The committee met at 9:02 a.m.

[M. Bernier in the chair.]

M. Bernier (Chair): Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us on our Zoom meeting today. Today is going to be an interesting one.

I want to thank all of our witnesses and the Auditor General and the comptroller general for joining us as we talk about the review of another report, Oversight of Dam Safety in British Columbia.

Before we started the meeting here, we had a quick little discussion, just going back and forth, Michael, on the importance of this review that was done on this report. I think there are going to be a couple of good questions. I’m looking forward to that.

Maybe I’ll just start right away by introducing our Auditor General, Michael Pickup, and welcoming him and his team to the meeting today, to get things started.

Good morning, Michael.

Consideration of
Auditor General Reports

Oversight of Dam Safety
in British Columbia

M. Pickup: Good morning. Thank you, Chair.

I would like to start my very few opening remarks that I do have by acknowledging that our offices on Fort Street in Victoria, of course, are located on the traditional land of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. I’m always grateful to be a visitor on these lands and to enjoy all that the land and sea and everything in between has to offer us as well. I do want to acknowledge that.

I want to, again, thank the committee wholeheartedly for not only the interest in our work. I think it goes beyond interest in our work to the speedy attention paid to our work, given that we only put this report out in September and here we are, roughly some four weeks later, that you’re calling this before committee to have a discussion on it.

[9:05 a.m.]

I don’t mind telling you, from where I sit, and for all of us in our office, that it’s just wonderful to see that level of interest and engagement in our work as well. Thank you to the committee.

I also, of course, want to thank our audit team, who do all the hard work. I always like to say that in many ways, I get the easier part of the work that goes with this. I only know that because I probably have had every audit job possible in an audit office over the years and have that perspective as well. But I do want to thank the team for their commitment to this, for the flexibility they’ve shown.

We had lots of changes on the team over the course of the time. We were dealing with the pandemic and everything else. So I do want to thank folks. I want to thank Malcolm Gaston, the assistant Auditor General; René Pelletier, executive director, who you see on the gallery view here today as well; Thom Dennett, who’s going to walk through a presentation with us today. I thank Thom.

We used some of our data analytics team, which are really highly qualified people who help us out with data. Thanks to Pam Hamilton, our director, and Michelle Crawford, our data analytics specialist, as well. You can see how many people go in to doing one of these audits. And there are more.

Not with us, for various reasons, including perhaps retirements or having moved on, are Ada Chiang, director, Jessica Schafer and Jane Bryant. I thought it worth pausing on those names as well, because we wouldn’t have reported on this and had this done if it weren’t for their contributions. All contributions are important, whether the folks are with us here today or not.

I also, of course, want to thank the staff at the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development for their cooperation during this audit, especially under the challenging times and difficult circumstances around working during the pandemic. I say we had the opportunity as part of our work to visit a few dams, but I’m being overly generous there, because we leave most of those to the team that doesn’t include me. I missed out on it, given when I came into the office. Hopefully, at another point in time, I will have the opportunity to do that. But the team did have a chance to go and see some things.

I did have a chance to do the video release, if you’ve had a chance to look at that. We went to the Sooke dam to film the video there, so I got to one dam. But it really wasn’t part of the audit. I was really just to do the video.

Of course, I want to thank the comptroller general. Fourteen months into this job, I continue to enjoy working with him and the relationship that we have and our mutual objectives, respecting our different roles that we have. It is a good relationship. Likewise with the Clerk of Committees and the folks who put all of this together for us as well. I know we are just another element of all that you have to deal with, so I thank you for that as well.

Before passing it on to Thom to walk through a brief presentation with you, I thought I would take a moment to mention that we are celebrating in our office Healthy Workplace Month in the month of October. It seems like longer than a month because we’ve been focusing on it. Because if it’s ever been important, it’s never been more important than it is now, over the last 18 months of working through a pandemic. So we are celebrating that, and we’re trying to be mindful of people’s physical health, their emotional health and their mental health as well.

I was really pleased recently when some of the folks in the office told me that by sharing some of my stories of walking 12 kilometres a day and not missing a day for the last year, no matter what the weather — although that would be a bigger thing to say in eastern Canada than it would be in Victoria because the weather is not actually that bad — I’m able to inspire the folks in our office to maintain a healthy lifestyle, work hard but look after themselves physically, mentally and emotionally as well. I’m glad to be hearing that that is making a difference for people, as well, as we continue to celebrate that.

Those were it for my opening comments. I’m going to turn it over to Thom, but then short of that, in case Thom doesn’t cover it, I know you’re going to have lots of opportunity to hear from the organization audited.

[9:10 a.m.]

Re-reading the action plans again last night, I think there was lots of interesting stuff there, I suppose, for interesting questions. If I think of our job, it’s to provide elected members with information, reports, audits like this to assist you in your work in holding government accountable. There’s lots of stuff there for discussion.

I do note…. I’ve been paying attention to this each time I read these the night before. There are lots of actions that indicate they will be completed in ’22, but there are lots of actions that stretch on to the end of ’23 as well. I think it’s always an interesting discussion to see what elected folks think of that and how they engage with the people we audit in doing that. That’s just a statement. That’s obviously not any kind of judgment or observation — just a statement.

Thom, I will turn it over to you and thank you in advance for doing this.

T. Dennett: Good morning, Chair and committee members. I’d like to tell you more about our audit of the oversight of dam safety in B.C. Please feel free to follow along by reading the Audit at a Glance. I’m starting just near the top of the page.

There are a lot of dams in B.C., about 1,900 that are regulated. These dams are important because they provide electricity, irrigation control and flood control, among other things, for British Columbians. Although dams are important, they’re also dangerous, and they must be properly maintained to minimize the risk of them failing. If a dam fails, it can cause damage to people, the environment and property.

In this audit, we looked at whether the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development has effectively overseen the safety of dams in B.C.

