The committee met at 5:32 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

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

I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting today in the legislative precinct here in Victoria, which is located on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. Given the legislation that was introduced today and the speeches on the floor of the Legislature by First Nations leaders, I think that acknowledgment gives us a new and deeper meaning. I want to acknowledge that as well.

The committee is responsible for reviewing and making recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on the three-year rolling service plans, annual reports and budget proposals of B.C.’s statutory officers.

Today we will be hearing from the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth and from Elections B.C. We’ll first hear from the Representative for Children and Youth. We have set aside 25 minutes for the presentation, followed by 30 minutes for committee questions.

With that, I will now turn it over to Dr. Charlesworth.

Review of Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR
CHILDREN AND YOUTH

J. Charlesworth: Good evening. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to once again appear before the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services and to welcome the new member.

I’d like to begin in a good way — also to follow up on what your words were, Janet — by extending my gratitude to the traditional stewards of these lands, the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples. I’m grateful to them for allowing me, as an uninvited settler, to do my work, to raise my family and to pursue my calling on these beautiful lands and to feel like I get held well in this difficult work because of where I get to live.

I’d also like to take a moment to introduce my colleagues that are joining me today: the deputy representative, Pippa Rowcliffe; CFO Dianne Buljat, whom you will recall from the presentation from the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner; the executive director for advocacy, First Nations, Métis and Inuit engagement, Blair Mitchell; and Alan Markwart, who carries a number of roles. Alan has been leading our legislative review, a statutory review that’s underway. You may have questions with respect to that. So we will address those.

[5:35 p.m.]

There are three interconnected threads in my presentation today. I’ll begin by setting the context for our work in the RCY and briefly speak about how we’re responding to that context and where we’re going. This sets the stage for our budget request. I will outline our request for fiscal year 2023-24 and address any questions that you have thereafter.

In the budget submission, we endeavour to describe the ever-evolving and complex context that we’re working within. I’m just going to address the highlights for you.

I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve just completed my fourth year as representative. Time flies. It’s also my 45th year in the child and youth caring field. I began in 1977, in September, working in this field. It is my deepest honour to serve as the Representative for Children and Youth and to do this sacred work, alongside our amazing RCY team; committed service delivery colleagues; the First Nations, Métis, Inuit and urban Indigenous leadership that we’re grateful to work with; the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth; and yourselves.

In all those 45 years of practice, though, in government, in the non-profit sector and in community, I have never experienced change of the scale that we’re all living through now. These times are unprecedented. That’s an overused word. Let’s just say that it is testing and challenging us daily, and there’s no playbook or jurisdiction that I can turn to that says: “This is how we need to address the kinds of issues that our children and youth are experiencing right now.”

The global pandemic and the toxic drug supply are just two of the challenges that we’ve been facing and for which there is no playbook. They have really exacerbated many of the difficulties that our families are experiencing.

Some of these changes are exciting. I’ll talk about a few of those, such as the resumption of jurisdiction that’s unfolding and, as the Chair has referenced, the legislative amendments that went forward today. There’s a reimagining of child well-being and child welfare in many different areas. For us, through the lens of belonging, we’re seeing more and more of that kind of awareness and understanding of the systemic need to care for our children and wrap around our children.

These significant shifts have occurred and are still occurring. They have prompted some important changes within our office and the way in which we do our work and the focus that we bring to things. I’m going to speak to those. Let me just highlight some of the shifts and challenges. First of all, the continuing fallout from the global pandemic has placed considerable pressure on B.C. families. You know this well. You’re connected to your constituents. It also is revealing shortcomings and fragmentation within our service delivery systems, particularly for those that are supporting our children, youth and young adults and their families.

Mental health and substance use services are areas where we’re seeing significant challenges going forward. Of course, that relates back to the ever-evolving drug toxicity crisis. It continues to harm people every day in every kind of family in this province. There are direct and indirect impacts on children, youth and young adults. This crisis is morphing and challenging us in many different ways, not only our service delivery system but our attitudes, beliefs and the assumptions that we’re carrying around drug use.

Another thing that’s significant is that there are major staffing challenges. MCFD is experiencing significant challenges to staff up many of their offices. That is also affecting the community services sector. We are, as we all know, in a very difficult labour market climate. We have a significant skills shortage, and it’s showing up within our government and community service systems.

The other challenge we’re facing is wait-lists for mental health services, for substance use services and for assessment and diagnostic services as well. I’m sure this is probably where many of your calls come to your offices. Many of the families are feeling like they don’t know where to turn. They don’t know what they can do for their children. There doesn’t seem to be anything, or there’s a time lag before they can get the supports they need.

As we were listening and learning today in the House…. Government continues to be disproportionately intrusive in the lives of First Nations, Métis and Inuit children and youth. It’s important to remind everyone around this circle that an Indigenous child is still 18 times more likely than a non-Indigenous child in B.C. to come into government care. That’s a devastating impact, as we were hearing today.

[5:40 p.m.]

Indigenous peoples have also been experiencing the tremendous pain and turmoil associated with the continuing recoveries of the remains of children and youth at the former residential school sites across Canada — starting, of course, with Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc on May 27 in 2021. Add into this mix the uncertain economy that’s feeling the negative effects of the pandemic, dramatic rates of inflation and a housing crisis, and families are really stretched and struggling.

So in this volatile, uncertain and complex environment, there are obviously many unprecedented challenges, but there are also exciting developments. There is hope and possibility. It’s the only way I’ve stuck around for 45 years — to have hope and optimism. And there are reasons for that.

As a result of the federal Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families, some individual First Nations in B.C. are beginning to work towards resumption of jurisdiction. In the process, they’re reimagining child well-being from a cultural perspective, from a traditional perspective, which holds tremendous promise. As you are aware, the government introduced amendments to the Child, Family and Community Service Act and Adoptions Act today, and I think that will create more opportunities. It will reduce the barriers that currently exist legislatively to those nations moving towards jurisdiction. These are important steps.

The federal government, as you know, proposed a settlement in response to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal findings. This week, that got turned around, and the future is uncertain. But nonetheless, there’s a significant amount of commitment and investment to ensuring that the CHRT ruling is fulfilled. So I believe it’s just a matter of time before we start to see that infusion into First Nations. Now, it does not help many Indigenous children or all Indigenous children, but it will certainly make a significant step forward if that is able to go ahead.

The other thing that I think is important to emphasize is that there’s a significant reimagining or growing awareness and acceptance of the need for harm reduction approaches and more diverse, culturally attuned and trauma-informed services for young people who use substances. One of the first reports I released in the fall of 2018, when I became the representative, was called Time to Listen. From that point to now, four years later, there has been a significant growth in awareness and understanding of what we’re dealing with in this crisis. So again, I think there are new solutions to complex and vexing social issues that are arising.

Considered all together is the environment in which we work. All these factors, both the negative and the positive, have prompted RCY leadership to re-evaluate how we can be of greatest help and how we can have the biggest impact as an advocacy and oversight body. This shifting landscape made it obvious to us that the status quo isn’t an option. It’s not an option for us; it’s not an option for the service delivery system either, of which we are a part. We are part of the bigger system.

So as outlined in our budget request and in our annual report and service plan, we’ve moved ahead in a new strategic direction. We call it paddling forward, and we use the metaphor of a canoe and paddlers and paddling. We believe that this is going to enable us to do an even better job in support of children, youth and families.

We’ve identified a number of priority areas, going forward. I’ll just quickly outline those. Those are also in your submission.

First and foremost is services and supports for First Nations, Métis, Inuit and urban Indigenous children and families — improving the current services and supports while also helping and walking alongside or behind nations as they reassert jurisdiction over their child well-being and child welfare. That is number one for us.

Another key area is child and youth substance use and the toxic drug crisis. As I’ve said, too many young people are dying or suffering significant injuries — catastrophic brain injuries, for example — or experiencing the emotional toll of losing their parents, their loved ones, their siblings and caregivers.

[5:45 p.m.]

We’ll continue to work very earnestly on this issue and are looking forward to the report from the Select Standing Committee on Health that will be coming soon. We will use that as a platform to continue our work, really pushing for a robust array of services and supports from harm reduction to treatment.

Child and youth mental health is another key one. A week doesn’t go by where you aren’t hearing about the impacts of the pandemic on mental health and the angst that many families are feeling as they’re dealing with unprecedented incidents of anxiety, depression and behavioral challenges, etc. We’ll continue to advocate for a voluntary system of mental health care and are actually doing some work on taking a look at past recommendations and thinking about what has changed and what lies ahead.

The fourth area for us is children and youth with support needs and those with multiple complex challenges. As you know, the Ministry of Children and Family Development has announced a new support-needs framework, and it’s our job to make sure that we monitor the progress on that and that we do a very deep dive assessment. Actually, Blair is leading that. We will continue to advocate for equity and access and supports for families, all families and all young people, that have additional support needs.

The fifth area for us is supporting families to nurture their children and youth, and that’s really important, because we actually want to go upstream. We actually, as an office, have not done that as well as what I think we could. Pippa has been leading some work over the last couple of years to take a look at those early interventions to help foster the healthy development of children and their families in those early years so that they can stay safely together. That’s a key area for us.

The next one is for those children who are unable to stay within their family home for a period of time. We are taking a closer look at residential services for children in care. That’s another area, frankly, that we think is in crisis. I’m happy to talk about that if you’re interested. We’re advocating for improvements to a residential care system that support connection and belonging rather than re-traumatizing or increasing the trauma that young people have experienced.

