request given everything going on, of course, so we delayed that one and pushed that one out to ’22-23 as well. So far, those things that were in that status report were all factored in, both in terms of our budget, our planned audit, and our ability to deliver the Performance Audit Coverage Plan for ’21-22.

We will have to watch, I think, as we push through this year to see what’s happening in terms of whether there are additional delays — for example, on substance use or on Site C or on others that would cause any of those items, particularly the performance audit’s plan for delivering ’22-23, to start to slip or push out as well. I think we’ll watch that to see how much of that happens.

I mean, I think, realistically, if there’s a lot of that, I would suggest that we will have to consider some sort of reporting like we did in March that summarized the postponed or delayed audits. We would have to consider something like that, to be open and transparent, to say: “Here is, additionally, perhaps, what is being delayed.”

So maybe I will pause there and ask Sheila or John or Russ or Elaine if they want to supplement anything I have just said.

S. Dodds: You covered it well, Michael. Thank you.

J. McNeil: Lorne, does that cover it for you?

L. Doerkson: Yeah, I think mostly.

J. Routledge (Chair): I have Pam next, and then Ben.

P. Alexis: I just wanted for you to elaborate a little bit more about your thought leaders. I am quite curious about this. I think it was touched on, perhaps, in March, but I can’t recall fully. So if you could just tell me a little bit more about the group and the intent and potential outcomes of what you’re expecting, what may be a surprise already. Just a little bit more elaboration on that for me, please.

M. Pickup: Sure. I will give you, sort of, my experience of it. It may well be that Elaine, who has worked quite heavily on putting the external thought leaders together, and Sheila, as well, may want to add on.

[1:35 p.m.]

Maybe I will start a little bit lighter in a couple of minutes and then ask them if they want to add anything, and maybe do a back-and-forth if there’s something else you want to ask me on it.

The intent of the external thought leaders was to bring together a group of people from within the province who would bring their views, their perspectives, on selected issues that we request their views on, to bring a different perspective that is based on a different lived experience than most of us have who have been fortunate enough to spend 30 some years in public service, or more, in some cases. They would bring their perspectives on things.

They wouldn’t be making decisions. We wouldn’t be com­ing together to make a decision. They wouldn’t be accountants or auditor types of experts, so we wouldn’t be going to them on an accounting issue to say: “What do you think of this?” What we would be going to them on are things like…. We will be having a discussion internally around what, if anything, we want to audit related to the pandemic.

We could put that question to the external thought leaders to say, “Based on your lived experience, what would be your suggestion of something we should consider to do a performance audit on, from your lived experience related to the pandemic?” for example. Depending on what the topic is, we would go to them and look to them for their ideas. It’s really just to, I think, expand the scope and be more inclusive of the different perspectives from across B.C.

The five people we’ve had join us and agree to do this…. Two of the folks are Indigenous and bring their wonderful experiences from Indigenous and other perspectives — not just Indigenous perspectives but different perspectives — to the table. We have two people of colour who are in the five, who bring their perspectives, including working with non-profit organizations, including coming from academia, including coming from community groups. We have quite an age variety there as well, as Sheila mentioned. The people aren’t all from Victoria. They’re from across the province, so we’re getting regional perspectives as well.

On strictly audit things, it’ll be: “Help us think about topics.” But then, also in your question, you said: “Have you had any surprises yet?” A couple of surprises. We had our first three-hour meeting, and one of the surprises outside of that meeting, to me, has been…. I believe we are doing this for the right reason, and that right reason is that we will pick, I think, audits with more broad perspectives and thought put into it, which should enable us to explain to people how we’re picking audits and resulting in audits that really are truly reflective of all that government does.

The surprise on that part of it was just how much this matters to other people. We didn’t really do this for advertising, if you will, to be seen to be doing the right thing outside of the office. We’re doing this because we really believe it is going to help us deliver better on our mandate. But I really underestimated how important this is to people outside the office and how encouraging people are from across the country. I’m hearing from Auditors General across the country, who are very encouraged by this, who are interested in this, who are thinking about doing this in this way now — and people from within the province and people in the office.

It makes me so happy how important diversity and inclusion are to young people. It’s not that it’s not important to the rest of us, but this is something very important to young people. We want to keep young people employed here, and we want to be able to hire younger people as well as keep the rest of us who are not as young. I totally underestimated how important all of that would be to these folks.

Now, coming together…. The second surprise I’d say that I would have is how valuable this is going to be to how we run the office, okay? — just on the day-to-day, Monday-to-Friday stuff — if we think of Indigenous perspectives, for example.

[1:40 p.m.]

One of our members, at our three-hour meeting, had a wonderful sharing experience about a way we could start meetings — walking through, talking about the Indigenous perspectives on being a fighter or a warrior, on being a healer, on being a teacher and on being a visionary — and how we could quickly incorporate that in a realistic, practical way into our meetings.

Well, including me…. I had never thought about that before, because I bring one Indigenous perspective, but I don’t bring those perspectives to it.

I’m going to see that there’s going to be value to how we do this. In fact, when we had our all-staff meeting, we ended up incorporating that into the start of the all-staff meeting.

