The committee met at 8:31 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

Deliberations

M. Starchuk (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Mike Starchuk. I’m the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from government and opposition parties.

I would like to acknowledge that we’re meeting today on the legislative precinct here in Victoria, which is located on the territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

As part of our committee’s oversight of statutory offi­cers, we’re reviewing the budget requests, service plans and annual reports of these offices. We will begin today’s meeting with the preliminary discussion about the budget requests.

I’ll ask to seek a motion to move in camera.

Moved, seconded.

The committee continued in camera from 8:31 a.m. to 8:43 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay, we will take a brief recess to set the room.

The committee recessed from 8:43 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. Good morning, Vic­toria. Thanks for being here this morning. It’s always a pleasure to have you in the room for the subject matter that you’re about to talk to us about. Hopefully, that eye problem that’s there doesn’t cause you any angst.

This year’s process has a timer in front of you. I’m not sure if you can see it, but it’s kind of everywhere. It’s 20 minutes. So far, the statutory officers have done a pretty good job of narrowing down their focus.

I will leave this to you, and the floor is yours.

Review of Statutory Officers

OFFICE OF THE CONFLICT
OF INTEREST COMMISSIONER

V. Gray: Thank you very much. Good morning.

I’ll begin with a couple of apologies. The first is to please forgive the pirate look. I’m covering one eye, not because it’s nearly Halloween, but because I have double vision and I’m waiting for some surgery. I apologize for that.

The second apology is that my executive coordinator, Carol, couldn’t be here. Just yesterday, she was scheduled for some urgent medical testing and, of course, it hap­pened to be for right now. I’m here on my own, and I hope I will be able to handle any questions. She normally does the budget and financial end, so I’m disappointed she’s not here, but I think I should be able to answer most of your questions.

With that, I’ll briefly remind you that our office assists MLAs to honour their obligations under the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act. We do that through giving confidential advice, assisting members with their financial disclosure, annually and ongoing, and responding to any complaints about MLAs.

Turning to budget, it’s really relatively straightforward. We’re a small office. Our bigger expense is salaries, and then we have operating costs. This year, unfortunately, the Legislature has told us that they need our premises starting next summer. I don’t know who is expected to move in there. I imagine it may relate to the increase in the number of MLAs and that there’s going to be a bit of shifting. But in any event, we’re sad. We like the premises, and we like the close access to the Legislature.

Budget-wise, we’re expecting to pay more to an external and commercial landlord, and we’ll have costs of moving and set-up and other ongoing costs. We haven’t yet found space. We’ve been in contact with government people that I expect will assist us. But we’re not there yet by any means. So we’ve made some estimates about new rent and estimates about the cost of moving — computer move and so on — and the need for any different furniture. But again, it’s all estimates.

Apart from that, the costs are mainly inflation. A cost-of-living increase for the salaries. There’s one item, which is for us to host the conference of the Canadian conflict of interest commissioners. There’s an organization that has everyone in my position — sometimes they have different names, ethics commissioner and so on — from each prov­ince and territory and from the House of Commons and the Senate. We meet once a year to essentially discuss best practices and issues that affect us all despite different legislation.

I’ll turn now to making a line-by-line review and give you some comments.

Our first line, 50, is base salaries. This is for our existing three positions. Two are full-time and one is part-time. The executive coordinator and the legal officer are full-time, and the administrative assistant is part-time. So no new positions. No change to the existing positions. The change is related to cost-of-living increase.

[8:50 a.m.]

The staff are paid…. I try to maintain parity with the BCGEU. It’s helpful to have had a loyal and experienced staff, and, of course, they’re dealing with confidential information from MLAs. So to retain them, I’ve tried to achieve parity with the BCGEU, and, as you may know, that meant an increase this year of, I think it was, 6.75 percent in salaries. Last year it was 3.5 percent.

If you know what’s going to happen with the cost of living, I’d love to hear it, but we just did the budgets guessing a 3.5 percent increase. That’s an increase, in 2024-25, of $9,000, and similar amounts in the following two years.

The next line item is employee benefits. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a disconnect in our dealings with the Ministry of Finance. I understood, we were told, that they charge us benefits at 2.54 percent of the salaries. I’m not entirely sure that’s correct, but we’ve estimated what we understood was the estimate for the impact on employee benefits. That’s showing an increase of 2.54 percent per year. I’m still talking to the Finance people. It may be that it should also be our inflation estimate of 3.5 percent.

The next item is my salary. There is a bit of a wrinkle on this this year. I was hired with a letter agreement that stated my salary and said: “with a projected cost-of-living increase of 2 percent.” This was translated into an order-in-council, which is different. It says: “my salary with a 2 percent increase.” Strangely enough, I have not been paid a 2 percent increase. One year, it was 2.12 percent. It’s a bit of a mystery.

I have suggested it would be appropriate for me to have parity with my staff and the BCGEU, which would involve a bit of an increase from 2 percent to the 3½ percent they were paid last year and the 6.75 percent this year. We didn’t factor that in because the existing order-in-council has the 2 percent, but there may be a shift. Probably in total budget amounts, it’s less than $10,000 a year. I don’t know if you would consider it material, but I’m telling you about the shift there.

We budgeted, based on the order-in-council, with 3.5 percent increases. My salary has historically been based on the same salary as the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court, but because I’m working a 75 percent position, it’s 75 percent of that.

Next is travel. This is for going to conferences and official government business. I’ve mentioned this annual conference, which it’s our turn to host in 2025. I went a year and a bit ago to Yellowknife and found it very helpful to meet all the other commissioners and hear some of the concerns and solutions. This year it was in Halifax. I had planned to go, but unfortunately, I got COVID-19, and I was not able to go. So our travel costs were down a little for that.

This is probably a bit high, but we’ve been keeping it at 35 percent. Previous commissioners have lived outside of the Victoria area and have flown into Victoria from time to time. I think acting Commissioner Lynn Smith met with some members at the municipal conference that takes place in B.C. — I can’t think of the acronym right now — and brought staff for that. Since COVID, most of the meetings have been virtual; that has cut down on travel.

Next item is professional services. This is, again, a guess. Will we need some assistance if there’s an inquiry where I’m required to delve more thoroughly? The only complaint I’ve had to fully investigate has been the complaint against Minister Osborne, about a year and a half ago. I was able to handle that just with my staff. But a complaint could come by where I would need to hold hearings or do other things. That’s the main item. It’s really to have something that’s a bit of a guess.

[8:55 a.m.]

We can’t control the nature and volume of complaints made to the office. If there is a complaint requiring signifi­cant hearing-related costs which we can’t handle in our budget, we’d have to come back to this committee and seek an increase.

Information systems. This includes data lines, IDIR ac­counts and so on. It’s a chargeback from what we’ve been getting in assistance from the Legislature people, and we’ve just budgeted $11,000, consistent with previous years.

Office and business expenses. This one is where we’ve put in costs for moving. We’ve put in, just for ’24-25, costs relating to the office move and some inflation. Then that one year we put in the $10,000 for hosting this conference — the Canadian conference of Conflict-of-Interest Commissioners.

The next items are pretty small: 68, statutory advertising and publications, consistent with the previous amount; 69, utilities. We’re anticipating, in our new premises, we may have to pay separately for utilities, and it may be a bit more. Again, we don’t know, but we’ve assumed a $9,000 increase for that. Amortization is consistent with the prior year. Building occupancy charges — we’re anticipating higher rent than we’ve been charged by the Legislature.

I think that covers what’s in our budget, line by line.

[Interruption.]

V. Gray: I thought I had silenced my iPhone, so I apologize. I’ll do that now.

With that, I’ve covered it line by line. I think that’s what you wanted. I’d be delighted to answer any questions you may have.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Victoria. I will say that you have set the new bar for the other officers that are out there — only using half the allotted time for your presentation. Nevertheless, I thank you for what I would consider a thorough explanation of your up­coming budget year.

Questions.

S. Chant: Just out of curiosity…. You’re probably not going to like this very much, but have you considered your group working from home rather than finding new digs?

V. Gray: We did discuss that. Most of my meetings have been virtual. The big use of staff is for handling all the paperwork relating to financial disclosure, particularly during the period when I’m having the meetings, and we’re processing this.

The members all present their form 1’s, and then my office staff process that by comparing it with the previous year, preparing a list of questions and concerns, and trying to interact with the MLA to clear up any difficulties. Sometimes there are none, but sometimes there’s quite a bit, and we don’t want them taking the paper copies home. As it’s confidential information for members, we lock it away.

We did think about that. There is this period of three to four months when there’s a lot of paperwork and office work, but it’s not always the same three or four months. It depends on when the election is called and when members are sworn in. Then they have a time period, under the Legislature, to…. I couldn’t even try to get premises for just January. even a repetitive six-month period or something. It shifts.

It’s less for me. I would like to be available. I do sometimes meet members in my office and discuss things there, but it’s more for handling the financial paperwork, processing it and keeping it confidential. That’s why we de­cided we needed something, rather than just a virtual office.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Victoria, for everything you do.

Just speaking to the salary thing, it’s legislated, I believe, that your salary is tied to the judge’s salary in the province. Is that right?

V. Gray: No, the Members’ Conflict of Interest Act just says my salary will be set by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

[9:00 a.m.]

I know that for some statutory officers, the legislation says it will be related to the chief judge. Mine just says “set by the Lieutenant Governor….” Historically, I believe, it has been related to that. I don’t know if it’s because there’s been a lot of litigation about the salary for the Provincial Court judges.

Anyway, I don’t know the history of that, but it is set by the Lieutenant-Governor.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): But it’s more of a guide­line, I guess, than anything, that it’s used by.

Those judges’ salaries: are they directed by legislation on the wages that they receive?

V. Gray: Yes. There’s an external commission which makes a recommendation to the Legislature, which can accept it or not accept it and ultimately passes legislation dealing with provincial court judges.

When I was a judge, I was a federally appointed judge and not under the same process. But this is my understanding of how provincial court judges are paid.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you. So the lift that you’re seeking, 3.4 over and above the 2 percent that’s order-in-council — would that be more reflective of what…? Is that the guideline you’re using for that lift that you’re requesting?

V. Gray: Well, I have suggested to the Clerk to look at the BCGEU. I did go online and try to find out what the increases have been for the provincial court judges, and I couldn’t figure it out. She may come back and say: “No, this is what they’ve had.” Certainly, it’s still a topic of discussion. I couldn’t figure it out. I think they…. I don’t know.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Victoria, I just to want to make sure I get this clarified. As far as the conference goes, is that an in-person conference?

V. Gray: Yes.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Do the conferences just simply rotate from province to province?

V. Gray: Yes. We last did it, I think, in 2010. So it would end up being 14 years later. It does rotate among each of the provinces and territories.

There’s a registration fee charged. I think it may have to increase by the time we do the conference in 2024. But it covers many of the costs, and each delegate pays their own accommodation and transportation. I suggested $10,000.

The costs tend to be meeting rooms, facilities, providing some snacks, I think. A big one is translation services, be­cause we do have a member from Quebec, and, I think, under Quebec law, they’re required to speak French at the conference. So there are translation services, which don’t come cheap.

M. Starchuk (Chair): The last question I have is regarding relocation of offices. You’re pretty good at the guessti­mate as to what’s there. How did you arrive at some of those numbers? Have you hired somebody, or is there some sort of service that’s being utilized to look at space to come up with the budget numbers that are there?

V. Gray: We haven’t hired anybody. We have been pointed to people in government, who we’ve been talking to. They have been a bit slower than I would have hoped in providing information. The guess we came up with came from phoning around some property managers and finding out what they were quoting as the price per square foot, in particular.