In B.C., dam owners are responsible for the safety of their dams. However, the ministry has a responsibility to check on the dam owners’ compliance with safety regulations. We found that the ministry has not effectively overseen the safety of dams in B.C. It did promote dam owner compliance with safety requirements, but it didn’t adequately verify or enforce compliance.

Our audit looked at four main areas involved in oversight. You can see these areas on the left side of the page, starting halfway down on page 1 of the Audit at a Glance.

As a result of this audit, we made nine recommendations, and the ministry has accepted all of our recommendations. They are related to informing all dam owners of their regulatory requirements, improving processes to verify dam owner compliance, improving monitoring of compliance and enforcement activities and strengthening performance measures and targets.

Beginning halfway down page 1 of the Audit at a Glance, for promoting compliance, we found the ministry has largely promoted dam owner compliance with regulatory safety requirements. The ministry has information available through their website, through workshops and does annual mailouts to owners of higher-consequence dams, and the ministry has an audit program for higher-consequence dams.

However, we found the ministry didn’t do outreach to dam owners of the low-consequence dams. For verifying compliance, we found that the ministry information on dams had gaps and inaccuracies. The ministry can’t effectively verify dam owner compliance unless they know where all the dams are and who the dam owners are. We found at least 196 dams missing from their records, and of the dams that did have records, 63 percent of the dam records in our sample were missing key information like who the emergency contact is and what the height of the dam is.

Continuing at the top of page 2 of the Audit at a Glance, we also found that the ministry did not fully verify dam owner compliance with key regulatory requirements. For example, some key safety documents, like operating manuals and dam emergency plans, weren’t reviewed three or more years after submission.

[9:15 a.m.]

Forty-five percent of the dams we looked at in our sample were not audited on schedule, and four of ten dam safety officers had a backlog of dam safety review reports for them to review. We found the average time it took to accept the reports was 20 months, but some of these reports actually took up to eight years to accept.

For enforcing compliance, we found that the ministry didn’t consistently enforce regulatory requirements. There were many dams that didn’t meet the regulatory safety requirements and many dam owners that didn’t make the improvements needed to become compliant. For example, at the time of our audit, there were 87 high-risk dams with significant deficiencies that had not fixed their safety problems for, on average, 7½ years.

For monitoring program performance, we found that the ministry did not adequately assess if the dam safety program improved the safety of dams in B.C. This was because the ministry did not have adequate performance measures and targets to report on the effectiveness of the program. Just at the bottom there, in the Audit at a Glance, we’ve included three questions that you might want to ask the government after reading our report.

Thanks for listening.

I’ll hand it back to the Auditor General if he has any additional comments.

M. Pickup: Thank you, Thom, for the summary, which really keeps to the Audit at a Glance.

Respecting the time of the committee, we’re trying to keep these things short and sort of to the Audit at a Glance, to maximize your time for questions, but we’re always happy, as we go forward, to tweak, if in the future you want more. It’s hard to do less. That’s about as quick as it gets for summarizing an entire audit. But if at any point you thought, “Okay, give more when you’re doing these presentations,” we’re always happy to do that too and always happy to take questions on things we’ve gone over quickly.

I think we’ll leave it at that, Chair.

M. Bernier (Chair): Thank you, Michael, and thanks, Thom, for that overview. I really appreciate the Audit at a Glance, and the way it’s being presented, myself. I know that the committee is quite appreciative of that approach as well.

I think what really comes out of that, then, Michael, for yourself and others afterwards, are the questions that it sparks — which, I know, you do a great job in covering.

We’re going to turn things over now to the Ministry of Forests, Lands. I’m not sure who’s going to be taking the lead. Eamon O’Donoghue, I believe, is taking the lead on this, and we’ll welcome him, as the associate deputy minister, to get things going.

E. O’Donoghue: Thanks, Chair. Yes, Eamon O’Don­oghue here. I’m associate deputy minister and acting as deputy minister this week. David Muter will run us through a presentation here, but maybe, I just thought, I’d have some opening comments before we started in.

I think the first thing is that we always do look to the Auditor General as a way to have an objective view, an objective look at our business, and an opportunity to improve what we’re doing. We always look forward to these audits and the outcomes. I think, as Thom indicated in this case, we accept all the findings that the Auditor made. As David will indicate here, we’ve already started to roll up our sleeves on taking the work to try to implement the recommendations of the Auditor.

Again, in the interests of time, I won’t take too much longer. I’ll turn it over to David, just to run through a short presentation.

D. Muter: Thanks, Eamon.

Thank you, Chair and committee members, for the chance to be here today.

I’ll just begin by saying that I’m here in the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people. My thanks to the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations.

With me today…. I’ll quickly introduce Ted White, who is our director of the water management branch. Together, between Eamon, myself and Ted…. I’ll run through a quick presentation, and then we’ll be happy to answer questions, going forward. I’ll be quick here because I know there are lots of questions. This will be the quick, high-level overview.

Just some background. Many of you already know this, as some of it was covered in the full audit report, but in case you missed this: the dam safety program began in the 1960s.

[9:20 a.m.]

We have four objectives for the program and how we organize it: education and training provided, ensuring compliance with dam safety regulations, reviewing technical documents and supporting dam safety emergency planning and response. It’s coordinated by the water management branch, which is within the resource stewardship division of the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. The water management branch provides safety oversight in conjunction with branch and regional staff within the ministry.

We’d like to make it very clear that we’re a coordinating body. We’re a safety oversight group. Dam owners hold the responsibility for structural integrity and the safety operations of their dams.

We’ve accepted, as you noted, all nine recommendations, and we’ve already started taking action on our response to those nine recommendations. We’re hiring five new dam safety staff to help address some of the resource gaps. We’re coordinating and tidying up job profiles and workplans to make sure that there’s clarity on our roles, responsibilities and resourcing — similar to that, organi­zational structure of the dam safety program — and providing access to additional ministry operating funds. We don’t want to have resources as the issue. That’s why much of our response is ensuring that those resources are being brought forward to address the recommendations.