It’s a breathing exercise you do to let out all the bad and take in all the good — just sort of let it all go. All of a sudden, we’re doing this at a meeting, which we had never thought of before. We’re going to work with this group when we put together a diversity and inclusion strategy, where we think about: “Are the people we are hiring, the people we are promoting, the people we have in here diverse and inclusive and representative of the province and the people in the province?” We’ve got some work to do, and these folks are going to help us on this.

The other surprise is that our first meeting was only to build a relationship, to do a kickoff. Already, we’ve got feedback on: “I think your office could do more outreach and communication in getting your message out and in engaging with the Black community in Vancouver, for example, and hearing our perspectives.” That came up at the first meeting, and that wasn’t even the intent of the meeting. We were onto something else. Those are some of the surprises that I would have. Sorry for the long answer, but there were a number of questions in there that I wanted to fairly answer.

I think to Sheila and Elaine, particularly, who have spent a lot of time on this: did I do that justice, from your perspective, or do you want to add anything?

E. Hepburn: Michael, I thought you did it perfectly. I’ve got nothing more to add.

S. Dodds: It’s interesting. Having spent years as a performance auditor trying to figure out what to audit and how to audit it, I would say that the work that everybody is doing, all communities are doing, around diversity and inclusion…. I look at the province, with the GBA+ framework — to be looking at the thinking around funding decisions.

For me, what this diverse perspective is bringing — I could hear it, and I could see it happening in that first meeting — is thinking about not picking a program to audit because it’s a significant dollar value, which is the driver, but thinking about who is receiving the benefits or the impacts of that service or that program. How is it landing with them? I think there’s an opportunity for us to actually think a little more broadly about what we choose and how we choose to approach it, to be able to have a better understanding of the people in B.C., not the people in the public service. It provides a bit of a different insight.

Then just to echo Michael’s point, there’s such an opportunity for us, as an office, to really think about diversity and inclusion, what we are going to do, and to have people who are not in the system challenge us, to say: “Well, what about this? What about that?” I think it’s just going to help us in doing our jobs better, internally and on the deliverables. They’re a great group.

P. Alexis: Thank you for that. I really, really appreciate it. I’d love to hear, in November, how that is going and any further observations and lessons learned. I think it would be valuable to share this with a number of organizations, as far as the strategy and how you’ve approached it, because I think a lot of people are needing some guidance in this area, for sure. They’re not really sure on how to approach it. I just think it’s wonderful.

I just want to say, too, that I think some of my most valuable conversations as a politician have taken place in the vegetable department at the grocery store. You get in this mindset, and you’re not thinking about what ordinary people are actually thinking. It makes a huge difference. Thank you for elaborating on that. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

[1:45 p.m.]

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Auditor General and the staff. I just want to go back to the one-pager you provided. Your mission is to “provide independent assurance and trusted information to assist the Legislative Assembly in holding government accountable.” Your work “contributes to improved financial reporting, programs and services for the benefit of people in B.C.”

I want to go back to your report that you put out in March, which came less than a month after we met. I know we met on February 3 and, I think, a second time shortly thereafter. It suggests that the government is asking you to delay work. That’s what it says on page 4.

My question is…. When we talked in February, you talked about 12 performance audits, being shorter, being more nimble. We approved an increase of $1.5 million to your budget. I’m a bit surprised that less than 30 days later this came out about delaying, which I understand, because of circumstances, the reopening plan and getting back on track.

I think British Columbians can expect this committee, in charge of finance and government services, to expect accountability and how you’re going to get back on track. Now, it sounds like you’re going to have that report in the fall for us.

I guess, considering that, my question to you, Auditor General, is…. The $1.5 million that was provided in an approved budget. Have you put a postponement on any of that, or have you just…? I know some of that’s for IT people that were added, $376,000, and higher office rent. But what about the other positions that, obviously, you can’t utilize at the present time?

You’re the branch of government that holds everybody accountable. That’s what we expect. We expect that taxpayers are getting value for their investment in projects that the government is undertaking. I’m a bit concerned that there’s some hesitancy and that you’re holding back. I just would like you to answer that, if you could.

M. Pickup: Sure. A couple of responses to that. Sheila may want to add…. I think there are a number of points in there. If I’m not fully answering your question, just let me know, and I’ll go back to it.

I want to go back to the status report that came out with the delayed audits in it and the update on what happened there. That doesn’t impact the budget request and the ability to deliver the 12 planned reports for ’21-22. We had already factored that in when we said…. In ’21-22, we still plan to deliver 12.

Those delayed audits are not impacting the ability to deliver 12 in ’21-22. We still plan on doing that with the money that we have been budgeted. Otherwise, I think we need to have a discussion. If we’re less than the 12, then why are we less than the 12, if we needed the money to do the 12, and where are we in terms of the underspend?

The commitment is still there, as it was during the budget process. This is the money, and the financing is to set us up to deliver on the 12 performance audits. That is not impacting that, but we did think it was worthwhile to do a catch-up.

I think where we will run into some issues or risk is on ’22-23, which still gives us some time to say: “Do any of the delays or potential delays or things that are happening now and over the next number of months…? Is any of that going to impact ’22-23?”

The example I would give you…. There’s only really one example so far, Chair, that I can give you. That is on the management of substance use audit. We had delayed that one. It was in the status report, with that delay in March. It was on the schedule for ’22-23.