The next area is transitioning to adulthood. Again, some promising developments in that area, with increased supports for young adults. Thank goodness. I’ve wanted that for years — long before this position, in fact. There are many young people who do not have family privilege. They do not have families that are walking alongside them into their young adulthood. If a young person has been brought into care, then essentially, the state is the parent. So as we’ve said before in our report, there is a parental duty that the state has when they have assumed that role. It’s important that we support those young people, because they will thrive with that support.

The final area is child rights, voice and representation. We are fundamentally a child-rights organization, a rights-based organization, and we will continue to lift up the rights of children in a variety of different ways, especially when key decisions are being made about their lives.

Those are the key areas of activity, but of course, we have to put this in the context of: how do we get the job done? Those are tall orders. Any one of those could consume many, many people’s time. So through our paddling forward strategy — and it’s addressed in the annual report and service plan; we took great care to describe what we were doing there — if you think about the metaphor of canoes on a journey, you have to have paddlers, you have to have paddles, and you have to have the resources that are going to support and sustain those paddlers and have a good map going forward.

Of course, we have to support our paddlers, our staff, so the paddling forward strategy speaks to the ways in which we will focus on training and development for staff in a number of key areas. For us, that’s cultural safety and anti-racism, trauma awareness, restorative practices and complexity thinking. We also have to make sure that we have a strong value base, a strong moral compass. We have what we call the six Rs that are grounded in relationships. We demonstrate respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility. When we screw up, we do our best to repair and restore. Those values are our touchstones.

Around our staff, we also have to make sure that they’re working together in good ways, so we’ve done strategic alignment for our RCY teams, renamed them. We talked about that when we met with you in April.

[5:50 p.m.]

That’s taking care of our compass, our direction forward and our people, and, of course, we have to sustain them. So we have to pay attention to HR, information management and IT systems, finance, policy, procedures, administrative supports, etc. We call those the paddling-forward enabling mechanisms. They are the granola bars in the bottom of the canoe that make sure that we can carry on with the work and make sure that we do that with the least resistance and the least of the back eddies and back currents. That’s, essentially, in a nutshell, our paddling-forward strategy going forward.

Now, I just want to speak about the context and the impact on the demands within our organization for you. The work of our advocates has become far more complex and time-consuming. As you’ll see from the materials that we’ve shared, the volume of our injury and death reportable circumstances, the number of reports that are handled by our reviews and investigations team continues to increase significantly. These are very hard stories. These are critical, life-altering injuries and deaths.

Related to both advocacy and reviews and investigations, those experiences walking alongside young people trying to access services and seeing when things go terribly wrong translates into an understanding of systemic issues. Our systemic issues team, or our systemic advocacy First Nations, Métis and Inuit research team — it’s a mouthful — are dealing with some very significant systemic issues, notably things like the toxic drug supply, services and supports for young people who have very complex, interconnected, multifaceted needs. These are pronounced and urgent.

This context that we’re working within and the drive on our work has placed stress on all three of our teams delivering the statutorily required work as well as the other teams in the RCY that support the statutory teams. We have addressed some of the stress on our teams through reallocation of funding and, thankfully, through previous requests to this committee.

In our presentation today, we’re asking for some further assistance from you. It’s really in two areas. One is the things that we have to honour, as well as some news, but I’ll deal with that in a moment. First of all, though, I want to give you some assurance that we are being as fiscally prudent as we possibly can be.

I want to talk a little bit about repurposing funds, which, you’ll be happy to hear, resulted in that we’ve been able to do a number of things with a net-zero impact to our operating budget. But I want to make sure that I’ve covered them off for you.

We’ve done a number of internal reviews within our organization in this last year, notably in the corporate shared-services area and administrative services. We’ve also done a bottom-up analysis of our operating budget. We’re taking every opportunity to increase our efficiency and effectiveness through repurposing existing resources — human and financial resources.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the impact of COVID and our move towards decentralized and remote work options. As I’ve shared with this committee before, the expansion of remote and decentralized work options resulted in savings in a few areas, notably in our building occupancy charges and in supplies.

Building occupancy charge savings from the closure of our Burnaby office, our Lower Mainland office, during the first year of the pandemic…. You kindly allowed us to repurpose that money, and it enabled us to recruit two new staff. That helped our reviews and investigations team and also enabled us to recruit a knowledge-keeper.

As we settle now into the new normal of virtual work while also reimagining our outreach and consultations and all the things that we need to do, as this new time emerges, it’s become clear that we have both savings and costs. As I mentioned, the two deputies, and Dianne as our CFO, have done a line-by-line review, and they’ve adjusted expense areas to better reflect our new reality — kind of covering off some costs where we’ve got a bit of savings and that kind of thing.

[5:55 p.m.]

I’ll talk a little bit about some of the more significant areas, office space being one. We did a detailed assessment of our office space requirements and revealed, actually, that we needed a different configuration of office space in Victoria, mostly hot desks for hybrid work, collaborative workspaces for when we bring our teams together to do joint projects, and community meeting spaces. We also realized through there that we needed a different office location in Prince George that’s closer to the youth and the youth-serving organizations and that’s more welcoming and safe, frankly.

With respect to Victoria, we actually were very fortunate. Space became available on the first floor of our building, and it’s a smaller footprint, a significantly smaller footprint, but it’s configured in just the way we need to support our new ways of working. So it’s very well suited to our needs, and minimal tenant improvements are necessary. We want to change colours, and we wanted to shift one wall. That’s about it. So we’re very fortunate in that regard.

In Prince George, our current lease expires in September of 2023, thank goodness. So we’re now actively looking for space, including the possibility of co-locating with youth-serving or Indigenous organizations.

If we take a look again at Victoria, with the first floor, what that’s enabling us to do is actually release the third floor that we have right now. Right now we have two floors, the third and fourth. This will allow us to use the fourth and the first floor of this building and release the third floor.

As you have heard from the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner and the Ombudsperson, we’re in a collaborative arrangement around the OPCC occupying that space. It well serves their needs. It’s perfectly configured. We’re even throwing in the furniture, so they’ll be able to move in quite quickly there. So that means that we’re going to be receiving some savings, because altogether, we’re going to have a little bit of net savings through this.

We’re asking you to allow us to reallocate savings from the anticipated subletting of our third floor, just as we did when we released space in Burnaby. There are a few areas that we would like to redeploy those funds to. One is to pay for the first floor, and the other is to cover additional building occupancy charges that we anticipate in Prince George. I can’t tell you how much I want to move out of the spaces that we have and to get us closer to where the young people are in a safe environment. So that may well cost us. We don’t know yet, but it may well cost us. So we’re holding that. It likely will cost us a wee bit more.

We also want to have the funds to secure some satellite gathering spaces or office spaces for staff and youth in other locations, particularly in the Lower Mainland. That would be like clinics and youth hubs or spaces where staff can come together periodically in order to do their work with one another. It’s not a permanent large space, but it is being able to access some of those satellite spaces in the Lower Mainland and probably in time, just because of the movement of our staff in the Interior as well.

Then a significant one is to invest in our corporate services as a foundation for both the RCY and the Office of the Human Rights Commission. Happy to talk about that a little bit more, but basically the reallocation of some of this funding to corporate services will address a chronic underinvestment and workload pressures that are arising in this area. It’s not only increased activity with the Human Rights Commission, but also there’s increased activity associated with working in a virtual environment. There’s actually more that’s required of our support staff in the corporate services area.

We are significantly under-resourced in that area. Typical, in other shared-service arrangements or other corporate services arrangements, is between 10 percent and 12 percent, and about 6 percent of our funding goes towards that. So it’s only because we have extraordinary people working in the corporate services area that we have been able to pull that off over the last few years. But it’s time. It would be the first time in nine years, actually, that RCY is proposing an increased resourcing for corporate services. So that’s what our intention is around, kind of moving with the resources that we have to better resource our needs going forward.

[6:00 p.m.]

Moving into our operational requests, we are requesting an operating budget increase that will bring RCY’s total annual operating budget to $12.191 million in fiscal year 2023. Of course, I’m keenly aware of the challenging economic times and that a 10.81 percent increase is a significant ask. I want to emphasize that most of this increase would go to cover inflationary costs, over which we have no control.

Seventy-seven percent of the increase, or $910,000 of the requested $1.189 million lift, would go towards maintaining status quo operations. Those are wage increases dictated by current public sector negotiations, temporary market adjustments, salary increases and increases to professional services for information management and IT. So that’s the status quo.

Now, in terms of requested FTE costs…. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve got significant pressures that we’re experiencing and a growing need for more robust outreach and engagement. We are wanting to address the pressures in two ways, in terms of FTE increases. That’s a total of $279,000. Those two FTEs, which amount to a 2.54 percent increase…. This is salary and direct salary costs and also operational costs associated with hiring those new staff.

There are two areas. With the expansion of RCY’s advocacy mandate, there are additional demands on staff time, especially for increased outreach as well as direct advocacy services. So we need to strengthen that team to ensure that we continue to offer those high-quality advocacy services.

There’s a clear need to ensure accessibility in our Prince George office for youth and young adults, as well, and to provide administrative support, something that they’ve been without for over four years. So we’re requesting funding for one FTE for an intake and community relations coordinator located in Prince George.