We’re also actively developing action plans to enhance oversight of dam owners, along with outreach education to help ensure their dam owners are meeting their obligations. I’ll go through the recommendations in the following four themes, which are aligned to the way the Auditor General presented in their Audit at a Glance: promoting compliance, verifying compliance, enforcing compliance and monitoring program performance.

Promoting compliance. Recommendation 1 was about informing all dam owners of their regulatory responsibilities and encouraging them to take dam safety training. We think that we’ve got a healthy start on this already, and it’s those lower-consequence dams that we can do more on — developing materials and methods to expand our dam safety education and training initiatives for all regulated dam owners. So yes, that is something we are investing in.

In terms of verifying compliance, there are a couple of aspects of this here: identifying unauthorized dams and improving our database information. This is where we found that the Auditor General’s findings and their recommendations were helpful for us. They have pointed us to where to focus resources.

We are going to be expanding remote sensing in order to identify unauthorized dams and looking at other measures to identify unauthorized and unregulated dams. There are methods that we have, within the ministry, of making sure that any reporting is connected back to the dam safety program. We’re going to be undertaking that as well.

In addition to that, we’ll be improving information by making policy and procedural updates related to data capture. This is something that we knew we needed to do. We can tidy that up. The Auditor General’s recommendations were helpful. This will adjust the data requirements by dam classification to make sure that we’re collecting the right data. It’ll allow us to then acquire the missing data that’s needed and optimize the database as required. It’s quite a healthy database, and we think that there’s value in tidying that up.

[9:25 a.m.]

In addition to that, going along with verifying compliance, three more aspects that the Auditor General flagged here are improving processes to consistently review dam owner compliance, reviewing our audit frequency and verifying low-consequence classifications — to make sure, if it is a low-consequence classification in our data set, that environmental conditions for the structure itself don’t change that classification rating — and strengthening accountabilities for branch staff to lead regional staff so that we can have a better-coordinated program.

Again, we accept these recommendations. We’ve found them helpful. We’re going to begin with support from the Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. to develop process and procedures to track and review compliance. As a professional oversight body, we’re looking to their help in this regard. We’ll also be working with branch staff to assist regional staff with compliance and enforcement processes. We’ll be reviewing our audit frequency, consequent classifications and strengthening accountabilities between branch staff and regional staff.

We’re also going to work with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries to develop a program to provide financial support for smaller dam owners, to address compliance issues. Much of that time delay in compliance issues can be financial, and funding to support that is one aspect we’re looking at as well.

The next recommendation is on enforcing compliance. These are recommendations 7 and 8. Two key elements I’ll start with there: the Auditor General noted implementing processes to efficiently monitor compliance and enforcement activities, and then evaluating the staffing needs to meet oversight objectives and staff accordingly.

Again, we accepted these recommendations. We are going to improve our database analysis and work directly with the compliance and enforcement branch — that’s a branch within our ministry — to develop a memorandum of understanding and outline roles and responsibilities to efficiently monitor compliance and enforcement activities. We haven’t had that clear delineation. We’ve noted it, and we think this will be a helpful approach for us going forward to making clear rules and responsibilities, based on this recommendation.

We’re also going to conduct a more thorough review of staffing needs and make staffing recommendations accordingly. I’ll talk a little bit about that further on here. Already, as a start, we’ve identified five positions that will be added, but through that review, there may be more than we think will be needed, and we’ll resource those accordingly.

Recommendation 9, about monitoring program performance. The Auditor General’s recommendation to develop and report on performance measures and targets — again, this is a helpful recommendation. We think it relates to the balance of the other recommendations. We’ll of course accept this. We’ll work collaboratively across the branch and regional staff to develop a robust performance program and reporting to provide more public information each year on the Dam Safety Program Annual Report. There is an annual report. We’re going to layer this recommendation into an updated version of that.

Overall, just a couple of summary points here that I’d like to make. We are committed to mitigating loss of life, damage to property and harm to the environment from dam breaches. That’s fundamental to the program and has been since day one. Since the inception of the provincial dam safety program, there has never been a loss of life based on improper regulatory oversight of dam operations or a significant population evacuation due to structural or operational issues of a dam in B.C.

We do regularly update and modernize. We have done that regularly since inception. We find that this audit is helpful as its information — much of which we were aware of — is providing more focus as to where we can invest ourselves and make those updates and modernizations.

In summary, we appreciate the work of the Auditor General. We accept all their findings and recommendations. We’ve initiated much of the work in response, as you’ve seen already. Just as a close, I’m fairly new in this role, but there have been a couple of audits that I partici­pated in with the Auditor General now: the Public Accounts Committee saw one a little while ago, the conservation lands program audit, and this one as well.

[9:30 a.m.]

I just want to share my thanks to the Auditor General. I found that their approach and their process was very professional, very collaborative, and they’ve come with some helpful recommendations here. My genuine thanks to them for their work in this.

I’ll turn it back to the Chair. We’re happy to answer questions.

M. Bernier (Chair): Thanks, David. Thanks for running through that. I know there will be some questions, for sure.

Before we get into the committee and the questions, I’m going to turn things over to our comptroller general, Carl Fischer, as we like to do, to hear a few words from him first, or any words of wisdom or advice he has on this report.

C. Fischer: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for the recognition.

I learned an awful lot from this audit report. I learned that my parents, when they were alive, had, probably, a mid-range-danger dam in their backyard, right behind their kitchen. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for improvement.

The report really did a good job of outlining the information. I also noticed that the ministry staff were very enthusiastic in developing an appropriate response.

The one thing I think of is that it would be very easy to hire 200 people to accomplish all of the oversight responsibilities, but that would mean…. What? Twenty emergency room beds or kindergarten classrooms for a year. So I think it’s really positive to see the ministry being creative, being innovative in thinking about how to respond to the recommendations with consideration of economy effectiveness and efficiency.

Over to you.