About a month ago government wrote to us and said: “Could you delay?” We were going to get restarted this summer for ’22-23 reporting. We were going to get restarted. Government wrote to us and said: “With dealing with the pandemic, trying to do vaccine rollouts and dealing with everything on top of that and the increased overdoses, we need some more time here. Can you not start this in July? If you start this in July, you run the risk of impacting health care delivery to people in B.C., including the vaccine delivery.”

[1:50 p.m.]

Clearly, we had no interest in being in a position to impact health care delivery, including vaccines, a response to the pandemic and what was happening. So we thought that was a reasonable request to delay, and we’ll have another discussion come early fall with government to say, “Okay, where are you now?” in terms of…. Hopefully, we are nearly out of the pandemic, but you know, we had to balance, obviously.

The request seemed reasonable to me, given everything that is going on. And that is part of why, Chair, we set up that status report — and doing that status report. We are being open and transparent so that if we got into this situation…. The Site C one we’ve picked back up on now — we had delayed that one, awaiting the consultant report to be finished. That has been done, and we’re gearing up on that.

So the short answer is, I think: no change to the plan to deliver on the 12th that we had planned for; some risks around that substance use audit going forward, and we’ll have to watch that one as we get…. We’ll have a better idea come October, November as to whether there is a risk of that falling off for ’22-23 and pushing out to ’23-24. We’ll have a good idea on that. But I am comfortable.

We are doing a couple of pandemic-related audits right now — safe spaces, for example, hotel procurement. Nobody has written to me to say: “You shouldn’t do those audits right now. We are dealing with the pandemic.” So those are moving forward.

I would get concerned if, you know…. We are working on 12 audits. If I got requests to delay all 12 audits, saying that it’s not a good time, that would be quite troubling for us, but that hasn’t happened. I think, if I’m trying to be reasonable, it’s been a reasonable approach, and the request of government was reasonable.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thanks, Michael.

Ben, do you have a follow-up?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Auditor General, just on the question I asked about the budget increase, then, what you’re saying is that the $1 million for new staff is proceeding and that this hiring for performance audit staff, as well as IT staff to modernize systems and communications, is proceeding. Or has it been delayed?

M. Pickup: It is proceeding, recognizing that it takes time and recognizing that it’s not…. You know, things happen week to week, month to month, right? So we can plan for an expected turnover, but there were a couple of people, for example, that left that we weren’t planning for. So we are dealing with that.

I think, Chair, one of the biggest risks is what’s going to happen over the six months. If all of a sudden, one in four people, as surveys might suggest, decides that they’re going to move on to try other things, then we’re running into a more difficult situation.

Also, I’d go back to say that short term, in terms of the finances and the money, in the desire to deliver on the service plan, yes, we’re doing staffing things, but also in our toolbox is looking at other short-term measures, which could include, at times, using some contractors or other professionals to fill in gaps where we have short-term gaps, because in the broader public sector, hiring a vacant position is not something you do in one week, two weeks, three weeks or four weeks. It takes time to fill the….

I’m not being critical. I’m just saying that the process takes time. That’s kind of the way it works.

Am I answering your question?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, I guess, when it comes to the fall update, considering that you said that your staffing is running at about 10 percent in the office, you’re going to about 40 percent occupancy with staff in person in the office…. Obviously, if those resources…. If people would prefer to work from home and you find that that’s acceptable with your team, then maybe there are some other savings. I think you did mention that you’ve contacted….

M. Pickup: Human rights and Citizens’ Services.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Yeah, Citizens’ Services — right? — reviewing office utilization. I think that those are all appropriate measures, Auditor General, and I look forward to your update where you’re going to — you know, when you land on your feet in the fall. How does that sound?

M. Pickup: Wonderful.

[1:55 p.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Thank you, everyone. It looks like we’re now reaching the end of our time with you. I would just like to wrap it up by thanking you and your staff for your presentation, for fielding the questions the way you did, and for the work you do on an ongoing basis.

That was a big discussion that came out of your report, and I, for one, am inspired by some of the things that you’re doing. The thought leaders — I’m intrigued by that. I’ve been going through, in my mind, how I could apply that to my work. I think it’s really, really critical. The way you are trying to adapt to a paradigm shift, which we are all grappling with post-pandemic, is very inspiring. So thank you, again, to all of you.

M. Pickup: Thank you so much. Have a good day, everybody.

J. Routledge (Chair): You too.

The Human Rights Commissioner is ready to join us.

Welcome, Human Rights Commissioner, and your staff. This is continuing with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We’d like to give you an opportunity to give us an update, a part-year check-in on how you’ve been doing, what the highlights have been, how the budget predictions have been going and what you anticipate in the future — so things that you’d like to share with us in terms of being sure that you’re able to meet your mandate in the way that you want to. Over to you.

OFFICE OF THE
HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER

K. Govender: Thank you so much for that welcome, and hello to all of you. Thank you for the opportunity, as always, to be here and to have this conversation to be able to update you on everything that’s just been listed.

Before I continue, I want to acknowledge that I am on the unceded and traditional homelands of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations here in Vancouver.

I’m joined by Deputy Commissioner Stephanie Garrett and chief financial officer Dianne Buljat.