The second FTE is…. We have enhanced, as related to our systemic advocacy, First Nations, Métis and Inuit research team…. We are focusing much more on accountability and policy monitoring, particularly around figuring out what impact the changes that we’re recommending are having. That’s actually something the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth has been asking us to do.

We are revising our recommendations monitoring approach, and we require an additional capacity there. That would be a quality assurance policy analyst. That’s a new type of position for us, and that will allow us to support that work.

Now, you may ask, when we’ve got significant increases in reviews and investigations reportables, as we’ve outlined, why we are not asking for anything there. That’s primarily because that team has gone through some significant challenges around staffing. There’s been quite a bit of turnover.

We’re in the process of recruiting for five positions right now to get us back on track. Until such time as we have stabilized that team and assessed how well we’re able to meet the requirements of that growing caseload or review load, we will not be asking for any more resources. We want to make sure that we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got right now.

That’s a snapshot of our budget request. I look forward to your questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much.

I’ll now invite the committee to ask questions.

B. Bailey: Thank you very much for the presentation and, as always, for the incredibly important work you and your team do.

I’m looking at a very interesting chart on page 13 of the budget submission, and I’m wondering if you can help me understand two things. One is…. It’s really great to see that there isn’t an increased number of deaths. Those numbers are, obviously, still very much too high but not increasing like we’re seeing with critical injuries. While the deaths have remained somewhat stable when you look at 2016-17, 112, to today, 110, the increase in critical injuries is very, very significant.

I’m wondering if you can help me understand that. I suppose you have…. Either you know or you have a sense, probably, of why that might be.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you. It’s a really important question. It is a very dramatic increase, for sure.

[6:05 p.m.]

There are a number of reasons for that. One is that the ministry is doing a much better job of reporting the reportable circumstances. We’ve also amended the agreement with the ministry so that there are some things that weren’t previously captured that are now being captured. A key area is around emotional harm injuries, for example.

Part of it is that we’re getting more reports because they’re doing a better job of fulfilling their requirements to report to us. That’s part of it. The other thing is…. There are significant impacts associated with the toxic drug crisis, in particular, and with the complexity associated with that. We’re seeing an increased number of injuries associated with substance use and with the indirect impacts of substance use.

As an example — I might get the number a little bit wrong — there were 158 children, who we became familiar with through our reportables, that lost a parent or both parents this last year to the toxic drug crisis. That is now a critical injury, from our perspective, because it is life altering to lose your family members in such a catastrophic way. So that is driving some of the increase as well.

We’re also seeing some increases with respect to mental health and suicidality. That’s another area, when you start to see suicidal ideation or suicide attempts or non-suicidal self-harming. All of those kinds of things are being exacerbated by the mental health challenges. We’re also seeing some…. There is also an impact associated with youth and gang involvement.

Those are a few areas that keep driving it up. It’s really a combination of the pressures that young people are experiencing in the context that we’re dealing with and the fact that the ministry is doing a much better job.

B. Bailey: One question on this chart. Would you like to come back to me after…?

J. Routledge (Chair): Go ahead.

B. Bailey: Thank you for that answer and that explanation.

This one is just a curiosity, really. I’m trying to understand the 191 percent number as a baseline. I’m sorry. It’s been a very long day. Perhaps it’s obvious to everyone else but me. If you could just help me understand where that number comes from. I’m not seeing it add up based on what I’m seeing here.

J. Charlesworth: Basically what we’ve done is…. If you take from ’16-17 to ’21-22, we’ve had a 191 percent increase in the overall number of reports that we’ve received. That’s the very bottom line, the 191. So it’s comparing two years, whereas the other numbers that you’ve got there are basically saying, from year over year over year, we’re seeing an 8 percent increase in ’17-18 compared to ’16-17, or a 31 percent increase between ’20-21 and ’21-22.

Yeah. The numbers don’t add up. You’re comparing one year to the preceding year in that one row, and you’re comparing ’16-17 to where we’re at right now in the bottom line. Does that help?

B. Bailey: It does. Thank you.

H. Yao: Thank you so much, Dr. Charlesworth. It’s nice to see you again.

I’m a bit embarrassed. I think I asked this question in the other committee as well. I could have forgotten the answer. I apologize for that.

In the RCY annual report and service plan, on page 117…. I’m looking at your research grant and then remembering you actually answered this before. The difference between actual versus budget…. The budget was $5,000 but the actual was $670,000. I know you had a really good reason for that. Do you mind educating me about that one again?

J. Charlesworth: So why so big? Well, there are a few reasons for that. One of the things is….

There are two big reasons, Henry. One is that we have had some lags in recruiting. So we have been short-staffed. We’ve had some savings associated with staffing.

One of the opportunities that we have, with respect to research grants, is very quickly taking the resources and going to experts and advisers — people that are doing the research — to supplement the capacity that we have internally. So it’s been a quicker fix to be able to do that.

[6:10 p.m.]

The other thing, though, is when you take a look at all those priority areas, we’re doing things from child rights and representation to toxic drug supply to early intervention — all of those kinds of things.

We’re only a staff of 77. We can’t have expertise in every area, so we’ve found it extremely helpful to go to those folks that are already steeped in this work. It’s much more efficient to be able to go and say, “Share with us the very contemporary knowledge and the very best thinking that you have in these areas,” that then we take into account as we’re doing our analysis and our assessments going forward.

To give you some really good examples of that, we’ve seen a growing number of gender-diverse children who are experiencing critical injuries, and they have a very specific kind of injury that they’re experiencing. It’s mostly around suicidality. We looked around and we thought: “We have to do something with this, because these children — we need to understand what’s going on for them.”

We went to Elizabeth Saewyc at UBC, who’s been doing this work for ages. She has a whole research team. She’s got all these relationships with young people — with gender-fluid and gender-diverse young people. In a very robust way, we were able to get the kind of knowledge that we needed in order to supplement our work.

It’s really two things that we’re doing. One is augmenting our capacity in a challenging labour market, and the other thing is getting the expertise that we need. Basically, we’ve taken money — savings — through recruitment lag, and put it over there. Does that help?

H. Yao: Chair, may I have a supplemental question?

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes, you may.

H. Yao: Thank you so much.

That’s actually my question specifically, because your budget only asked for $5,000, and you actually spent about $617,000. It sounds like the money is really well spent. You’re collecting great data and great information. My question right now is: for future budgets, have you ever considered maybe we need to increase your research part so, that way, we can continue to collect and utilize important data that can make you work and make your connection with the community of greater strength?

I feel like this is sort of a one-time benefit due to COVID, which is great, but obviously, we want your field to be successful, because our future generations depend upon your great advocacy. Is there any kind of consideration that that might be an area to have a significant or appropriate re-evaluation of an increase?

J. Charlesworth: What a wonderful question. I think that I’m going to look to Pippa or to Dianne on that, because it really reflects the line-by-line review that the team has been doing.

Would you like to answer that one or would you like me to?

P. Rowcliffe: I’ll give it a go.

It’s a great question, Henry. One of the things I think that’s really important to say about the budget review that we did this year was that we’ve revealed that there are other areas of our budget that we want to go into more depth with so are going to be spending a bit more time looking at that larger allocation of major strategic activity. That’s one of the ones that we have a commitment to pay some attention to and take a look at. That’s the first thing I would say.

I think, also, the other thing that’s been really important is we’ve realized that to be able to do it well, we need to really build those relationships with researchers so that, as we bring them in, they’re really connected with our strategic priorities. It’s a budget and a strategic issue that we’re trying to balance and fit and connect together. I would say to watch this space, because we’ll probably be talking more about it as we go into future years, really trying to align….

We’ve got a few new grants with, as Jennifer mentioned, gender diversity, around mental health particularly and also around substance use. We’re really beginning to lean into that alignment.

So great question, and I think we’ll sort of pick that up in future years’ budgets and really be thinking about it from that budget and strategic perspective.

J. Charlesworth: I’ll add, too, that I think…. Again, we haven’t quite found our feet post-COVID and in the labour challenges that we’re facing, so we are just fine this year with being able to repurpose some of the moneys and savings we’ve got in some areas and put it towards research, and then we’ll figure out what next year brings and whether we will come back to this committee. But I actually am feeling quite confident that we have the resources that we need with that existing configuration that we have to realign because of recruitment lag.

[6:15 p.m.]

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation. I like the generosity of leaving the furniture behind.

My question…. I think, to what Brian had said about the numbers having changed…. Inside of the report, you talk about going from 24 to 27, the age that’s there, and it’s creating 60 percent more people that are in the system.

Is the budget reflective of that added group of people that are in there? Then, to that question, there is a part here that says: “Due to increasing complexity, the months that it takes for files to go….” We often hear that it’s a very complex situation, but sometimes I’d like to get an example to find out how complex it really is so I can understand that part of it, because it’s kind of staggering — the time that it takes to go and the resources that are there to go through the file.

J. Charlesworth: Well, we’d love to provide examples.

Blair, would you like to offer one, or do you want to…?

B. Mitchell: Thanks, Jennifer.

There are so many examples where families and children find themselves working in multiple service systems and also service systems that aren’t really catering to their needs or meeting their needs.

Young people transitioning, in particular, to CLBC services require a lot of attention and focus from our advocates. Young people who don’t have the services that they need from MCFD — we’re advocating that they get those and transition to CLBC services.

It’s really finding the voice of that young person in that process to make sure that they’re being listened to. That takes more time, because you’re creating relationships with young people, creating relationships with service providers, creating relationships with multiple service providers around the table and then trying to support that young person to transition to CLBC services to make sure that their service levels are adequate, that they remain the same and that they are being supported.