M. Bernier (Chair): Thanks, Carl.

I see some hands going up right away, but I just, again, want to thank all of our witnesses for presenting today, and all of the comments. This is obviously an important report for us to discuss. I can tell by the questions already.

J. Tegart: I’ve got a few questions, if you’ll indulge me.

I guess when I read the report and looked at the short overview…. My question is: how much time are dam owners spending on reports that haven’t been read? We require people to do a lot of reporting, but I hear often from people on the ground that a lot of time is spent putting reports into government, and it feels like it goes into a black hole. When I see that some took eight years to review, I start to think that they are very frustrated with how much time they are putting in versus the response.

I don’t know who can answer that question.

M. Bernier (Chair): I think we’ll probably look to the ministry first of all for that, if there’s a comment we can get.

D. Muter: I wonder if…. Ted, do you want to take the lead on that one?

T. White: Thank you for the question, Member.

When we look at those reports…. Generally, the dam safety reports are primarily for the owners to understand the condition of their dam and what actions they need to take. The reviews that are done internally — some of them use it for a while. Generally, those are the ones that we feel have lower risk.

However, specifically to your question, depending on the consequence classification, the report can take several hours to complete, or several weeks if it’s a more complicated one. That would generally be for those high or extreme ones.

J. Tegart: Just one more question, maybe, if I can.

When I first became an MLA a number of years ago, I was approached by a non-profit group who found that they were the owner of a dam. They were in their 70s and 80s, and they were being held responsible for a dam that nobody wanted to be responsible for. They were having a hard time getting people on their society, because nobody wanted to take responsibility for the dam.

How many of those situations do we have? The stress that they were feeling because they were required to do reporting and to…. They were beside themselves, trying to meet the criteria from the ministry.

[9:35 a.m.]

Do we have a sense of how many of those are, perhaps, not high-alert dams but run by non-profits for water stewardship, etc.?

E. O’Donoghue: I’m not sure, Jackie. We will have that. I’ll ask some of the technical staff if they have a sense of that. If not, we’ll make sure we get back to you on this.

I’m just wondering, Ted, if any of the staff have a sense of that one.

T. White: Eamon, we’d like to do a review on that, because there are a number of low-consequence dams. But to respond directly to the question, I think we just need a bit of time to do some background work.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the report. I had a few questions.

My first question is…. In reading the report — correct me if I’m wrong about this — mining dams like Mount Polley are not included in this monitoring and compliance system. Is that correct?

D. Muter: That’s correct.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Okay. I was just curious about that.

Is there a mirrored process in the ministry, where the ministry is looking at these dams and monitoring and compliance around that, around mining? Then they’re looking at the other dams and monitoring and compliance around those ones, and it’s sort of a similar process, dupli­cated within government. Can you help me understand why there are two processes there?

E. O’Donoghue: I can take a stab at this, and then if anybody else wants to jump in, they can.

In the Ministry of Mines, they have mines inspectors, because, certainly, some of the risks behind mining dams are not just of flood implications and what may happen but also what may be contained in the waters behind some of those mines — acid rock drainage, those sorts of things. So there are a lot more issues at stake and at play.

Typically, those mining dams, in some cases, signifi­cantly contain more risk. So the mines inspectors, which are located within the Ministry of Mines, do that inspection process completely separately from the ones we do here.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Okay. Then just to follow up on that, I think there has been, if I remember correctly, an audit.

If the Auditor General could weigh in, are there plans to audit monitoring compliance on those types of dams?

M. Pickup: Right now, in terms of what we have on the schedule, that is not on the schedule. But when we do these audits, we always look to see: “Okay, is there anything coming up on an audit that would cause us to reconsider?” as we do the planning and then replanning past the current year that we’re in. We’ll consider the results of this and whether anything is coming up as a result of that, but right now, there’s not currently anything on the schedule.

Thom or René, did you want to add anything on that?

R. Pelletier: I think the only thing I’d add to that is that when we do reports like this, when there are similarities between other ministries, we would hope they would look at the results of our audit report and consider whether they need to make improvements in their programs as well. If we don’t have the capacity to do that audit, hopefully they still get benefit from it.

E. O’Donoghue: Rick, maybe one just last thing to add here. Certainly, following the Mount Polley dam failure many years ago, my guess is there was a lot of assessment of that approach in the whole findings there. My guess is there are probably some pretty good reports that came out of that process. We might be able to look up some of those and point you to some of those reports.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Thanks.

It’s just, in that context, it might be interesting and helpful to do an audit in the future at some point and look at whether those issues have been addressed and things like that.

[9:40 a.m.]

My other question is around compliance. In the report, it says that there are 87 dams at the highest risk, and I think 25 of those — the owners are not actively addressing the issues. The report states, I think, fairly obviously that dam owners are less likely to fix deficiencies if compliance is not enforced effectively.

Can you talk about compliance a bit more? I guess, just for the benefit of people listening, I think the general public thinks that if the government is monitoring something and they’ve identified that something needs to be done and it’s not being done, there would be some process for fines or some other way to enforce compliance. Can we talk about what that process is now and what you hope it will be in the future?

E. O’Donoghue: David, maybe you can answer this one, or Ted.

I know, Rick, we are looking at some potential regula­tory changes, as well, to help address this.

I’ll turn it over to David and Ted for a more complete answer.

D. Muter: I think, Ted, we talked about this yesterday. You’ve got the details on this. So go ahead, Ted.

T. White: Thanks for the question.

When we run into matters where we have owners who are not being compliant with the regulation, there are a couple of different steps. Generally, to begin with, owners will identify deficiencies with their dam and then make a plan to address them. It looks as though they have a number of deficiencies, but they may take some time to develop a plan to work with them.

Most people are cooperative and work on it. We end up with some who are uncooperative, and then what we do is we work through the process with compliance enforcement in terms of escalating from more notifications. We may issue fines and then take other action.

