The committee met at 8:01 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good morning, everyone.

I’d like to recognize that we are meeting today on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Today we are beginning our spring check-in meetings with each of the province’s nine statutory officers, where we will be receiving financial and operational updates. These meetings will extend over the next couple weeks. On our agenda for today is the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the registrar of lobbyists; the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth; and the Office of the Auditor General.

With that, I’ll turn it over to Michael McEvoy, the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

Over to you, Michael.

Financial and Operational Updates
from Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE INFORMATION
AND PRIVACY COMMISSIONER
AND REGISTRAR OF LOBBYISTS

M. McEvoy: Thank you. Good morning, hon. Chair, Deputy Chair and members of the committee.

I would like to acknowledge that I present to you today on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people, also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

As an officer of this Legislature, I also acknowledge that I am privileged to work with people across many traditional territories, covering all regions of our province.

Joining me this morning are Deputy Commissioners oline Twiss, to my left, and Jeannette Van Den Bulk, just to my right. Also here, as always, to assist is Dave Van Swieten, executive director of shared services, who serves in this capacity for our four officers of the Legislature, headquartered at 947 Fort Street here in the province’s capital.

Thank you once again for the opportunity to meet and discuss the work of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the registrar for lobbyists for British Columbia. Providing this update, in addition to our yearly submission, will, I hope, give a deeper understanding of the work that we do.

I would like to start this morning, Chair and hon. Members, by thanking you for recommending my 2022-23 budget request to government and, in particular, the additional resources for the adjudication division of the office needed to address the sustained increase in demand for those services. I am now pleased to report that we are hiring additional adjudicators, and I look forward to updating you at future meetings about how this is helping to improve our service to British Columbians.

In advance of this meeting, you asked me to address any supplemental funding requests we may need. When I last appeared in November, I stated that if Bill 22, the proposed legislation to amend the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, were to be approved, it would have a direct impact on the staffing and resources of my office. I also said that it was premature to discern the precise impact of those changes because, even if the bill were to be passed, it was not clear when certain key provisions would be brought into force.

[8:05 a.m.]

Bill 22 has, of course, now passed into law. However, the provisions having the greatest impact on my office are not yet in force. These are the requirements for privacy management programs and mandatory breach reporting. We are discussing these matters with the minister responsible, and she will apprise me of the proposed details in the coming months. We will analyze them carefully and quantify their impact on our office. My expectation is that when we meet next fall, I will be in a position to address what additional resources will be needed to meet the demands of the amendments.

Turning to the recent work and accomplishments of the OIPC, I have now looked at the preliminary numbers from the last fiscal year and can report that we handled more than 10,000 files — in line with last year’s previous high. This number includes a significant increase in core files received. That is, access and privacy complaints, together with requests by individuals to review public body decisions withholding information in response to access requests. Combined, these files really represent the bread and butter of the work we do for the public.

What we also saw in the last fiscal year was a decrease in time extensions asked for by public bodies to respond to access requests. While I suspect this was in part due to public bodies getting over the initial jolt of the pandemic, I will have a better idea once we complete our report card on the timeliness of government responses to access requests due later this year. What is clear now is that my staff continue to shoulder a heavy workload and have done an extraordinary job in keeping pace with the demands placed upon them.

We also remain active on the investigation front, where a number of ongoing matters are utilizing the technology funds the committee previously recommended. Given the constraints put on me by the act, I can’t speak to the specific nature of these files at this very moment, but I expect to be in a position to do so when we meet next fall.

I earlier mentioned COVID and government access-to-information systems. In December, we released a report on how these systems held up in the wake of the pandemic. We reviewed a select group of public bodies over a one-year period starting in March 2020. The selection was based on the higher volume of requests they handled during our review period and included three health authorities. Overall, I was encouraged to see that despite an increase in both the number and complexity of requests, our access-to-information system maintained a relative resilience during the first year of the pandemic.

The public bodies we reviewed, by and large, adjusted to the changing circumstances and succeeded in maintaining their access-to-information programs. In one example, a public body used staged releases of information to help applicants get some records while it continued to process the remainder of a larger request. This is the kind of creative thinking, I think, that serves as a model for others.

This report was also a good opportunity to highlight and remind public bodies about the importance of proactively releasing records without an access request. Doing this builds public trust, negates the need for staff to spend hours responding to commonly made access requests and provides greater transparency and accountability for the people of British Columbia.

Interestingly, this was also an issue of considerable interest to MLAs in the course of my office’s last two presentations made to the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. During my first appearance in February, I gave the special committee a brief overview of FIPPA, B.C.’s public sector legislation, and provided some background about the role my office serves.

The second appearance focused on a full set of recommendations for reform. We provided both submissions to you, Chair and committee, in advance of our meeting today. The most concise summary is this. Robust access to information and privacy laws are vital to the overall foundations of democracy, and I believe that B.C. can put itself, once again, in a leadership role.

Private sector privacy reform is also a matter on my office’s front burner. I reported to you about this last year, and the government side of the House now has before it recommendations of the Special Committee to Review the Personal Information Protection Act.

One item not on the committee’s recommended list but which has since emerged as a significant issue across many jurisdictions is a specific set of rules, perhaps in the form of a code, focused on children and online privacy.

[8:10 a.m.]

A code of this type would help protect our children from online tracking, targeted advertising and nudging used to engage children in online behaviours not in their interests. Such a code has been adopted in the U.K. and a variation of it in Ireland. Others are considering it, including the state of California, to the south.

Its positive impact on children would be greatest if multiple jurisdictions sign on to a similar approach that allows for a broader enforcement mechanism. That is why my office is actively looking at whether our government should consider its adoption here. I have discussed the matter with counterparts in the U.K. and Ireland as well as representatives of UNICEF, who are helping spearhead efforts internationally in this direction.

I believe that such a code could potentially be adapted and integrated within our PIPA legislation such that we can stand together with other regulators globally to ensure our children are properly protected in the online world. We will continue to pursue this important issue.

This also serves as a reminder that our office does not operate in a jurisdictional silo, which makes coordination with fellow regulators, nationally and internally, important. Members of this committee will know my office continues to serve as the secretariat to the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities, and I again thank you for continuing to support this role. It enables a prominent and respected place for British Columbia in a region where not only personal data flows ubiquitously but where the province’s major trading partners reside.

Investigations, mediation, adjudication and informing legislators and the public about reform are key parts of our work. But so, too, are the efforts of my team to educate the public, organizations and public bodies about their information rights and obligations.

An important aspect of education is the guidance we offer. The OIPC has published three guidance documents since we last met in November. In January, we released a guide for employers to help them understand what conditions must be present before conducting random searches for drugs and alcohol in the workplace.

We receive many questions about how our private sector legislation applies to the workings of strata councils, especially those related to condominiums. I know this is of considerable interest to many of your constituents. With this in mind, earlier this year we updated our privacy guidance for strata corporations and strata agents in an easy-to-understand format for those living in strata arrangements.

Finally, in March, we released guidance to clarify the responsibilities that lie with public bodies who seek to store or allow access to British Columbians’ personal information outside Canada’s borders. This was largely prohibited prior to the recent amendments in Bill 22. Our guidance makes clear that despite the recent changes, public bodies are required to ensure reasonable security measures are put in place before decisions are made to disclose or store personal information outside of Canada.

Just before I turn to the work of the ORL, I would like to refer to one other matter that I know will be of particular interest and for which each of your parties must be given credit. Last month, together with my colleague Anton Boegman, B.C.’s Chief Electoral Officer, we published a campaign code of practice for political parties here in B.C. The code was agreed to and signed on by all three political parties represented in the Legislature.

The code’s principles ensure a level playing field for electoral campaigns and balance the need of political parties to know their voters with the need for protection of their privacy. The code contains ten principles, including that political parties understand their privacy obligations and apply adequate privacy protections.

The code was a result of my 2019 report that looked into how B.C.’s political parties collect, use and disclose voters’ personal information. We wanted to ensure there was a common understanding among parties about what is and isn’t allowed by B.C.’s privacy and election legislation. We are also following up with additional guidance for political parties and their obligations under PIPA, and we soon hope to have that available.

I strongly believe the code and the parties’ commitment to it will enhance the public’s trust and confidence in how political parties are managing the personal information of voters. All of your parties should be strongly commended for working together to enhance this part of our democratic system of government, a system which should not be taken for granted.

[8:15 a.m.]

I will now turn to the recent work of the office of the registrar of lobbyists. As you know, the Lobbyists Transparency Act, or LTA, designates me as the registrar for the ORL by virtue of my position as Information and Privacy Commissioner. My responsibilities as registrar under the LTA include a mandate to establish and maintain a register for lobbyists and to oversee and enforce compliance with the act.

Since we last met in November, we have added new functionality to the registry to improve the user experience. The new autocomplete function now allows lobbyists to easily access senior public office holders from previously entered lobbying activity reports. This feature is designed to save time when registering lobbying activities by providing the name and position title of senior public office holders previously entered more than three times.

We continue to educate lobbyists and the public on those recent changes to the act and the lobbyists registry. Since my November appearance, we have updated two guidance documents. One provides guidance on the term “provincial entities” as it is used in the LTA, while the other focuses on gift-giving prohibitions and provides an update about sponsored travel.

We also have two new guidance documents that will be available in the coming weeks. The first helps members of the public understand the type of information they can find in the lobbyists registry and how to search the information in that registry. The second helps public office holders understand what they are and are not required to do under the LTA.

You will know that most requirements under the LTA fall on lobbyists themselves but that there are some that public office holders would do well to be aware of, such as the two-year cooling-off period if someone leaves a public office holder position. This guidance also outlines some best practices for public office holders to consider when engaging with lobbyists.

A recent March issue of our e-newsletter Influencing B.C. has been included in our list of resources sent prior to our appearance today. As you peruse it, you will see that we have featured information on the recent amendments on the LTA and the lobbyist transparency regulation that exempts three B.C. regulatory authorities from the LTA or the regulation when engaged in activities conducted under an administrative agreement with the province of British Columbia.

Our public education work continues as we explore ways to make our resources accessible to lobbyists, public office holders and the public. The goal continues to be to ensure that the legislation is understood so that lobbyists achieve a high rate of compliance with the act and to make the information in the lobbyists registry easily accessible to the public.

Whether serving the public in the areas of lobbying, access to information or privacy, my office is committed to developing a more inclusive, healthier workplace that builds upon continual learning, cultural agility, openness and inclusiveness. As part of that work, we created a diversity and inclusion group known as DIG that is comprised of volunteer staff members committed to recommending actions for enhancing inclusiveness into our workplace policies, procedures and services.

I want to share just a little bit about the progress we’ve made in that regard. The office has integrated a number of action items recommended by the DIG team to our senior leadership over the past few years, including incorporating Indigenous behavioural competencies into our hiring practices; using gender-neutral language in our communications and interactions; updating our harassment, discrimination and bullying policies; and providing internal training on topics ranging from building respectful and equitable workplaces to trauma-informed dispute resolutions and having difficult conversations.

The DIG team has also recommended actions for how the OIPC and ORL can respond to the calls for action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. In addition to hiring and training, this work includes reviewing our investigation and adjudication processes.

Consistent with this, we are reviewing the Accessible B.C. Act and preparing to respond to its requirements. In doing so, we’ll be joining public bodies that are creating a plan, a committee and a feedback tool that promotes accessibility. Respect is a core value of our office, and our team is committed to an inclusive and healthy environment for staff and the public.

I would like to conclude my time this morning with a brief preliminary review of our 2021-2022 financials. The ’21-22 fiscal year numbers are still to be finalized, but at this point, we are projecting just over a 2½ percent surplus on our operating funds. Of course, we will have a finalized and detailed number, a breakout, for you in the fall. Again, I wish to thank the committee for recommending that government approve our 2022-23 budget request.

[8:20 a.m.]

I want to finish my presentation this morning by acknowledging the work of the OIPC and ORL teams. I am very grateful for all of the people in my office who have chosen public service as a vocation. The people of this province are also fortunate to have them in their employ.

With that, Chair, I thank you and the committee for your attention this morning. We would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

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

Now I’ll invite members of the committee to ask any questions, any follow-up, they may have.

P. Alexis: Good morning, everyone.

I’m just looking at the single budget sheet that you sent along for 2021, 2022, 2023. I see, of course, there are approved FTEs, from 44 to 51. I just wanted to clarify that’s because of Bill 22 and the additional staff. Or is that another thing, because this was, I think, done prior to, perhaps…? I don’t know. If you could fill in the blank for me, I’d appreciate it.