Jennifer, would you like to add to that?

J. Charlesworth: There’s a really good example. I think I’m just going to pick up on the other part of your question in terms of the increased age, which is a wonderful opportunity. We’re so thrilled to have that amendment to our legislation to be able to support young people up to 27. I have a 28-year-old and a 30-year-old, and I’m still very much engaged in supporting them going through, and they’re awesome. But you have to walk alongside young people, especially in these difficult times.

Do we have the resources? I would say that at this point, we’re trying to figure out how best to do the outreach. Hence the request for an additional FTE for Blair’s team that’s able to do the outreach, because these are not easy folks to find. If you can imagine, they’ve had an experience of being in care. They actually don’t want to have anything to do with professional systems in many cases. So being able to find them and being able to let them know that there’s somebody who could assist them, that there are new resources that weren’t there before….

Much as we did when our mandate expanded a few years back, what we’d like to do is do our very best to support those young people and keep good track of the numbers. Then if we’re finding that our numbers are going way up, we’ll come back to the committee, but it’s premature for us to do that right now. Really, we need to reach them first, find out how we can be of support and then see where our caseload numbers go from there.

Hopefully we’ve answered both aspects of your question, Mike.

M. Starchuk: I think you’re in the wait-and-see phase.

J. Charlesworth: Yes.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. It’s excellent. My wife works in social services, so she understands the challenges that you guys go through all the time.

I’m curious about the labour shortage and the challenges it brings you folks. The competition, the pay…. A lot of this budget is on inflationary costs, and that could reflect on being more competitive in hiring.

I was reading in the budget submission here of temporary assignments and the challenges you see with some of the folks that are going to other ministries. Poaching, I guess you could call it, or whatever you want to call it.

[6:20 p.m.]

Also, with your mandate to hire 25 percent Indigenous staff…. It’s up from 18 to 25. How is that going to impede your goals for those folks that you want to hire on? Maybe explain, a little bit, the challenges and how much of this budget reflects that.

J. Charlesworth: There are a few areas that we’re really challenged by. One is that, as you can imagine, when everybody is looking for people, there’s a lot of poaching. That’s the word I use too. Our staff are actually extremely skilled. They have an extraordinary set of skills by virtue of doing this kind of work, and they’re known within the system, so we have had many of our staff be offered developmental opportunities or promotional opportunities.

One of the things…. A little-known fact is that if a temporary assignment is under seven months, it can be a direct award. It doesn’t need…. It can be a tap on the shoulder, basically: “Come on over.” It can happen in two weeks. So people don’t even have to compete for those positions. Once in, then what we see is that those temporary assignments get extended and extended and extended.

For example, Blair was dealing with one that was supposed to be under seven months. It went for 21 months. That puts a tremendous amount of pressure on us, because you can’t offer the person who’s backing up that person any kind of security and assurance, so they’re always keeping their lines of sight to other opportunities as well.

So temporary assignments and that poaching that’s happening…. It’s happening all over. It’s not just for us. All of the independent officers have been sharing the stories about that. So that’s one area.

The other thing that’s important about those temporary assignments or some of these opportunities is that people can go and get quite a significant budgetary or staffing salary increase. So it’s a wonderful way for people to increase their salaries in a time when, frankly, public service salaries are low, especially with the housing market. You can go, and if you hop a couple of places in the course of a year, you could get a 10 percent salary lift. Why would people not be doing that?

We actually have some kinds of problems that are a public…. They’re bigger than our office in terms of the ways in which things are going in the public service now. I hope to be speaking with the head of the PSA soon on some of these things and whether this was really envisioned in this challenging labour market. So that’s one thing.

The other thing is that this work is darned hard. I think that it’s reasonable to expect people to move after a few years of working in reviews and investigations, for example. I’m proud to say that advocacy is an extremely stable team. That’s thanks to Blair’s leadership and his amazing managers and whatnot. So that’s a very stable team.

The most unstable team, frankly, is reviews and investigations, and that’s really because of the nature of the work. So it’s really quite reasonable to see turnover in that. We just have to plan for it a little bit better than I think we have.

The other thing that you talked about was with respect to recruitment — preferential hires or exclusive hires of Indigenous folks. With over 66 percent of children in care being Indigenous, we have a duty and a responsibility to be more reflective and to bring that perspective in. The reality is that those folks are under…. They’re in great demand. There are lots of opportunities for folks, so it is more difficult to recruit into those positions. In a few situations, we’ve had to do three postings before we’ve actually been able to recruit, hence the recruitment lag. But it’s a commitment that we have to make.

I should say that the other thing that we’re doing is expanding our preference statements to address other areas of recruitment, particularly racialized, LGBTQ2S+, folks with different abilities, neurocognitive or physical accessibility issues — trying to reflect a more diverse workforce as well. So we shall see how we do.

[6:25 p.m.]

The other thing I should say is that it’s been very beneficial to go to more remote and decentralized work, particularly for Indigenous folks, who want to stay close to their community and culture. And why would we ask them to leave their community and their cultural ties to come into Victoria, for example? That doesn’t make any sense. Here we are talking about belonging, and then we’re asking people to unbelong themselves by moving here. So that is helping for sure, in terms of some of the applications that we’re getting. They’re definitely outside of the urban areas. So that’s helpful.

M. Starchuk: With regard to office space, you’re excited to lose your office space in Prince George, which is usually not the case — to lose it. But what tools are you using to determine what your office space needs of the future are?

J. Charlesworth: Well, one of the most important things is talking to our staff and doing an assessment of: “What’s your ideal work arrangement, in terms of the number of days in the office, the number of days working at home? What are some of the configurations that you need? What are the environments that best suit your ways of working?”

We’re doing a lot more collaborative teamwork across our statutory teams, asking and really taking a look at, as we say, what needs to be in the room. What’s in Zoom, and what’s in the room? When do we need to bring people together?

It’s really being driven a lot by staff and their participation with Pippa and Sam. That’s driving it, in part. The other thing is taking a look at what the best practice is out there. What is the evidence?

For example, there’s a place called KWENCH, which is a co-working space here in Victoria. We actually hosted a meeting there. People loved it. So they came from that co-working space, and they said: “Could we do something like that?” When you expose people to different ways of working and they can start to reimagine themselves in those places, then we start to get creative around the design going forward.

So there are best practices. What’s out there? What does our staff want? We’re also recruiting a designer to help us make sure that we’re doing the best use of space, especially on that first floor.

M. Starchuk: It basically stems out of the Auditor General and the way that they had done the research — and exactly what you’re saying. It’s talking with staff, taking a look at best practices and then hiring a third party, a person that says: “Okay, these are your ideas. How does this look?”

J. Charlesworth: Yeah, exactly.

P. Rowcliffe: We have been very structured about how we’ve done that. We have run town halls with staff with some very clear questions around what would make the space that we have welcoming and productive and something that they would like to be able to spend time in.

There have been a few other things that have really driven some of our decision-making, creating cultural space that is safe and welcoming for our Indigenous staff but also our Elders and Matriarchs. We’re really paying close attention to that, because that’s part of our recruitment strategy — that our space, as well as everything else that we do, is welcoming, supportive and appropriate.

Then the third real driver is that we want to be able to make sure our doors are open, so that youth are able to come in. That’s a big driver both in Prince George and in Victoria, because the third floor definitely isn’t an accessible space, and the fourth is very much more sort of administrative, whereas this gives us the freedom to create space that really does allow for us to welcome people in, both partners and youth.

R. Merrifield: Thank you so much for the presentation. This has been excellent. I just commend you for keeping the budget where it is, despite seeing this 191 percent increase. That’s truly remarkable. One of the questions…. My only question is on the office space transition as well. I wasn’t seeing that in your capital. Are you doing that through operating dollars, then, or does that come back when you have that space understood?

D. Buljat: The additional space is operating costs. It’s just a lease, and we’re doing very minor tenant improvements that wouldn’t reach the capital threshold. The capital threshold for tenant improvements is $50,000. We’re going to do a bit of painting and purchase a bit of furniture. That’s all going to fit into the operating thresholds. So there isn’t additional money required for it. We’re being very realistic about it.

R. Merrifield: Okay. So then Prince George would not be contemplated yet in this.

[6:30 p.m.]

D. Buljat: Prince George is not contemplated yet. The current lease expires in September of 2023. We didn’t want to exit earlier and incur additional costs. It’s not good space. It’s not in a safe location for youth. So we are actively looking for other spaces, but there are not a lot of opportunities in Prince George either. It’s a bit of a challenge. That’s why we don’t have anything to put forward for that yet.

R. Merrifield: Okay, excellent. Thank you so much for the answer.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you. I’m pretty sure that our next presenters are waiting outside, so we should wrap it up.

I want to thank you on behalf of the committee. We’re clearly all very engaged with your presentation and the incredible work that you do. One of the things I was struck with — I wrote it down — is the way you phrased the “continued fallout” from the pandemic. I think that’s such a good way to put it.

I want to thank you for the very compassionate and eloquent way you explained to us what is going on in the world. We, ourselves, and our constituents are grappling with that, and you see it in a painful way, many times. that is very instructive. Your analysis of what you’re up against and what we’re all up against as a society is very impressive. Thank you for that.

J. Charlesworth: Thank you. It’s much appreciated.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll recess just for a couple of minutes.

The committee recessed from 6:31 p.m. to 6:38 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll now hear from Elections B.C. to make a presentation.