I’d like to be close to the Legislature, because I think it can be of assistance to members if we’re close to the Legislature. I haven’t made a final decision about that, but it’s kind of what I’d prefer. There’s space in this place across Superior. I can’t remember the name of the building there. We have talked about the building the Attorney General is in, but it’s down Fort Street. As I say, I’d prefer to be here, but we’re looking at that.

S. Chant: Is it SDPR across the way that you’re talking about?

V. Gray: I don’t know.

S. Chant: Not to worry. They’ve got links right across there.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I’m always interested in the perception of conflict of interest and the grey area that sometimes it has. You mentioned a specific case that you dealt with this year.

I don’t know if it’s appropriate to go in camera or not, but I would like to know a little bit more detail on the process of what’s perceived as a conflict of interest, how it was handled and what the outcomes of that case that you talked about were. Is that appropriate to talk about?

[9:05 a.m.]

V. Gray: Well, I can tell you the process generally. I’m guided by the legislation. The first thing is that if I get a complaint, one question is: is it someone who can complain? In B.C., a member of the public can complain, or an MLA can complain, so that’s a pretty easy bar.

The next question is: have I been provided with reasonable and probable grounds to believe that there’s been a contravention of the….? Well, I guess the second question is probably: is the complaint against someone I can investigate? The legislation in B.C. just is restricted to members. In some jurisdictions, it says public office holders.

During the height of the pandemic, I received complaints about Bonnie Henry. I can’t investigate that. She’s not a member. If it was in Ontario, it probably could be an investigation. So a lot of complaints are responded to on that basis.

It was in the news that there was a complaint made to my office about John Horgan, the former Premier. He is not a member. I do not have the ability to do an investigation of any complaint against him.

That’s the second stage.

Then the next stage is: are there reasonable and probable grounds? This can involve a bit of back-and-forth to try to understand. I think some people may think that I’m an investigation office and can get tipped off and then decide to do my own inquiry. But that’s not what the legislation says, nor has it been the history here. The burden is put on someone to bring me something enough to….

If there is an investigation of the legislation, I would want any committee to consider changing that to: is there a reasonable possibility it should be investigated? The reason I say that is related to the Osborne complaint. Some of the complaint related to proceedings in Treasury Board. So a member of the public or an MLA that’s not in Treasury Board can’t come and say that this is the decision that was made by Treasury Board and that this member was involved in this way. So I think it’s a bit too high of a bar for certain situations.

In the Osborne complaint, my next step…. I know it’s someone who can complain. It’s against someone who can be complained about. Are there reasonable and probable grounds? This can take a bit of investigation. It’s, again, very dependent on the legislation. What decision was a member involved with that could have had an impact on their private interest, and what’s their private interest in? What was the decision?

In the case of the Osborne decision, it did involve getting information from Treasury Board, which has its hurdles of confidentiality and undertakings. Before I could release the report, I had to go through a process with Treasury Board and give them a draft of parts of the opinion so they could be satisfied I wasn’t revealing cabinet secrets. It’s at that stage that in some complaints, I would expect to have to interview witnesses, members and others — under oath, perhaps. I have the power to do that.

I personally think it’s often most economical and fo­cused to first get all the documentation organized and do a strong investigation of that. Then you can find out where the gaps are and ask the proper questions.

In the case of the Osborne complaint, I was given some written statements, essentially, by the member and her husband and some others. I compared those with all the documentation and whether I felt that it was plausible and acceptable and whether I needed to do further inquiries. I didn’t do any in-person, under-oath investigations there. The process has to be tailor-made for the question that’s involved.

That might be too much information. I hope not. Does that answer what you wanted?

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I think we all worry about being subject to a conflict of interest. As much as we try to do the right things all the time, there’s always…. We’re out in the public. We are involved in legislation and bills, and, through that, through personal investments or whatever, it could be perceived that you’re acting in bad faith in your job.

[9:10 a.m.]

Certainly, I think I speak for everyone. We don’t want to ever be in that pool.

V. Gray: Right.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I was asking more specifi­cally on the case itself as a template, in my mind. I think it’s something you probably run into from time to time. The situation that you had with the Osborne case, which probably could lead to almost anyone in the Legislature.

I’m not sure. I don’t know. I guess that’s good enough. The case has been solved. Everything is clear. There’s no….

V. Gray: I think it’s clear. I dismissed it. I mean, it’s one of these situations where…. If you look carefully at what happened at each time period, I think it answers your questions.

G. Chow: If an MLA writes a letter to a company advis­ing them to donate generously to a public cause…. Is that considered activity on behalf of constituents, per the act?

V. Gray: I guess I would need a bit more information. I’m very….

G. Chow: I mean in general.

V. Gray: I don’t really like answering hypothetical questions. I tend to get in trouble.

G. Chow: If an MLA supports certain fundraising activities….

S. Chant: Not for self.

G. Chow: Not for self but for a third party.

V. Gray: I guess I can…. I’ll try to answer that.

It’s not a conflict if you’re doing something that’s part of the general job of an MLA. Our conflict-of-interest act is focused on any benefit to the member’s private interest. If the MLA writes a letter saying, “Please do this with funding,” and the MLA stands to get $1 million out of the whole transaction, there’s probably a conflict of interest. More difficult is under some other legislation.

You make me think of the case against Prime Minister Trudeau, with the SNC-Lavalin case. Now, I don’t think that case would have been decided the same way under our legislation. I think he would say: “Whatever I did…. I was trying to protect jobs at SNC-Lavalin in my constituency in Quebec. I was just being an MLA, even though I was Prime Minister.”

Their legislation says that if you do, essentially…. I’m going to misquote it. It’s something like…. If you do something improperly that benefits another person, then you can be afoul of the conflict-of-interest act.

There it was said that what he was doing was benefiting SNC-Lavalin, when he tried to have them avoid prosecution. The way he did it improperly was when he put some pressure on the Minister of Justice and Attorney Gen­eral, which I don’t need to go into. That was held to be im­proper.

Under our legislation, you really have to look at…. What is the private interest, and what is the decision that has been made?

From time to time, I advise members. “This may not be strictly contrary to the act. You might not be contravening the act and subject to a…. But I think you should be aware that there may be this concern that arises in the eyes of the public.”

I don’t know if that was the advice given to Prime Minister Trudeau. I don’t think he did consult the Ethics Commissioner about accepting a gift of going to the Bahamas and staying with the Aga Khan. I might well have said: “It may not be contrary to the act, but it’s something you will want to consider — whether the public is happy about you accepting a gift of this magnitude that’s going to have this kind of an expense for the security force protecting you.” I don’t know.

I find that with most of the questions that I’m asked, I do have to dig into the details. They’re often what’s decisive. It is dangerous for me to give a hypothetical opinion, but I hope that can give you some ideas, anyway.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Are there any other questions for Victoria, with regards to our deliberations, which will come out of the budget that’s in front of us?

V. Gray: I do urge you. If you have any concerns that affect you, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We do love to hear from you.

[9:15 a.m.]

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Victoria.

I just think it’s important that the public is aware that we have people like Victoria that keep an eye on the public purse and on conflict and make sure nothing goes off the rails. It’s important, because we’re under scrutiny all the time. It’s really critical that people know that.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I think on that point, Tom….

I think you touched on it the last presentation, as to the number of contacts that you will get from the MLAs and/or the new MLAs regarding questions, to ensure that they aren’t in a conflict of interest, whether it’s something that’s a gift or something that’s on a wall or attending something.

I don’t believe it was in this report. It may have been in other ones. But I do think that that’s a key point of the work that your office does.

V. Gray: Yes.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. Well, with nothing else than that….

David has walked in the room. So what he’s seeing is that there’s a ton of time that’s left over after questions.

Victoria, thank you very much for your presentation and your time this morning. More importantly, I thank you very much for the job that you do for all of us that are here in the Legislature.

We will take a quick recess to reset the room.

The committee recessed from 9:16 a.m. to 9:21 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. We’ll call the meeting back to order.

I’m going to wait for a few faces to pop up on the screen. There’s the important one, and there’s the other important one.

I was remiss this morning in doing some introductions. We’ll start off with introductions, David, of some of those faces that you and your staff may not be familiar with, starting with the Deputy Chair.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Chair.

Deputy Chair Tom Shypitka. I’m the MLA for Kootenay East.

C. Oakes: MLA Coralee Oakes, joining you from Cariboo North today.

B. Stewart: Ben Stewart, MLA for Kelowna West.

G. Chow: George Chow, Vancouver-Fraserview.

S. Chant: Susie Chant, MLA, North Vancouver–Seymour.

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m very proud to represent Courtenay-Comox today.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Ronna-Rae’s voice is slowly but surely coming back.

I am Mike Starchuk, the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.

David, thank you for appearing this morning with yourself and your team.

There is a different format to this year. I’m sure we’re going to see a timer pop up on the screen shortly. You’ll have 20 minutes to provide us with your presentation, followed by our questions and/or comments to follow.

David, the floor is yours.

OFFICE OF THE MERIT COMMISSIONER

D. McCoy: Thank you very much. Good morning, every­one. I appreciate the opportunity to come here today. I’d also like to welcome the new committee members to this committee.

Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m joining you from the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. The work of our office extends across the homelands of the Indigenous peoples within what we now call British Columbia.

Today I have with me Mr. Dave Van Swieten, executive director of corporate shared services, who is well known to this committee. I also have my new deputy commissioner, Elizabeth Maurer, who joined our office last May.

It’s a pleasure to be here to address the status and budgetary needs of the Office of the Merit Commissioner. As I began my role as commissioner only in March of this year, this is my first fall presentation to you. So the timer is fine. I know no different.

With this year’s changes to the fall presentation for­mat…. I’ll limit my introductory comments to a brief follow-up on items discussed with this committee in May and highlights of my vision for the office going forward.

[9:25 a.m.]

Allow me to take a moment now to update you on the office since I assumed the role of a part-time Merit Commissioner in March of this year.

In the spring, I foreshadowed that we would begin a review of those dismissal processes that resulted from the COVID-19 vaccination policy. Some of those files are now eligible for review. Our office has begun this work and has a plan for additional reviews.

In the spring presentation to this committee, I also anticipated a review of the just cause dismissal process, pursuant to section 25.1 of the Public Service Act. This review is now underway by the Special Committee to Review Provisions of the Public Service Act, some of whose members are here today.

I presented to the special committee in early October, along with others, and was subsequently invited to provide a written submission to respond to questions and recommendations made by other presenters, which I have done. I’m not seeking to change the scope of my work in the area of dismissal reviews. However, I have asked for changes that will streamline the work and help in the effectiveness.

On the topic of effectiveness, I foreshadowed in the spring that this summer we would implement the new case management system, which is core to the work that we do. We fully implemented our new system on time and under budget. Our staff and external auditors are both using the new system for this year’s annual audit cycle from start to finish. I’m excited to have a modern system to replace our legacy system and look forward to reporting back to this committee on our enhanced ability to analyze trends and data.

Since I was last here…. I’m not just happy. I’m ecstatic to report that our office is fully staffed and trained. We continue to meet our high-quality standards of work in a timely and meaningful way. In addition to the hiring and training of four new staff, we brought on one more external auditor to support the hiring audit functions and to replace an auditor who had left last year.

Our self-determined timeline goal to complete staffing reviews was raised this year to 45 days. We had a new team, and we were growing and developing. Looking ahead, I’m returning this goal back to our 30-day time frame.

As the team develops and as we redefine our work processes internally, we will be resuming our special studies into specific hiring-related topics. So many of the organizations that we work with have expressed appreciation for the information and guidance contained therein. I’m also exploring potential updates to our annual merit performance review audit program.