I am pleased to report that my office continues to successfully balance the strategic building of a new independent officer of the Legislature with achieving the real impact of the statutory mandate that we have on advancing human rights in the province. I am very grateful to this committee and to the Legislature for your part in making that a reality. Your decision to recommend the budget requested the last time we met ensures that we can build a strong, effective and innovative office that can truly promote and protect human rights in the province.

It takes vision to see what we’re doing here, and it takes trust to champion this kind of change. So thank you for that.

With the full funding in place since we met last February, we’ve grown from 16 to 28 permanent employees to an overall team of 35, including temporary employees, as we finish off this last wave of our recruitment. We’ve also embarked on a number of new initiatives. We’ve been able to plan into the future with confidence and renewed clarity with the benefit of this secure funding. You’ll hear that we’ve made strides in our organizational evaluation plan, for example.

We’ve successfully completed tenant improvements of our permanent office space, coming in under budget, and expect to fully reopen in September as per public health guidance and the B.C. restart plan.

[2:00 p.m.]

We’ve also been moving forward on a number of projects. We have been doing extensive research into human rights issues in policing practices in B.C. We’ve been granted leave by the B.C. Supreme Court to intervene in our first human rights case. We’ve also been laying the groundwork for our first large-scale public inquiry. We’ve launched a new video resource, released a new teaching guide, posted and participated in a number of engagement events, launched our inaugural workshop on human rights and have been responsive to human rights developments as they unfold in our province and in our country.

You may remember from the last update, or from seeing these billboards in your own communities, that we ran a public awareness campaign about confronting our own internal biases last fall, and we had some encouraging outcomes. Our campaign education web page was visited more than 10,000 times. More than 2,000 people watched our video. The campaign was covered in more than 19 media articles, reaching an estimated 80 million people. We are currently working on our next public awareness campaign to be launched this winter.

Another of our education and engagement campaigns is the “I Love My Human Rights” video storytelling series, which we first envisioned in 2019. This is a series of short, moving narratives from a diverse set of people living in B.C. who share their intersectional identities and their experiences with and work against discrimination. These videos will serve as part of a multimedia human rights storytelling library, a unique educational tool to harness the power of storytelling and to foster empathy — a foundation for changing hearts and minds.

One of the more satisfying aspects of my work is being able to hear the stories of British Columbians who are working to advance human rights in big and small ways. These stories add important context to the larger, systemic work that my office does and remind us all that no matter who or where we are, we each have a role to play in human rights in this province. In that spirit, I’d like to share the “I Love My Human Rights” Brandon Yan story with you now, which we launched just this spring.

[2:05 p.m.]

[Audiovisual presentation.]

Thank you for that.

You’ve heard some of the conversations that we’re having. We know British Columbians are eager to have these conversations about human rights with us because they are reaching out to us and telling us that in no small numbers. Despite the fact that we are not a direct service organization, we received more than 2,000 phone calls and nearly 600 emails from members of the public in our last fiscal year alone. We are currently averaging 73 requests a month.

The majority of these requests are related to human rights implications of COVID-19 public health orders, how to make human rights complaints, questions about accessing legal advice and employment, and tenancy rights materials. We are committed to taking the time to provide trauma-informed responses to each request for information and referral. We’ve fielded hundreds of public comments and managed nearly 4,000 conversations on social media over the past fiscal year, involving nearly half of our 8,000 followers across all of our social media channels.

On a provincial level, we commissioned a poll of more than 800 B.C. residents to learn more about what they know and understand about human rights in the province. We learned, for example, that only 60 percent of British Columbians have heard of the human rights code, and there are fairly significant misunderstandings of what it contains. The majority believe it protects our freedom of speech, for example, while in reality, it is limited to protecting against discrimination. We have seen this misunderstanding play out, for example, in the masking debates.

This poll has provided valuable baseline data to us about human rights experiences and human rights knowledge in the community, which is contributing to our future education work.

Despite the impact of the pandemic on community engagements, I’ve also worked to make as direct an impact as possible in my outreach as commissioner over this time. Our public engagements have continued virtually.

We’ve hosted our Indigenous engagement session with B.C. Elders in April, sharing the session with close to 1,000 people eager to learn about human rights from a decolonizing perspective. We are on track to meet our goal of holding virtual face-to-face meetings with all 200-plus First Nations over the next five years, as well as Indigenous and Métis organizations, having recently met with, just to give you a few examples, the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council, the Esquimalt and Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nations, among others.

We have signed protocol agreements or MOUs with both the First Nations Leadership Council and the First Nations steering committee, which outline our commitment to working in relationship with these important leadership bodies.

Over the past year, I have contributed to raising awareness of our human rights responsibilities, including speaking at 24 events to several thousand people. This included International Women’s Day at Surrey Women’s Centre and talking about Latin American identity in Canada at an event organized by the Vancouver Public Library and the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre — so a wide range of different kinds of events, speaking to a diverse range of audiences.

In that, I have given a number of virtual keynotes to community groups, groups who speak to employers and other duty bearers, such as the Community Social Service Employers Association and the Inclusion Project’sEmployment Equity Partnership Round Table. I’ve also co-presented at our own events around desegregated data collection, such as the event we held at the University of the Fraser Valley in March.

This is in addition to media interviews on rights issues with outlets such as the Vancouver Sun, Sing Tao daily, Turtle Island News and the Tyee, among many others, as well as engaging in human rights conversations on a number of popular podcasts. This is a rising area of requests through our media line — podcasts. We have been mentioned in nearly 350 articles just since we met in February.