We’ve set aside about 25 minutes for your presentation and about 30 minutes for questions and answers from the committee. I’ll now turn it over to Anton Boegman.

ELECTIONS B.C.

A. Boegman: Thank you very much. Good evening, Madam Chair, Mr. Deputy Chair and members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Thank you for this opportunity to meet with you to share Elections B.C.’s plans and budget requirements in support of our ongoing administration of our mandate.

I’d like to begin with a sincere acknowledgement that this meeting is taking place on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and the Songhees First Nations. We acknowledge with gratitude and with respect their stewardship of the lands that we are on.

[6:40 p.m.]

Joining me at the table this evening are Yvonne Koehn, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for corporate services, and Charles Porter, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for electoral finance and operations. Sitting in the gallery are Tanya Ackinclose, director of finance and facilities; Andrew Watson, director of communications; and Jodi Cooke, executive director of electoral finance.

Following my opening comments, Yvonne and Charles will highlight the details of our operating, capital and event budget requirements as well as the funding necessary to provide annual allowances to eligible political parties.

I’m always pleased to meet with the committee at this time. It’s an excellent opportunity for us to provide an update on the work and the key activities of my office. It’s also a great opportunity to share with members of this committee and, through you, the Legislative Assembly and the citizens of British Columbia, how Elections B.C. uses public funds to serve the democratic processes in our province.

We provided our budget document and associated spreadsheets to you earlier this month, and in relation to the funding requirements for the Surrey South by-election, those budget documents were provided to you earlier in August. In this material, we review our mission and organizational values. Elections B.C.’s, mission is to serve democracy in British Columbia. We do this by administering elections fairly and impartially and through delivering modern, accessible and trusted electoral services that are designed with British Columbians at the centre.

Two of our core values are accountability and transparency, and this meeting provides us an opportunity to bring those two elements together and put forward the budget requirements that are needed to achieve our mission in an efficient and fiscally responsible manner. Before summarizing the numbers that comprise our budget request, I’ll make a few comments on the work of this current year and our key priorities for 2023-’24. Following these remarks, Yvonne and Charles will provide additional detail. Yvonne’s focus will be on the ongoing operating and capital budget requests, while Charles will address our event- and public-funding requirements.

Elections B.C. has five ongoing strategic priorities: deliver events, modernize electoral services, improve accessibility and inclusivity, build organizational capacity and protect electoral integrity. These priorities provide an effective framework from which to describe our work now and into the future.

For event delivery, the administration of campaign finance and election advertising rules for the October 15 general local elections has been a major focus of our office this year, with election advertising issues being of particularly high volume. General local voting day is now past, and the intensive work on this provincewide event has shifted to the receipt, the review, assessment and audit of election disclosure statements. Following the conclusion of this work, we will prepare and table a report with the Legislature on the local elections, including any recommendations for legislative change.

During this year, we’ve also administered two provincial by-elections, one in Vancouver-Quilchena and one in Surrey South. Both of these have been conducted under the newly enforced voting modernization provisions of the Election Amendment Act, 2019. This year, we also oversaw an unsuccessful recall petition in Vernon-Monashee.

Looking ahead, our primary event focus in 2023-’24 will be completing an electoral district and voting area boundary redistribution that will be based on any electoral district changes that are passed by the Legislative Assembly. We will also be preparing for the 43rd provincial general election, which is scheduled for October 19, 2024. This includes an associated provincial enumeration, which will take place in the months before the election.

The next general election will be British Columbia’s first provincewide election under voting modernization. Among other benefits, all voters will now be served on a first-come, first-served model when they enter a voting place rather than having to line up at their assigned voting station. This change will also enable absentee voters to be processed more efficiently without having to go to a separate absentee station. In the voting places, election officials will look up voters in an electronic voting book, and they’ll record their participation. The voter will mark a paper ballot for their electoral district contest, and that ballot will be inserted into a tabulator.

[6:45 p.m.]

This will result in a faster and smoother experience for voters and will enable the provision of more timely participation information for candidates and campaigns, which will facilitate get-out-the-vote efforts. It will also produce fast, accurate election results following the close of voting, a benefit for all British Columbians.

As Charles will discuss in more detail, in relation to our event funding requirements…. Hardware procurement timelines are currently much longer than in previous years. We are requesting supplemental event funding this year to ensure that that equipment, which is needed for the next general election, can be in our warehouse with plenty of time to prepare it for that event.

As the members of this committee know, the B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission released its preliminary report on proposed changes to provincial electoral district boundaries and names on October 3 and, following a second round of public consultation, will table its final report by April 3, 2023. If the Legislative Assembly enacts the commission’s proposed changes, Elections B.C. will implement these new electoral district boundaries into our systems and our maps and complete a full redistribution of voting area boundaries.

In the past, this redistribution work has taken Elections B.C. up to 12 months to complete. With the use of digital-mapping technologies, however, I’m optimistic that the redistribution will be able to be completed in a shorter time frame.

Supporting our priority of modernizing electoral services, we’re also implementing a system to allow for the electronic filing of candidate nomination applications. We anticipate launching the service in the coming months. Looking forward, we will also be seeking to add the electronic filing of financial reports to our suite of modernized electoral services.

Improving the accessibility and inclusivity of electoral processes is a core commitment of Elections B.C. and a priority for me as Chief Electoral Officer. As I outlined to the committee in May, after an initial mailout to about 100,000 16- and 17-year-olds earlier this year, we’re now sending monthly letters to youths, as they turn 16, inviting them to register on the list of future voters. Altogether we have sent over 125,000 letters and registered over 12,000 future voters, of whom 4,000 have already been automatically registered on the voters list when they turned 18.

We’re also working to implement the requirements of the Accessible British Columbia Act. A project is underway to appoint our accessibility committee and prepare an accessibility plan and feedback mechanism. This will ensure that Elections B.C. is meeting the requirements of the act by the September 2023 regulated deadline.

Our fourth strategic priority is building organizational capacity. You will see the impacts of this in our budget submission.

We’ve completed our comprehensive organizational review and are looking to implement the final aspects of this process, including the addition of three full-time employees. Significantly, we’ve moved much of our information systems development and maintenance work from contracted service providers to our expanded in-house IT team. Not only has this strategy materially reduced the risk in our technology-driven events and operations, but it has also resulted in a significant decrease in our requirements for capital funding. It will also reduce future amortization costs.

Last, we remain committed to actively addressing the new challenges to democracy, to voter trust in institutions and to electoral integrity that are posed by cyberthreats in the digital communications environment. Our recent experience in overseeing election advertising during the pre-campaign and campaign periods for the general local elections has highlighted this work and has reinforced that the threat to our democracy that is posed by disinformation and posed by non-transparent advertising is real and ongoing.

This experience is in line with reports from the Communications Security Establishment and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The challenges for electoral administrators and the damage to trust in elections that we have seen south of the border are also a stark reminder of the potential risk in this area.

The recommendations in my May 2020 report on digital communications disinformation and democracy remain before the Legislature. I strongly encourage all legislators to review and to act on this report.

[6:50 p.m.]

Now to the numbers. Our core services ongoing operating budget request for 2023-24 is $13.873 million. This is an increase from what was presented to the committee last year, largely driven by our need to account for the recently ratified BCGEU labour contract. Yvonne will provide more information on the detail of this request, including a breakdown of the relevant operating budget components.

As noted, the technology is critical for many aspects of electoral administration, and it is a key enabler of our strategic priorities and the provision of modern and improved services to voters and electoral stakeholders. Our capital budget request for 2023-24 is $400,000. This is a reduction of 50 percent, or $400,000, from what was presented to the committee last year.

This capital budget will primarily include funding for two projects: the e-filing system for regulated political participants and the development of a secure mobile application through which district electoral officers can complete their planning activities. Again, Yvonne will provide more detail on the proposed capital budget.

For event funding, Elections B.C. will require funding in fiscal 2023-24 comprised of $12.425 million to support preparations for the 43rd provincial general election; $3.848 million to implement 2023 electoral boundaries redistribution; $1.785 million to conduct audits and assessments of financial disclosure reports for the 2022 general local elections; and $736,000 to support preparations for the 2024 enumeration, which will be administered in the summer of 2024.

As noted, in addition to the event funding for the next fiscal year, we’re also requesting supplemental event funding for the current fiscal year. This supplemental request includes $8.897 million to support preparations for the 43rd provincial election.

The majority of these funds are for the procurement of necessary technology for the modernized voting place. Procurement would usually take place in the year prior to a fixed-date election. However, due to global supply chain challenges and delays, the procurement activities must be advanced to the current fiscal year. This component can be described as an advance on funding that would normally be included in next year’s event funding request.

We will also require $906,000 for the administration of the Surrey South by-election, as outlined in my request to this committee dated August 18, 2022. Obviously, the majority of this funding has already been spent, as the by-election is complete, and the elected member is now sitting in the Legislature.

The last component of our 2023-2024 budget proposal is the funds necessary to administer public funding requirements that are mandated by our legislation. We will require $3.3 million to make the July 2023 and January 2024 annual allowance payments to eligible political parties.

Following Yvonne’s presentation on the detail of our ongoing operating and capital budget requests, Charles will provide more information on our event funding and annual allowance payment requirements as part of his comments.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to meet with this committee. I’d like to now turn the presentation over to Yvonne.