Now, as a new commissioner, I have also begun a series of outreach meetings with all three branches of government — judicial, executive and legislative — to discover how my office and mandate are perceived and understood by those whose files we audit and review.

I have also met with other organizational heads of some of the agencies, boards and commissions in my jurisdiction to further understand how the Office of the Merit Commissioner can better clarify the role of the office, ensure value for the information we report out on, seek out any process and communication improvements and ensure that any misconceptions — or as I like to call them, merit myths — on merit-based hiring can be addressed and explained.

I will be continuing on with these merit awareness outreach activities to ensure that my mandate is well understood and that the observations we report out on to organizations continue to be meaningful and acted upon.

While working in a half-time capacity as the Merit Com­missioner…. These last seven months have been very challenging. My team, my agenda and my work have continued to require significant time, dedication and attention to properly lead this office and ensure we continue to offer relevant and high-level services and oversight while meeting our legislated mandate.

Being mindful of the time limit, I’d like to now review our budget proposal before you today. The budget proposal today, for 2023-24, is for $1.638 million in operating funds and $39,000 in capital funds. This represents an in­crease of 8 percent in the operating costs and a decrease of 69 percent in the capital costs from the ’22-23 approved budget.

The first part of this new requested funding is inflationary wage increases. This is a significant portion of the overall increase I’m asking for today. I’m requesting $82,000 as an annual increase for fiscal 2024-25 to cover the cost of the July 2023 salary increments for future years.

[9:30 a.m.]

As a reminder of how inflation has impacted our salaries and what has already been approved…. In recent years, the high rate of inflation led to an increased cost of wage inflation, which was reflected in the collective agreements and in the direction from the Public Service Agency about the increase for non–schedule A staff.

The impact of the wage inflation following the tentative 19th main agreement with the BCGEU wasn’t reached until last fall, following the preparation of our budget submission. Therefore, some catch-up was needed in wage inflation. That’s because in our office and a few others, we do not request wage inflation funding until an amount is known. The amount retroactive to July 2022 was not known until after this office had come before this committee last fall.

Once we knew the amount the inflation was increasing wages, I came forward in our spring appearance this year, and supplementary funding was granted. This supplementary funding allowed us to catch up salaries for the last fiscal year. Again, for this fiscal year, inflationary impacts on salaries beginning July 2023 were not known until they were announced this summer. The lifts are particularly significant this year, as you may have heard from some of my fellow officers.

In this submission, I’m requesting two budget items related to wage inflation. One, permanent funding going forward to cover the costs of the July 2023 salary increments in future years. In addition, I’m asking for $44,000 as an additional supplementary amount for this year to cover wage inflation for the July 2023 salary increments. In relation to inflation, I also have an additional request for a small increase of $2,000 in the operating portion of the building occupancy costs for inflation.

The second part of my request for an increase in the operating budget is related to a new key priority outlined in the budget submission and business case before you. This is funding to support the addition of one new staff position. I’m seeking to bring a portion of the auditing function in-house so as not to rely so heavily on contractors as well as to add capacity in other areas.

I’ve outlined in the business case submitted to this committee that additional funding of $76,000 on the operating side and $2,000 on the capital side is requested. This will represent a 4.87 percent increase in the operating budget. This increase would be greater but, in fact, the funding request is partially offset by $45,000 due to the savings that would result from reduced reliance on external contract auditors if this request were to be approved.

Why am I seeking to add a new position at this time? On taking on the role of Merit Commissioner, three things became clear to me.

One was the opportunity to bring a portion of the office’s auditing in-house to mitigate the risk of having all auditing completed by external contractors. This new position would audit competition files and train new staff and auditors in the audit function and would be a built-in mechanism to help retain corporate knowledge.

Another was that, with additional capacity, our office would be better positioned to do the high-value mandated work that falls to our office, including emerging areas of work. The world has not been static around us. There are new complexities and changes related to our mandated work, where increased capacity for research and data analysis will position my office to be proactive and ready.

In my merit awareness outreach meetings with heads of organizations within my jurisdiction, I have heard again and again the value that they place on the special studies my office produces. The portion of this new role that is not devoted to auditing hiring competitions would be directed towards research, data analysis and potential special studies, such as the study of lesson qualifications that our office produced last year.

Finally, in addition, with the recent staff turnover this year on this very small team, it became readily apparent to me that I need to restructure our work to be better positioned to remain agile in the face of any future loss of staff. That could be parental leaves or long-term disability leaves — any of those type of leaves as well.

This position will serve as an internal talent pipeline for the program manager roles and will also be positioned to fill any unexpected shortfall we may experience in contracted auditor output. My goal for this new FTE is twofold: reduce external costs while building internal capacity within my very small team.

[9:35 a.m.]

Applying lessons learned from the past turnover, this evolution is part of my restructuring efforts to ensure the office can provide continuity of service and ensure all timelines for my mandate continue to be met.

I will move on now to review the increases previously reviewed with this committee. I’m referring here to table 2 on the five-page budget document. This second table represents budget requests that have been previously re­viewed and approved by this committee either in a prior fiscal year or as a supplemental funding request earlier in this calendar year.

In December 2022, a capital funding reduction of $112,000 was approved for the 2024-25 fiscal year for the case tracker replacement project, as shown in table 2 of our submission. This occurred primarily because some of the year 2 capital funding was required in year 3 of the project, and subsequent funding approvals granted us a dedicated capital budget in 2023-24 to complete the project. For the purposes in table 2, there is no change in our projected decrease in funding needed, as we are now live in our new system.

The other item that was previously approved in the supplementary funding was $36,000 for wage inflation in 2022-23. That was the initial funding I mentioned earlier to catch up from the first round of collective agreement increases that were announced.

I’d now like to comment on last year’s expenditures for the committee. Although I was not in my role yet, it may be helpful for you to hear that we ran a surplus in operating funds last year, primarily due to the decreased operating spending needed for the case tracker replacement project, due to a reduced scope of the project as well as some recruitment lag.

We received the supplemental contingency funding for our case tracker replacement system. That supplemental contingency was capital funding for developing the application. It was requested in advance of user acceptance testing in the event that such testing revealed a need for significant new development costs. The office indicated in that request that funding would be returned if it was not needed.

As the Merit Commissioner inheriting this new system, I would like to express my appreciation to the committee for their support regarding this project and the supplemental funding amount. If we had needed the extra funds, they were there, but I’m happy to report that while our case tracker replacement system budget for the year was $169,000, we anticipate only spending $69,000 of it. I be­lieve we have roughly $100,000 to return to treasury. We are managing many of the application changes in-house and saving the spend of capital dollars by doing so.

To recap, at this time and for the next three years, I’m requesting an annual operating budget of $1.638 million, plus an annual capital budget of $12,000 per year. This includes the $44,000 in supplemental funding for this fiscal year.

Finally, I’d like to take a quick moment to thank all 5½ people in my office, both new and current, as well as the HR, finance and IT teams from our centralized service model and the Ombudsperson’s office who have worked so very diligently over these last seven months to support me in my new and part-time role. I’m honoured to lead this office. I’ve had the opportunity to be able to put together such a talented, diverse and dedicated group of professionals who continue to deliver to all of our stakeholders the high level of quality work that has come to be expected and produced from the Office of the Merit Commissioner.

With four minutes and 43 seconds left, thank you very much.

M. Starchuk (Chair): David, thank you very much for your presentation and the applause to 5½ people that were there.

I had to write it down when you get the vernacular of merit myths. I did. That’s a good catchphrase.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you, David, for the presentation. I think I speak for everyone. I thank you for your pragmatic approach. It’s reasonable. It’s sensible. It’s not so much theoretical, but I think it’s felt with the committee from the budgets presented.

I was going to ask more about the program audit analyst — why that needs to be in-house. I think you referred to it as about a $40,000 savings, perhaps.

D. McCoy: Forty-five.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): A $45,000 savings. I think you described it already, so I’ll leave that for now, but thank you for that pragmatic approach, once again.

[9:40 a.m.]

The $25,000 request for an IT refresh. What does that look like? Can you explain a little bit more? Is that just a maintenance kind of thing, or is that something that you need to do?

D. McCoy: I’m going to let you answer this, Dave.

D. Van Swieten: Sure.

You hit it right on the nose. It is that we replace our IT assets before they become outdated and subject to hack attacks that have been the topic of several presentations here. It’s exactly that, just refreshing the technology.

It’s typically on a five-year cycle. Some machines are on a three-year cycle, and that’s what it is.

C. Oakes: Thank you very much for the presentation today.

I have a question around the IT refresh, as well, and the shared services with the Ombudsman’s office. There was a pretty significant request put in for IT through that office, so maybe this is a question for Dave.

I’m just trying to understand the shared service component of the IT; $25,000 seems very reasonable, but I’m trying to understand how this works with another presentation that was provided several days ago to us.

D. Van Swieten: Sure, and thank you for the question.

The advantage of the corporate shared-services model is: we’ve got a number of IT assets that are shared and used by each of the offices. If we were all one entity, all those requests would be combined into one, but because we’re four different entities, each office takes a turn in purchasing a piece of equipment.

For example, if there’s a switch on the floor in the server room that needs replacing, it might be the Merit Commissioner’s turn to purchase that asset. Whereas Jay, as the Ombudsperson, may be replacing a server that year. Each year a different office purchases different equipment.

It helps what I would describe as keeping the cost down, so it’s not four offices coming to you for repeats of each of the four pieces of equipment. It just adds to the efficiency of the shared-services model.

C. Oakes: May I ask one more follow up?

M. Starchuk (Chair): Sure, go ahead.

C. Oakes: Obviously, I remember the Ombudsman’s re­quest. Is there also a correlation, then, to the Auditor General’s request for IT?

We have had a lot of requests for technology upgrades. I’m trying to understand…. There was one significant request, and I’m trying to understand if that supports everyone else.

D. Van Swieten: I can totally see how you get there.

If you think of the corporate shared-services model that falls under my jurisdiction, under the Ombudsperson, through Jay, we have four of the independent offices that we support. The Merit Commissioner. Clayton was here last night as the Police Complaint Commissioner. Obviously, Jay is the Ombudsperson. This afternoon I’ll be back to talk about the Privacy Commissioner. Those are the four offices that participate in this particular model and share technology.

The other offices have their own presentations and challenges that they face and present here.

S. Chant: Thank you very much, and thank you for your presentation.

I’d like to hear a little bit more about the special studies and research. Have you got somebody who does that work, specifically, or is it off the side of somebody’s desk or how does that all work, please?

D. McCoy: Sure.

The special studies, in my 5.5, I have one analyst who also does a lot of work on the data and the report writing to create our annual report and our merit performance audit, which is another big one.

Off the side of her desk, she’s been doing these special studies. They’re quite labour intensive, but they’re very helpful. But we can only produce so much, as a new team.

She’s also our main case tracker replacement system person, who can troubleshoot and fix things. If not, then it will go to Jay’s team. So she’s got a lot of hats, one of one of which is to do these special studies, yes.

S. Chant: Can you give me an example? You very briefly said one, but can you give me an example with what the study was and what the outcome was in terms of it being a positive for somewhere?

[9:45 a.m.]

D. McCoy: The one I mentioned was the Lessened Qualifications study. Essentially, in that study, and these are all posted on our website for public consumption, we were looking at when a competition is posted, but the hiring manager decides after the fact to lower the qualifications required when doing their screening of the competition. In fact, that becomes an error in merit, because other peo­ple may have applied had they known the qualifications were lower.