We have just launched a series of new online workshops on the rights and responsibilities of British Columbians under the human rights code, which we are sharing with school districts, the public service and the public. We have run our first pilots, which have been well received, and continue to incorporate the learning as we go.

[2:10 p.m.]

In keeping with the goal to deliver foundational legal information on human rights in an approachable, accessible format, we are also centralizing information that is currently held on the Attorney General site as well as the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal site. We’re bringing that all together to host on our website. It’s a series of pages containing plain-language information on human rights law. This is part of our educational mandate so that employers and employees, landlords and tenants, service providers and service users can understand their rights and responsibilities under human rights law.

Online, our public outreach has ramped up on all channels, with new education campaigns spotlighting issues such as Black history education, anti-Asian racism, National AccessAbility Week and Indigenous history. These campaigns have all attracted new and diverse followers. We’ve also begun creating unique social content in the form of illustrations commemorating national days of significance that you see, just in examples, in front of you here. These are being widely shared across a number of platforms.

We have continued our work with other human rights agencies in B.C., including the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal and the B.C. Human Rights Clinic, as well as other legal clinics. We’ve done that through establishing a no-wrong-door approach to increasing access to justice in the human rights system in the province.

Most recently, this has included a survey and information-gathering from each party to gain insights into the types of data that are now being collected and where we can standardize our data collection to identify the trends that we are seeing in our calls and our emails — the people that are reaching out to us — so that we can improve our practice across all aspects of the human rights system. In addition, our office has initiated conversations between the front-line staff at each agency on how we can improve our services to the public by reducing the number of places a person has to go for the information that they’re looking for.

We’ve also continued our work as a member of the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies. This is like the umbrella organization for human rights commissions in the country. I have just stepped into the vice-chair role there. We’ve been grateful, in that context, to have the opportunity to share, for example, COVID responses across jurisdictions, to participate in a series of educational opportunities and to engage in knowledge-sharing on policy and practice — on law, as well — particularly on emerging human rights issues such as human rights during COVID, for example.

We’ve had a number of important firsts regarding inquiries and interventions since I last had the opportunity to present to you. In April, I made my first application to intervene in a judicial review proceeding called Harvey v. Gibraltar Mines Ltd. I have the power to intervene in cases before the tribunal or to apply to intervene in cases that are before the courts, which means that I can get involved in cases as a third party to assist the decision-maker with understanding the systemic implications of a particular case. When I say “as a third party,” it means we’re not representing either side in the dispute, but we come in as a third party to be helpful to the decision-maker. That’s our role in these cases.

The Harvey case concerns the legal test for family status discrimination. We know that women continue to disproportionately responsible for the care of children, the elderly and people with disabilities, both within their families and within society at large. We sought to intervene in this case to ensure that the human rights code provides meaningful protections for women who face discrimination at work on the basis of their caregiving responsibilities at home. We were granted leave by the B.C. Supreme Court to intervene on May 14, and we are proceeding with preparations for the case as we move towards hearing.

We have also been working on submissions to the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. As you may remember, I appeared before that committee in February, and the current work is to provide written submissions, which will also be released to the public in the coming months. My office is currently undertaking significant research to support this report and our pending recommendations on addressing systemic racism in policing, including analyzing data from a number of police departments.

I am thrilled to be able to share a milestone in our growth as an organization. We have determined the topic of our first public inquiry and are busy working on important elements, such as our inquiry procedures guide, our inquiry website, our terms of reference and trauma-informed evidence-gathering practices.

[2:15 p.m.]

A public inquiry is an opportunity to delve deeply into an issue of concern, to gather factual and expert evidence, to hear directly from those impacted — through witness statements, for example, or public hearings or surveys — and then to determine recommendations for how to address the human rights issues raised. I’m very much looking forward to launching our first inquiry in the coming months. You can keep an eye out for that announcement.

Over the last few months, we’ve ramped up our government relations and law and policy reform work. My team and I have met with a number of ministers, parliamentary secretaries, government staff working on a range of policy issues, public agencies, MLAs and opposition critics. We’ve been pleased to see the uptake on our recommendations flowing from our Grandmother Perspective report — which I told you more about in the last appearances. We continue to monitor the implementation of those recommendations, as well as the other recommendations that have been made over the last two years.

In the last year, you may remember — I think I spoke about this in my last time before the committee — we assumed the administration of special programs in B.C. that used to reside with B.C.’s Human Rights Tribunal. A special program is any program that’s adopted by an employer, housing provider or service provider that aims to improve the conditions for an individual or a group that has faced disadvantage.

I have the authority to preapprove a special program. The benefit of that is that for as long as that approval is in place, the special program cannot be considered to discriminate under the human rights code. Since February, we have received 26 applications for new or renewed programs and approved 25 of them, providing new guidance and resources on our website as well.

As the pandemic has continued, so has our work on providing human rights guidance and policy related to COVID. We’ve issued two sets of pandemic policy guidance during the pandemic. We’ve released mask-exemption posters, primarily aimed at businesses, to be able to communicate guidelines to clients or to customers, and COVID-19 and human rights frequently asked questions. We’ve released videos and other documents and resources during the pandemic. Now we’re on the cusp of releasing guidance about the potential human rights implications of vaccination proof requirement. That will be coming in the coming weeks.