M. McEvoy: That relates to the approval that you gave for further support of the adjudication division to deal with the considerable strain on that resource and the need to hire additional people to deal with it. That would represent those FTEs. I think there were, as I recall, five full-time FTEs and two additional FTEs, I think, over a period of two to three years. That would explain that increase in FTEs that you see there.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Michael, to your team for the presentation.

You had talked about children and online, and the work that you were considering doing, and taking a look at best practices in other jurisdictions. Can you just drill down a little bit to say: “This is what we’re doing today and, by looking at these other jurisdictions, this is what we can do tomorrow to make it safer”?

M. McEvoy: Yes. Probably the leader in this field right now is the United Kingdom. Their legislation for private sector privacy allows for code-making — that is to say, a set of rules that can be developed by the commissioner, actually, in the case of the U.K., but ultimately approved by the parliament.

The parliament directed the commissioner in that case to develop a code specifically aimed at protecting children. What the regulator did in that case was go out and consult with stakeholders, listen to the public and develop a set of rules specifically designed at protecting children in the online world. That was then approved by parliament, and they have in place now a code to deal with those things, and it’s enforceable at law.

I think the use of a code is actually a very useful tool, because what it means is that the legislation in place doesn’t have to be amended every time there’s a new technology or there’s an issue that needs to be addressed. It’s a flexible tool, I think — the principle of a code-making process.

We are looking at that issue here amongst our team. It’s an issue that we’ve started to have a discussion with the minister about — just started that process very recently. We intend to follow up on it because, as I noted, in order to really give the kind of protection I think we need for our kids…. It’s not just an issue in the U.K. or here in British Columbia; it’s really very much a global issue. In order to properly enforce it, you need jurisdictions throughout the world really developing similar kinds of rules around these things that are enforceable, where jurisdictions can cooperate and coordinate to ensure that those rules are met.

Of course, the companies themselves operate without regard to borders. Data flows without friction, really, for the most part, across borders. That requires, I think, jurisdictions across the world, as well, to get their act together in order to put the protections in place that are going to serve our kids.

H. Sandhu: My questions regarding the additional seven FTEs have been asked and answered. Thank you for that.

[8:25 a.m.]

In addition to that, what we’re discussing — the protection of children, that code implementation in the U.K. — I’m curious if they do have, after launching that, measured outcomes. Or are they still waiting? It sounds like it’s something that could be really useful, given how Internet connected the entire world. Data doesn’t see the boundaries or the jurisdictions. Just if you know that there are positive signs that they’re seeing already?

M. McEvoy: So it’s very early days. I did actually have a discussion with one of my colleagues in the UK just a couple of weeks ago about it. They’ll obviously deal with specific complaints that they receive from parents or members of the public about it. But I do think that they have an intention, as I understand it, to do some audits, as well, of various companies to see how their practices are doing in line with the kinds of rules that have been recently set out. It is still early.

At least on the surface, a number of the large tech companies are indicating that these are very important rules as well. They understand their importance and are making changes to ensure that they’re…. If they know that they’re serving children or they can reasonably be expected to have children on their site, to make sure that things like tracking are just turned off by default would be one example. Or ensuring that the kind of psychological nudging that might direct children into turning off certain kinds of function that would protect their privacy — those are the kinds of things that would not be used.

It’s also a matter of educating businesses and organizations about what they should and shouldn’t be doing in relation to children. That’s also important. But it is early days, and we will continue, I think, with interest to monitor that. We’re not the only ones. Colleagues across this country are looking at the same thing, as are others across the globe.

H. Sandhu: Really interesting. Thank you.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Michael. That was comprehensive. This is the first time I’ve been involved in this committee and learning, and I appreciate the update.

Well, Mike stole my original question, but I’m going to add onto that. So do you see this expanding at all — the role of the RCY and any involvement in terms of her oversight? And has there been conversation with her on recognizing that this is becoming an increasing issue, or is it completely out of her purview?

M. McEvoy: That’s an excellent question. I do expect that I will be chatting and having more than a conversation with my colleague the Representative for Children and Youth. I would note, in general terms, that it’s important to note that for the work of our office and this field but also other fields — for example, artificial intelligence — the boundaries do not stop at the Privacy Commissioner’s door. These are broader societal issues that you as legislators are tackling.

But we as regulators are also tackling them and recognize that these are issues that raise issues with, for example, the children’s commissioner, the Human Rights Commissioner and the ombuds office, who deal in the issues of fairness. It’s one of the reasons why the officers work closely together to talk about issues that we have in common and ways that we can share resources and approach these issues with more of a global approach.

The short answer to your question is yes. We will be talking to the Representative for Children and Youth and, I expect, other officers about this issue as well, because it expands just beyond the two of us.

B. Stewart: Commissioner, it’s great to have your very precise presentation. A couple of things that we talked about and what led to last year’s significant increases were that you demonstrated the backlog that you were facing and the fact that it was actually growing. You mention it in your notes here.

[8:30 a.m.]

I wanted to know if you could give us an update on, I guess, where you’re at in terms of, as you mentioned, staffing being increased and what the future is looking like to get back down to a reasonable expectation as somebody asking for or filing a complaint with you.

Then lastly, in terms of where you are at with the adjustments from the workplace, the staff — have they returned back to full-time? Where are we at in terms of the future of work in your office?

M. McEvoy: On the first question, when we lost a period before you, we projected that the backlog on the adjudication division by the time we reached this meeting would be something in the neighbourhood, I think, of about 235 inquiry files, if I’m not mistaken. It turned out that number was, I think, 237 or thereabouts, so we were almost precisely on point for what we were projecting for the backlog. Obviously, a significant issue and one which we’re determined to tackle to ensure that we’re properly providing service to the public.

We were in a position to begin hiring adjudicators, obviously, when the budget was approved, and that process…. Literally, as we speak offers are being extended to very qualified people to take on that work, and we look forward to those hires.

Obviously, it takes some work to get people up to speed to understand fully the work that they’re dealing with, because it’s very specific and a highly targeted kind of adjudication. But we’re confident, with the resources that you’ve provided, that we will be able to diminish that backlog and get it to a reasonable level as we had outlined in our submission to you in November. It will take some time, but with the skills and ability of the people that we’re bringing on, I’m confident that that will happen.

With regard to the second question about the workplace, along with my colleagues, the two deputies that are here and our senior leadership team in the office, we are talking with our own employees about what the future of our workplace is going to look like. People are sort of gradually returning to 947 Fort Street, but the transition is, I think, a gradual one. I do anticipate we will have something of a more blended workplace in that sense, of people working from home, or working from home and the office and many who wish to return to the office. We’re just working that process out now. Some jobs are more amenable to working from home.

The other thing I would mention about this too is that allowing people to work away from the office also expands the potential pool of candidates. I mean, we do work for all of British Columbians. To have the ability to retain expertise for people who can’t live here necessarily or afford to live here but have incredible abilities to investigate or adjudicate or whatever — I think that’s something that we have to consider in the work we do, as I say, doing the work of all people in this province.

We haven’t landed finally on what it’s going to look like, but I think it’s important that we do, as an office, talk about it, and that the employees who spend their working lives committed to this service have some say in that as well. Together with my two deputies and our leadership team we’re, again, working through that issue now.

B. Stewart: Just one follow-on question. My recollection is that you also had an IT issue, like the servers, etc., needed some sort of upgrade. I know that there’s a separate process that the offices are sharing, but where is this at in terms of your needs?

M. McEvoy: Yes, you’re right. We’re upgrading and modernizing our case tracking system is what it is, and it’s not just our office. It’s the other officers of the Legislature who share 947 Fort Street. I can report to you that there would be some greater detail provided, I expect, by my colleague, the Ombudsperson.

We are on time and on budget. Our office will be rolling that part of the system out this year that I believe has happened in the Ombudsperson’s office last year — in the last fiscal year, was rolled out. So we’re very pleased with the progress that’s being made, and it will provide, I think, more effective service for British Columbians once it’s in place.

[8:35 a.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, it looks like you’ve covered everything. So on behalf of the committee, Michael, I’d like to thank you and your staff for coming today and giving us an update, and also thank you and all your staff for the work that you do.

I also think I speak on behalf of the committee when I thank you for your very proactive approach to your work. We are living in unprecedented times, and the kinds of choices that we make today will impact on the kind of democracy we have in the future. You’re clearly looking ahead to what that means in terms of the work that needs to be done to protect our democracy. Thank you so much for that.

M. McEvoy: Thank you, Chair.

J. Routledge (Chair): Let’s take a recess.

The committee recessed from 8:36 a.m. to 8:58 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Now we’ll proceed with the presentation from the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth, Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth.

Over to you, Jennifer.

OFFICE OF THE REPRESENTATIVE
FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

J. Charlesworth: Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. It’s lovely to be here in person with you. I am pleased to be here once again to give you an update on the activities within our office and to also give you some budget highlights.

I’d like to begin in a good way by acknowledging the traditional lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples, specifically the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations, on whose territories we are able to gather and do our work in a good way.

I’d also like to take a moment to introduce Pippa Rowcliffe, who is the deputy representative. Pippa is responsible for our corporate shared services as well as reviews and investigations. Of course, within the context of corporate shared services, that includes finance.

Samantha is not able to be with us today, and Dianne is actually on the other end of the text because she is ill. So if Pippa is working away on her phone, please know that it’s in communications with Dianne, who is our chief financial officer.

[9:00 a.m.]

We’ve provided you with a detailed written submission, including background information about the RCY, an update on our activities since we came to you in November and since our annual report was released at the end of September. Given our time today, and I’m sure that you’ve got questions, I will keep my remarks quite brief. I won’t go through all the details of the submission, but I would like to bring out a few things for your consideration today and look forward to your questions.

I want to talk first about the context that we’re working within and the ways in which that’s influencing the children, youth, young adults and families that we are accountable to, and therefore, the way in which we organize ourselves and do our work.

I am 3½ years into my first term as the representative, and it’s become obvious to me, especially during the last year, that the status quo is not an option.

I didn’t expect, when I started this job, that I would be spending the bulk of it within the context of a pandemic. But nonetheless, it’s been a tremendous learning opportunity. So much has changed in all facets of life, not only because of COVID and all the things that have happened as a consequence of that, but because of other events.

Certainly, the pandemic has put considerable pressure on families and, by association, children, youth and young adults. That’s emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually and financially. We know that the COVID impacts have certainly heightened and illuminated the fractures and the frailties of our current systems of care.

We’ve seen an increasing incidence of mental health concerns amongst children and youth, as well as their caregivers and parents, and a noticeable shortfall in availability and accessibility of services, particularly for children and youth with complex needs — mental health, developmental challenges, substance use issues and the combinations of those.

We’ve also seen significant short- and long-term staffing challenges and instability for the Ministry of Children and Family Development and other public bodies, as well as our community service partners. This leads to reduced or even non-existent supports, in some cases, across B.C.’s child, youth and family and young adult–serving systems.

Of course, I can’t speak about the changing context without also referring to the toxic drug supply. The impact on children, youth and families is varied. Sometimes we see, through our death and injury reports, the deaths of children. We certainly see a significant number of overdose events being experienced by children as well as youth. We see very young children.

We are also seeing a number of our young people that are experiencing what we code as emotional harm as a result of a parent, caregiver, sibling or loved one passing away. They are working through profound grief and loss during a time in which it is more difficult to find and offer support with loved ones and community members.

The other major challenge with regards to context in which we are working centres specifically on how Indigenous children, youth and families are served. As members may be aware, more than two-thirds of the children and youth in care are First Nations, Métis, Inuit or urban Indigenous identifying. The enduring damaging legacy of colonialism continues to have a profound and outsized impact on these families.

They’ve been feeling the affects of the pandemic and the toxic drug supply, of course, as well. But they’ve also been feeling the impact of something else. I think our lives all changed on May 27 of last year, with the discovery of the 215 children on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc peoples. Since that day, it’s been extremely painful for many Indigenous families and communities as the recoveries continue to happen and as the impact and the stories now start to come out.

That date of May 27 was what I called a no-turning-back point, when every Canadian had no choice but to acknowledge that the effects of residential school and other colonialist policies are not historical. These effects are ongoing, and they must be addressed with sufficient resources and every ounce of energy that British Columbians and Canadians can find.

Today an Indigenous child is still 18 times more likely than a non-Indigenous child in B.C. to come into government care. That’s an inexcusable continuation of the colonial legacy and the residential schools.

Adding to this great impetus for change and the complexity of the overall landscape in which we work is the fact that individual First Nations in B.C. are beginning the journey towards asserting jurisdiction over their child welfare services.

Finally, the other major factor for the RCY, as part of our context — and for any organization, really — is the challenging fiscal climate in which we find ourselves as we emerge from the pandemic.

[9:05 a.m.]