We went in because we thought we saw it happening anecdotally through our audit process. Through that we were able to dive into it deeper and actually come up with some information to show, yes, this is what’s happening. This is why you shouldn’t do it. It’s happening more often than it should. And here’s what I think would be the good fix, which is: don’t do that. But, you know, much more eloquently than that.

We did a special study on that. When I was out meeting with various organizational heads, I was specifically asked: “Can you please get more of those studies out? Because they’re so helpful for us when we’re trying…. Everybody just wants to be their best. Everybody wants to do their best, and we really find those helpful.”

We’ve got to remember that in my legislation, unlike some others, I can’t provide advice or training. I can pro­vide awareness. If I can do that through special studies, then I’ll do that. That’s what it’s all about.

I hope that answers your question.

S. Chant: That’s good.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I also forgot to mention the last time I asked a question was thanks for giving me five words we don’t hear very often. What was it? On time, under budget and surplus. I’ve heard those five words. It depends on how you hyphenate them. It could be only three words.

Going into the staffing. Last budget, you had 6.5 FTEs, but there were two vacancies, I believe, at the time. You hired those on. You said you’re fully staffed now. So I believe there’s $157,000 underspend that was part of that. Can you just maybe…?

D. McCoy: I’m going to let Dave jump in as well at the same time, but I’ll kick it off.

In the case tracker replacement project, we had got some budget for a temporary resource to come in and help — this was before my time — the project along. That resource was apparently not used, and therefore the money is being given back. So that FTE or that temporary FTE was not filled.

Did I get it right?

D. Van Swieten: Commissioner McCoy, that was awesome.

Just building on it. Maybe a bit more context will help you. It was definitely before the commissioner’s time. It was with the previous commissioner. The project plan for each of the four offices adopting the Case Tracker System was to backfill any sort of project staff that were used to apply their expertise in designing the new system.

Under the previous commissioner, they decided not to hire that resource because it would have been quite labour intensive to teach them how to backfill. On a team of five and a half, that we’ve heard here tonight, it’s tough taking someone out to train somebody. By the time they’re trained, you lose that advantage of having that capacity.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Got it. Okay. So that underspend then goes back to general revenue?

D. Van Swieten: Yes.

S. Chant: I think a continuation of that question, sort of. You spoke about having in-house management. I’m a nurse. We’ve had systems bestowed upon us. Quite often they come with external folks to be at elbows so that we can figure out how to use the systems.

When you say you’re doing in-house management of the case tracker, does that mean you’ve got somebody that is able to tweak it so that if something is not doing the job that it’s supposed to or going the way it’s supposed to, it can be done in-house?

D. McCoy: That’s correct. Yeah. We’re developing…. I mean, she’s been amazing. Don’t forget, it’s a partnership. So yes, the company itself has those resources when you first take on the software to get you going and then developing our IT specialists that do shared services. There’s one who’s dedicated to this resolve project.

Then inside the Office of the Merit Commissioner…. All four offices use the system differently. It’s not the same system for all four office. They’re quite customized.

[9:50 a.m.]

Within our office, our one analyst has thankfully taken on that and has that bent to take that kind of work on, and she can make changes, because our processes are changing. Our work processes are going to have to modify with this new system, because the old one is from 1992. So this one is really quite amazing in comparison.

So she can make the changes as we tweak our processes without having to impinge upon Dave’s team as much as we may have to otherwise, because they’re helping the other three offices. So she’s…. Thank goodness. There are a lot of savings in that. We’re not putting in tickets to resolve for additional support that would normally cost. We’re able to do it in house.

S. Chant: And if she leaves?

D. McCoy: Yeah, if she leaves, then I’m going to have to lean on Dave’s team more.

S. Chant: Fair enough. Thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): There are a couple of…. Maybe they’re more just clarifications, because after hearing merit myths, there’s a lot that I forgot.

With regards to the new funding, what you were talking about, the audit analyst, is it the intent to take the half-person and make them whole and then provide another half-person, or is this a completely…?

D. McCoy: No. The half-person is a different classification. It’s a part-time program manager. This is an analyst, and like I said, this will be the talent pipeline, potentially, into the program manager roles if needed. So this will support the program managers. So, no.

That person, that new one FTE, will have half the job doing audits, the other half doing…. Whether it’s supporting our internal analyst on the system, doing special studies — I mean, there’s no shortage of work for them.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Then the other question I had…. It might have been my ears, but you talked about the budget request of $1.638 million, and you had said that was an 8 percent increase over the ’23-24 budget. Is that correct?

D. McCoy: I believe that’s what I said, yes. Let me find it. Yes, that’s correct.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. I guess it’s just a math error from my side then.

Interjection.

M. Starchuk (Chair): No, no. That’s fine.

George.

G. Chow: Thank you. So the funding, the $76,000, is like a net increase for this new position that you’re going to be hiring?

D. McCoy: Yes.

G. Chow: And, of course, that position will have a salary level commensurate with your experience and what your requirement will be.

D. McCoy: That’s correct. Yes.

G. Chow: Okay, thanks.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I do not see any other questions of anybody that’s virtual. I don’t see any questions inside of the room.

David, before you go, a lot of times when people will make their presentation, they will have somebody behind them that will sit there, and you’ll see head-nodding and smiling. In this case, it’s been Elizabeth that has been next to you the entire time.

We are trying to imagine what her voice sounds like, but the smile and the head nods that you have from your deputy that’s right next to you is an indication, I believe, of where your office is today.

D. McCoy: Thank you.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I think David was appreciative that the big-kid table — he was able to sit at that today and not off to the side. It’s well set up today for him.

M. Starchuk (Chair): A happy Dave is a happy world. Or a happy David.

Anyway, thank you very much for your presentation this morning, and congratulations on a job well done.

D. McCoy: Thank you so much.

M. Starchuk (Chair): We will take a brief recess.

The committee recessed from 9:54 a.m. to 10:16 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): We will call the meeting back to order and move a motion to go in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera at 10:16 a.m.

The committee continued in open session and recessed from 10:24 a.m. to 10:25 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): There we go. We’ll have a motion to go in camera.

The committee continued in camera at 10:25 a.m.

The committee continued in open session and recessed from 10:46 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Welcome back, everyone.

Anton, welcome to you and your staff that are here today.

There are a few new faces, although one of them is not on screen today. We’ll just do a quick introduction of the people that are here.

We’ll start with the Deputy Chair, whose name tag is just getting ready to fall off. It’s just hanging there.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Hanging on by a thread.

Hey, good morning. I’m Tom Shypitka, Deputy Chair and MLA for Kootenay East.

C. Oakes: Good morning. Coralee Oakes, MLA for Cariboo North.

B. Stewart: Good morning. Ben Stewart, MLA for Kelowna West.

G. Chow: George Chow, MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview.

S. Chant: Susie Chant, MLA, North Vancouver–Seymour.

R. Leonard: Ronna-Rae Leonard, MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

M. Starchuk (Chair): And Mike Starchuk, MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.

Ronna-Rae is surviving a very, very raspy voice. That’s there.

Anton, we have a little bit of a different format this year. As you can see, there’s a clock in front of you. No pressure in any way, shape or form, but nobody has run the clock out yet. No, sorry. One, yes, and we can guess who that might be.

Nevertheless, you have 25 minutes to make your presentation. Then it’ll be followed by questions and/or comments from the committee.

Anton, the floor is yours.

ELECTIONS B.C.

A. Boegman: Good morning, Mr. Chair, Mr. Deputy Chair, and members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We appreciate this opportunity to meet with you to share our plans and budget requirements for the upcoming fiscal years.

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

I’m joined today by Yvonne Koehn, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, corporate services, and Charles Porter, Dep­uty Chief Electoral Officer, electoral finance and operations. Both Yvonne and Charles will present elements of our budget submission for the next fiscal year. We also have several senior staff sitting in the gallery — Jodi Cooke, executive director, electoral finance; Tanya Ackinclose, senior director of finance and facilities services; and Andrew Watson, senior director of communications.

Our budget submission this year is especially significant as we look ahead to the province’s 43rd provincial general election, scheduled for October 19, 2024. As you know, a general election is the principal raison d’être for Elections B.C. During a general election, we transform from 79 full-time staff in Victoria to close to 18,000 temporary staff spread out across the entire province. The shift is significant and vital to upholding the democratic right of British Columbians to freely vote for those who will represent them in the Legislative Assembly.

I’ll begin with a contextual perspective on our work, which is framed by the key priorities in our strategic plan: deliver events, modernize electoral services, improve ac­cessibility, build organizational capacity and protect electoral integrity. The next election will be the culmination of years of work to modernize the voting process for provincial elections in B.C.

In May of 2018, Elections B.C. tabled a report with recommendations for legislative change. The report was based on our experience in administering the 2017 provincial general election, and it also spoke to a number of challenges that had emerged in electoral administration since the early 2000s. The recommendations were designed to address these challenges, to provide faster and better service to voters, and to enable faster results reporting and more efficient staffing for election officials.

One of the challenges identified in our 2018 report was inefficient staffing. The model in place at that time re­quired district electoral officers to recruit, hire and train an ever-increasing number of election officials in response to growing voter counts. Prior to the 2017 election, for every 400 voters, we were required to have a voting station and two election officials.

[10:55 a.m.]

Had that model continued to today, we would be looking at hiring over 34,000 election officials for the next election. Finding enough staff to hire and effectively train in the short time frame of a campaign period was both a challenge and a risk to successful event delivery, especially given labour market conditions. Having that many officials did not guarantee good service. The model required voters to line up at their assigned voting station, even if other stations at the same voting place had no voters present.

Voting trends have also seen a steady shift from voting on final voting day to advance voting and absentee voting. Advance voting went from 11 percent in 2005 to over 35 percent in 2020, with absentee voting typically at around 10 percent, or 200,000 voters.

The large increase in advance voting resulted in a significant strain on the many manual, paper-based processes under the old model. Absentee ballots had to be counted at the final count, which made it more likely that the election results in a district and, potentially, the province as a whole would not be known until the completion of the final count two weeks after election day. As I’m sure many of you recall, this was the case in the 2017 election.

We began to address these challenges in 2017 by introducing laptops to record voter participation at advance and absentee voting and by adjusting the voting area model to reduce the hiring burden and undercapacity issue on election day. Through our experience in 2017 and a review of best practices in other jurisdictions, we identified the recommendations we made in 2018.

The Legislative Assembly unanimously adopted these recommendations in 2019 with the passage of the Election Amendment Act of that year. These amendments enabled the use of proven technology in the voting place, such as networked electronic voting books and paper ballot tabulators.

The key elements of this transition are both modern and familiar, with many aspects already in place in B.C. municipalities and other Canadian provinces. Voters entering a voting place will be served by an election official on a first-come, first-served basis, much like at a bank or a coffee shop. This will make voting faster and minimize lineups.

Election officials will strike voters off the voters list in close to real time using the laptop. Participation information will be shared between all voting places in our network and with campaigns to help support their get-out-the-vote efforts.

The use of electronic ballot tabulators to count paper ballots will result in results reporting that is both timely and accurate. Results should be reported much earlier on election night, and the ability of a tabulator to count a ballot from any district will mean that far fewer ballots will need to be counted at final count. Stringent logic and accuracy tests, both before and after voting, will be used to verify the correct functioning and accurate counting of the equipment, along with a random hand count audit of a tabulator in each district.

Importantly, the electronic voting books and tabulators should combine to reduce the number of rejected ballots. Tabulators notify a voter if there is an issue with their ballot that could result in it not being counted, allowing the voter an opportunity to correct any errors.

The core components of our system also remain familiar within our modernized approach. B.C.’s unique accessibility to the ballot will be maintained, with voters being able to vote at any opportunity, in the voting place and in the province, offered over the many days of the campaign period.