Y. Koehn: Thank you, Anton. Good evening, committee members. I’m Yvonne Koehn, the Deputy Chief Electoral Officer of corporate services. It’s a pleasure to appear before this committee to provide you with details on the numbers you see in the budget proposal document.

I will focus on our core services operating and capital budgets, as well as the specifics of tables 1 through 4. Our ongoing core services operating budget request is broken down, by expense line, on page 11 of our proposal. This table lists expenses that support all business areas, and you can find additional notes for each expense line on the following page that provide details about the nature of these expenses.

As noted earlier by Anton, the request of $13.873 million for ongoing core services represents an increase of $1.45 million compared to what was requested for fiscal ’23-24 during our last budget submission, which this committee recommended for Elections B.C. A key driver for this change is in the salary increases for schedule A staff resulting from the new BCGEU agreement taking effect. The salary and benefits amounts are also increased by the addition of 3.25 full-time-equivalent positions resulting from the organizational review we outlined to this committee last year.

[6:55 p.m.]

Other than staffing costs, there is an increase to the information systems budget to accommodate the need to continue the upgrade to Microsoft Teams in order to facilitate a more effective hybrid model and align with what stakeholders and partners in other government offices are using. There is also budget allocated for server purchases and associated licences for key applications.

Other changes to the expense line budgets are modest and reflect minor fluctuations between the separate line items as we adjust to changing circumstances and projects each year. As mentioned earlier, Charles will address the event expenses and funding required to provide annual allowances to eligible political parties. Therefore, I’m going to move on to page 13.

This page includes a pie chart that illustrates our core services operating budget request for next fiscal, which shows that Elections B.C. is highly dependent on people. Once salaries, rent and IT are covered, we have very little flexibility in other areas.

Pages 14 to 20 of the budget proposal include spreadsheets, tables 1 to 4, created by the committee for our use. Table 1 on page 14 is the three-year budget plan by STOB. This table shows the current fiscal year, ’22-23, compared to our request for next fiscal year. This table includes both our core services and the events budgets, and illustrates how widely the total budget varies from fiscal to fiscal as we move through different events. The total proposed budget of $35.967 million for ’23-24 includes the $13.873 million mentioned earlier for core services, plus $18.794 million for events and $3.3 million in annual allowances to political parties.

The planned budgets for the two out years — fiscals ’23-24 and ’24-25 — do not include event delivery funding. When we create our budget for electoral events, each budget is developed from the ground up based on the specific plans for an event, which are finalized during the fiscal year prior to scheduled events. Funding for scheduled events occurring in the next fiscal year are requested as part of our annual budget proposal, while funding for unscheduled events are requested as and when required.

Table 2, on page 16, shows the budget versus actuals for fiscal ’21-22. Our total operating expenses of $20.191 were $935,000 or 4 percent below the approved budget of $21.126 million. The largest areas of surplus were under the professional services and information systems line items.

Table 3, on page 18, shows the actual expenditures for the last five fiscal years. You will notice that the total operating appropriation is equal to the total operating expenses. This is because the total operating appropriation is the amount reported in the public accounts, whereas in the other tables, the total reflects the approved budget. This is a consequence of the funding process.

Funding for unscheduled events such as by-elections is from a special appropriation recommended by this committee and approved by the Minister of Finance. At the end of the year, the Ministry of Finance actually allocates Elections B.C. the exact amount necessary up to a maximum of that approval. So the budget reflected in the public accounts equals exactly the amount that was spent on those events.

Finally, table 4, on page 20, is the capital spending plan. Our capital request for ’23-24 is $400,000, for ’24-25 is $325,000 and for ’25-26 is $150,000. This is significantly reduced from previous capital budget requests, which ranged from $650,000 to $1.2 million over the last five years. The reduction is as a result of the organizational review, which has shifted the bulk of information system work from contractors, paid out of the capital budgets based on the nature of the work delivered, to in-house staff, who are covered by our operating budget. The reduction in our capital budgets will also reduce the amount of amortization paid in future operating budgets.

As Anton mentioned, the two main projects that make up our capital budget request in fiscal ’23-24 are to improve services for provincial regulated political participants through an e-filing tool for financial reports and to improve services for our district electoral officers through a tool that is efficient, mobile and secure to complete planning activities, which will also result in headquarters staff able to provide oversight and guidance more efficiently.

Thank you for your attention. Charles will now address the event-related and annual allowance funding requirements.

C. Porter: Good evening, committee members. I’m Charles Porter. I’m the Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for electoral finance and operations. I will begin my remarks by providing the committee with an overview of operations and will then focus on Elections B.C.’s event-related funding requirements.

[7:00 p.m.]

These are busy times of change for Elections B.C. We continue to adapt our operations to maintain readiness while managing pandemic risk, a changing security environment and global supply issues. We closely study issues in other jurisdictions, including emerging threats to election administration and democracy. We maintain a relationship and share information with other election management bodies, federal security agencies and police. We are working with our partners to anticipate risks and prepare for future events.

I wish specifically to thank B.C. Mail Plus and the King’s Printer for their exceptional support. Despite many challenges, we’ve been able to maintain a high state of readiness and excellence in electoral administration. I’m very proud of our achievements in support of democracy.

Currently we are in the middle of our four-year business cycle between the 2020 and 2024 provincial general elections. The 43rd provincial general election is scheduled for October 19, 2024. We are also just over a week since the October 15 general local elections general voting day and about six weeks since the Surrey South by-election.

In summary, at this stage of our business cycle, we are in the midst of the implementation phase of the general local elections event. We are intensifying our preparations for the next provincial general election, and we are preparing for and delivering on-demand electoral events as required.

Prior to discussing the general local elections, I would like to clarify the role of Elections B.C. With respect to local elections, Elections B.C. only administers electoral finance and advertising provisions under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. We do not administer voting, which is run by local government staff. This, at times, causes voter confusion, and we have received a number of inquiries and complaints related to local elections administration.

The October 15 general local elections were the third since the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act was enacted in 2014. This is complex and evolving legislation, and it is not always consistent with the Election Act. These factors make administration challenging for Elections B.C. and make compliance challenging for regulated political participants.

Adding to the complexity this year was the fact that these were the first general local elections in which new rules for election advertising were in force. These new rules include the establishment of a 60-day pre-campaign period and sponsorship contribution limits. We have a team in place to support compliance with the requirements of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. To date, our staff have been providing information and responding to requests and complaints.

To give you a better sense of the scale of these operations, here are some brief statistics: 3,222 candidates and 45 registered elector organizations participated in the general local elections, and 77 third-party advertising sponsors registered with Elections B.C. To date, Elections B.C. has responded to over 8,000 inquiries from election participants. We ran a major provincewide advertising campaign with the theme “Know the rules,” and we held 13 information sessions to educate participants on the rules and requirements of the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.

In addition to providing information to political participants, our role now will shift to compliance activities and enforcement actions. We will receive, review and evaluate thousands of electoral finance filings. For the first time, in some cases we will be conducting audits to ensure compliance. We will take enforcement action as needed.

Now I will turn to provincial electoral events and other matters. As Anton mentioned, we have administered two provincial by-elections in 2022. The first was in April, in Vancouver-Quilchena, and the second was in September, in Surrey South. During both events, Elections B.C. deployed new technologies and procedures made possible by amendments to the Election Act, which were brought in through the Election Amendment Act, 2019. This included the use of electronic voting books and vote-counting tabulators and a first-come, first-served model of serving voters.

These events have allowed us to gain valuable experience in administering elections under the amended Election Act. We treated each event as a learning opportunity, in keeping with our commitment to continuous improvement. We used an observer program to conduct voting place evaluations and voter exit surveys. In our main meeting with this committee, Anton spoke to some of the benefits we saw in Vancouver-Quilchena: short waits, efficient voting station service, fast results reporting and high voter satisfaction. These observations were repeated in Surrey South.

The voter survey results have been very positive; 96 percent of survey respondents found it very easy to vote, 96 percent rated the voting process as very efficient, 98 percent were satisfied with their voting experience, and 97 percent were confident that their vote would be counted accurately.

[7:05 p.m.]

Elections B.C. administered a recall petition for the MLA for Vernon-Monashee. The petition failed as of October 11, when the recall petition was not submitted by the statutory deadline.

Elections B.C. is also responsible for ensuring that provincial party leadership contestants comply with the campaign financing provisions of the Election Act. As has recently been reported in the media, our role is limited and only in relation to financing reports from approved leadership candidates. In May, we received and reviewed leadership contestant financing reports filed in relation to the B.C. Liberal leadership contest, and we will also do so for the one report which will be received in relation to the B.C. NDP leadership contest.

A major area of program development in electoral finance that we are working on is an expanded audit and assessment program. Following best practices, we will use risk-based criteria to identify electoral finance filings which require more in-depth reviews and, in some cases, audits to ensure compliance with the legislation.

Now I will turn to our funding request. Through the remainder of this fiscal and into 2023-24, we will be concluding our work on the above-noted events, focusing most of our effort on the general local elections and the Surrey South by-election.

For the general local elections, we are requesting event funding for 2023-24 of $1.785 million to conduct compliance reviews and audits of financial disclosure reports. The largest component of this funding is for temporary staff at headquarters, and the remainder is made up of information systems and office expenses, including professional services.

Now I will move on to preparations for the next provincial general election. This includes three significant components. First, we are preparing for B.C.’s first provincial general election under the amended Election Act, using the modernized voting and counting systems.