As this committee is well aware, there are many competing fiscal priorities. I’m very mindful of that as an independent officer. I have to make sure that our resources — the resources that you grant us as an independent office — are used to the very greatest ability and impact possible to help children, youth, young adults and families in B.C. The fact is that these are unprecedented changes. The context in our work is very different. So as I say, the status quo is no longer an option.

So I want to take a few moments to talk about how we’re adapting. We’re going to continue to adapt, as well, because we’re learning every day. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think: “Okay, what do I need to pull out of my toolkit and my knowledge in order to figure out how to show up in a good way?”

We’ve learned from the pandemic. As I’ve mentioned to this committee before, we’ve moved very quickly to remote working arrangements for many of our staff, and we adjusted technologically in ways that would allow us to conduct our business online, not only as teams but also with the young people and the families and the partners that we work with. We’re still adjusting on that front, even as we move back, gratefully, to in-community work that’s so vital, meeting with our young people.

The important changes to how we work are going to be around where we’re physically situated and what software we are using, however. We have established what we call the paddling forward strategy, and we’re refocusing on key priorities and reimagining ways that we can be most effective. I’ll talk about a few of those. More detail is in the submission.

As part of that strategy, we’ve considered all the external factors that I’ve just reviewed and identified a number of areas that we think we need to focus on for the remainder of my first term. These include — no surprise — addressing the over-involvement of the child welfare system in the lives of First Nations, Métis, Inuit and urban Indigenous children and families and supporting assertion of jurisdiction. That’s our number one and overarching priority in everything that we do.

Other priority areas include: children and youth substance use concerns; children and youth and their mental health concerns; children and youth with support needs, additional support needs and especially those that are experiencing multiple complex challenges; supporting families to nurture their children and youth as a critical prevention strategy, what we call keeping families safely together, or backing up the bus and working in the early years; residential services — there has been a bit of an outcry this week in that area — and supporting youth who are transitioning into adulthood.

I’m going to talk a little bit about assertion of jurisdiction and the RCY, because you may be curious what the implications are for us. In 2019, the federal government enacted An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families, which is aligned with the TRC calls for action and, of course, the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. This legislation came into force in January 2020 and is enabling legislation that will allow for First Nations or Indigenous governing bodies — so that could include Inuit, Métis, First Nations — to assert jurisdiction over child and family services.

A number of nations in B.C. are moving in that direction in restoring their laws and designing their own child well-being systems of support in preparation for assertion of jurisdiction. There are some moves, too, under the Child, Family and Community Service Act. Five nations are moving forward under that act to try and have greater control over child welfare in collaboration with MCFD. So it’s very fluid.

This will take many, many years, but in the meantime, how do we have to show up? Once an Indigenous governing body establishes full jurisdiction, our office actually will no longer have jurisdiction over their services, because it’s under a federal act and it’s government-to-government, federal to the Indigenous governing body. Obviously, that will have a significant impact on our work in the years to come.

It’s an area that we’ve actually recommended to our Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth, who are undergoing a legislative review — that they consider that as they’re taking a look at our legislation. But quite likely, the changes won’t be significant until later on, and we’re suggesting the big change will probably be in the latter part of the 2020s. So 2027 is the next time that they’d be reviewing the legislation. In the interim, we have recommended to the committee that they make a number of changes to our legislation during its current review, including capacity to assist these Indigenous governing bodies during this transition period.

A number of Indigenous governing bodies have already reached out to us informally to find out what kind of a relationship they could have with us. That could range from…. We would assist them to build their internal capacity with respect to reviews and investigations, audits, quality assurance and advocacy.

[9:10 a.m.]

In other cases, they are interested in us continuing on to have a role for a period of time so that they can focus on the direct services to children and youth, and we can provide that kind of supportive oversight.

Regardless of which way we go, that will be entirely up to those Indigenous governing bodies. We’ve asked for enabling legislation that would allow us to be in service to them, and that’s what we would do. We see our role as evolving more and more in a place of assistance and support to those nations and Indigenous governing bodies. That’s something that’s in the future, but nonetheless, something that we’re very mindful now of how we build capacity.

I want to talk a little bit about what we call our enabling mechanisms, because I think this is pertinent to the questions you were asking around the adjustments that we’re making and the innovations that we’re bringing forward.

One thing is our training and supports. Part of our role in helping nations and Indigenous governing bodies, Métis Nation B.C., with assertion of jurisdiction and addressing service inequities, which I’ve also mentioned, is to ensure that our staff have the training and the wherewithal to provide that support in a culturally safer and attuned way.

To that end, we’ve offered, and will continue to offer, all of our staff training in cultural safety, anti-racism and trauma-informed and restorative practices. We now have an RCY knowledge-keeper, a full-time knowledge-keeper, and a cultural safety adviser that continues to work with us, and we’re developing what we’re calling Elder and Matriarch circles who will walk alongside us with all of our projects, as well as supporting our staff and guiding our work with our communities.

We’re also looking at how we can strengthen our relationships with Indigenous partners, including Indigenous child and family service agencies, B.C. friendship centres and First Nations and Métis leadership. So that’s one piece.

The other piece that has really shifted for us is our partnerships with external researchers. As you can appreciate, when we’re dealing — and I’ll talk a little about the scope of our work — with all of the issues that are affecting the complex needs of children, youth and families, I can’t possibly, in a team of 70, have the expertise in all the areas. So we’ve recognized that we need to work very strategically with external partners, because there’s expertise out there, particularly in the public post-secondaries and the research institutes.

An example of that is our recent Crossroads report. It took a look at the fiscal situation and fiscal discrimination, as we called it, for Indigenous children and families and the funding model from the federal government and the provincial government. We worked with the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy and the University of Ottawa, and they were invaluable in helping us translate a very complex area. We released At a Crossroads: The Road Map From Fiscal Discrimination to Equity in Indigenous Child Welfare on March 29, and that was a beautiful model that we’re going replicate as we go forward.

Just a little bit about that report. It also highlighted concerning issues of transparency and accountability with respect to provincial funding, so as a committee responsible for funding and budgets, I urge you to read that report even though it was presented, primarily, to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth.

This is an example, as I say, of how we’re trying to do our business differently rather than having to be the experts in every area. We have identified expertise with post-secondary institutions, research organizations and community agencies to conduct research with us in this coming year on our priorities: mental health, substance use, residential care, youth transitioning from care, children and youth with support needs and the early-years interventions. That’s one area.

Another area that’s a shift for us, and I spoke about this in November, is knowledge mobilization. We release a lot of reports, and they have recommendations. Sometimes those reports are in the hands of government, and we will monitor that. But many times these reports have public…. There are public implications associated with them. So we’ve decided to do more with our reports to ensure that a broader array of people are aware of what’s in them and how that can be useful. So it’s not just the service delivery sector, but it’s also educators, rehabilitation workers, recreation workers and families themselves — caregivers, foster care givers.

[9:15 a.m.]

As I say, details are in the submission, and we’ve spoken about that before. But we’re focusing this year on developing our capacity for knowledge mobilization in two areas. One, in our Excluded report, which took a look at the experience of children with FASD. We’ve developed a video. We’ve developed some resource material. We’ve developed a short report that’s very accessible. It has lots of visuals, so that it’s more accessible to people like educators and family members who are advocating for children with FASD.

The other area that we’re working on, and most of this will roll out in June, is pertaining to Skye’s Legacy: A Focus on Belonging, a very, very powerful report about what we can do to enhance the well-being of children through greater connection and belonging to people, to place, to community and to culture. So that’s a new area for us. We hope to spread the impact and make sure that every effort that we put in our reports actually has longevity.

I’m going to switch now to our internal review processes. As part of ensuring that RCY is as effective and as focused as possible so that we’re able to pull on those right levers for systemic improvements, we’re conducting a number of internal process reviews. If we’re expecting the public bodies to do their work, then we have to do our work as well.

The most significant is a line-by-line examination of our budget to ensure that expenditures are as focused and efficient as possible. I’ll get into that in more detail in a few minutes, but here are a couple of other internal processes I wanted to highlight.

The RCY and the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, a little over two years ago, created a corporate shared-services agreement. We’re two years in. Obviously, we’ve been through the pandemic, so it makes it more challenging for sure. Both offices support this arrangement, but we also recognize that we need to build on the learning and ensure that we are being the most effective and responsible with the resources.

We commissioned an external review, and we’re in the final stages of taking a look at that and reviewing and revising our shared-service models. Early findings of this review were that the services have actually been significantly under-resourced over the last two years. It’s really to the credit of our incredible staff in corporate shared services that we’ve been able to hold things together, but we did not allow sufficient resources, especially as Human Rights Commissioner was a start-up, essentially, over those last couple of years.

We’ll be working together in the next six months to address the issues, with a strong focus on finding opportunities within existing budgets, you’ll be happy to know. That’s an agreement that both Kasari and I have.

Meanwhile, the administrative and project coordination needs of RCY have also evolved over time, and because of the volume of work that we do, it’s time for a fundamental refresh there. We’re committed to a number of substantial projects over the coming year and a half, particularly that require significant administrative and project coordination expertise. Ensuring the most focused and efficient use of resources — again, within existing budget, you’ll be happy to know — will be essential to our success.

Again, we commissioned an external review of our administrative support services, administrative functions, and we’ll be implementing the recommendations from that in a different model in this fiscal year. So that’s a little bit about our internal work.

I want to shift now, just before I conclude, to talk about the increased volume and complexity of our work. This is our mandatory, day-to-day work. As we conduct the review of our business and think about where we can have the greatest impact, I need you to know about what’s happening in our non-discretionary workload, because it continues to grow.

In the fall of 2021 legislative session, an amendment to the RCY Act was passed and subsequently proclaimed at the end of February. This important amendment — we’re thrilled with it — now allows us to advocate on behalf of children up to the age of 27. That was increased from the age of 23. This changed the population of young adults eligible for RCY advocacy services by 60 percent. We expect it to influence our workload over the coming year.

The workload of the RCY advocacy team members remains high and diverse. In this fiscal year of 2021-22, 1,811 children, youth and young adults were served either directly or indirectly by advocacy services. It’s interesting that our numbers don’t look considerably different than the previous year. However, what we have seen is a difference in the nature of the situations coming forward.

COVID did depress our numbers for a period of time. We’re starting to see it move up again. But if you compare it to the pre-COVID time, we were serving about another couple hundred children every year. As we’re not out in community, it’s been harder. People haven’t known about us in the same way, because otherwise, in typical times, our advocates are out in community, meeting with agencies and educators, etc.

[9:20 a.m.]

Our advocates, however, are spending more time in case meetings related to children, youth and young adults they’re supporting. In fact, the total hours that the RCY advocates spent in such meetings has more than doubled since 2019-20. We can also see growing complexity through the number of months that the files remain in active status, which continues to increase — nine months or more — and the number of service lines that are involved.

I have to say, because of the challenges within the system — the staff shortages, all the things that are going on — our advocates are often in situations where they’re advocating and there’s very little to find. They have to work very, very hard with their colleagues to try and find something that will make a difference in a child’s life. So: complexity.

Reviews and investigations. Our team there continues to deal with significant increases. In 2021-22 our team screened an average of 380 critical injury and death reports per month. During the first three months of 2022, this number has increased to more than 440 per month, on average. When we talk about critical injuries, these are significant, life-altering.

This has continued a trend of consistent and significant increases in the number of in-mandate critical injuries and deaths reported to RCY over the past several years. When we receive these reports, some, we determine, are out of mandate. They don’t meet a certain threshold. We still track those, because there are patterns and trends in that, but we focus our attention on those that are in-mandate and meet the threshold of critical injury or death within a certain time frame — all the things that are legislatively required.

The total number of in-mandate critical injuries and deaths for fiscal 2021-22 was 2,515, representing a percentage increase of 31 percent over 2020-21. This also represents a 115 percent increase since 2018-19 and a 184 percent increase since 2016-17. Further increases in reports of critical injuries and deaths and subsequent workload are on the horizon.

Reporting from health authorities. This seems like something I repeat every time I come to this committee. We’ve been working with the health authorities. They’re statutorily required to report, but they have not been reporting. We’ve been working with them, actually, since my predecessor, Bernard Richard, started this. But we are very close.

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is now reporting in the area of substance use and addiction, in narrow areas. We’re working with the other health authorities, and we’re fortunate to see movement in that area. Once implemented, this new reporting from health authorities will contribute to further increase in our workload pressures.

At the same time, it’s important to note that we’re very pleased that we’ve been able to move forward in this area. The opportunity to gather information from the health authorities is important to understand what’s happening for children, because they’re not just being served in one part of a system of Children and Family Development. They’re also presenting at emergency departments. They’re also in adolescent psychiatric units. They’re also presenting with overdose events, etc. To fully understand mental health and substance use concerns, this data will be really critical for us.