One of the plans we have in response to the audit is that we’re going to have better coordination with the compliance enforcement group to make sure that we have better processes to actually take action on enforcing compliance to be able to bring people into compliance better.

I think one thing I’d like to add there, just to be really clear, is that of the dams that we have in the province, if people aren’t compliant…. There are no dams that we’re concerned about for imminent failure. If we were, we have ability to take action and deal with that right away.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Sorry to take up all the time, but just to follow up on that, there were 87 classified as highest risk. Are you saying that there isn’t risk there?

T. White: There is risk. But what we look at in terms of — is there an increasing risk if those deficiencies are not addressed, or is there a risk of imminent failure? If there is a risk, say, as a result of a seismic standard that needs to be updated or they need to improve particular monitoring programs, we’re working with those.

The flip side is if we’re looking at a dam and the dam safety officers go out, look and say, “Oh, there’s imminent failure risk here,” then we can take more immediate action. That risk, the way we view it, is increased risk if those deficiencies aren’t addressed. Does that answer your question?

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Not really. I mean, I’m reading in the report that the average amount of time that these dams have been in the high-risk category is like 7½ years. I assume that they’ve been at some level of risk even longer than that. I also read in the report that sometimes these plans have no deadline on them. Is that changing?

[9:45 a.m.]

I really want to try to understand the level of compliance and enforcement now and what you hope will change in the future. For something to be in a high-risk category for 7½ years seems too long for me.

T. White: Some of them will be in a high-risk classification for a number of years, as the action to resolve that risk may be a large capital project that would take time to plan, raise funding for and implement. So it might take several years to develop a plan to resolve a seismic risk. I’m using that as an example.

However, what we expect to change, as we work on the response to the audit, is to improve our processes for moving through the compliance process with our dam safety officers and the compliance enforcement group within the ministry, and, hopefully, we’ll resolve more of these more quickly.

I think the other part is that having the performance measures that we’re committed to will provide us better information as to how quickly we’re able to move these off and understand why. If any of them are lingering, we’ll have a better ability to report on that.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): That’s it for me for now. I might come back with some questions later. Thank you.

M. Bernier (Chair): Thanks, Rick.

We’ll move things along. We have lots of questions, it looks like. MLA Banman next.

B. Banman: Many, many years ago I read a letter that a gentleman penned from Michigan to the government of the day for two unauthorized beaver dams that were built by beavers on his property. It’s hilarious. If you haven’t read it, I think everybody should.

I’m left with the question…. The one thing I found missing in the report, unless I’ve missed it in the fine print, is: what is a dam? What’s considered to be a dam? What’s considered to be…? What are the definitions of the different dams? For instance, if a beaver dam is built on someone’s property, does that count, whether or not they intended it to be there?

I also look at, for some of these medium-risk dams…. In certain parts — I know in MLA Tegart’s area — ranchers will quite often build a small dam as a watering hole, which, especially during the recent wildfires, may or may not have been useful for helicopters or crews to be able to put that out.

For me, the report leaves me with more questions than it did answers. Yes, it appears as if we’re way behind in inspecting some of these. But to me, I think it would be helpful for not only myself but for the public to actually know what you consider a dam to be and when it changes from one category to another. I would find that extremely helpful. If I could get an answer on that, I’d be appreciative at this point, if it can be answered.

E. O’Donoghue: It certainly can be answered. Thanks for the question. I know I asked a very similar question recently, because, as also a small farmer, I have done the exact same thing. As we were going to this audit, I had to say: “Hold on a sec. Do I have a dam that’s at risk?”

As I understand, under a seven-metre berm is — I don’t know what the right word is — not considered very consequential. But I’ll certainly turn that over to the experts here who can give you more of a precise definition about those things. That’s probably Ted or one of the staff there.

T. White: Thanks, Eamon.

We rely on the definition of a dam from the dam safety regulation. In there, it means “a barrier constructed for the purpose of enabling the storage or diversion of water diverted from a stream or aquifer, or both.” There’s another part to it.

Then as we move through the dam safety regulation, there are what we call “regulated” and “unregulated” dams. So a minor dam is one that is less than seven metres in height and stores less than 10,000 cubic metres. That provides the first: is it regulated and subject to the additional monitoring and reporting components?

[9:50 a.m.]

If it is a regulated dam, then there’s a schedule, based on consequence level, or particular consequences, that designates it under certain classifications, which then sets out the surveillance, monitoring and reporting schedule for it.

M. Bernier (Chair): Can I just jump in a bit with what Eamon was saying, and also for Bruce. If it’s 7 metres, though, where do they measure from? Can a hole be a dam? I think, as Eamon was kind of alluding to, most farmers in rural British Columbia have dugouts — they’re called — but some of them divert a creek, and some of them take the rainwater off the surface, but they’re not actually dams, per se. They’re holes in the corner, sometimes for offering water for their ranch.

I know Michael wanted to jump in a little bit in a second, as well. But Ted, if you can just clarify that for me, because there is so much confusion out there from people about what constitutes a dam, whether they should or should not be registered, whether they’re in compliance or not, whether when they talk to them — the local FLNRORD office — they should be acknowledging it or not. Again, I think that goes a bit to the point of the report, but can you clarify that a little bit more?

T. White: When we get into what’s a dam or not, as I read from the regulation, there is, constructed across a stream…. But what you’re referring to is the dugouts, which we see across the province, but are primarily in northeast B.C.

The way we measure is generally from the top of the dam, the vertical distance from there, to the natural bed of the stream. In many cases, the dugouts you refer to are…. We see berms that are pushed out on a depression in the land. So it becomes a bit of a process to go: where’s the natural bed of the stream? And then, on that downstream tow, what would the elevation be? This is why we have both the elevation and the volume of water stored to look at that.

What you’ll find, and we can provide it, is that there are guidance documents on how to look at dugouts and determine what should be regulated or not, or considered a dam. Using those two definitions of the elevation and volume stored, the majority of those dugouts are either not regulated or are minor dams. But there are a few, which you’ve probably seen, that are pretty significant structures that we want to ensure are regulated.