Second, we are preparing to administer the next election on new electoral district and voting area boundaries. This is pending the enactment of an amended Electoral Districts Act, following the release of the Electoral Boundaries Commission’s final report. That report must be tabled in the Legislature by April 3 of 2023.

Third, we are preparing for a provincewide enumeration event to ensure that the voters list is as up-to-date as possible for the next general election.

You will note that our supplementary budget request for the current fiscal year includes funding for the Surrey South by-election as well as the 43rd provincial general election. For the Surrey South by-election, as noted in our August 18 report to this committee, we are requesting the addition of $906,000 in supplementary funding for the current fiscal year. This comprises $806,000 for our cost to administer the by-election and $100,000 for election expense reimbursements to eligible candidates and political parties.

The 2022-23 general elections supplementary funding request of $8.897 million is primarily to procure technology in support of implementing the new modernized voting model. To give you a more concrete understanding, the bulk of this funding request will allow us to procure about $5.8 million in laptops and peripherals and about $1.1 million in printers and toner, through a mix of purchasing and leasing. Beginning the procurement of this essential equipment in this fiscal year will mitigate risks presented by global supply chain challenges and long procurement lead times.

For 2023-24, we require $12.425 million for preparations for the 43rd provincial general election. The main elements of this funding will provide for the additional procurement and configuration of election technology; salaries, benefits and training costs for district electoral officers and their deputies; development of election advertising; and printing costs. Also included are funding for temporary staff at headquarters; information systems; office expenses, including professional services; and advertising costs.

The next component of our event budget request is $3.848 million for the electoral boundaries redistribution. If, as anticipated, the next election is called after new electoral district boundaries are passed into law, the election will be run on these new boundaries. In addition to implementing the legislated electoral district boundaries and names into our systems, we must also redistribute voting area boundaries to account for both electoral district changes and population changes. A well-planned voting area boundary set plays a crucial role in assigning voters to accessible voting places and mitigating the risk of long voting place lineups in high-growth areas.

[7:10 p.m.]

The redistribution budget request includes funding for temporary geographic information system technical staff; information systems; mailing costs for a provincewide voter notice to ensure voters know which electoral district they reside in; office expenses, including professional services; and advertising costs.

The next component of the event-funding request is $736,000 for the enumeration event itself. Ahead of each scheduled provincial general election, Elections B.C. conducts an enumeration to ensure a high-quality voters list for use in the general election. An accurate voters list is essential for an inclusive, accessible and fair general election. Enumeration activities also raise awareness of the upcoming election among British Columbians and allow for meaningful engagement with communities experiencing administrative barriers to electoral participation.

The 2024 enumeration will consist of three strategies: data enumeration, mail outreach and directed community outreach. The first strategy for data enumeration includes processing available files from regular data-sharing partners such as Elections Canada and resolving address exceptions. The funding to begin the preparation for the 2024 enumeration includes funding for temporary staff at headquarters, information systems and office expenses, including professional services.

The final component of the event-funding request is $3.3 million for annual allowances to registered political parties. In accordance with section 215.02 of the Election Act, the Chief Electoral Officer must pay an annual allowance to registered political parties whose candidates in the most recent general election received at least 2 percent of the valid votes cast in all electoral districts, or 5 percent of the valid votes cast in the districts in which the political party endorsed candidates.

Per the Election Act, funding for 2023-24 is based on an allocation of $1.75 per vote received for the July 2023 payment and the January 2024 payment. We have included an estimate to account for changes to the consumer price index for the January 2024 payment. This concludes my comments.

Anton, back to you.

A. Boegman: Thank you, Charles.

Madam Chair, this concludes the formal presentation of Elections B.C.’s budget requirements to the committee. Before moving into the discussion and question-and-answer section of the meeting, I’d like to highlight one additional aspect related to our budget request.

You will have noted that a significant portion of the event-funding request, especially the supplemental request for this fiscal year, is for the procurement of e-poll book ballot printers that, combined with the paper ballot tabulators, are necessary for the modernized voting place. With provincial and local elections scheduled every two years, there is a potential for Elections B.C. to be able to lease this equipment, at a cost recovery basis, to British Columbian municipalities that have similar technical requirements.

This is a model that’s used in Ontario, where Elections Ontario has purchased the equipment and leases it back to many Ontario municipalities. Under this model, there is the potential for provincial savings in the millions of dollars over the life of the equipment.

Elections B.C. is currently piloting such a lease with electronic poll books for the municipality of Squamish. Based on the result of this pilot program, we’ll be looking at expanding it further through future discussions with local administrations. Although this potential lease program does not impact our budget submission, I felt it important to highlight this with the committee.

At this time, we’d now be happy to respond to any questions that committee members may have, Madam Chair.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Anton. I’ll now invite the committee to ask questions.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I’ll just pick up, Anton, on where you left off there with the purchase of capital equipment for the purpose of voting and then leasing it back out to other municipalities or whoever. Is there a return-on-investment component on that? Do you know what that return on investment would look like? Is it five years, ten years, six years?

A. Boegman: Over the life of the equipment, which is typically going to be two provincial general elections, or eight years, give or take, plus a little bit more, there is a return on investment. We’re still crunching the numbers, because obviously that’s dependent on how many municipalities are going to be taking advantage of that opportunity.

[7:15 p.m.]

I have had a number of discussions with the Ontario Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Greg Essensa. He has indicated that that is a key component of what they’re doing in that province.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Just to follow up, how long has Ontario been doing this, then?

A. Boegman: They received their mandate and the changes in legislation prior to their 2018 election, so they’ve been doing it for the 2018 election, the 2024 election. They’re still using the same equipment that was purchased for the 2022 election. They’re still using the equipment that was purchased in 2018 for this purpose.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Just another follow-up. Thanks, Chair.

Is it being anticipated right now by Elections B.C. to follow this model, but first to find out what that return on investment would be? I mean, technology changes so quickly. We know that what’s good today, in three or four years from now, may be obsolete. So those things under consideration — is Elections B.C. now considering that model? Will it come to this committee to ask for that purchase, or is that in the budget right now to make that purchase?

A. Boegman: The funding that we’re putting into the budget right now is to enable Elections B.C. to administer the 43rd provincial general election. That’s equipment that we require as a result of the changes to the Election Amendment Act, 2019. The advantage of having this equipment in hand is that it can also be repurposed for use by B.C. municipalities. Through the pilot that we’re running right now with Squamish, we’re going to be fine-tuning that. Then we’re going to be…. We’ve had a number of discussions with other jurisdictions, with the city of Vancouver, for example, about how this might look in the future.

We’ll be looking at putting that proposal together, but it won’t result in any net new requests coming to this committee. It will simply be that the equipment that we have purchased already for use in provincial elections will be allowed, able to be repurposed for local government elections.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

R. Merrifield: I noted that the 2020 election was about $42 million. You’ve got just under $9 million for the supplemental funding of this to get ready for the 43rd. Would you anticipate a cost of a similar…? Or is this $9 million in addition to the previous $43 million? I think it was $43 million.

A. Boegman: I think the cost of the 2020 election was actually in the nature of $51 million…

R. Merrifield: Oh, $51 million. Sorry.

A. Boegman: …all told. Obviously, that was a unique event and required expenditure of funds on items that were essential for ensuring the safety of voters and election officials during that time frame.

The $9 million, or $8.897 million, plus the $12 million that we have in the budget right now for preparations, will allow for many of the preparations, of course, that are necessary to get us ready to administer that. There will be additional funds that will be in next year’s budget, where we anticipate what our expenses will be — for example, the rent of district electoral offices, for the salaries of election officials that we will hire and train, for material that will be produced in the lead-up to that time frame, for advertising campaigns that will be conducted.

For these types of things, most of the costs are based on actual quotations that we receive from suppliers or are based on the cost that is in the marketplace at that time — for example, whatever the market rates for rental of offices will be at that time. It doesn’t give an accurate picture if we try to budget two years out, for example, from the election.

I would expect that the costs for this election, all told, will be in a similar number, I would think, as the 2020 election, as there were unique costs for that. We’re also investing now into the technology that will serve us, not only for the next provincial election but for the ones after that.

R. Merrifield: Just to follow up for clarification. Then, because we’re investing in this $9 million right now and because it will last two different elections, we don’t have to…. Are we amortising those costs over the two, or would they just be assumed in this one and not needed to be calculated in the next?

A. Boegman: They would be front-loaded in this one.

R. Merrifield: Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

B. Bailey: I’m interested in the…. You’re procuring now the technology that you’re going to need, the actual hardware that you’re going to need due to the chip shortage. I suspect that’s lots of time, but I do wonder if you’ve done a risk assessment. If what you need to purchase isn’t available in that time frame, is there a plan B?

[7:20 p.m.]

I ask this partly because…. My air conditioning went out in May, and we’re waiting still. It sounds like it might be another eight months. They’re saying…. So there still really are challenges happening. I’ve heard personally that chips are going to get easier to get, but I’m wondering if you’ve done any risk analysis on this and if there is a plan B in place.

A. Boegman: I can certainly talk to some of the risk analysis that we’ve done. There is a plan B in place.

Yvonne, you may want to add to my comments. Charles as well.

We have made contact, for example, with Elections Ontario. They have their supply of hardware that is already in place, and making ourselves available of some of that is part of our plan B. We also have discussed, with a number of national suppliers, the ability to lease equipment, if needed, on a short basis.