I will end, talking about budget, briefly. Budget planning has been a challenge over the last couple of years. Every year we come, and we need to plan for business as usual, but of course, it hasn’t been business as usual. Particularly for us, we have a very significant travel budget because we spend a lot of time out in community. In fact, in my first year, before COVID, I had 200 community events. I was out in community a lot in order to listen, learn and understand what is best for our children.

We are now resuming our in-person community capacity, but it’s safe to say that last fiscal year we did very little of that. As a result of savings in travel and a few other budget lines, I’m happy to tell you — well, I’m happy for you — that we are returning an approximate $440,000 in surplus funds to general revenue this year. However, I hope that my remarks today — and as evidenced from our submission — are that these are uncertain times. We anticipate that we will be able to work within the budget that we have, but we will need all of it as we go forward.

I did mention that although we review our budget annually, especially in preparation for our submissions to this committee, we’ve decided to do a very deep-dive review, because things have just changed. We have to understand if we have put the money where we need to put it in order to have the greatest effect.

[9:25 a.m.]

With Pippa’s leadership, we’re stripping the budget down for a closer look at what we need and where, and this will build on our regular review. But it really is a very in-depth review. We think that it’s warranted, and it reflects good practice and our commitment to ensure that we are using our resources in this very difficult fiscal climate.

As I say, we anticipate being able to work within our allotted operational budget of $10.982 million for the current fiscal year; however, I would be remiss if I didn’t say: committee, we may have to come back to you, if the caseloads continue to increase at this rate, when we come back to you in the fall. Nonetheless, at this point, we’re doing everything we can to use our resources in the most responsible way going forward. We have a lot on our plate.

I will end my remarks there and welcome your comments and your questions.

P. Alexis: Thank you so much. I always learn so much when you present. I very much appreciate that.

Can you tell me how you’re addressing your staffing shortages, and what that might look like? So many are suffering, regardless of sector, with staff shortages, and it’s so impactful, of course, for you in particular, when we’re dealing with such devastating circumstances. Can you tell me a little bit about how you’re addressing this?

J. Charlesworth: Yes. I love that question. Thank you so much. For any organization, I think they need to take a look at the nature of the work that’s being done and the many different ways that they can respond. There are things that we’ve already done, which I’ll highlight, and things that we are doing and will do, going forward.

What we already have done…. We actually found that when we pivoted to online work, remote work, it worked very well. Our staff were incredible. We had no drop in productivity, and people really appreciated that. So what we did was we decided that we weren’t going to call people back into the office; we were going to give people an option. We gave people an option for full-time remote work, but then we advanced that to the next level and said we would also do decentralized work.

Up till then, for remote work, you still had to be close to Victoria, Prince George or the Lower Mainland. Now we have said, “We will attach you to B.C. service centres,” so decentralized. What’s been very interesting is that has affected things in two ways. One, some of our existing staff have found that they’ve been able to move to communities where they could afford housing. That has been very important, and it becomes something that’s a retention opportunity for us. They want to stay because this is a benefit that they wouldn’t get in many other areas.

The second thing is it has expanded our recruitment pool, because we can go anywhere in the province now, and people can work from anywhere. That’s particularly important because we’ve put a focus on recruitment of Indigenous staff, given the clients that we serve, the people that we serve. It’s very important for many Indigenous folks, First Nations, to stay close to their community and their cultural connections. Again, that has enhanced the ability. We are getting applications from all across the province. That’s what we’ve done.

The other thing that we’re doing right now is actually taking a look at all of our HR policies. That’s another initiative that Pippa is leading. Going right from the ground up and thinking: how are our policies reflecting the contemporary context, including decolonizing and adherence to DRIPA? That’s powerful for staff as well, because they’re seeing that we are trying to be an accountable organization that actually is a rights-based, justice-oriented organization. There’s something that is meaningful for many of our staff there.

The other thing that’s related to that is beginning to think about well-being. I worry about our staff because of the things that we deal with. I’ve been in this field for 45 years as of September, and I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire career — the kinds of things that we’re seeing. I think: oh my goodness. Our staff — particularly the advocates and, in the reviews, the investigators, the investigation analysts — are dealing with these things over and over again. For the advocates, I worry, because we’re not seeing the changes. They don’t know…. Where do you advocate when there are no services?

[9:30 a.m.]

As we’re doing the review of the policy, we’re really thinking about how we focus wellness and well-being. Having things like the Elders and Matriarchs, the knowledge-keeper, we have a very enhanced, robust counselling offering. This exceeds anything that’s available in the public service, so people can reach out and get the supports there, really thinking about: how is it that we support staff?

Then the other thing that’s related to that is meaningful work. We know that people want to have meaning. With paddling forward, it’s been very much about: where are those things that we think we can make a difference on, and how do you want to be involved? So doing cross-project teams so that the advocates then have an opportunity to contribute to public reports as well, which they typically have not had, and being able to work with their colleagues and learn from one another.

So that, and then, of course, we’re taking a look at our recruitment and retention and really trying to figure out: what can we offer? So we’re going to have to go and take a look. Do we have competitive salaries? I can tell you that the PSA is all over the map, and we still are beholden to those levels. So we’re taking a look at those things and whether we’re actually competitive, as well.

So that’s a very long answer for you, but I hope that that kind of covers the different elements.

P. Alexis: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Jennifer and Pippa, for the presentation. I know the work you guys do, and I think it is just emotionally draining and so, so difficult. Thank you for doing it.

A couple clarifications, initially. Did you say that the change in legislation so that you support young people up to 27 has resulted in a 60 percent increase in the work that you’re doing?

J. Charlesworth: Yes.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Okay.

J. Charlesworth: I should clarify: a 60 percent increase in the young adult population that we serve.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Okay, for those — not the actual workload of the office.

J. Charlesworth: That’s right. So the number of young people that we can now serve between the ages of 19 and up to age 27 — that’s a 60 percent increase in the number of young people that are eligible for our services now.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Okay. May I ask clarifying questions, then?

Now, that change has just come in. So you haven’t seen the impact of that yet in terms of what that is going to mean to the office, but that is obviously on the radar.

The 440 reports of critical injury or death on a monthly basis is shocking to me. I’d read the original report, but it didn’t hit me till I heard you say this. But you did say “in scope.” So if I could just clarify, when you’re talking about those critical injuries and deaths, what does “in scope” mean?

J. Charlesworth: Right, okay. Great question.

So the 440 are reports that we receive primarily from the Ministry of Children and Family Development and Indigenous child and family service agencies. They’ve got criteria around what gets reported to us. When they come in, we look at every one of those. Then we determine, based on our criteria, what is in scope or in mandate. So those are the ones that we do the deeper dive — the more thorough review — on.

Everything is logged. Everything is tracked. Every report, actually, that comes to me shows me how many times a child, for example, has had an out-of-mandate report to us as well. But the “in mandate” basically refers to it meeting the threshold of critical injury. It means, essentially, life-altering.

What we’re talking about there are suicide attempts; suicidal ideation; emotional harm, which is primarily through the death of a loved one — for example, through the toxic drug supply — or caregiver mistreatment. So this is when they’re in the care of a staffed residential home or a foster caregiver, and they’ve been harmed by that caregiver. It includes sexual violence. It includes exploitation. It includes physical violence. And I’m forgetting one. At any rate, you get the idea. It’s those kinds of things that fundamentally are traumatic for a child and affect their experience as they grow up.

Of course, deaths are self-evident. We actually aren’t seeing a change in the number of deaths. It’s been pretty stable. What’s increasing is the number of in-mandate critical injuries. I think that’s associated with things like better reporting, for sure. The ministry is doing a very good job in that area.

But it’s also associated with things like the mental health crises. Suicide attempts, suicidal ideation and non-suicidal self-harming behaviours are increasing — acute mental health crises. It’s associated with the toxic drug supply. It’s associated with a significant increase in sexual exploitation and gang involvement.

[9:35 a.m.]

That’s what we’re seeing. I hope that answers your question.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. It does.

H. Sandhu: I would like to say thank you, Jennifer and Pippa. It’s such a great presentation. And for the work you and your staff do — it’s incredible.

It’s a comment and a question. It was pretty impressive to find out that you’re exploring all of the options to be flexible with staffing and letting them work from remote locations. In my opinion, decentralization will, perhaps, also help find the issues in those rural communities, because their challenges could be, certainly, different than the urban cities.

I see that, in this budget, one FTE is being reduced in 2023-24, if you can tell us what that FTE was and why we decreased it. You mentioned short- and long-term staffing challenges. What are the main reasons? I know there could be several reasons, but what is the prominent reason? Is it illness, retirement, people leaving jobs due to stress or any other…? If you can share with us, that would be helpful.

J. Charlesworth: I’m going to turn to you around the…. I’m not entirely sure that I’m following. I don’t think our FTEs are going down.

P. Rowcliffe: No, I’m not following that question.

H. Sandhu: Oh, is it the approved? It says approved FTE, 77 in 2021-2022 and ’23, and then 2023 and ’24 is 76 — the year after. I was just curious.

P. Rowcliffe: I’m curious too.

H. Sandhu: I was thinking the workload is being increased, and the FTE, so that’s why I thought I’d ask.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you. I’m glad that you asked.

Let’s talk about the staffing pieces. I think there are two dimensions that we need to understand here. One is our staffing challenges. What I would say there is that we’ve seen retirement. We have also seen people that have been with our organization for a number of years, and they need something different.

We’re very, very supportive of people going on temporary assignments. So that’s been an interesting challenge for us. It’s a good thing, though, because people are able to go, have other experiences and then come back. We benefit tremendously. They benefit tremendously, because their CV expands. But also, we are learning about the public bodies that they’re going to. We’ve got TAs right now with the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the Ministry of Health.

Conversely, we bring people in from the ministries and public bodies into TAs as well. There are lots of advantages of that, but it does create some challenge. You have a little bit more fluidity in staffing.

And then other people are in a situation where they just need to do something different. I think that it’s probably one of those areas…. There is a certain lifespan working within a place like the RCY, both because it’s an independent office — I think some people need to go back into the general ministry world — but it’s also the nature of the work that we do. It’s heartbreaking. I think that’s part of what we are dealing with.

At the same time, we’re very fortunate, because when we do put postings out, we actually get a very robust response. There are a lot of people that want to work in the RCY and have that experience, especially if they’ve worked within the system and they want to be a part of systemic change.

We’re actually not struggling as much as our public body partners, though. The Ministry of Children and Family Development, the community agencies in particular, are really struggling with staffing shortages, to the extent that there are a number of MCFD offices that have no staff or less than 50 percent, and they’re having to fly in folks to go and provide the services to the community. It’s, again, the nature of the work that’s going on, the toll that COVID has taken, etc.

That affects us indirectly, because you’re phoning and you’re trying to do some advocacy work, and it’s really hard to reach people, or they say: “We don’t know what else to do. There isn’t anything available.”

That’s how the staffing shortages, in a short- and long-term way, are affecting our organization and the relationships we have with our public bodies. I worry a great deal about the community social services sector right now. I’ve heard from contractors that are saying, “We’re giving back our contracts because we can’t recruit staff,” particularly for staffed residential.

I hope that helps.

[9:40 a.m.]

H. Sandhu: A quick follow-up, if I may. I wonder if there have been discussions….Again, as my colleague Karin also mentioned, this is a job very mentally stressful and draining — and heartbreaking, at the same time. I know that in health care, some organizations or even unions provide resiliency workshops to deal with it. If that’s something that is being done or that’s something to consider, because retention of staff and the nature of work….

I am pretty impressed with the way you’re already being very creative, so it’s just curiosity.

J. Charlesworth: That’s a wonderful suggestion. We probably do have a lot to learn from our health colleagues.

We’re very fortunate that our new executive director for reviews and investigations actually comes from the Ministry of Health. It’s the first time we’ve had somebody who’s from a senior position in the Ministry of Health come over. We are learning a tremendous amount. Her background is in maternal and child health and epidemiology, so this is an area that we’ll learn from her as well.

That’s actually a really good point. We focused a lot of our training and development on enhancing our capacity to work in this complex environment. We’re trying to build stronger and safer workplaces too, in how we support one another and lift one another up. But we haven’t explored the idea of resiliency workshops or things like that. But that’s an excellent suggestion. Thank you.

P. Rowcliffe: We’ll take that under advisement. It actually is related to our corporate services, which we’re currently doing a full review on. I think you’ll probably see us adjust that when we come back in November. But it was related to the start-up of OHRC and then an adjustment in HR requirements on their side. I’ll take it back, and we’ll have a look at that.