Our new administrative approach maintains the im­portant checks and balances of our system that ensure a free, fair and transparent election. Voters will still hand-mark their paper ballot, the gold standard in election administration, which will be retained, if necessary, to conduct a recount. Candidate representatives will still be able to scrutinize voting and counting procedures to support a transparent and non-partisan process. I have high confidence in our new model, which has been successfully tested in four provincial by-elections.

As reported in national media over the last year, new challenges have emerged in electoral administration, particularly those related to foreign influence, disinformation and other cyberthreats. All of these can contribute to a decline in trust in democratic processes, institutions and elections.

With the enactment of the Election Amendment Act, 2023, earlier this year, my office will go into the next provincial election with new tools to address false statements and information that could affect the results of an election or voter confidence in the administration of an election. My office is continuously monitoring emerging information on foreign interference in elections, and I expect that I will have new recommendations to bring for legislative change to address these threats.

[11:00 a.m.]

Safeguarding both the integrity of the election and public trust in the election is a priority for my office and is in­corporated into many of our activities. My team has been working over several election cycles to develop processes, procedures and systems to address the challenges faced by election administrators in the 21st century and the opportunities that are presented by the proven technology. We’re looking forward to applying this work for the benefit of British Columbians in our next election.

Now to the numbers. Our core services ongoing operating budget request for ’24-25 is $13.948 million. This is a modest increase from what was presented to the committee last year, driven by our need to procure professional audit services. Yvonne will provide more information on the detail of this request, including a breakdown of the relevant budget components.

Our capital budget request is $92,000. This is a reduction of 72 percent, or $233,000, from what was presented to the committee last year. The capital budget will primarily provide funding for two projects — a system to communicate voting place wait-time information to voters and the requirements, development and procurement work to support a post-election replacement of our electoral geography system. Again, Yvonne will provide the detail.

For events, Elections B.C. will require funding in fiscal ’24-25 of $5.657 million to administer the 2024 enumera­tion and $69.422 million to administer the 43rd provincial general election. The enumeration budget is about $1.1 million less than what was requested for the last enumeration conducted in winter 2017, prior to the May 9, 2017, election.

We’ve been able to achieve efficiencies through expanded access to other public data sources, which means we do not need to develop custom enumeration software or hire and deploy as many enumerators. Charles will speak to the specifics of our enumeration strategy during his part of our presentation.

In terms of our general election budget, the ’24-25 re­quirements are an increase of 34 percent over the actual administrative costs from the last election in 2020.

As outlined in our budget documents, there are a number of factors that have led to this increase, including: six additional electoral districts, which are, in fact, a cost multiplier to all other aspects of the election; the addition of approximately 300,000 voters since 2020, with another 100,000 anticipated over the next year; a 14 percent in­crease in Canada Post mailing fees, which results in a net increase of 35 percent to overall mailing costs, including the rate increase, new voters and our additional strategy for 2024 of sending notices to residential addresses where there are currently no voters registered.

There are higher rates of pay for election officials to keep up with provincial minimum-wage rates and labour market conditions and overall inflation increases, as well, of course, as the technology necessary for the modernized voting place and in district offices.

The addition of six districts in British Columbia is likely the single biggest driver of these increased costs. Indeed, for the 2009 election, which followed a similar increase of six electoral districts — in that case, from 79 to 85 — the resultant increase to the election budget was approximately 65 percent, $22.9 million to $38.1 million, in terms of the budget numbers. For the 2017 election, where only two new electoral districts were added, the increase to the budget was 17 percent. Again, Charles will speak to these specifics.

The last component of our budget is the funding required for political financing activities. This funding is mandated in our legislation. There are two aspects to this budget. It will require $1.772 million to make the July 2024 payment to eligible political parties. We’re also requesting $4 million to cover the election expense reimbursements for eligible candidates and political parties that we estimate will be paid out over the next fiscal year.

With that context in place, I’ll now turn it over to Yvonne to begin the line-by-line budget review.

Y. Koehn: Thank you, Anton.

As Elections B.C.’s Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, corporate services, my priority is to ensure that our office has the ongoing capacity needed to efficiently deliver on our mandate.

Our core services operating and capital budget support the ongoing work we do in between elections to maintain that capacity. Notably, this includes the ongoing maintenance of key systems that manage voter registration information, including address and electoral boundary maintenance, managing political entity registration and reporting, such as political party annual financial reports and voter education.

[11:05 a.m.]

Finally, it includes the work of my corporate services team, including IT, human resources, finance and other staff, who ensure the operational teams at EBC have what they need to deliver on our mandate.

Let’s go straight to the spreadsheets, on pages 10 to 18 of the budget proposal, where you’ll find tables 1 to 4, created by the committee staff for our use. Table 1 on pages 10 and 11 is a three-year budget plan by STOB. This table shows the current fiscal year, ’23-24, compared to our request for next fiscal year. This table includes both our core services and the event budgets and illustrates how widely the total budget varies from fiscal to fiscal as we move through different events.

The total proposed budget of $94.749 million for ’24-25 includes the $13.948 million for core services, plus $75.079 million for events and the $5.722 million in public funding of political financing activities. This table also includes a request for $92,000 of capital dollars, which is a significant reduction from what we have typically requested. I’ll provide more detail when we review table 4.

The planned budgets for the two out years, fiscal ’24-25 and ’25-26, do not include any event funding. I think I have those years wrong. When we create our budget for electoral events, each budget is developed from the ground up based on specific plans for an event that 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 is requested as and when required.

The committee requested that we also provide table 1.2, which I believe is unique to elections, found on pages 12 and 13, which breaks out our core services, operating, event and public funding budget request for fiscal ’24-25. I’ll walk us through the core services operating column, and Charles will speak to the remaining columns in this table.

As I mentioned earlier, we are requesting $13.948 million, a modest increase of $93,000 over the amount recommended by this committee last year for ’24-25. Additional funding is needed to engage contracted auditors to perform the audit functions under our mandate. After completing a competitive bid process for audit services, the successful bid was $100,000 over what we had projected last year.

We also had some increases to our permanent staff sal­aries and benefits over what we had projected due to reclassification of some key positions. We are able to cover some of these increases through savings and amortization, resulting in a net increase of $93,000. The savings and amortization have been achieved by reducing our capital budget, as we are using internal staff for information technology projects rather than contractors.

The largest part of our core services budget request is attributed to salaries and benefits for permanent staff, building occupancy charges for our headquarters, office and warehouse, as well as information systems. These three categories total $12.607 million, or 90 percent of our overall core services budget request, which leaves little flexibility in other areas.

Table 2 on pages 14 and 15 show the budget versus actuals for fiscal ’22-23. The variance of 11 percent or a surplus of just over $3 million is mainly under the information systems line item. The overall surplus was the result of a number of ongoing factors throughout the year, including actual expenditures coming in lower than budgeted, recruitment lag due to market conditions and supply chain issues.

Table 3 on pages 16 and 17 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. As I’ve explained in previous meetings with this committee, this is the result of the funding process, which culminates in the Ministry of Finance allocating Elections B.C. the exact amount necessary to fund our expenses up to the maximum approval. So the budget reflected in the public accounts equals exactly the amount that was spent in those years.

Finally, table 4 on page 18 is the capital spending plan. Our capital request for ’24-25 is $92,000, and for ’25-26 and ’26-27, we have indicated that those amounts are to be determined. The two main projects that make up our budget request in fiscal ’24-25 are to improve information to voters on lineups at voting places and to prepare for the replacement of our geographic information system, which is a custom system that was introduced in the ’9 0s and is difficult to maintain with the existing IT expertise in the marketplace.

We have started a gap analysis on what our business needs are and what the current commercial software tools, such as Esri and Oracle, can offer us. Fiscal ’24-25 is a general election year, so the intent is to build a requirements document and conduct a request for proposals such that we can be ready to start the replacement projects soon after the general election has concluded.

[11:10 a.m.]

We know this project will require capital dollars in fu­ture years, but it is too early to properly estimate what this project will cost. Future budget submissions will be based on these findings, hence the uncertain capital numbers for the two out years.

We also provided a summary financial outlook that you can find on page 8 of our proposal, which shows you at a glance the core services operating budget for the current fiscal year, next year and the two out years. You may notice two trends.

One is that the amortization amount continues to de­crease. Amortization is directly tied to our capital spending in previous years, and this reduction is a result of the additional organizational capacity we have developed in our IT department. This allows us to perform more of our enterprise hardware and software maintenance and development in-house, rather than hiring contractors to perform capital improvements, and it can be seen in reduced amortization and in capital budgets.

The other area of fluctuation is in the line item for corporate information systems. The baseline budget amount for this item is just over $1 million, but every few years we have bigger expenditures to refresh our operating infrastructure as it reaches its end-of-life. In ’24-25 our request is for $1.026 million and then increases in ’25-26 to complete a required refresh of our computer workstations. It then goes back down in ’26-27.

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

C. Porter: Thank you, Yvonne.

Good morning, Committee Members. As Anton noted, I am the deputy chief electoral officer for electoral finance and operations. I’m responsible for ensuring operational readiness and the delivery of both on-demand and scheduled electoral events. I’m also responsible for administering provincial and local campaign finance and advertising laws.

I’m going to review our event budget and then move on to a review of the budget for public funding of the political process. Both of these topics are set out in greater detail in table 1.2 on pages 12 and 13.

Following our 2023 redistribution of all voters to the 93 new electoral districts in the province, we will be delivering two major scheduled electoral events in ’24-25, a provincial enumeration and the 43rd provincial general election.

The primary objective of a provincial enumeration is to improve the quality of the voters list in advance of a scheduled general election. Enumerations are not held when an unscheduled election is called. A secondary benefit of an enumeration is increased awareness of the upcoming election.

Enumerations are closely tied to our strategic priority of improving accessibility and inclusivity. The 2024 enumeration plan will combine a provincewide advertising campaign, a mailout of personalized voter registration notices and in-person activities conducted in areas where they can have the most value in reaching voters.

The mailout and advertising campaign will build on earlier redistribution messaging. Both will begin in mid-August, and enumerators will be hired to conduct enumeration activities in the field in September of 2024.

Communities and facilities serving individuals who have typically experienced barriers to participation will be a key focus for in-person outreach, including Indigenous communities, post-secondary institutions, homeless shelters and organizations serving new Canadians.

A key component of our enumeration strategy is to get the voters list as accurate as possible before the enumeration begins. We are served in this regard by recent legislative changes and agreements which provide Elections B.C. with more voter data than before. To receive and process data, we will have temporary staff working with our voter services team over the months before the event starts to identify and apply updates from our information-sharing agreements and to follow up with voters as necessary.

The data that we will be able to access is limited to basic name, birth date and address details — only what is necessary for us to process voters. Our sources of information include Elections Canada, B.C. drivers’ licences, B.C. ID cards and B.C. Services Card data. The budget request for the enumeration is $5.657 million next fiscal year. Looking now at the line item budget for the enumeration, you can see that the largest expense categories are for office and business expenses.

The bulk of the $3.22 million under this STOB are costs related to the direct mailing of voter registration notices. The next largest category, at just over $1 million, is for advertising-related expenses. We have budgeted $1.049 million for salaries and benefits for enumeration staff, split between enumerators working in the field and temporary staff at our headquarters. The bulk of our headquarters temporary staff are contact centre operators, who answer voter inquiries in response to the voter registration notice and register or update registrations as needed.

[11:15 a.m.]

I will now move on to the 43rd provincial general election, scheduled for October 19, 2024. We are now, of course, less than a year until the writs are issued, and we are rapidly increasing readiness activities for this event. This time last year, we met with this committee at the early stages of our event planning, and we identified some event-related spending in the current fiscal year to prepare for the event. This time next year, we will have conducted the events and begun our event close-out activities.