E. O’Donoghue: Maybe we can just say, Ted, as part of this as well, that we’ll just have another look at our information and make sure we’ve got good graphics and information that are available to the public on that.

M. Bernier (Chair): I know Bruce has another question, but maybe….

Michael, you wanted to jump in there, it looked like, on this issue, maybe.

M. Pickup: Just very quickly, Chair, if it is helpful.

On page 7 of the report, it summarizes the 1,900 dams by the failure consequence level, again. So you look at…. About roughly half of the 1,900 are significant or above, with four classifications there. Extreme is loss of life greater than 100; very high, up to 100; high, up to 10; and significant, possible loss of life. The description of those consequences are in appendix C on page 35.

The other thing I was just going to remind you quickly was that exhibit 2 on page 23 actually summarizes the 1,900 by risk level. You roughly look anywhere down from alert, caution, not cooperative, caution cooperative, down to stable, and you’ve got about 300 of the 1,900 sitting in those categories combined. Those categories indicate where the owner is working to be compliant — compliant but not actively working on it — and where they are. I just thought I would point out those extra tables, which may or may not be helpful.

M. Bernier (Chair): Appreciate that.

Bruce, you had another question.

B. Banman: The simple question is…. It’s helpful to put those at risk, but it doesn’t define what a dam is.

[9:55 a.m.]

Based on what I just heard, when I was a kid, and I was making little mud pie things…. I’m diverting a waterway, which technically could be a dam, as it’s diverting a stream. It is so vague that it’s no wonder the public is confused and landowners are confused.

I go back to the statement of the incredibly humorous letter that was penned about beaver dams. According to this, if I own property…. You know, beavers can be pretty…. What they’re capable of doing is amazing. Does that or does that not qualify as a dam that now, as the landowner, I am responsible for taking care of and having to fix? It’s a debris dam.

I can see all kinds of issues where people would avoid registering this like the plague. If we’re having trouble around this area to define what a dam is, how do we expect the public to do it? I would just be turning and running the other way. I would just not want to have anything to do with it as a landowner. So does a beaver dam count?

E. O’Donoghue: I think the answer to that one is no, because it wasn’t constructed as per regulations. So we know it doesn’t count. But I think your question is still very good. I think we need to do a better job of just doing a simple graphic on what counts under what regulation. So I will take that back as part of our review and make sure that we get that updated.

M. Bernier (Chair): Maybe that’s a good time for me just to remind everybody that committee staff will be working with the office of the comptroller general to follow up with a bunch of these unknowns to ensure that we can get information back. So we’ll leave that with committee staff to try to help us get that with Carl later.

With that, I move things to MLA Coulter.

D. Coulter: Actually, I cede my time, Chair. Some of my questions were answered already. Thank you very much.

M. Bernier (Chair): Sounds excellent. I’ll move things along to MLA Mercier then, please.

A. Mercier: Well, I think Mike was before me.

M. Bernier (Chair): Wow. Look at the teamwork we have going on here on the committee. I went by how I saw the hands go up.

Sure, MLA Starchuk. You can ask Andrew’s question, and then he doesn’t have to ask one too.

M. Starchuk: If I could. Thank you, Chair.

My question is about water licences. It’s not necessarily about dam safety, but inside the report, there’s the mention of water licences, and we all know that there’s a deadline for water licences. How will that come into effect with these dams that may not have their licence, and what would happen to it as far as, for the lack of a better term, unauthorized water use after that point?

E. O’Donoghue: It’s a great question, Mike. I think you’re referring to the groundwater licensing issue. That’s certainly a very active discussion for us, and there are a number of initiatives underway to try to improve on that and make sure we get more compliance. But obviously, if there’s non-compliance, then we’ll need to contemplate enforcement.

Just as an anecdote, there are very few dams, I think, that are affected by that groundwater issue because, of course, many of them would be surface water. But certainly, on the groundwater file, there’s lots of active work right now to make sure we can try to get as much compliance by the deadline.

M. Starchuk: If I just may, with the groundwater licensing — and it only affects the number of dams — it’s my understanding that to get licensing, the process is fairly arduous to go through and that we’re looking at March 1 as the deadline. So would some priority be given to those people that are actually using the groundwater in their dam process?

E. O’Donoghue: I didn’t understand this until, actually, just a few days ago — that they only need to have an application in, submitted. It doesn’t need to be approved or completed by March 1. So as long as their application is in, they’re good.

[10:00 a.m.]

A. Mercier: I have a few quick questions. Just harkening back to the Deputy Chair’s question about the 87 high-risk dams, I’m wondering if you can give some tangible, illustrative examples of what a high-risk dam with a sufficient safety deficiency looks like to kind of put some meat on the bones of that.

You alluded to, as well — I can’t remember who from the ministry alluded to it — sometimes the need for complex capital planning if there’s something like a seismic risk, which is understandable and surely would take some time and planning to do. But to what degree could it be said that part of the reason for the long time in correcting the deficiencies could be lack of sophistication or knowl­edge on the part of the dam owners? Is this really a case where, in certain instances, there needs to be more hand holding?

E. O’Donoghue: Ted, do you want to take that one? I think it started off….

There were a couple of points there, Andrew. So the examples of — I think it was the first part of the question — what those high-risk insufficiencies might be, and then following from there. Ted?

T. White: Thanks for the question.

One of the examples that we have is in Nanaimo. There’s an old dam on the Chase River that has seismic deficiencies. That’s why I went to seismic right away, along with my other examples. The dam owner is looking at what they can do to mitigate it from a few different perspectives, one being if there is anything we can do downstream — so if that were to fail, mitigate the flow — or how to actually deal with the seismic issue there.

The other examples for smaller dams…. I’m just looking for one. We’ve got seepage in some of them, where you look at a dam, and you’ve got water coming through, meaning that waterproof section within the dam may be compromised in some manner. To give you a bit of an example on that, there are times where the dam owner may not have the particular skills or understanding.