I just want to also build on Jennifer’s comments that one of the other things we are doing is a full review of what we’re calling office space, but we’re considering that to be both virtual and physical. In a town hall we ran recently, one of the requests from our staff was to create space that, actually, really allows for some of what you’re talking about: staff to sit together and both work but also be in space and more in relationship, both here in Victoria but also in the virtual spaces where we can gather people together who are sort of in the same geographic regions.

We’re paying a lot of attention to how we support, through use of space, that idea of relationship, of connection and the importance that staff need to debrief and emotionally support each other through the work that they do. That’s something else that, probably in November, you’ll see, because it affects physical space here. But it also is going to affect budget in terms of how we support staff to come together in the spaces that they’re in.

L. Doerkson: First off, I wanted to thank you for the presentation. I wanted to note that I absolutely agree with your “no turning back” comment about 215. Thank you for acknowledging that.

I have two questions. I guess the first one is…. You noted that the numbers during COVID for help had actually dropped. I think you noted that some of that was because of your connection to the community, etc. And now a very large increase.

I guess my first question is: is that being driven by COVID, or is it being driven by something else?

My second question, I guess, is maybe a little more complex. My limited experience…. I shouldn’t say “limited experience.” It’s certainly become a daily situation in both my offices, in 100 Mile and in Williams Lake. I can tell that it is becoming more serious also through volunteer efforts that I have through food programs, etc. The need for that food for hungry kids is growing unbelievably, actually.

You yourself noted…. I think in one of your answers, you noted that you’ve never seen anything like this before in 45 years. What is driving it?

J. Charlesworth: Oh, my goodness.

L. Doerkson: These are simple questions.

J. Charlesworth: Thanks for the simple questions.

I’ll take the first one. It’s important to distinguish. We’ve got our advocacy team that’s receiving those calls or those requests from young people, from family members, from caregivers, etc. That’s actually not…. We saw the dip in the first part of COVID, especially the first four months. Then we started to see it go back up again.

[9:45 a.m.]

Over the year, the first part of the early months of the pandemic, a significant drop. I think everybody, like all of us, was just: “What the heck? What are we going to do now?” Then we started to come up. Then it’s continued to basically hold pretty steady since then. We’re not seeing a dramatic increase in the numbers of calls that we’re getting for advocacy.

I think I would expect that we would be getting more, but that’s because we’re not out in community. As I’ve said, the advocacy situation is more about the complexity of needs. I’m sure you’re all hearing that in your constituency offices — families that are contacting you, saying: “We can’t find anything.” That’s advocacy.

The increase is really in our critical injuries and deaths, in terms of the number of cases. Now, what’s driving that? I think that you hit the nail on the head when you talk about the things that are not traditionally seen as child and family services. We’ve got a housing crisis. We’ve got food insecurity that’s profound, because of the rising costs, inflation. I worry about what’s going to happen over this next period of time, with the cost of inflation and housing, at what that’s going to mean for families.

We’ve got situations in which our educational environments are not able to meet the needs of children with significant behavioural challenges. So they are being excluded from school. Sometimes they might get 45 minutes a day; sometimes none. That’s increasing the number of families that are in significant stress, because parents are having to leave the workforce in order to care full-time for their children. Karin and I have had a situation just recently that we were taking a look at, where exactly that was happening.

I think it’s one of those things that’s actually requiring a very different sort of response — a whole-of-government response, recognizing that you can’t separate out child and family well-being from income security, from food security, from community well-being and access to health care, etc. I often wonder — it’s one of the things that keeps me awake at night: what are we missing? What do we need to do differently? I don’t think that the way in which we’ve envisioned our systems of care — I’m getting a little philosophical here — are the right ways to go forward.

As you say, there’s no turning back. I really struggle; I’m thinking: “Okay, I can’t….” As I look at this family situation, I see that, yes, there are mental health and substance use concerns, and there’s domestic violence, and there are all sorts of things going on. But what’s driving that, so that we can back up the bus and be more preventive? That’s why we’re doing work, and Pippa has provided some leadership. Samantha is providing leadership in this area now, on the early family supports and getting things stable so that children have better outcomes.

I wish I knew the answer to your second question.

L. Doerkson: A quick follow-up. Just with respect to supports, that’s another issue. I agree with you 100 percent. I think that there are a number of different items that are, obviously, driving this. It’s just unbelievable to me how the outcome of the last year or so…. I’ve been doing that food program for probably ten years through my local Rotary club, and we’ve never seen demand like that. Now, fortunately, we’ve never seen support, either, like we’re getting. That’s a great thing.

Just as far as your advocate position for supports in rural British Columbia, what are you doing specifically to encourage different ministries to…? I don’t know if “commit” is the right word, but there is a real lack of help.

In fact, I was just discussing a very serious issue that involved RCMP, that involved a mother being afraid of her child. Those types if things I’m not equipped to deal with, of course. We brought the RCMP on that. There was nowhere else to go in rural British Columbia, for support for this mom or for the son, who was dealing with serious addictions. There are no treatment beds; there’s nothing. What would you say to that?

J. Charlesworth: I would say that I completely agree with you. That’s a phenomenon that is happening throughout this province, particularly in rural British Columbia — again, exacerbated by the challenges of trying to find qualified and skilled caregivers.

What are we doing? Just yesterday, actually, I was meeting with some of our members from the advocacy side of the organization. They’ve done a beautiful job of documenting for me a number of active cases in which we’re seeing the absolute lack of services and supports.

[9:50 a.m.]

We’re using that as a platform to go to the ministry tomorrow, to say; “Okay, here’s what we’re seeing from advocacy. These are the patterns.” I think it’s important that we take a look at these things.

We can deal with one-offs — and we should, because that’s our responsibility as advocates or as leaders such as yourselves — but we have to take a step back and say: “What are those patterns? What are the trends? Where are the weaknesses in the system, the frailties in the system, and how do we deal with it systemically?”

What we’ve identified is a number of trends that we’re seeing with respect to not being able to serve and support these families. Again, I don’t have the answer, but my thinking is that we actually have to rally together with more of a whole-of-government response and a community wisdom in that mix, as well, to say what is going on and what could be different.

We are seeing an increase in the use of RCMP in rural areas to do, essentially, behaviour management, because we have a lack of skilled staff in many of the resources. And we are seeing an increased use of hospitals and emergency departments to try and triage situations, but they’re bursting at the seams, and they’re also dealing with staffing shortages.

Again, it’s one of those things. I’m attending to it because these are enduring patterns and trying to figure out where we need to effect change or who we need to have conversations with. Always happy to have conversations with any MLA about the experiences that they are having in their communities and to come and visit as well — yeah — and meet with people in the community. The more that I gain that community intelligence…. I’m only as strong as the intelligence that people bring to us.

Our reports, our advocacy is great, but community is important. That’s why it’s wonderful that we’re now back in community to hear. But we are seeing the same trends that you are, and it’s heartbreaking, particularly when you’ve got those complex needs of behavioural, violence, mental health and substance use. Those ones are really, really tough for families.

L. Doerkson: Thank you all for your work.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have next a question from Mike, then Ben, and that’s probably all we’re going to have time for.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Dr. Charlesworth. It took me about one millisecond to remember how much enthusiasm you had from the last time you presented.

I, too, had the same question about the decrease in FTEs. When you’re looking at the amount of hours on that one report — it says from 1,135 hours two years ago to now 2,500 hours — it didn’t seem to make sense that that’s the way the numbers were going. But you did say something at the beginning with regard to nations and/or governing bodies kind of getting that ability to handle their own nations and bodies. Is there a shuffle? Is that…?

I mean, I was going: well, I guess if this work is going away, then maybe that’s part of the reason that’s there. So I’m not sure if I solved the problem or not or if you solved it inside, but it kind of made sense. I don’t know if that overlap is there.

J. Charlesworth: Well, I think it’s really part of a budget construction process and the way in which we can’t anticipate the increases that we’re going to ask you for. We say, “Committee, this is what we’re going to need in order to fulfil our responsibilities this year,” and then we’re going to do our very best to stay within the line going forward.

Then, of course, we sometimes come to you with either creative solutions like, “We’ll save money here. Can we redeploy it for staff?” which is what we’ve done with this committee before, or come to you to say: “We’ve got a crisis brewing.” Rest assured, we will take a closer look at this coming forward. Thank you to both of you for the question on that.

With respect to whether the development of the Indigenous governing bodies is going to reduce our workload in the short term, I don’t think so. I think that we might see it within five years, but not within one or two years. The reason for that is twofold. There’s a whole process. Once a nation or an Indigenous governing body notifies the federal government that they want to pursue their own authority, they want to assert jurisdiction, there are essentially a number of phases that they have to go through before that happens.

Cowichan is a good example. They’re doing beautiful work up there. It’s taking them a long time, because they’re doing it in the right way with their community in restoring their laws. So what they thought might take a year is going to take two years, for example. Then you have to build the system up, so there are going to be some parallels for a period of time.

[9:55 a.m.]

We’ve worked really hard. It’s something that I feel very strongly about. I am not Indigenous. I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by amazing Indigenous leaders like Samantha and other members of our executive. But I have realized how important it is that the I build those relationships.

Actually, our relationships with the Indigenous child and family service agencies, First Nations leadership and the Métis Nation B.C. are very, very good. They actually want us to continue, for the most part, to walk alongside them as they build up their capacity. So we’ll continue to do that. But ten years from now? Yeah, we’ll be a different organization. There’s no question.

B. Stewart: Dr. Charlesworth, Ms. Rowcliffe, I just want to thank you. You know what? This is a journey. You talk about some of the terminology, etc. I don’t think that it’s going to disappear anytime soon. I do love your ideas in terms of challenging the status quo and doing these things like MLA Starchuk was just talking about — First Nations getting involved, decentralization, which goes to MLA Doerkson’s question about rural British Columbia. I kind of assume that people are on the move from Prince George, going out.

I want to just ask one question. It happened that we had an incident in my riding about a week or so ago — violence in schools, with kids. The parents, the RCMP, the school board don’t really know where to go. I’m kind of wondering…. It happened again, I think in Abbotsford, with probably a more violent outcome. I guess my question is: have you got any advice on where to…? I’m getting the RCMP telling the parents not to charge the other individual, and it’s a whole lot of other things in the background. I’m just thinking: what do we do when we’re not qualified? Who do we reach out to?

J. Charlesworth: Oh my goodness, yes. That’s an interesting one, because you’ve got the police, you’ve got education, and you’ve got, again, a lack of resources. I think that…. I don’t know the answer.

A quick answer would be that this is not an area we have authority over. It’s not within our mandate to work within the schools, although we are reaching out to our select standing committee and suggesting that there might be an expansion of mandate in some aspects of schooling. But what you’re talking about is not something that we see.

Having said that, the fundamental question is: what do families do when there’s violence and when a young person has been harmed by that? I would say the best thing to do is to take a look at what’s available within the community. I have tremendous respect for so many of our community organizations. If you’re in an area where you have a Foundry, then that….

Violence affects the mental health and well-being of young people. So thinking about what is available within your community…. Again, happy to touch that with you offline, because our advocates know a tremendous amount about what’s available in the community. Even though we wouldn’t advocate in that area, because it’s outside of our mandate, we could certainly say: here are five places or two places, or here’s a provincial body that families can talk to, parents can talk to, about how to address these situations.

Yeah, it’s very interesting. You see quite a bit of difference across the province as to how police or RCMP handle these kinds of situations. I’ve begun conversations with the B.C. chiefs of police, but there are lots of things that I don’t fully understand.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens as a result of the review of the Police Act, for example. I think police are being called into places that are really difficult for them.

It’s not a very good answer. I’m sorry.

J. Routledge (Chair): I want to thank you both, on behalf of the committee. I think we could probably keep you here a lot longer and engage you more about other work that you do. On behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank you for your presentation. I’d like to thank you for the depth with which you’ve answered our questions, and I’d like to thank you for providing such a clear picture window on the work that you do.

[10:00 a.m.]

Also, I think we’re all moved by the context that you provided, linking the kind of crisis that we’ve all been going through the last couple years but reminding us that there are those in our society who experience that crisis a lot more deeply than we do and that you provide them with the resources to survive it and to thrive in the future. Thank you so much for that.

J. Charlesworth: It’s a pleasure. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll call a short recess while we set up for our next presenters.

The committee recessed from 10 a.m. to 10:08 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Welcome back, everybody.

Now I’ll welcome the Auditor General and his staff.

Over to you.

OFFICE OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL

M. Pickup: I’ll do a quick a introduction of the folks that are with me today and really did all the heavy lifting and work, I might add, that goes into this. I kind of got the easier job, to some extent, in this. On my far left is John McNeill. Next to me is Sheila Dodds. On my right is Elaine Hepburn, and next to her is Dave Murray. These folks will be pleased to assist in answering questions as we move through. I have a bit of a presentation to go through, so I’ll walk through the presentation with you.