Turning now to operations. With confidence in our budget, we were able to hire and on-board new employees, and the office’s team grew from eight to 23 people during the 2020-21 fiscal period. Since then, the office has hired a further six employees, for a total of 28 of 35 positions. As I mentioned earlier, we have a total of 35 employees at the moment, counting temporary staff. We’re currently in the process of recruiting for our final few positions, and we’re proud that we have staff presence in four regions in the province, including Victoria, Vancouver, Kelowna and Prince George.

We are nearing completion of our evaluation plan, with key performance indicators that will provide us with the road map we need to ensure that we are meeting our commitments and demonstrating progress in the months and years to come. This process has been integral to our strategic planning, as it means that evaluation has been built into every aspect of our work. Even as we’ve been developing the evaluation plan, we have been concurrently building it into the projects that we are working on. You will see more details of this plan in our upcoming annual report.

Finally, as the pandemic restrictions shift, we’ve been actively aligning our return-to-work plans, with a particular focus on ensuring a safe and healthy workplace, including gradual voluntary re-entry over the summer and a plan for full re-entry in September, barring any changes, of course, to the B.C. restart plan. Tenant improvements on the Vancouver office were successfully completed by the real property division to the current government standards, and it came in under preliminary real property division estimates by $135,000 in operating and $206,000 in capital.

[2:20 p.m.]

Overall, our operating budget for last year was $5.5 million, meaning that we returned a total of $1.127 million to general revenue. The bulk of that was in salaries. Roughly $1.027 million was not drawn down, due to delays in hiring. As discussed in February, these delays were largely due to COVID and also the impossibility of building to our full capacity over the course of the last year, given the uncertainty of what the current year’s budget would look like.

Of course, delays in hiring also meant delays in program work. We didn’t have the people to do the work in all of the cases, so there were some related underspends in some other areas. But I’m pleased to report that we do not anticipate these same issues in the current fiscal year.

As you’ve heard, our office continues to be very busy with both building the office and delivering on our mandate. Of course, all of the strategic work plays out against the backdrop of needing to be responsive to an ever-evolving human rights landscape during a pandemic and during a time of both truth and reconciliation. As I often say, there is never a dull day in this job, and I hope that my highlights today have given you a sense of what’s been keeping us busy.

Thank you so much for your attention today and also for your support of our work. I’m happy, of course, to take any questions that you may have now.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Commissioner. Before I open it up for questions and perhaps discussion, I’d just like to share what struck me about your presentation. Compared to some of the other statutory officers, whose focus is on monitoring, auditing and investigating, you so clearly framed your work. The first word you used was “advancing” and that it’s change-oriented. With that perspective, it really gave me some insight into what your office does. So thank you for that. It was very clear.

I know that I will have some questions, but I’ll open it up to others first.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for the presentation. Congratulations, as you’re the vice-chair of this national group of people that are there. So the natural question for me to ask is: how are we comparing to the other organization?

K. Govender: Yeah. It is a little bit hard to compare in particular ways, so I’ll talk a little bit about the differences first, in terms of structure.

To B.C.’s credit, I think, my office — I was going to say the commission, but I’ll be more technical in this answer — has been set up in quite a unique way. There are three aspects of the Human Rights Commissioner role that are unique in comparison to B.C.’s history but also all other human rights commissions across the country.

The first one is why we’re all here today: that we are set up as an independent officer of the Legislature, and I report directly to the Legislature. There’s only one other commission in the country that’s set up that way, but because the governance context in Northwest Territories is so different than B.C., it’s not a comparable model. Every other commission in the country is set up in some relationship to government, usually under Ministry of Justice, for example, although some of them are a little bit different. So that’s the first aspect.

The second aspect is that our work is entirely focused on systemic work. So prevention, oversight, monitoring — those pieces. None of our mandate concerns the adjudication of individual complaints. If, for example, an employee feels that they’ve been discriminated against by an employer, they can bring that complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal, here in B.C. We and Ontario are the only provinces that have that direct-access model. The commission does not play a gatekeeper or a triage function in the complaint adjudication process. So that’s the second part.

[2:25 p.m.]

The third one is that we have a mandate to promote compliance with international human rights law, which really broadens the scope of what we mean by human rights. It means that we don’t have to focus only on human rights as defined by the human rights code but can also work on, for example, poverty as a human rights issue, which isn’t covered by the human rights code but is covered under international law.

In some ways, it’s quite hard to compare to other jurisdictions. Ontario is the most similar because they have an entirely systemic mandate. They’ve been around for quite a while. We are in regular conversation with them, so we’ve had the opportunity to both learn and also share information back with them. That’s been a really helpful model for us.

Thank you for the question.

J. Routledge (Chair): Anyone else have a question ready?

I’ll ask a question. It’s with regard to systemic discrimination. I know that in talking about the work of the commission and your priorities, it’s really focused around addressing systemic discrimination.

My question is…. I don’t want it to sound like a loaded, leading question. But my sense from media reports…. I have a sense that people don’t really understand the term “systemic” and that institutions don’t necessarily understand the term “systemic.” I wonder. When they get their backs up about…. You know: “There’s no systemic discrimination here.” Is what they’re hearing that there’s no systematic discrimination here? I wonder, from working with this, day in and day out, what your observations are about our understanding of systemic discrimination and the role that it plays in people’s lived experiences.