The way the regulation is set up is that when they do their dam safety review, they’re to engage a qualified professional to help understand what those deficiencies are. We do work with the owners to look at when those reports come in and look at ways forward. It’s always that challenge of: you’ve got a qualified professional to provide a report, and then helping them understand and work through it.

One other example to provide is that some of the older dams have undersized spillways. If we hit a significant storm, the dam may not be set up to pass that water as safely as we want. So then it’s a matter of how you do that.

Does that get to your question?

A. Mercier: Yeah. Thank you. That brings a lot of clarity for me and for my understanding.

I have one other quick question about dam safety officers. It mentions in the audit that there’s an instance with high-risk dams where there were two dams where new safety officers took over responsibilities, and the compliance activity had to start again from the beginning. The government mentioned, in the response to the audit, the work to implement new databases and inventory.

It seems to me that that’s a pretty basic case management issue that would crop up in something as idiosyncratic as doing this type of enforcement and compliance out there. I’m just wondering if you could speak to that in particular and what’s being done in terms of best practices to correct that from happening again.

D. Muter: It’s a great question. That comes to some of the notes that I shared in our quick presentation about looking at roles, responsibilities, organizational structure as well as the improvements to our data sets.

There are gaps in our data set that unfortunately lead to situations like that one that is noted, where a new officer comes in and needs to pick up from scratch. That’s obviously inefficient. A consistent data set would allow them to continue on and pick up from that previous step. That’s an obvious thing that we can fix.

[10:05 a.m.]

I think, as well, being clear on roles and responsibilities so that when that transition happens, there is a structure in place so that transition from one dam safety officer to another can be supported not just with a consistent data set but also with a structure of organization that allows for that to happen so that there’s a smooth transition from one to the next. We are going to be looking at that, and that’s one of the responses that we provided — reviewing the organizational structure to make sure there’s better connection between us, in the water management branch, and those regional dam safety officers.

M. Bernier (Chair): Okay. Thank you. Does that cover it, I think, for Andrew? I’m looking around to see if there are any other questions.

I have got one. Maybe two, actually. On slide 6, from David. When you were talking here, you were talking about expanding remote sensing. Can you give me a definition? What is remote sensing? I was trying to figure out what that actually meant. I didn’t see it in the report.

I apologize, Michael, if it’s in there and I missed it.

What is remote sensing in order to try to identify unauthorized dams? What would that be, aside from Google Maps?

D. Muter: Ted, you’re probably best to help on the technical details of this one.

T. White: Sure, yeah. Thank you for the question.

It’s a little more than Google Maps. Really, what this one is, is using satellite data and comparing, over time, to see if there are any new water bodies that pop up. Then we can use that as information to go and look and see if there has been something constructed that would be classified as a dam. We have done this in the northeast, and it has been a very effective tool to help sort out some of the issues.

Given the information provided by the Auditor, we’re discussing looking at using it more broadly as a means to address the unidentified dams that were noted in the audit.

M. Bernier (Chair): Now, in asking that, though, I’m just wondering, when I see five more staff…. I mean, that sounds very time-consuming, or could be. Is there going to be designated staff to be doing this? What is the plan, then, within the ministry to deal with this issue?

D. Muter: Well, I think I’ll start maybe…. I don’t see that as being a significant staff resourcing need. I think this is something that we can handle. We do have resources already within the ministry that are quite capable and skilled and well resourced at that satellite imagery analysis. We do that as part of our forest management aspects of the business here as well. So I don’t think it’s a significant stretch, and it’s leveraging existing resources that are already within the ministry.

E. O’Donoghue: David, just to add on to that — Ted, you can correct me — I believe in the work we did with the northeast…. I thought we were building an approach where we could automate that sensing to determine if there were new bodies in place. I thought there was a way that they had done that to make it efficient, so you didn’t have to have a staff person actually going through and physically looking at it.

Is that correct, Ted?

T. White: That’s correct, Eamon.

M. Bernier (Chair): Just one other thing, David, while you were talking as well. You talked about working with the Ministry of Agriculture. I’m not sure what you can share, but if so, can you kind of give me an idea, again, for…? In northeast B.C., that’s one of the huge issues that I have — the impact on agricultural land and some of the confusion around, as we talked about earlier today, what constitutes a dam and what doesn’t, and then some of the capacity issues for a lot of people, especially in the agricultural sector, to deal with the compliance issues, the financial impacts they have.

You did say that you’re working with Agriculture. Can you kind of give me a little bit info on that that might help for people listening — that you can share?

D. Muter: Not much more detail there, as it’s sort of early days, based upon that recommendation from the Auditor General. But what we took from the Auditor General’s recommendation there, and then understanding the agricultural sector, is there’s a need for possibly some funding to support addressing some of the issues that dam owners may have in the agricultural sector, and then better information and dissemination of that information, as has been discussed well here.

We in the ministry have got, we think, good guidance documents, but there is an opportunity to update that. It’s not just, then, updating those guidance documents. It’s also who delivers it. We’ve had conversations with the Ministry of Agriculture on groundwater licensing and making sure that they’re out supporting us and that information as a trusted advocate to work with the sector.

[10:10 a.m.]

We think that that’s an additional path here — making sure that not only is there funding support but that communication comes out from multiple parts within government so that folks see it and hear and understand it.

It’s early days, but that would be something we’d be happy to, as we work with the Ministry of Agriculture, bring back in an update report through the comptroller general.

M. Bernier (Chair): Great. Thanks, David.

I’m going to look to MLA Glumac, who has another question.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): Just to follow up a little bit on these high-risk dams, you were saying earlier that if a dam is at the risk of immediate failure, there are mechanisms to do things quickly. I’m not sure what those mechanisms are.