I want to start by acknowledging, with respect, that at the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia, we conduct our work mainly on the Coast Salish territories. Primarily, this is on the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples’ traditional lands, now known as Victoria, and the W̱SÁNEĆ people’s traditional lands, now known as Saanich. I’m grateful to have been a visitor on this land now for some 21 months, and I strive to be mindful of the connection it holds to Indigenous people in these territories.

It is our pleasure to be here with you today and to have the opportunity to speak to our financial and operational update, which is quite a bit of material, frankly. I’ll also note before moving on that today, April 27, is also Administrative Professionals Day. Celebrated since 1952, it’s a day to recognize the work of administrative assistants, receptionists and other administrative support professionals, who are key to our work.

[10:10 a.m.]

Central to our work, of course, are our admin professionals, who keep us organized and efficient. This keeps us on schedule, and they’re central to our office running efficiently. I’m very appreciative, as all of us are at this table, of the support we receive, and I’m happy to provide some recognition to these folks today, and to say thank-you to them.

Today I’ll be providing three updates — a brief update on our financial and operational results from ’21-22, the year that just ended, a walk-through of our service plan, ’23–25, and a review of our supplementary budget requests.

In terms of providing you an organizational update for ’21-22, I think it’s not an overstatement to say that we’ve had a remarkable year that has challenged us in many ways. We have delivered on our external commitments, which has been a major achievement. We made significant progress on internal work that we need to do as an organization to help foster long-term stability and success.

It has been a considerable push, as we work through major organizational changes. At the same time, in addition, the pandemic and its many impacts, from staff illnesses to turnover, have stressed all of us, particularly the leadership in our office.

Overall, I’m confident that we have struck a balance between continuing to deliver on our mandate while really setting the stage to improve and build lasting stability and resilience in the organization. Both are equally important to me. We will provide lots of additional details in our annual report in late June.

To give you a budget update, we are anticipating to report a surplus for the year just completed of approximately $900,000. That is a lot of money. This surplus, to be returned, reflects an underspend on salaries, and this is due to vacancies, frankly, tied to the challenges of competing in a competitive labour market.

This is from a retention and a recruitment perspective as well, some underspend on our travel budget mainly related to the pandemic and also an underspend on professional services. This is mainly related to the lack of availability, frankly, of contractors and what is required to manage that. And yes, I will note, even contractor resources to find auditors on contract is difficult, if not impossible, to do in this market right now.

However, or nonetheless, despite these challenges in filling vacancies, we were able to deliver on our financial and performance audit commitments. That’s why I said it was a truly remarkable achievement for the leaders in our office, for the 15, 17 people who worked tirelessly to get us here, and for all staff as well.

In terms of a product update, we completed all the financial audit work required in order to provide our opinion on the government’s summary financial statements, which, I will remind folks, is the largest financial statement audit in the province of British Columbia.

We delivered 12 reports to the Legislative Assembly, which included a report on financial statement audit work and a report on a fraud risk management survey that we conducted across the government reporting entity, which again was the most extensive fraud risk management survey ever done in British Columbia.

Ten performance audit reports covered a range of topics from fraud risk and cybersecurity to government’s response to the pandemic, key infrastructure and safety issues, including avalanche safety, dam safety and long-distance bus services to things like home-sharing services for developmentally disabled adults and conservation land management. We’ve been in a lot of places over the last year.

I’m enormously proud of the topics we’ve covered and the incredible effort and expertise it represents. I want to recognize both our audit staff and all of those who support the audit staff, our critical audit support services, for what they’ve accomplished and the challenges they have overcome in order to achieve this.

I’m going to turn now and provide a little bit of a people update to you. We, not surprisingly, experienced an unexpected high level of turnover in ’21-22, some retirements and many departures, quite frankly, for increases in pay and promotional opportunities in both the public sector and the private sector. This cannot easily be backfilled and is posing some challenges for us.

[10:15 a.m.]

We effectively reprioritized to ensure that our audit commitments were met. This meant postponing other work that is important to the strategic development and long-term health of our office.

Some of our turnover was at the management and executive levels, which, of course, impacts corporate knowledge and adds additional pressure to the leadership group that remains. So we had to make choices about activities that had to be deferred, and we needed to ask more from our employees that remained, and they delivered.

But we have to be careful as this can lead to stress and other factors that could drive additional turnover. So we have to go forward cautiously.

I want to illustrate some of our current challenges. We are budgeted for about 130 full-time-equivalent positions. We’ve had some vacancies because of departures, but we also had 19 people, or 15 percent of our people, away from their positions for an extended period of time as of March 31, 2022. These absences can be for different reasons. They can be health reasons, they can be temporary work assignments with other organizations or, in many happy cases, new parents who are on leave as well.

The common element in all of this and why I bring it up is that temporary vacancies like that are more challenging or nearly impossible, in many cases, to fill than permanent vacancies, right? You’re only offering people a short-term assignment. But the good news is, and I think there is good news, we’ve invested a lot in our people this year and have a lot to show for it. So I’ll move on to that.

In 2021-22, we also focused on what we want to be as an organization. This has meant rethinking our governance processes to build in more transparency and a highly unified and engaged leadership group; engaging our staff in strategic planning processes to clarify and restate our vision, our mission, our values, goals and objectives; commencing strategic initiatives to revitalize our culture; improve our corporate planning and audit planning and management processes, which, in the long run, should make our office a more competitive and attractive employer.

We prioritized organizational work in the latter half of the fiscal year and are continuing to build on these steps as highlighted to you in our service plan. We’re seeing the results of much of that work, including the many weekends and nights worked by people at this table and others. We are seeing this in our recent work environment surveys, which has resulted in a marked improvement overall compared to the 2020 survey, which was done before I was appointed as AG.

I’ll speak to some of those numbers in the context of our use of the data as a key performance indicator, going forward, when I introduce our new service plan.

One of the critical initiatives that we focused on last year was the development of human resource policies to help us leverage the tools and lessons that have emerged from the pandemic and support our staff to continue using remote work and other flexible and hybrid approaches to working. What we’ve learned is that these approaches can help us be more effective and collaborate in new ways, while also adding meaningful value to the lives of our employees and fostering inclusion and individual success. These things are going to help us in the long run.

A key component of the success of this initiative is our plan to modernize our workplace to support a hybrid workforce and reduce our footprint, which we hope to proceed with in the upcoming year. I look forward to speaking to you about that in the supplementary budget request momentarily.

Now for our service plan. I’ll walk briefly through the service plan. A couple of logistic-type things. We normally present our service plan in the fall, along with our budget submission. We reviewed our traditional reporting processes and recognized that historically, over the years, our service plan has been a year out of sync with our budget submission.

Case in point: last fall we presented our service plan along with our ’23 budget, which was well into the year. We decided that approach isn’t aligned with our best interests or, really, our legislative mandate, so the new ’23–25 service plan aligns with the budget submission presented to the committee in November ’21.

[10:20 a.m.]

Then, for the upcoming fall meeting, we will complete the realignment and present a service plan for ’24 to ’26, with a budget submission covering the same three years. We will then be fully in sync, which I think is a great improvement.

I should note that we’ve also made a significant effort to improve the quality of the service plan itself, with an eye to its long-term value. The new service plan reflects a reconsideration of our objectives and strategies, better capturing long-term priorities and establishing a more focused set of measures and objectives that are more aligned with the B.C. reporting principles.

Now I’ll provide a brief overview of the five objectives in our service plan, which start on page 6.

Objective 1: improve clarity and consistency of processes and information used for corporate governance planning and reporting. Our corporate planning and leadership emerged from our strategic planning process as a key long-term priority. This was consistent with the 2019-2020 workplace employee survey results, which placed the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia in the bottom 15 percent of the public service for executive-level management, with a score of 46. That was from the 2019-2020 survey.

We’ve made that a key indicator of our performance in this area. It’s a consistent long-term measure with a transparent and well-established methodology that allows us to objectively track our progress over time.

The results we just received from the 2022 workplace employee survey showed a big improvement: 13 full basis points, to go from 46 to 59. That is a 30 percent increase over our 2019-2020 scores, and I think that is wonderful. This is a positive change and a demonstration of how our recent investment is starting to pay off, but there’s a lot more work to be done, of course.

Objective 2: fostering an engaged workplace where all employees are safe, supported and respected. Our key performance indicator for this objective is our overall engagement score on that work environment survey — which I think I referred to as the work employee survey, but it’s the work environment survey. It’s called the work environment survey. Our benchmark, which was the score from 2019-2020, which was the most recent one done before I arrived, was a score of 61.

Frankly, to be completely upfront with you, going into this and thinking about the challenges of working during a two-year pandemic, I was not expecting that score to improve in 2022, but it did. It increased by five full points. This is a 9 percent increase over our 2019-2020 scores, and I’m very pleased with this — to see this happening. This indicated, I think, that our office is indeed fostering a safe, inclusive workplace. We all work hard and supported staff through a challenging time for all of us during the pandemic. I think our work environment survey demonstrates that.

Objective 3: implement a sustainable workforce plan to build organizational capacity and limit operational risk. Our third objective focuses on the nuts and bolts of managing people. Our key indicator for our performance on this objective is our employee turnover rate. At 21 percent, this rate is higher than we would like but reflective, honestly, of the reality of coming out of the pandemic. Many other legislative audit offices — my Auditors General colleagues from across the country — are all experiencing the same thing. So we’ve identified strategies that we expect to lead to measurable improvements in turnover over the next couple of years, but it’s going to take time.

Objective 4: maintain and demonstrate the quality of our audits. We follow established Canadian generally accepted auditing and assurance standards and have a rigorous internal quality assurance process, which is key. Our work is done for the Legislative Assembly, so the best indicator of the quality of our audits is the level of confidence that members of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts have in the audit reports. We intend to survey committee members for their feedback on each of our reports when they are presented and use that data to ensure that our reports add value to the work of the Public Accounts Committee and the Legislative Assembly.

[10:25 a.m.]

Objective 5: deliver our audit commitments on time and on budget. It is important to ensure that our work output forms part of our service planning and our performance reporting as well. Each year, we are required by legislation to conduct a massive audit of the government’s financial statements — as I indicated, the largest financial statement audit in the province of British Columbia. We conduct, of course, other financial audits and performance audit work that we report on throughout the year.

Our reporting output on that additional work, along with the completion of the mandated summary financial statement audits, using the resources set by this committee, is our key indicator of our performance on this objective. So in ’21-22, we set and met a target of 12 reports to be delivered. I want to say that again: we set and met a target of 12 reports to be delivered in ’21-22.

That was 12 reports delivered during a period of significant turnover, COVID illness and COVID pressures, unfilled vacancies and organizational change that strained our folks, and we have to pay attention to this.

Therefore, as we transition, given that reality, we have set a target of eight reports for ’22-23, recognizing that’s a floor, not a ceiling. I would remind folks that in the 21 months since I’ve been Auditor General, we have delivered 21 reports to the Legislature. That’s been an incredible pace, given everything I’ve said.

This also is a reflection of the resources required this year to deliver two more large and more complex audits that are underway, the impacts of staff turnover, and frankly, the unfilled positions that we have in place and the money that we are returning as well.

Each year there is a mix in the size, nature and complexity of the audits we do. That can influence the number of reports that we will deliver, and that is the case in this coming fiscal year as well.

We are committing resources to improve our portfolio and audit management processes over time and look forward to sustainable improvements in our long-term output.

Now I’m going to refer to the supplementary budget request, and I am getting closer to the end. I think I only have a page left, so the end is nigh.

Supplementary budget request. So we returned, at the invitation of the committee, last fall, to provide additional information about our proposal to meet the committee’s February 2021 request that we examine the office’s building requirements to find opportunities for savings or alternative arrangements. Our team has been working closely with the workplace strategies and planning staff at the Ministry of Citizens’ Services to design an approach to reduce our office space requirements, while also making it more effective for a hybrid workforce.

If you refer to page 2 in the supplementary budget request, the numbers are unchanged from our budget submission for ’22-23. There is still a net savings of $1.6 million over the building lease, and greater savings if we exercise the option to extend the lease a further five years.

So what’s happened since November 2021? We implemented a modern nature-of-work policy that supports flexibility in work locations and hours, while ensuring continuity of operations. We worked with our government consultant to develop a feasibility plan, which you’ll see on appendix B, page 10 of the supplementary budget request. We toured many members of the committee through our building with our consultant and a copy of the feasibility plan, and we continued our discussions with other independent offices who have expressed interest in the space that would become available through our building’s space redesign.

Our staff have responded positively to our hybrid and flexible work options. Some staff have said they believe our approach to the nature of work will become, in the longer run, a very effective recruitment and retention strategy for us.