A provincial general election is an immense and fast-paced event. The election event budget we are presenting to you today sets out the spending we will need to implement a plan that includes over 360 different deliverables developed over years in accordance with our planning framework.

As Yvonne mentioned, we conduct a zero-based budget for an election, which involves esti­mating the cost of each deliverable in our event plan. Where necessary, we estimate, based on budgeting assumptions derived from previous events. This is particularly true of the budgets to administer voting and counting in the electoral districts.

The detailed district-specific budgets for this work will be prepared next spring, when the district electoral officers and their deputies complete their final general election readiness planning assignment. Our submission today in­cludes our best estimate of items like voting-place and office-rental costs. The provincial general election budget for the next fiscal year is $69.422 million. While this is also set out in table 1.2, the pie chart on page 6 of our budget proposal provides a breakdown on how we are proposing to spend this amount.

The largest category of expenditure is staff wages. Be­tween our district electoral officers, their deputies, their office staff and election officials, as well as temporary head­quarters staff needed to support the election, we require $31.686 million, or about 46 percent of the overall election budget.

While new legislation, technology and procedures will allow us to hire fewer election officials than in the past, the increase from 87 to 93 electoral districts means that more DEOs and their deputies and office staff will be needed. Similarly, headquarters staffing needs to increase to ensure that we can support the increased number of district electoral officers and the new technology they will be working with, as well as to counter emerging threats like domestic or foreign election interference.

Beyond our staff, we rely on a number of key contractors to help us deliver an election. The costs of these professional services are estimated at $2.668 million. Services included under this line item include contracted IT support staff, payroll services for election officials and services to monitor social media and other channels for disinformation, misinformation and other threats.

After people, the largest cost category is for information systems. This is budgeted at $10.593 million and includes equipment leasing, licensing and support costs, software licensing and network costs. Next is office expenses, at $7.186 million. This includes furniture rental in DEO offices, transportation costs for election supplies and costs associated with in-person training for DEOs.

Building occupancy costs, including the rental of district electoral offices and voting places, are $6.425 million. More districts means more DEO offices and more advance voting places. Combined with the rising cost of commercial rents, this results in an increase of about a million dollars over the amount spent in the 2020 general election.

Printing and provincewide distribution costs for where-to-vote cards are $4.954 million. Advertising costs are $4.832 million. This includes the mandatory Election Act–required advertising about voting opportunities and advertising which will introduce voters to the new look and technology of voting. Finally, ballot printing is budgeted at $1.078 million.

While greater use of technology has impacted the budget estimate for this provincial election, some of these costs are investments in future election infrastructure. Some equipment will serve for multiple provincial elections. These infrastructure costs are approximately $1.2 million in fiscal 2024-25. The combined total across all fiscals, based on previous budget requests, comes to approximately $8 million and includes technology for the voting places in the district electoral offices.

The final component of our request is $5.722 million for public political financing. First, I will speak to the annual allowance payments. Then I will discuss election reimbursements.

[11:20 a.m.]

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.

Funding is based on an allocation of $1.75 per vote re­ceived, plus an adjustment to account for changes to the consumer price index each January.

The estimate of $1.772 million only includes the July 15, 2024, payment, as the second instalment, in fiscal ’24-25 — it’ll happen in January of ’25 — will be based on the results of the 43rd provincial general election. Once the results of the election are known, we will write the committee with a supplementary funding requirement for the January 15, 2025, payment.

Now we will turn to the subject of election reimbursements. The estimate for election expense reimbursement payments is $4 million.

Section 215.04 of the Election Act requires the reimbursement of certain election expenses to political parties and candidates. Eligibility is based on the proportion of votes that parties and candidates receive in the election. Eligible recipients are entitled to 50 percent of the reimbursable expenses, up to 50 percent of the election ex­penses limit. This is paid in two instalments, and only the first instalment is included in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

Since the number of eligible recipients cannot be known until the election results are declared, the $4 million estimate is based on previous elections and will change based on actual voting results and the expenses incurred by candidates and parties. A similar amount will be included in next year’s event funding request to cover the second instalment.

This concludes my remarks. Over to Anton for closing comments.

A. Boegman: Thank you, Charles and Yvonne, and my apologies for using extra time thus far in our presentation.

The 2024 election will be historic for British Columbians, and the last three years have been a time of tremendous work and change for Elections B.C. I’m very proud of the extent to which we have introduced these significant changes to our electoral processes and am looking forward to seeing them implemented provincewide in the next general election.

These changes improve efficiency in the voting process, provide better service to voters, maintain the necessary integrity checks and will, hopefully, support improved voter participation in our next election.

We’re now pleased to answer any questions the committee members may have, Mr. Chair.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Anton. Before we get into the questions, if you wouldn’t mind taking the time to introduce the staff that are behind you.

A. Boegman: Certainly. Yes, I think I had in my opening comments that we have….

Interjection.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Did he? I’m sorry. That was the part I did not remember. Okay, there we go. Numbers, numbers, numbers.

We will go to the first person on my list — Tom.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Anton, for the presentation.

A couple of non-budgetary questions first. I might ask some budgetary stuff later.

The first one…. Always a concern of mine is the threat of foreign influence, election interference, those kinds of things. What do you perceive as the biggest threat, perhaps, for foreign influence? It could be cyberattack, could be misinformation. I’m not sure what it is. But what keeps you up at night?

The second one would be on fixed election dates. We know that under, I guess, a request from the Premier, the Lieutenant-Governor could dismiss the Legislature, which would trigger an election. Can that work in opposite? Can it work on a fixed election date? Could the Premier actually request a stay of the fixed election date, to go past it, from the Lieutenant-Governor?

A. Boegman: Maybe I’ll address the second question first. My understanding is that under the Constitution Act, there is a time delimit, where the election must be held on this day. The idea of a deferral, extending it beyond…. Unless there’s a change to the legislation, I do not believe that that would be possible in the current context.

In terms of the threats that our democracy faces, I think, it’s been an area I have been concerned about for a number of years. Indeed, my colleagues across Canada also reflect that concern.

I tabled a report in 2020 which highlighted some of those changes and some of those threats, particularly as they relate to the trend of communications and the campaigning space moving almost exclusively in the digital environment. We were reflecting on what we had seen in the U.S. in 2016, what we’d seen in Brexit in 2016 and what we had seen largely in other areas.

[11:25 a.m.]

Over the past year, of course, there have been a number of explosive allegations played out in the media, obviously based on whistleblower-type reports. There’s currently a public inquiry headed by Madam Justice Hogue into foreign influence and interference in Canadian elections, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the results coming out of that inquiry.

If I look at our current Election Act and what the protections are and where the gaps are right now, certainly there are a lot of protections currently in campaign finance in terms of the limits on contributions, the criteria. It needs to be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident making contributions. In terms of the transparency of the reporting scheme, I think that is a benefit to all British Columbians.

In my report, I did identify that there were a number of gaps that we saw in the disinformation side. I articulated a number of issues. I was very pleased to see the Legislature respond with the Election Amendment Act, 2019, which addressed some of those and gave my office new powers to deal with specific, deliberate forms of disinformation — I would say provisions around impersonation of an election official or of a candidate, political party, party leader, those sorts of things; deliberate false statements made with the intent of affecting confidence in the election and results. It’s these sorts of things.

We’re working right now to put in place the necessary frameworks and processes to enable us to enforce those new provisions, much like we enforce the current provisions on campaign finance and election advertising and these sorts of things.

If I think about what keeps me up at night, it’s around things that I’m not aware of and that it’s very hard for me as an election administrator to become aware of. You hear about the nature of some of the reports that were presented in the media. There are things that are reported a year afterwards or, because of the nature of intelligence gathering, it is information that is not able to be shared outside of either federal institutions or unless someone has a specific security clearance or unless that information is in relation to that person.

Trying to get a better understanding of that environment is critical for us. We’re looking at what partnerships we can establish with organizations in this space to do media monitoring, trying to make sure that we’re aware of what’s going on. We’ll be continuing the pilot we have with Elections Canada, resources for media monitoring and social media monitoring in foreign languages. We’re working with an academic group out of McGill University that has previously worked in other provincial and the federal elections to do monitoring of disinformation in that space.

Really, those are the things that, right now, I’m very concerned about, that I’m thinking about in a new report that I anticipate tabling and really trying to make sure that our legislation is as fit for purpose as possible.

I think, also, that what has become clear to me is that addressing these threats effectively is going to require a whole-of-society response. It’s going to require more than just the work of one agency. It’s going to require collaboration across federal and provincial authorities.

It’s going to require work, I think, within our school system to enhance curriculum on digital media literacy and core civics. It’s going to require the establishment of neutral and independent fact-checking organizations. There are great international examples in Taiwan, in Finland, as an example, that do these things very well. So I think that’s something that’s going to be important to realize and a consideration for legislators.

S. Chant: Thank you very much for your presentation, and thank you for shouldering an enormous amount of work for all of you, because the concept of hiring however many more people for however period of time is just overwhelming to me.

[11:30 a.m.]

When we talk about approximately 300,000 people coming to British Columbia in the last couple of years, and possibly more than that, what percentage of those people do you feel will be able to vote?

I know that’s premature because your enumeration isn’t done, but I’m assuming you’ve looked at some stats and are able to make some estimates.

A. Boegman: The numbers I mentioned are based on…. Since the last election, we’ve had, actually, over 300,000 new voter registrations. These are people who are eligible to vote, who have confirmed their eligibility through the registration process and that we’ll be now able to communicate with. We’re anticipating a further 100,000 registered voters.

Our planning estimate for the next provincial election is there will be around 3.7 million registered voters in the province. Of course, our population is over five million.

Then, of course, whenever someone is a registered voter, it enables us to communicate with them directly through some of our targeted materials like the enumeration notice that we’ll be sending, also where-to-vote notices that we send out and those sorts of things.

G. Chow: Comparing the 2020 election and the 2024 election. Of course, that one was conducted under COVID with a lot of mail-in ballots and all that. How do the costs compare?

A. Boegman: I think I spoke to that in my opening comments. I’ll get my notes just to make sure that I’m being accurate. The cost of the 2020 election — the actual cost was over $50 million.

G. Chow: So it’s 65 now.

A. Boegman: To be precise, it was $51 million. Our budget estimate for next year is $69 million.

G. Chow: That’s due to…? Of course, we increase in population, but due to inflation or process?

A. Boegman: Yeah, I think if I was to speak at a high level, there are three things that I would speak to.

I did articulate in my comments that I think the biggest driver is the new electoral boundaries, with six new electoral districts. Those six districts are really a cost multiplier. We’re going to need, obviously, to rent and staff six new offices, secure new voting locations, hire all the staff to fill those to serve the voters, procure and ship additional supplies and equipment and these sorts of things.

As I mentioned there, if you look at…. This is a simplification, but in 2009, when we moved from 79 to 85 districts — that was an addition of six — there was also a significant increase in costs at that time.

The second one is what I’d classify as, I would say, environmental changes. This, of course, just reflects things that have changed over time since the last election. That reflects the new voters that we have on the voters list. You know, if there are going to be 400,000 new voters and you’re sending a piece of direct mail to them, of course you can see how that cost multiplies and increases.

Cost-of-living increases. Inflationary pressure is something that’s in the media all the time, and it impacts the things that we need to procure and source and then, of course, ship out from headquarters to all of the district offices in the province. In essence, there’s just going to be more of everything in this election.

Legislation, I think, drives costs as well. There’s been significant legislative change. And while I firmly believe this will result in a much better voting model for British Columbians and provide significant benefits to the province, it does come at a cost.