K. Govender: There’s a lot in that question. Thank you for that. There are a few different ways to answer it. One of the pieces that occurs to me there is that in our…. You may remember, just because it was the same day I appeared before you last, that I also appeared before the Police Act committee, the committee that’s looking at reforming the Police Act.

In that presentation, I offered a definition of systemic discrimination and some of the factors that can feed into it. I really talked about how it’s not a bad apple search to understand whether we have systemic discrimination. It’s not about intent, necessarily, of any individual person. It’s about how it shows up in the way that our laws and policies and practices operate. We can often see that through, for example, data and statistics.

I’ll continue with the policing example. If we know that Black people and Indigenous People are disproportionately subject to strip searches, and we can control, in that research, for a number of factors, including criminality, for example, or monitoring certain kinds of neighbourhoods…. If we can control for those factors, and we still know that Black and Indigenous people are disproportionately subject to over-policing measures, then we can identify systemic discrimination regardless of the intent of any particular officer or actions of a particular police force.

We’re providing that definition, which I’m giving in the context of policing right now, but it will be able to be more generalizable. That’s the first piece.

I think there is a growing understanding of what systemic discrimination means in the current public dialogue, because human rights have been so present in so many people’s minds, outside of the human rights community that talks about it all the time. I think it’s much more present for the general public.

I think one of the pieces that your question points to is potential defensiveness or shame that we all feel when we are faced with some of these issues. That was really what our public awareness campaign last year was aimed at doing, trying to say that we all have biases. We all operate with biases. It’s part of how our minds work. Can we put aside the shame and guilt that might be associated, might stop us from looking inside, and try to interrogate that and try to understand where our stereotypes lie, what’s actually based on evidence and what isn’t?

I hope that answers at least a few aspects of your question.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you.

Harwinder.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Kasari. I really liked your thorough presentation, especially that video as well. I could relate to not the entire component but what was being said.

[2:30 p.m.]

Systemic racism. I know I often get asked this question. Often the tone is very defensive from the other end. I try to educate people. I wonder. What are your thoughts? I think discrimination about job selection or other even higher positions also falls under systemic racism. I do share that, so I wanted to get your thoughts.

In our personal experience, some of our family members…. For example, my late husband — and he was third generation here — and his siblings and cousins and friends living in northern B.C. had to have English names. They had the Indo-Canadian names, the East Indian Punjabi names, and I thought why they all had these names, and they lived with these names.

They often shared that, on their résumé — and they’ve tried it many times — if they had, back then, those Indo-Canadian names, they wouldn’t get called. So for those résumés…. Then my daughter — she’s in university now — shares that some of her friends from South Korea or Asia or China or Japan also had this similar…. I think it also speaks a lot to systemic racism.

I know things are changing, thanks to the work you’re doing, and many other organizations. Am I right, when I share some of these examples? Even today’s experiences, like personal experience — to get to something that you deserved, it took you 15 years, versus somebody else who you trained or who is your student.

I think that there’s a bigger dialogue around it, so I’m not sure if, when I share those examples — does that fall under systemic racism or not?

K. Govender: Yes, absolutely, and I certainly can appreciate your family’s experience. I’m mixed race, and the Indian side of my family has all Anglicized names as well, for very similar reasons, so I can certainly relate to that history.

I think it’s borne out not just from our anecdotes and our stories, which we know well, but also from the statistics. We know that these patterns exist in B.C. through, for example, even the public service on certain aspects. There are successes in terms of gender in many aspects of the public service, but some struggles in the disability side and ensuring that our public service represents and reflects the diversity of British Columbians, for example.

Certainly, I think that is absolutely an evidence of systemic discrimination in all forms, not just systemic racism. I think it’s one that deserves some attention. We are engaging in some work on employment equity, some work to put forward some best practices — they are wise practices — and to really delve deeply. As we’ve started that work, it’s been really interesting, because of course we’re building our organization, and we’re learning as we go, and we did such a massive hiring in this last — nearly two years now, to get up to speed.

H. Sandhu: Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. My Indigenous friends are reclaiming their names, I’m recently learning from them after the incident in Kamloops, because they did not like who they were not…. I think what was the touching part, and I felt I needed to discuss here: Friday, when I picked up my middle daughter from school, she did not know her biological dad’s actual name. As I’m pulling back in my drive, she’s like: “What was Sammy Daddy’s actual name?” I didn’t know. She’s 14 now, and she didn’t know. It really did touch me, in that my daughters didn’t know what was his name on the birth certificate.

I think it may seem a very little thing to many people, but he lived with the name that…. He liked his other name, but he had to live with that name in order to avoid those barriers or whatever they thought would be the best idea. So I thought I’d highlight that.

K. Govender: Thank you for that. Thank you for sharing.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thanks for sharing that, Harwinder.

Other questions, observations?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Commissioner. I appreciate the work that you’re doing.

A couple of questions. The recent intervention in the Harvey and Gibraltar case. I guess it’s already been to the Human Rights Tribunal. What’s the opportunity for you to help out in that? Or what’s the outcome that you can hope to achieve?