Our new nature-of-work policy positions us to effectively implement a hybrid work environment, thereby reducing our need for office space. However, policy work is only part of what is required to address the real challenges and benefits of hybrid work.

As we transition from a primarily remote workforce, we must adapt to some staff using shared in-office workspaces, while others spend more time in a home workspace. This requires, of course, rethinking the physical space. We can make minor improvements but require this funding to make the practical, sustainable improvements.

[10:30 a.m.]

Currently the space and equipment we have don’t lend themselves to effective workplace sharing. Existing facilities are impractical for large meetings and collaborative work without everyone being physically present or everyone connecting virtually. Reduced demand for dedicated workstations and reduced average in-office attendance allows us to fund this investment.

We’re confident that we’ve created a plan that will reduce our footprint and long-term office space costs while improving our competitiveness as an employer and our effectiveness through integrating modern tools and collaboration approaches. We depend on this committee’s approval to make the necessary investments to succeed and have relied on government experts to ensure our approach is aligned with government objectives and established practices of government. We hope you will support us to make these improvements.

Finally — yes, I’m coming to the finally — our annual report for the ’21-22 fiscal year will be delivered before June 30, as required by the Auditor General Act, and will include the independent auditor’s reports on their audit of our financial statements and the limited assurance review of our annual report.

I know that was a long, long journey through all of this. I want to thank you for your attention to this and for allowing me the time to walk through along the presentation.

I have all the folks with me today who put so much into this. We’ll be more than happy to take questions between us, and we look forward to it.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Michael. Yes, we have questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I’m pleased to see all of the work that you’re doing on the HR side of things. It is obviously important when you look at some of the numbers from when you came into the office, in turnover and various things. Just a couple questions related to that. How are you benchmarking your salaries? We know they’re very competitive right now. Are the openings that you have at CPA level? What kinds of positions are you finding the most difficult to recruit for?

M. Pickup: Sure. I will answer that, then my friends here can supplement/adjust anything I say. They’re more than comfortable with me now to adjust/correct anything I’ve said.

A couple of things I would say. You know, if you take it on the CPA-trainee front…. We had some discussion here last year, and we got a budget increase. We were way behind on the CPA trainees, for example. We were offering 40 when the market was doing mid-50s to upper 50s, so we fixed that one. That one, frankly, was the easy fix. Fixing that was easy.

What we’re really struggling with are performance auditors. Performance audit is a discipline, but performance auditors do not come out of a university with a degree in performance auditing. They’re people we hire who have degrees, but then we’ve got to train them and put them through performance audit. It doesn’t happen quickly. Even when you do get people in, it’s going to take a couple of years to get people up to speed as to where they want to be.

In terms of your question on salary benchmarking, it’s something we talk about a lot at the Auditor General level. Honestly, I think we need to take a really good look at it. Our competitors here are not the other audit offices across the country. It’s the public sector in B.C. To some extent, some people will leave for the private sector, but it’s the public sector.

When we have people who may be making $75,000 or $80,000 say, “I love what I’m doing here, working with you folks. But I can go make $95,000 in a ministry, and I’m going to love that work too. It’s exciting work, so I’m going to go,” we can’t say: “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll match your salary.” You just can’t. It’s not that simple to be able to do that, because that creates a whole host of other problems, never mind trying to follow the spirit and principles, obviously, of the rules around public sector salaries and all of that stuff.

So it’s not simple to just be able to do that. I think what we need to do — it’s going to be a big project — is have a really good look at all of those salaries, do some comparison within the public sector, mainly, see where our folks are leaving for. At times — my friends can correct me here if they think I’m off a bit — people will leave, at professional level, with experience. They’ll go into a position where, seemingly, they’ll be doing similar work — not a huge promotion, seemingly similar work — but the pay is higher.

[10:35 a.m.]

Well, I’m an honest person. If someone comes to me and says they’re going to do that, I’ll be like: “Well, why wouldn’t you?” If you’re making $80,000 and you’re going to be just as excited about the work and you’re going to get to work with great people, why wouldn’t you go make $95,000, right? It is going to be a challenge, but I don’t want to minimize in thinking that this is going to be a one-month project that we’re going to fix. This is going to take a lot of work.

It goes back to something I talked about earlier — I’m sorry for the long answer — about capacity. Even taking on looking at a project like that, which probably will take six months to do, that is a lot of time on the folks that are here but also the folks that aren’t here — people in human resources, and others. So it’s a lot of work.

Does anybody want to supplement?

J. McNeill: Yeah, can I supplement it, to make the answer a little bit longer?

Certainly, I agree with Michael. There’s very acute pressure in the performance audit, because that’s quite a niche skill. To be honest, there is a lot of competitive pressure for the CPAs. For example, usually, CPAs pass the test, they’re designated, and they have a return for service, say, for two years. It’s very rare for a CPA student to leave. We’ve had several students leave almost right after writing the test, which is completely unusual. Like Michael alluded to earlier, it has not just been hard to hire CPAs; it has been hard to contract CPAs.

On the financial audit, there’s a lot of pressure as well. I’ll also note that there’s a lot of pressure in the critical audit support services. For some of our existing support services staff, whether it be contract procurement, payroll, HR — IT is another one that we’re really struggling with — there’s just so much demand out there. One of the challenges, too, is that we’re just a little office. The people that we hire need to be able to wear many hats, and those people are even more rare.

In my role, CFO, I almost feel like I wear every hat. That’s like for a lot of people in the office. To find someone who has that breadth but also the depth at the exact same time, is really hard and really competitive. I think, across the board, it has been difficult. I’ll agree with Michael that performance audit, for sure, is acute, but it is felt across the board.

M. Pickup: One last quick comment. I’m just thinking back to when I worked for the Auditor General of Canada. During that short, 25-year period, one of the Auditors General that I worked for used to say: “It’s always great to take the view, when our folks leave, that they’re very capable people. Most of them go to the public sector. They’re probably helping government improve, because government is getting really good people.” She used to have us think of it as the idea of sort of a finishing school, if you will, for government. But that has its limits.

If you lose a few people a year, it’s okay, but when you start losing these numbers, then clearly, we’ve got some issues to get into, and we know it. We just haven’t got there yet.

B. Bailey: Nice to see you all again. Thank you, again, for the tour that you took us on not that long ago.

I’m interested in the change that you’re predicting, from 12 annual audits to eight. It’s a one-third change. I’m wondering if you can help me understand two things. One, I think I heard I you say that that 12 was unusual. I wonder if you could perhaps give me a bit more of a longitudinal slice of what this compares to.

Also, if you do go to eight, what are the implications for the bodies that you do these audits for, in that 33.3 percent of them will not be done in that particular year? If you could help me understand that, I’d appreciate it.

M. Pickup: I’m trying to keep track of all of that in my head. Maybe, uncharacteristically, I will try to give a shorter answer first, and then we can go back and forth, if I’m not giving you what you’re looking for.

If I give the simple answer on the move from 12 to eight, I sort of recognize that eight may well be the floor, rather than the ceiling — it may be greater than eight — I’d say: “Why is it that it may be the floor?” Well, some of it will depend on whether we can recruit people and find people for these positions. For example, on our performance audit portfolio, we had, probably, nine vacancies. That’s three audits. You went from eight to 11, so that accounts for three of them. I’m giving you the simple answer.

[10:40 a.m.]

Then, if you look at a couple of the complexities of some of those audits we’re doing, two of the audits are huge. Two of the topics that we’re getting into, two of the main issues in British Columbia, are bigger than some of the audits last year. That’s going to account for one.

The main thing is those unfilled positions, and that’s part of why we’re returning money: because we weren’t able to hire the people. So that’s the short answer there.

If I look back at the reports, in ’22, we delivered 12. In ’21, it was nine. And in 2020, it was nine. So it is unusual. You know, as I said earlier…. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but I think my job is to come here and be honest and frank with you folks. To get 12 this year was too much of a push, I think, particularly on the leadership folks.

If you can’t get people in at the auditor level, who picked up the slack? Who put in the evenings and weekends, which has a limit of how much you ask people to do that? It’s the people at this table, but it’s the other 14 or 15 people who are leading the office. They never threw in the towel, and they got those 12 done, even though we were short. I can’t ask people to keep doing that. That’s not fair. We’re going to lose those people if I try to do that to people.

Now, did I miss…? No. I got it all.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Michael and team. Great to see you all. Great report.

I just had the exact same question as Brenda asked, but to build onto that…. You’ve answered part of my question, but are we anticipating any backlogs due to this reduction? I can see the positive side it can have on staff retention — just giving them a break — and also the quality of report, rather than having to rush through. So that’s one question.

The other quick question is regarding the furniture costs. It’s $370,000. Is that an estimated cost, or is that the cost that is provided to us by supply? Do we get multiple quotes? How does that work? And the recent inflation: how will that impact?

M. Pickup: John, why don’t you take…? I’ll just answer the first part, and then I’ll turn it to John to take all the money questions.

I do want to go back, in terms of the number of reports. In an ideal world, yes, we would be at that 12. We would be able to hire those people in the performance audit portfolio, and we would be up and running, and that would be great. So 12 would give us the coverage that would be, obviously, greater than doing eight or nine, of course.

I think anytime you look at the size of government, the growth of government and the new programs and expenditures that a government may have, you want the audit office to reflect, in terms of its budget and the work it’s doing, the size and nature of the government as well. It probably puts more of an onus on us to then say: “Okay. If you’re going to do X, and if X is less than Y, you want to be really sure the audits that you’re picking are the big-ticket items that you want to be doing.”

Will I have people in government lining up, saying: “Too bad you can’t come audit us because you’ve reduced the number”? Probably not. But I don’t look at them as being our primary client, if you will, anyway. Our primary client is people in the Legislature. We report to people in the Legislature. The organizations that we audit are the organizations that we audit. We’re not doing the work for them. We’re doing the work for the elected folks in the Legislature. Secondary to that are the recommendations that come out of that.

John, do you want to take the money questions?

J. McNeill: Yes. It’s a good question. This is where we’re trying to strike a balance with the right amount of planning without too much, without that budget approval. That $310,000 for furniture is the best estimate that we were able to get from government, using a formula that they have and a system that they have, based on the experience that they’ve had rolling this out at many other locations.

[10:45 a.m.]

If we do get budget approval, then we’ll be able to move forward with that more detailed plan of: “Okay, now we’re looking at a quantity survey. These are the desks that we’re going to keep. These are the ones that we’re going to replace. This is what the quote is from government’s corporate supply contract.” We’ll be able to have firmer numbers. That’s where my hope is — that if we obtain approval at this meeting, we’ll also have an opportunity to report back in the fall on how things look.

I can’t give a fixed number right now. It’s just that estimate. But hopefully, with approval, we can go forward, get the general contractor involved, get a lot more detail and get timelines, and it’ll inform an update in the fall. Of course, we’ll be able to share that information with the committee, as well.

H. Sandhu: I appreciate the answer. Thank you so much.

D. Murray: I just wanted to add a clarification regarding the reports and the way our performance audit process and selection works, because I came from a different office. I’m new to the Auditor General.

I think there’s a key distinction between how the Auditor General works and some of the other independent offices of the Legislature, and that’s that we don’t have an input that creates a backlog when we’re looking at this. We’re not responding to a series of complaints or allegations or anything that’s being filed with us. This is a discretion that’s in the Auditor General Act that actually doesn’t oblige the Auditor General to do any performance audit reports but enables him to do so.

Every year we’re looking multiple years ahead at what the relevant potential edits we could do are that would provide good coverage and address issues that are of relevance to the Legislative Assembly. Then we look at our resources and plan that accordingly. Those plans shift over time.

So that’s really what you’re seeing here. This is a shift in those plans, but there isn’t anything being dropped off, if that makes sense, or anything that’s going to a backlog. It’s simply our resources being applied to a very well-selected cross-section of audits for relevance.

I hope that that helps.

B. Stewart: I want to go back to the staffing, okay? I believe the number was about 330 or something as your FTEs — sorry, 130, not 300 — and 19 away. Sorry, you wish it was 330; then we’d have all of these issues in front of us. I want to just confirm that and what you’re down.

Secondly, I don’t know how your HR is managed — whether it’s internal or there’s an external group that supports the Office of the Auditor General.

The third thing I want to know is: when staff leave, what’s being done to find out why they’re leaving?

M. Pickup: Okay, so I’ll take the first two, and then maybe I’ll turn to the Deputy Auditor General on the question of the process around exit interviews and the outboarding, if you will — the opposite of the onboarding.