So new roles identified. New training material must be developed. New training material must be documented, printed. We needed to develop software for the new electronic voting books that we’re using. We had to procure hardware. It was actually at a time when the hardware that we procured prior to 2017 needed to be phased out, so we needed to do a replacement of the hardware.

[11:35 a.m.]

Yeah, I’d say the boundaries are the biggest driver, obviously. The environmental changes — more of everything. Then the new legislation and the new voting model. In our pie chart, we showed that technology budget costs for next year represent 15 percent of that budget. I think in 2020, technology was around 5 percent.

G. Chow: So the ballot is still basically counted by hand provincially?

A. Boegman: No. In places where we are deploying the technology, the ballot will be counted by a ballot tabula­tor. It’ll be the paper ballot. We’ll obviously retain that paper ballot, but it’ll be counted by a tabulator and reported. That’s the model that we’ve had in the four by-elections thus far.

There will be some locations where we’re not able to deploy tabulators and the technology. Of course, those will use the hand-count process and the paper documentation.

G. Chow: Okay. Thank you.

R. Leonard: Hello. I hope this goes well. I don’t have much of a voice.

I wanted to say thank you very much for the focus you’ve put into making sure that we have a strong electoral process. I’ve seen over the years…. I think I was the one that was delaying the results from 2017. To see how you have embraced the technology to improve the voter experience — number one, because one of the biggest frustrations from people I’ve seen is having to wait in long lines — and to find ways to make that voter experience more robust and make people not just walk away from it….

Democracy costs money, and we’re a growing population. I just wanted to say thank you for all that you’ve done.

I really appreciated page 6 of the report, showing how these increases fall. If we were not to support anything in this, any one thing in this proposal, what could we possibly drop without impacting our democratic process?

A. Boegman: To be honest, I firmly believe everything in our budget proposal is required to support our democracy. Charles has spoken to the detailed model that we use to develop the budget estimates. We use a project management methodology where we identify what is needed, we schedule that, and then we cost that.

I think our commitment is, of course, that this is a budget estimate. We will only spend the money that we need. Obviously, if there is surplus, then that surplus is returned. But I certainly think everything in our budget is absolutely necessary.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Anton, I look at the pie chart. I mean, I’m a pie chart person — the colour, the slices.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): The pie.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Yeah, pie — period.

There’s a 9 percent slice there for voting places. I know that we’ve got six additional electoral boundaries — and thank you for the work on that — but can you make me better understand…?

I know in some places, whether or not it’s Langley or Richmond or Surrey or parts of the Island, you’ve essentially, in those cases, made more pieces of pie. But how many more polling stations become part of that?

If we take a look at Langley, where there was X amount of people that were there, there’d be X amount of polling stations. Now you’ve just changed boundaries and created one. What kind of a reflection is that of the number of polling places?

A. Boegman: I think, in some cases, the new boundaries will not mean a new polling place, necessarily, because there are existing polling places, and those existing polling places will be suitable for the shifting boundaries. People will just go to the polling place that is closest to them.

I think we also need to think about…. Because of the new requirements, some of the polling places that were used previously would not be acceptable for the new technology footprint we’re having. Perhaps they don’t have network connectivity that is necessary. So we might need to source new and different locations for those.

[11:40 a.m.]

I think the electoral boundary change, where it happens is…. If there is a change, perhaps it’s right on a border of a community. There may be people who were used to going to a voting place that was right in that community, but now their assigned voting place…. We might need to find a new one to better serve them in their new district. Of course, they would still be able to go to the one in the other district if they wanted to, but they may not be able to do that.

I don’t know if that answers your question entirely. We do, obviously, focus on making sure that the voting places that are assigned to voters are as accessible as possible to them. In some cases, that means that we need to find new locations from what was used previously.

M. Starchuk (Chair): When I was looking at it…. I mean, 9 percent. We’re almost at 10 percent of…. That’s the increase that was there.

I’m just curious if that would be correlated directly to 9 percent more polling places.

A. Boegman: Well, I think the pie chart really shows what percentage of that budget is dedicated to that cost item. That just means that of the $69 million, approximately 9 percent…. Just around $6 million would be allocated to DEO office rent and to voting place rental. So not necessarily an increase of 9 percent.

S. Chant: Just really quick. It seems to me…. Last spring there was…. You were talking about an education component that you were hoping…. I may be confused, and that’s okay.

Do you have an education component that talks about…? We’ve got people that are coming from overseas or that are new to B.C. and haven’t had the opportunity, perhaps, to be in the type of system that we have. Do you have something that they can benefit from and that maybe we can also have access to, to share when we find families that…?

We get approached in our offices by people saying: “How do I…? What are the…?” We know the basic parameters, but it would be really helpful to have something in our offices that we could share with people around voting here.

A. Boegman: We produce a number of resources that we make available.

I’ll provide a few comments. I’m sure that Andrew will have more comments to add to what I have to say.

We have a Democracy in a Box Kit. We provide other resources that we make available to educators and to anyone who…. They can request the loan of the kit, and we can ship it out to them.

We do, of course, a lot more engagement and outreach in the lead-up to an election. Obviously, there are ongoing practices that we have. But in the lead-up to an election, we do a much greater focus on them.

One of the things we do is partner with a group called the Democratic Engagement Exchange, which is run out of Toronto Metropolitan University. They do work in other provinces as well. They conduct non-partisan elector outreach and engagement. We can customize a program for British Columbia which really focuses on offering a vote pop-up. This is a simulation program for them to demystify the voting process and to try to help people connect what they see with an election and really just build that culture of engagement.

We did a pilot of that in the Lower Mainland in the 2017 election, where we held pop-ups in a variety of settings like food banks, student union buildings, language programs, libraries, senior centres, Canadian newcomer classes and places like that. Those programs are really intended to engage those new Canadians, people who may not be familiar with the democratic process in British Columbia, and help engage them with that prior to the election.

Andrew, do you have anything else to speak to?

A. Watson: Good morning, everyone. Andrew Watson, communications director.

I could just add two quick points. We do outreach presentations on an ongoing basis with partners that serve new Canadians or voters who are seeking their citizenship, including DIVERSEcity. We also work with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to provide information to new citizens about registering and voting once they get their citizenship.

[11:45 a.m.]

Absolutely, we’ve got lots of educational resources available. We’re always happy to share those with anyone who would like them in terms of reaching out to voters about this topic.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): It’s getting close to lunch. I like pie too. So I’ll speak to the pie chart as well.

That’s just on public awareness and advertising. Seven percent is dedicated to that. Is that consistent with other years? What forms of public awareness…? Is that social media? Is that radio? Is there a breakdown on that? Is it consistent? Is it a higher, or lower, chunk of the pie than other years?

A. Boegman: I will speak, again, at a high level. I’m sure….

You may as well come back up, Andrew, to provide some additions.

The chunk of the pie is bigger for this election. I believe it’s really important…. Because of the changes brought about by the Election Amendment Act, 2019, we were able to effectively communicate how voting will be different for voters in British Columbia.

We’re consciously building an election integrity or trust component into our communications activities. I think that this is an area where…. Previously, election agencies would just accept that our institutions and our processes are trusted. Certainly, research indicates that Canadians and British Columbians are, perhaps, unlike their counterparts in the States.

I don’t think this is something that we can take for granted. I think we need to be very much proactive in going out and making sure that we’re able to prebunk, perhaps, myths that may be there in the election space with accurate information.

Certainly, those two components are key elements as to why we’re spending more, or planning to spend more, on advertising for this election.

In terms of the breakdown, maybe, Andrew, you can pick that up.

A. Watson: The advertising campaign includes a lot of different media — television, radio, newspaper, traditional media but also digital and social media. We know that’s where a lot of the attention is going in terms of reaching voters.

We have a very broad audience to reach out to. We want to make sure that every British Columbian has information about where, when and how to vote. The target audience for the campaign is really any eligible voter within the province. So a very diverse audience to reach out to. On the public awareness side, we want to make sure that the media plan is comprehensive so that all voters have that information.

One additional piece, compared to 2020, is a “know the rules” advertising campaign, which focuses on advertising rules for third-party sponsors. That is an element of the increase, a smaller element but not something we did in 2020, given that it was a snap election.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Sorry. Just one more.

That’s great. I don’t know if you’ve seen an increase in social media versus traditional marketing. I know we see that a lot just with other MLAs and other people that are trying to get people out to vote.

The last one was just on the audit of the annual financial reports. It’s, essentially, a 200 percent increase to what you first estimated, $50,000. Now it’s $150,000.

Can you explain the rationale there and why you saw an increase in that?

A. Boegman: Jodi.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): We’re getting everybody up here.

J. Cooke: Good morning. My name is Jodi Cooke. I’m the executive director of electoral finance.

To speak to the increase around the audit of political parties…. The cost that was estimated when we originally submitted our request was based on staffing that would be done in our office. So we were trying to recruit auditing staff to complete this internally.

As you probably heard from the Auditor General earlier this week when they made their presentation, the recruitment of professional auditing services in Victoria is very challenging. We experienced quite a bit of challenge trying to recruit that staff and looked for an opportunity to continue with that work with a modest increase.

We contracted with an external auditing firm. We found that they were able to provide the auditing expertise and, combined with our staff, who have the subject-matter expertise of the complex rules under the campaign finance requirements, were able to complete that work.

[11:50 a.m.]

B. Stewart: You talked about the…. Elections B.C., I think, has done a remarkable job in reaching out and trying to get people engaged in the election process.

I guess the question I have is…. The absentee voters and people that are new to this system.… I guess the ballots…. When you go to a polling station, you’re expected to vote for a candidate on the ballot, but if you’re an absentee voter or any of the other methods that you can use, it isn’t required.

I guess I’m kind of wondering: what work are you doing to make it so that those absentee ballots could be either printed or downloaded or whatever, printed up? I realize that sometimes people are out of the country. But what are you doing to address that?

A. Boegman: That part of the design on the new modernized voting place and part of the benefit of using the ballot tabulators is that the ballot tabulators can be set to administer accurately contests in all 93 electoral districts in the province. We’re combining that with the ability in our voting places and in district offices to print ballots on demand, meaning that the voter….

Say if an absentee voter comes in and they’re voting out of district, we will identify them and strike them off through the electronic voting book, but through that process, we will actually print for them an ordinary ballot for their district. They will then be able to go and vote using that ordinary ballot, which lists their candidates, and then that will be tabulated in the tabulator. So that’ll be able to be reported on election night.

Our target is to be able to report on up to 98 percent of all ballots on election night, with only 2 percent of the ballots remaining to be counted at the final count. That’s certainly a great benefit of the new model in being able to move away from the write-in ballots, which were a previous requirement for all out-of-district voting, and have many more of those voters be able to vote using the ordinary ballot.

B. Stewart: Just to be clear, then, the write-in ballot is no longer valid?

A. Boegman: No. The write-in ballot will still be available. It will just be used in many fewer opportunities than was done previously.

B. Stewart: Okay. Thank you very much, and good work. Thank you. I always appreciate your work.

S. Chant: Are you still doing the reach-out to the voters that are going to be old enough to vote by the time the election comes?

A. Boegman: We certainly are. We’ve done a lot of work with the future voters. I can give you some stats on that. We currently have 12,738 voters on the future voters list. The number of British Columbians who have gone from the list of future voters to the permanent list is just under 10,000, which I think is a fantastic success of that process.

We have close to 18,000 future voters currently regis­tered who will be eligible to vote by the next provincial election — so 17,956. These will then be people who…. Because they’ll be eligible to vote, we’ll now be able to send them a where-to-vote card. We’ll be able to communicate with them directly for the next election.