My question is: with a dam, wouldn’t you want to address the issues before they come to a place of imminent failure, and wouldn’t it be these dams that are in this high-risk category that should be acted on before it gets to that point, where you have extra mechanisms to enforce things?

You mentioned the example…. There are dams in this high-risk category that have seismic issues. I would assume that we would want those issues to be addressed in a shorter time frame than an average of 7½ years. It kind of gets back to my question. What are we going to do to increase compliance? Specifically, are we going to increase fines?

I think, as I was trying to explain earlier, the public, when we think about compliance, think about how there’s going to be an increase in fines. I mean, what other mechanisms would you utilize to increase compliance, coming out of this audit, if it’s not fines? I’m just curious if you could elaborate on that.

E. O’Donoghue: Ted, do you want to take that one.

T. White: Yeah, thank you.

To the first part of the question, about what we could do, if a dam is considered to be an imminent threat, the ministry can take action by being authorized to go and do work and then pursue recovering those costs later. Then if it falls under the Emergency Management Act, other steps can be taken. In general, that’s what I was referring to. We can do that.

I agree with you. We’re trying to avoid getting any dams near that imminent threat, and that’s where the schedule of reviews and surveillance helps identify these deficiencies further out in advance, and we’re definitely trying to accelerate the response of the owners as best possible.

What the response will be. Part of what we’re looking at and trying to understand is…. There are a couple of things I would suggest. One is: why are people not complying? We’re trying to get information out about that so we can understand what the best response is that we can take to change that behaviour so we see people either being in compliance with orders or submitting information on time.

The first thing is understanding what’s motivating people not to be in compliance, and then we’ll look at what the best response is. Is it additional outreach and information, or is it fines? In some cases, it may be that government takes more action, and by that, we undertake the work and then recover it — so just trying to make sure we understand the balance of those.

R. Glumac (Deputy Chair): At this point, you don’t know why people are not more compliant? You don’t have a sense of that?

T. White: I would say we haven’t done a systematic review of it. I think what we find is that sometimes they don’t understand their obligations.

When we look at if people haven’t submitted particular reports, when we undertake the outreach program we do with the Ministry of Agriculture, where we go and talk to the owners of small dams and give them an update, we often see a response there, where they, once informed, then will respond.

[10:15 a.m.]

Other times you end up with financial issues. Then, every now and then, you get an uncooperative owner. We’re trying to get that analysis so we can then best determine what the way forward is.

M. Bernier (Chair): Okay. I believe that was the end for Rick’s question there.

Are there any other questions, then, from the committee? I do not see any. We’ve had some great questions and some really good, important discussion. I’m going to turn things over, maybe as a wrap-up before we adjourn the meeting then, to Michael, our Auditor General, as we like to do.

Now that you’ve heard all the questions, Michael, and some of the commentary as well, maybe I’ll just thank you, before you wrap up there, again for this report. It was obviously an important one. It raises a lot of questions. It also is important, as we’ve seen, in that it puts the ministry in a position to always be thinking about how we can do things better in government and for the people of B.C. So thank you, Michael, for that.

M. Pickup: Thank you for those comments, Chair, and for the opportunity. Just a couple of final comments that I would make. I made a few notes as we went through, and if I can read my own handwriting, I will be doing well. Now I know what others go through when I leave them notes.

Thank you to the members for the questions. I said it at the beginning and I can’t say enough how much value this adds to job satisfaction for those of us who do this type of work, particularly on the teams who are doing the work. So I thank members for the questions. Nice to see the reports being used to hold government accountable and to ask questions. That tells me we’re delivering on our mandate, which is important and why we exist. Thank you for that.

Thank you to the ministry, not only for the responses to the questions and the cooperative attitude but…. Gone are the days, thankfully, from those years when we would spend this time arguing about minutiae or fighting over something that an organization actually agrees on. I’m so thankful that those days are all gone.

I thank the ministry for having that modern, professional approach to this. If something is not being done and they think it should be done, they’re saying so. They’re not arguing over conclusions, if they agree with them, just for the sake of arguing to try to perhaps say, for other reasons…. I’m thankful to the ministry for that.

I’m also thankful to the ministry for the very specific comments they made on the things that they’re going to do, that they see of value to do, not specifically because we told them to do A, B, C, D, E and F, but what we’d said was, when we looked at the programs: “Here are things that are not working as well as they ought to be.” And then the ministry is saying: “Okay, we are going to now do A, B, C and D.” I want to thank the ministry for the very specific and tangible examples they gave of the value of this audit to them.

While that is secondary, as I’ve let the members know, to why we do this work…. The reason we do the work is for you. As I’ve said on many occasions, it is very important to those of us doing this work to see perhaps improvements being made to programs and services, how things are done, recognizing that what we come in to audit — I think this is important — is what government has set out to do.

We’re not coming in to figure out what government ought to be doing in terms of oversight of dam safety. We’re looking at what the regulations are, what they have set out to do and what they ought to be doing versus coming up with some kind of program.

This is a good example. When you see the abilities of auditors, like on this team, to be able to come into something that could be seen to be relatively complex…. Remember, the people who are taking the questions today do this work at least five days a week and, in many cases, for years.

I’m very proud that the team is able to come in, get up to speed, understand the program enough to be able to audit it, recognize what the role of audit is and what we’re actually doing by auditing. We’re not trying to become dam safety experts or to become inspectors. We’re trying to do an audit. So I’m thankful to the ministry for that and to the team for having done that as well.

That was really the summary. I think I’ve managed to actually read most of my notes.

Thank you once again.

M. Bernier (Chair): Thank you, Michael, and thank you to your team as well.

Seeing no further questions, I’ll also thank everybody from the ministry, and Carl as well, for their comments and for the work that they’ve done on this report.

With that, I’ll look for a motion to adjourn.

MLA Mercier.

Motion approved.

M. Bernier (Chair): Thank you again, everyone. Looking forward to our next meeting in person, not on Zoom. Have a great day, everyone.

The committee adjourned at 10:20 a.m.