In terms of the FTEs, we have funded positions, 155; funded and filled, 132; funded and vacant, 23 positions. In terms of the human resources as a function, it is internal to the office. But it’s one of those areas where…. That’s been a struggle as well, over time, to find human resource professionals. They are in short supply, as well.

So we’ve had some challenges, I think, from a human resources perspective, over the years, predating me as well. There’s been a lot of turnover in human resources. Probably, there’s nobody there now that was there three years ago — no one. I might be exaggerating — maybe even two years ago as well. So not fully staffed — turnover, hard to keep people in that function, hard to find people. So that’s a challenge as well.

Now maybe I’ll turn to the deputy, to Sheila, to talk a little bit about exit interviews and outboarding.

S. Dodds: Yes, thank you, Michael. Thank you for the question.

When staff leave, we do, do exit interviews. It’s offered to anybody who’s leaving to be able to sit down with a member of our HR team to go through that interview, because we are wanting to understand what they liked about their experience and why they’re leaving — if it’s just a promotion opportunity or if there’s a reason why they’re leaving.

[10:50 a.m.]

We also will conduct an interview with…. An individual can choose who they want to have that exit interview with. I ended up having an exit interview — conducting one — with a former staff member recently just to be able to make sure that we did get that information. It was a very insightful interview around some of the real strengths we have as an office. In that situation, it was a promotional opportunity. They went into one of the ministries to be able to get some different experience and to get an increase in pay.

So yes, we definitely do that. We do summarize the results, and then we feed that into our other HR activities. But to Michael’s point, we have…. The issue of turnover and vacancies is part of a challenge in our own HR team, which does impact our ability to do that workforce planning.

B. Stewart: I guess the question is…. You’ve mentioned money a lot. You keep talking about the disparity between what you’re paying, etc. I do have an HR department in the business that I set up. I know that we are very careful to make certain we’re watching what’s happening in the norms and stuff like that.

I guess if it was only money — and it doesn’t appear that money is the issue — why wouldn’t we raise the wages to that level? I know we addressed that last fall, and we supported you. It seems to me that with a little bit of…. To retain these people, if that was…. I don’t know if it’s the only driver. Anything I’ve ever seen in HR is that money is not always at the top of the list. As a matter of fact, it rarely is at the top of the list. I guess I’m just kind of trying to drill down.

The reason I’m asking this, Michael, is because you’ve got a huge request here, really, to reinvent the office, etc. Is it the office? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the work environment and those types of things, or the type of work. I’m just trying to understand. We don’t kind of look at this $1½ million plus the $300-and-some thousand for furniture as an add-on when we haven’t got the HR thing sorted out.

M. Pickup: There’s a lot in there that I could probably chat with for an hour, I think. I will touch on it, and come back to me if I’m not touching on all of it.

In terms of why people are leaving, I think it’s varied. I think some of it…. I ask why people are staying. Well, they’re staying at the more senior levels, I think for the most part — the leadership levels — when, frankly, the money probably isn’t as great. But they’re staying because they’re dedicated or they are committed.

I think realistically, money is still an issue. If you’re making $75,000, I think it’s different than if you’re making $140,000. A $15,000 raise is something that may attract you more to go elsewhere. I think in terms of the office itself and the environment itself…. I’m a numbers person and a science person. The numbers are showing on our workplace survey — up 9 percent from 2020 — that it’s a better place to work. People are more engaged. That’s just the frank answer to the numbers.

If you look at the increase in the belief in the executive, in the belief in the senior managers, that’s up 30 percent since 2020. I don’t want to be defensive, but I do want to put on the table that we aren’t perfect. We have things that we want to improve, obviously. But I do believe that at many of these lower-level positions, it is a money thing.

This is a big project, to be able to go and look at this. It’s not an easy answer just to say: “Okay, let’s give everybody at this level $10,000 or $15,000.” There are rules around that, about how much of that you can do, how often you can do it, how frequently you can do it, how big the increase can be.

We try to follow the spirit of the public service rules, even though we have independence and freedom. I’m not going to go out there and just suddenly do everything that is so different than what’s happening in the public service without really knowing the why and being very careful and taking the time to be very prudent and put the work in to make these decisions.

We also, I think, in answering that, even have to think about that when we’re recruiting people. Let’s say I have people at a certain level who are making…. We just went through this, actually. They’re making, say, $130,000, and we have a vacancy at that level. Recognizing that these people are doing the biggest financial audits in this province, public sector or private sector….

We had nobody apply from the outside. They told us that they wouldn’t even think about it for $130,000. “Talk to me if it’s $200,000,” because that’s what they’re making in the private sector. Well, if I’m going to pay them $200,000, that’s more than the Deputy Auditor General is making, and this person would be two to three levels below them.

[10:55 a.m.]

So salary is a big deal, but it’s not a quick fix. How I would get myself into trouble as Auditor General is thinking the answer is quick and fast and just going ahead and doing things.

We’ve got to be prudent. We’ve got to think things through. We’ve got to have some of the HR capacity to be able to do this. Frankly, we need to have the bandwidth and capacity at the leadership level to say, “Okay. We’ve put a push on many things. We’ve got a number of things done. We are in good position on a number of things. Now it’s really time to switch our focus on recruitment and retention and the salary issue and a number of other issues, to say: how do we keep people who are here, and then how do we recruit people as well?”

I think it is a fairly complicated answer. One of the things we’re hearing and seeing early signs of…. Some of that is reflected in those engagement scores. Recognizing a 9 percent increase in engagement, during the pandemic, is not a small feat. I think part of that is related to the promise of how we’re going to work together on this nature of work — redoing the building, for example — so that people can be accommodated in that way.

Now, I’ve lost track if I answered everything you asked. If I didn’t, it’s not avoidance. It’s simply my memory is not remembering everything you asked.

Chair, I don’t know if I missed anything there.

Okay, my friends want to add.

S. Dodds: I just wanted to expand on Michael’s comment around the structure. We respect the role of the Public Service Agency and stay aligned with it. We are working with the management compensation and classification framework that applies to ministries.

What that has meant is that salary increases, when you’re in a management position in the band, have been limited to 2 percent a year. So we have a band. How do we move people through that band in a way that doesn’t cause an upset balance in the rest of the organization or between our office and a ministry, for example?

As Michael said, it’s complex, and we need to look at it. The way the system works right now, if you leave an organization and then come back for a position, you’re in a position to negotiate the salary, which you don’t have the opportunity to do when you’re within the organization. There are some structural challenges to be able to look at that.

One point I just wanted to raise was that on the financial audit side, firms have all, I understand — this is going to be part of what we need to look at — provided a signifi­cant salary increase to CPAs, to retain them in the firms. As Michael said, we have aligned the salaries. We’ve caught up, reasonably, to firms to be competitive as a training office. But then once you’re qualified in our office, you can go to a firm and get $5,000 to $10,000 more annually now, because of some recent shifts there.

Within the framework, we just don’t have the flexibility to make the shift in individual salaries. Then there’s a budget envelope, overall, that we have to deal with as well.

J. McNeill: I just want to add in and acknowledge, right, that salary is important. It’s a hygienic factor. But there are other things that we’re trying to do. The LWS request is a big part of that, in terms of retention and recruitment, to create a work environment that draws people in, that makes people want to stay.

One of the comments in a meeting, when we were talking about nature of work…. Someone said: “The nature of work policy is like a raise to me.” That’s where I knew we really had hit the target with nature of work, when people were starting to consider its value in terms of dollars in their annual salary.

Also, the strategic planning that we’re doing with the service plan, our strategies we’re rolling out. We really are focused on making the work environment better for people. I think also the choice to maybe turn down the dial and the pressure is also part of that. Because yeah, we do understand there are multiple factors that go into why someone chooses to stay.

I totally agree: it isn’t all about salary. There’s a reason why you choose to work where you work. We’re not all just working at the place that we could be making the most money at. So we have this full spectrum approach. We’re really trying to come in at all angles. Like Michael said, and I’ll just reiterate: we are seeing results in our workforce environment survey. We have objective feedback that what we’re doing right now is starting to work, starting to take hold.

[11:00 a.m.]

That’s what we’re kind of doing when we’re coming with this LWS request. We’re asking for you guys to let us continue that momentum in the right direction, to continue to build on the success that we’ve had and really help us build a bulwark or safeguard ourselves against the great resignation and really be able to keep the people that we invest so much in.

These people…. They’re people. They’re individuals to us. They mean a lot to us. They bring a lot of value to our office, and when they leave, it leaves a huge hole. Even if we were able to recruit someone at a snap of a finger, there’s still that time. It takes a long time to get that person to where they were, right? Especially if that new person then comes in at…. You know, you lose someone at 70, and the new person you hire comes in at 90…. It’s like, well, maybe that person who left at 70, maybe they would have stayed for 75 or 80, and now we’re paying a brand-new, less experienced person 90.

We are working on all of these fronts to try to make the environment better, to try to recruit and retain our people. Because we really care about them and are interested in them having success in our office, growing with us, sharing the level of commitment to the office that we share on the leadership team, having that commitment and energy pervade throughout the organization and really see a new work culture develop.

In many ways, I think our office, with the nature of work and a lot of the initiatives that we’re taking…. We’re kind of at the forefront here and leading. It’s an exciting time, and it gives us, at least for the time being, a competitive advantage. We want to maximize on that.

M. Pickup: Two quick things, Chair. I think examples are probably good, right? They demonstrate how these things can be not so easy to fix. I’ll give you an example.

I had a lead on a couple of people in other provinces who would have been wonderful people to have join us. We had some discussions internally. You can’t do that. You can’t have people outside the province who work remotely and are living outside the province. They have to live within the province.

This is also adding to the competition because our folks can live in B.C., go work for the Auditor General of Canada. No rules against that. You can live in Saskatchewan, B.C., or anywhere else and work for the federal government. I see that happening more and more in the federal government. We can’t do that in B.C. We are following that rule that you have to live here.

The other thing I think that I would add, and my colleagues will look at me probably to say: why is he saying that? In terms of tell-all. I tell people internally: you’ve got to give me two years. You’ve got to give us two more years to look at all of the salary stuff and to do a really good, thorough job that I don’t end up on the front page of a paper in a bad story for doing things too quickly that don’t make sense.

I’m trying to use our relationship leveraged within the office to say: can you hang in for a couple more years, folks, and give us two years to really look at this? Because, frankly, I think we’ll be back here asking for a big ask to fix some of the salary stuff. But if we came here and asked for — I’m going to throw out a number — $4 million to fix salaries, I think it would be incumbent upon me and us to be pretty prepared and have a lot of work put into why we are coming to ask for X million dollars for salaries. So that’s part of my message internally: give us two years.

D. Murray: I just had two facts to add to that, as I think the question was about salaries, but it was also about the LWS request and, really, why we are doing it. First of all, we’ve surveyed our staff. We’ve spoken to staff that have left. Just this morning, we had one of our assistant auditor generals talking about an employee who has left and has contacted us again to come back because of the flexibility that we’re offering.

So we have real, simple, straightforward evidence, numbers from our existing staff, people who have left and people who want to come work for us because of flexibility. We can’t make that work without the space changes. We can’t do a hybrid office when the office isn’t set up for it.

The other piece is this is not a recruitment strategy. That is a wonderful benefit of this. This is a long-term cost reduction strategy that was requested by this committee. That’s why we’ve brought this forward. This is the way we can make it work and fund it. We can reduce our space. We can’t reduce our space simply by offering our staff flexibility, because they have to come in sometimes, so we need that space.

[11:05 a.m.]

This is how we can give up the space. It’s going to have a lot of benefits, long term, for the organization’s health and appeal as an employer, but we’re here to save money in the long term. That’s what we’ve been asked. That’s the origin of this and why we’re here.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you.

Mike, we’re kind of running out of time. If you have a quick question with a quick answer, you can go for it.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Chair. It’ll even be quicker than that, because, Dave, it’s like you were absolutely looking at the bottom of my page.

The comments, Michael, that you made were: “Why are people staying?” and “Make the office a more attractive employer.” That resonates with me, and I don’t want to see your office just become the farm team. That’s essentially what you’re telling me. While it’s nice to go watch the Vancouver Canadians, I’d rather go watch the Blue Jays. But we’ve got the Vancouver Canadians. So I get it.

Thank you for your answers, Dave.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. With that, we will wrap this up.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for providing such a full and detailed explanation. How you’re able to quantify and measure your performance is very helpful to us. It’s something that this committee has been looking for. Your answers have been very precise, and we really thank you for that. You’ve given us a lot to work with in terms of your specific request today. Thank you.

D. Murray: Thank you, everybody.

J. Routledge (Chair): We will now recess for a few minutes.

The committee recessed from 11:06 a.m. to 11:13 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll entertain a motion to move in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 11:14 a.m. to 11:53 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

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

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:53 a.m.