We have looked at the risk. Partially, the main way that we are mitigating that is by going out earlier into the marketplace. We’re quite confident, with the supply arrangements that we’re aware of right now, that that will meet the need for Elections B.C.

Yvonne?

Y. Koehn: You nailed it. Those are all the points that I wanted to make. Thank you.

B. Bailey: Thank you very much.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I’m just looking at the event expenses budget, particularly on the electoral boundaries redistribution.

In the budget here, the proposed redistribution is already…. The interim report is out. There is also now the consultation phase, and they’re going out right now, publicly, to look at those proposed boundaries.

In the budget, is there a contingency there? If the Boundaries Commission comes back and they have to reconfigure maybe two, three, four, five boundaries…. That could possibly happen. Is that built into this? And if it is…. Would there be a surplus coming out if there isn’t?

A. Boegman: The budget for the boundaries redistribution has been developed and will provide Elections B.C. with the necessary staff and equipment and services to implement the boundaries when the final report is tabled and depending on what happens in the Legislature regarding the proposal that the commission will make.

The funding there represents, as Charles has itemized, what’s necessary to take place for our systems, for our maps, etc. It also includes a provincewide communications component, where we will be sending letters to voters informing them of any changes to their electoral district, which is a component that we had, as a lesson learned, from the work of the previous commission in 2015.

I don’t believe that there will need to be any other contingencies within that request. As Yvonne has articulated, if there is money that we don’t spend, of course, we return that to the province’s funding.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

B. Stewart: Thanks very much. A very comprehensive report.

You touched on sending out about one million pieces of solicitation to 16- and 17-year-olds.

A. Boegman: About 125,000 letters have gone thus far.

B. Stewart: Oh, 125,000. Okay. Well, maybe it should get to one million.

I guess the point about it is…. It’s about voter turnout and engagement and doing those things.

Is Elections B.C. doing enough? I mean, are they really reaching in terms of trying to engage and trying to get those people out? Is there more that you think could be done? If not, what’s the constraint?

A. Boegman: I always think that more work could be done. We’re always looking at ways to better reach voters and, in the example that you gave, future voters.

The future voters one is one where we were able to identify, through the additional data sources that we now have through the Election Amendment Act, 2019, those 16- and 17-year-olds. We were able to put in place an action step for them to do, when they’re 16 and 17, to join the list of future voters so they can then become subsequent voters.

[7:25 p.m.]

Of course, that’s not the only activity that we have that’s focused on future voters. We also do a lot of outreach amongst…. For example, our outreach coordinator was at the B.C. social studies teachers annual meeting. We provided information to them and provided them with access to the kits that we’ve prepared, things that they can use in their classes and that they can use to educate.

The bulk of our awareness messaging and our communications campaigns, of course, takes place in the lead-up to an event like the provincial general election. Charles mentioned the enumeration. That is an event where we will be sending over one million pieces of direct mail to every British Columbian to indicate what their current voter registration status is and what they need to do if they need to update that and to provide them with information on the upcoming election.

The opportunity that we now have with the boundaries provides another opportunity to send out…. I think there are 1.6 million unique residences in British Columbia that we will be sending mail to, again, about the change in the boundaries and what that means for them as individual voters.

The activities that we do are split across different events. We hope that they will all kind of leverage and support each other to continue adding to that.

Part of the enumeration activities, as well, is work that is done within each electoral district. That will be on-the-ground events, voter registration drives, going door to door in certain locations and these sorts of things.

We work with liaison officers that have the ability to reach into specific communities, such as First Nations communities, or work with different language groups, such as Chinese Canadians or Indo-Canadians.

I don’t know if I answered your question. I’m trying to encapsulate the different things that we are doing. We’re always looking at new ways to do things. My goal is to make sure that all British Columbians know what their opportunities are to vote and that they have clear information on where, when and how to vote.

B. Stewart: Yeah. I guess our measurement of that would be the voter turnout in terms of…. What can we do to get it to track or trend the other way? How does that sound?

A. Boegman: Voter turnout is something…. Of course, we want to see a healthy level of voter turnout. It is a measure, by itself, that has many different inputs, right? Elections B.C. has part of it around barriers to participation, around the information that’s provided. Those are the things that I really focus our efforts on.

Candidates have a role. The media has a role. There are a number of different factors. But for sure, healthy voter participation numbers are important for our democracy.

B. Stewart: The only thing, subject to privacy concerns…. We, obviously, have a new database that includes, I think, most British Columbians, with the vaccine mandates and all of those things. Everybody is getting reminders about going for that.

It just seems to me, especially with younger people, if you’re coming up on that birthday…. We already know your birthday. Getting the information ahead of time…. I mean, at least it makes them think. Very difficult to reach unless it’s coming in on something like a phone.

Anyways, I’m sure you’re probably talking about it and thinking about it. I just raise the questions.

A. Boegman: Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Henry is next, then Harwinder. That’s probably all we have time for.

H. Yao: Thank you so much, Chair. I’m actually going to piggyback on Ben’s comment.

I have a concern. Obviously, Richmond has one of the lowest turnouts, when it comes to voter turnout in Richmond. I mean B.C. overall. What we’re trying to often see is all the false language and false information that has been floating around on social media.

I’m wondering. Does Elections B.C. have any kind of strategy and planning to tackle that false information or those advertisements? Sometimes illegal advertisements happen on social media and on WeChat. I’m not sure whether Elections B.C. has been investing energy to monitor and to regulate.

A. Boegman: We do have a strategy around that. During the general local elections, we actually had a partnership arrangement with Elections Canada. They have a Chinese language monitoring unit that monitors social media posts and monitors traditional media posts and provides that information to us on an ongoing basis.

[7:30 p.m.]

We were able to use that to determine whether information that we were seeing was in compliance with the legislation governing third-party advertising and election advertising in the local government elections. It provided us with input should we need to contact social media channels in order to make sure that information that was non-compliant was taken down and things like that.

I may ask Andrew whether you might have anything more to add about that topic, because you were our key lead on that with Elections Canada.

A. Watson: Hello. Andrew Watson, communications director.

I just would add the point that we did have visibility on the WeChat platform as part of that partnership with Elections Canada, and the focus there was to monitor election communications within that environment and ensure that they were compliant with the advertising rules under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act. Following that pilot project with Elections Canada for the general local elections, we’ll be feeding in our lessons learned on that for our monitoring program for the 43rd provincial general election. It’s certainly very much on our radar.

H. Yao: I assume we don’t have time for supplemental questions?

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re running a bit behind, Henry. If it’s directly related and it could be asked and answered quickly, go for it.

H. Yao: It’s okay. I’ll pass it on to Harwinder. Thank you.

H. Sandhu: Thank you to the presenters for the eloquent, very good presentation. Just a quick question. When we’re talking about the voter turnout, is there data available that shows us what age group we have the lower voter turnout? Also, going to schools, I see a lot of curiosity among new and future voters.

I wonder. You talked about soliciting. Oftentimes, I can say, in households, parents check the mail, and oftentimes they look at it and recycle. Maybe it does go to the young voters or not. Do we have a strategy and plan to send those pamphlets or whatever we do, materials, to schools and post-secondary institutions where they can have it on bulletin boards? Oftentimes kids may end up seeing that.

Also, talking about platform…. It may sound funny. How about targeting the young audience and young voters with TikTok ads or something? That’s where they happen to be these days. They’ll know: “Oh yeah, I can vote.” In 2020, my older daughter…. I almost forgot that she was eligible to vote. It was her first time. I’m just wondering if that strategy…. Or are there any other creative ways to…? Because I see that they’re very curious, and they’re very excited, but sometimes, often, they get caught up and forget about voting time.

A. Boegman: We do have a number of strategies. Actually, the letters that we send to future voters are individually addressed to them, because we have that information now through the data-sharing arrangements that we have. Those are directed to them. We’re hoping that they’re getting them. We certainly have had tremendous uptake from future voters on those letters. We’re going to continue doing those ones.

But we do have a number of complementary strategies in terms of where our material goes to. It does go to schools. We send to social studies teachers. I mentioned the conference that we were just at recently — again, making those connections and making sure that information about what is available is out there amongst that community. We also send all of our material to libraries. Public libraries have them. They’re available.

We sponsor the organization Civics, which runs parallel elections for students at the local elections, and they run it provincial, and they run it federally. We’re actually looking at renewing that partnership with Civics, especially now that we have the list of future voters available, because previously students would fill out a registration form that was a make-believe form. But now those that are 16 and 17 will be able to fill out one that actually does register them on the list of future voters.

[7:35 p.m.]

Not only do we have the print material, but we also are very active on social media. I’m not sure about TikTok videos, to be particular, but we do Facebook for sure, although I understand that’s not a platform that youth are on. But Instagram is one where we are. And Snapchat? No. Okay. So Instagram at least, but perhaps we should look into some TikTok videos.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, with that, I want to thank you for the work that you do, for the role that you play. I guess it comes as no surprise that it’s something that’s very close to the hearts of people in this room, so thank you for your leadership on that. Thank you for your vision. And thank you for your presentation and the way you addressed our questions.

You have such an important role to play in making sure that it’s easy, safe and people have confidence in participating in democracy. I think, as you alluded to earlier in your presentation, democracy is under threat right now, and you and your team play such an important role in defending democracy here. So thank you for that.

A. Boegman: Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): We will take a 15-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 7:36 p.m. to 7:54 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll call the meeting back to order, and I will entertain a motion to go in camera.

The committee continued in camera from 7:55 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

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

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 8:45 p.m.