K. Govender: Thank you for the question. It has, as you say, already been to the Human Rights Tribunal. A judicial review is somewhat like an appeal to the B.C. Supreme Court.

[2:35 p.m.]

In that context, it’s really about…. For our argument, it’s not about the situation of the parties involved. It’s about what the law is and what might come out of this case in terms of the impact on the test for family status discrimination.

So family status is one potential ground that can be claimed under the human rights code as a prohibited basis of discrimination. That usually has to do with caregiving responsibilities. It usually has to with accommodating somebody because of their responsibility for caregiving their children and they need a different shift, or an elder or something along those lines. Those are the kinds of situations that arise in family status cases.

The family status cases set a particular bar that is a different test than for other forms of discrimination. We want to be part of that conversation about what that test is and what the implications for human rights in the province are, given the legal questions at stake.

Our role is to assist the decision-maker to assist the judge — in this case, at the B.C. Supreme Court — to understand the broader human rights implications, rather than making a decision narrowly on the facts, simply, before the case — before the decision-maker, before the parties. So our role is really an assisting role.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): If I could ask just a follow-on question.

A lot of the work… I know you’ve only just started, but it seems to me, especially in a situation like that, there is a component about educating employers. Is that a plan of yours in the future, or is it undergoing already, to help equip employers to better understanding these things which they may not be familiar with? You’re talking about something that’s not in the labour code, so I think that there are bound to be people that are offside already. Ideally, we get to the point where they’re not offside.

K. Govender: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. We are already working on some aspects for employers in terms of education, and we have some future plans.

We have just piloted and started to run a new workshop. The workshop is kind of a basic human rights, what does the human rights code cover, and we’re doing a slightly different version for employees, for employers, for tenants, for housing providers, for service providers and recipients of services.

That’s sort of the three main areas of the code — which is service provision, employment and housing — and then both the people who have responsibilities under the code and those who have rights under the code. It’s essentially the same material but some targeted examples. Some targeted scenarios could be done with some scenario planning to really target…. And I expect the largest uptake will be from employers, because that’s the biggest number of complaints before the Human Rights Tribunal — around employment situations.

I very much believe that there are many employers looking for answers, that they just want to know what their obligations are. It’s one of the pieces why I was so excited to see a human rights commission. I think there is a real demand from employers to really understand, “What is this legislation that binds me?” and to know the information.

So that’s one piece, an active workshop. The other is to put together a series of…. You could call them factsheets, you could call them just webpages on public legal information containing a bit more of a deeper dive into each of these areas.

Right now there is some quite dense information hosted by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, and there’s also some information hosted by the Attorney General’s ministry. We have built close relationships with both, so we’re migrating a lot of that information over to our side and trying to make that as accessible and digestible as possible. So that’s also aimed directly, although not only, at employers so that they can understand their obligations.

Also, I should say, I have been doing a lot of speaking and doing keynotes and so on to employers, just to talk about their rights. That will continue to be ongoing as I get these invitations to speak.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I have another question.

It may be implied in your most recent answer, but I’m wondering about special programs and your authority to implement special programs. Do you anticipate push-back, and is there a plan for that?

[2:40 p.m.]

K. Govender: Push-back from those who don’t like a special program that’s in place?

J. Routledge (Chair): Right. Those who might call it something like, I don’t know, reverse discrimination.

K. Govender: Right. It’s interesting. There hasn’t been a lot of history of that, at this point, directed at the body making the decision. But I certainly anticipate that that’s possible.

It is very clear under the legislation that it’s permissible, and not only permissible but encouraged, in many ways, for duty-bearers to be proactive — by duty-bearers, I mean employers, service providers and housing providers — in trying to, for example, address the employment issues we were just talking about. So putting into place specialized hiring so that you can try to balance out your workforce to try to reflect British Columbians, for example.

A high degree of the applications we get are from employers. A very high degree are from the K-to-12 education sector, so school boards asking for that special program approval — also some from health care and other sectors as well. You can do that regardless of whether you get a special program. An employer or someone can do that, but what a special program approval does is ensure that no one can bring a human rights complaint against that body, that institution, for doing that.

The requests we get are largely from fairly large institutions — so again, school boards, health authorities, universities, post-secondary sector. It’s a way of ensuring that they’ve…. Are they doing it in a compliant way that actually will effectively address some of the problems? And they need to show that they are doing that.

We hear some success stories in this process, certainly as people apply for renewals, because they report back to us, which they need to do. They have to send us a mid-term report and a final report during the term of the special program, because they’re always time-limited, to say: “How effective is this?”

If their goal, for example, is to have an Indigenous educator in their school and they’re doing that because they want to increase graduation rates for Indigenous youth and they’ve got some evidence to show that that happens, show us that it’s happened. Show us that your plan is being effective. Often, we are seeing some really great results from it. I think that’s one way to certainly defend against critics on that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions, comments before we wrap it up?

Okay. With that, I would like to thank you and your staff for your time and for the work that you do on a day-to-day basis to transform British Columbia and make us a more equal, fair society. You’re doing cutting-edge work, so thank you, on behalf of all of us.

K. Govender: Thank you so much, and we look forward to seeing you again in the fall.

J. Routledge (Chair): I will entertain a motion to move into camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 2:43 p.m. to 2:46 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Megan has moved the motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 2:46 p.m.