Since the beginning of the list of future voters, we now have over 22,636 registrations on it.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay. That concludes the question part of everything. Anton, thank you very much for your presentation and for your staff being here this morning.

I think, to Tom’s questions at the beginning, the things that keep people up at night and the integrity of voting and the ballots that come forward and the counting and the lack of interference that are there…. I wish you well. I wish you luck on that.

Having said all of that, we will take a recess and return back here for one o’clock sharp.

The committee recessed from 11:54 a.m. to 1 p.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Good afternoon.

A motion to go in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 1 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. We are back.

We will take a brief recess to set the room.

The committee recessed from 1:15 p.m. to 1:17 p.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us.

Because there are a couple of new faces, we will do some quick introductions. We will start off with the Deputy Chair.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Chair.

Deputy Chair Tom Shypitka. I’m the MLA for Kootenay East.

G. Chow: George Chow, Vancouver-Fraserview.

S. Chant: Susie Chant, North Vancouver–Seymour.

C. Oakes: Good afternoon. Coralee Oakes, MLA for Cariboo North.

B. Stewart: Ben Stewart, MLA for Kelowna West.

R. Leonard: Ronna-Rae Leonard, MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Hi. I’m Mike Starchuk, MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.

If you get a question or a comment from Ronna-Rae, her voice is slowly but surely coming back.

Thank you for being here this afternoon. This is a little bit of a different format. You have a clock in front of you. We have 25 minutes in front of you.

The floor is yours.

OFFICE OF THE
HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER

K. Govender: Thank you, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you today our latest financial and programmatic news from B.C.’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner as well as details from our budget submissions.

Before I continue, I want to acknowledge, with gratitude, that we gather here today on the unceded and ancestral territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, including the Song­hees and Esquimalt First Nations.

As the descendant of settlers and migrants, I want to couple this gratitude for the land with the sense of re­sponsibility that I think we all carry. Particularly I do, as Human Rights Commissioner.

I am joined today by my colleagues deputy commissioner Stephanie Garrett and chief financial officer Dianne Buljat.

[1:20 p.m.]

Sadly, this will be the last time that Stephanie will be appearing by my side at this committee, as she is moving on to take a deputy position at the Ombudsperson’s office. While we will miss her very much, you will continue to benefit from her wisdom in that role. I’m very grateful for all she has contributed to steering BCOHRC’s ship, including our budgetary asks and fiscal responsibility, which I know are of utmost importance to this committee.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the budget recommendations in your report last fall, which have allowed us to serve British Columbians in a variety of ways. I hope you will see that it was money well spent.

Given the different format that the committee requested for today, I’m just going to spend a few minutes to provide an overview of the organization and highlight a few recent and ongoing projects.

Specifically, I will speak to education work that we’ve been doing to help the public better understand systemic discrimination, how we’ve been engaging with communities on the results of our inquiry into hate, our work with local governments to ensure that human rights of encampment residents are promoted and protected, our new investigation into the operation of the adult guardianship regime, and some of the work we’ve done to improve accessibility of both our materials and the human rights system more generally.

I will then turn to operational updates and developments ahead of us this year and the budget proposal in front of you.

I will preface my comments by saying that I’m pleased to be presenting a status quo budget request today, with a salary and benefits funding correction only, despite the operational changes that I will mention in a moment and the changing world around us. We have no key requests for you.

Starting with a bit about us, our mandate is to address the root causes of inequality, injustice and discrimination in the province by shifting laws, policies, practices and cultures. We do this work through education, through research, through advocacy, through inquiry and monitoring.

There are a number of aspects of this mandate that make us unique among the other officers. I want to spend just a moment on that. We have no direct service function. We do not receive or resolve human rights complaints or human rights issues; this is entirely the role of the human rights tribunal. Our focus as a commissioner is entirely on systemic change and oversight.

Another key difference is our mandate covers the whole province, every sector and every person who is either a rights holder or a duty bearer under human rights law.

We’ve been building this office in a unique context. Human rights are at the forefront of the minds of many, particularly due to the pandemic, in a way that is unprecedented in Canada in my lifetime.

Our five strategic priorities, which we developed shortly before the onset of the pandemic, have taken on particular poignancy during this time, including the rise of hate and white supremacy; poverty as both a cause and effect of inequality and injustice; the rights of those held in detention; decolonization and Indigenous rights; and discrimination in the context of employment, housing and service provision.

Turning, then, to a few project highlights since I last presented before you. During this period, we have piloted our new workshop on systemic discrimination and developed a simulation exercise to help learners better understand systemic discrimination through their own experiences. At their request, we have piloted our workshop with all staff members of the family maintenance enforcement programs and have received very positive feedback.

We have travelled around the province to talk about hate, discrimination and the results of our first big public inquiry into the rise of hate during COVID, working to engage and empower communities large and small, rural and urban, to take action on these issues, including on the rise of anti-Asian hate. For example, in the last number of months, I have visited Penticton, Nanaimo, Fort St. John, Surrey and Kamloops to engage in these conversations in person.

We have also worked with diverse local governments in B.C. to raise awareness about their obligations under human rights law towards encampment residents and to learn more about how these obligations might be applied to a range of local circumstances.

We have also launched a focused inquiry into the detention of people who appear to be abused or neglected and incapable of giving or refusing consent, as defined under the Adult Guardianship Act, and whether such detentions are compliant with the law and with human rights principles.

[1:25 p.m.]

Finally, I wanted to mention a number of initiatives that we’ve been working on to improve access to justice and access to the tools that our office produces. For example, we have conducted an accessibility audit on many of our online and digital assets and are in the process of implementing those recommendations now.

We released videos of our foundational workshop about the human rights code in ten languages. Each 45-minute video will help viewers learn about their rights and re­sponsibilities, whether they are landlords, tenants, em­ployers, employees, service providers or service users, who are all covered under the human rights code.

In partnership with the human rights tribunal and the human rights clinic — those are our other partners within the human rights system — we released resources to help people navigate B.C.’s human rights system. The B.C. hu­man rights system web portal, which was developed using funds that we were granted the last time we were here, provides a clear and concise overview of the different parts of the human rights system in B.C. and helps people understand where they can turn to for support and how to get there.

There are, of course, many other areas of focus on our plate at the moment, but given the time constraints in the new structure, I’m going to leave it there for programmatic updates.

The year ahead is going to bring some significant operational developments. As you know, we have, since BCOHRC’s inception, relied upon an agreement with the Representative for Children and Youth for a shared corporate services arrangement, including human resources, IMIT and financial services. I think you’ve heard much of this from the representative herself already.

In our fifth year of development and following an ex­tensive review of services and needs, both organizations feel that now the time is right to do some corporate services transition. At least some of those services will be transferred over to BCOHRC in the next six months or so. These changes are not anticipated to result in any budgetary impacts for us. They’re cost-neutral. We will provide further updates on this in our spring appearance before the committee.

The other development ahead is my first term expires at the beginning of next September. The year ahead could bring a commissioner change. Importantly, this coincides with the organizational evaluation we have planned, as well as a new strategic plan, within the next year. We’ll be seeing some of those important developments as an organization.

While we have not planned for any financial implications from this potential turnover, the change in leadership, and any alterations needed to respond to the organizational evaluation, may represent a significant shift for the organization. I’m grateful to our passionate and hard-working team for continuing to deliver on our mandate during these times of transition.

Turning then to the budget, in October 2022, the committee approved operating budgets of $7.505 million for ’23-24, the current fiscal; $7.608 million for ’24-25; and $7.608 million, the same amount, for ’25-26; and then $35,000 in capital for each of these three years.

For this year, we are requesting a status quo capital budget of $35,000 and an operating budget of $7.668 million for fiscal year 2024-25. That represents about $60,000, or less than a 1 percent increase over the previously ap­proved operating budget. That’s to accommodate a wage-increase shortfall. The increase comprises only inflationary costs on salaries and benefits. There are no other variances above 5 percent in our requested budget this year.

I want to spend a moment on this accounting for wage inflation. Our practice has been to incorporate wage-inflation requests in our fall budget cycle, based on the best information available at the time. For our schedule A em­ployees, wage inflation is driven, as you know, by the BCGEU collective bargaining process. For our management-classified staff, wage-inflation direction is provided by the Public Service Agency, following recommendations by the Public Sector Employers Council.

In 2022, the ratification of the BCGEU master agreement was delayed to October 2022, although it was effective as of April 1, 2022.

[1:30 p.m.]

At the time of our submission last fall, minimal information was available with respect to how the wage inflation would be applied overall, as well as the costing related to other changes in the overall compensation package. While we anticipated the application would be the same, based on past practice, that wasn’t the case.

This request that you have before you includes a $55,000 adjustment related to the impact of the 2022-23 and ’23-24 wage increases, to address a shortfall that has resulted be­tween estimated and final direction. This does not include a potential adjustment for ’24-25, as the application of that adjustment has not been confirmed.

Just for the sake of clarity, all of this is the difference between what we knew at the time of our last budget submission on what increases would be required and what ended up actually happening.

Additionally, effective April 2023, the terms and conditions for excluded employees and appointees was updated to reflect increased vehicle allowance rates. This request includes $5,000 related to that charge. That’s what the $60,000 is that we are requesting.

In conclusion, I want to talk a moment about the impact of these investments in British Columbia. Our educational materials have seen significant uptake. For example, our video series introducing human rights in B.C. has gar­nered nearly 40,000 views, and a third chapter of this trilogy will be available soon.

More than four million people across B.C. saw our re­write the rules campaign. That was the public awareness campaign to address ableism. As well, our resources in that campaign have been downloaded over 15,000 times.

Our employment equity toolkit has also seen a significant uptake, with thousands of views and downloads. Small Business B.C. said about our resources: “Promoting equity in your workplace isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also good for business. If you’re interested in creating a more equitable workplace but don’t have the expertise or know-how to start, BCOHRC’s employment equity toolkit offers a perfect jumping-off point.”

As I have already mentioned, we released the findings from our inquiry into hate last March. That was just before we appeared before you for the spring appearance. Through that inquiry, we heard afterwards from one participant who said: “Through our participation in the inquiry, we learned that there is immense power in sharing about experiences that are designed to shame, degrade and belittle you.”

The report and the recommendations in that inquiry were greeted with significant public interest, garnering over 1,200 media articles, spanning local, provincial, na­tional and even international outlets, with a reach of more than 627 million potential viewers.

We also had more than 10,000 visitors engage with the report and recommendations on our website. In response to our accessible materials in the report, one community member, noted: “The plain language summaries are brilliant, so good,” as well as “You can also pass on that my comment isn’t just perfunctory. Like, having your legalese available to people to read and dig into, ponder and organize around, is actual politics, and it’s deeply important. To me, it’s half the work, the invitation and support available to people to join into the work.”

Those are my comments today, and I look forward to hearing and answering your questions.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. If you’re going to get blue stars, ribbons, whatever it is, you win. You’ve made it the briefest of all, the briefest of the 25-minute allotments that we have seen up until now. So it’s going to be fun to pursue the next office, when Michael comes in after you. In fact, there’s no way. It’s not going to happen.

Thank you very much for your for your presentation. As well, good luck on your next chapter of your life. The work that’s been done here will obviously help you out with where you go.

And with regard to your budget, I’ve been here for a while, same as how Ben has been here for a while, and we watched the growth of your office. Very happy on where it is and the outputs that have come from your office. I’m very impressed and love the work that you do and the people that you work with do as well.

K. Govender: Thank you so much.

[1:35 p.m.]

S. Chant: I thank you for the work that you do and the work that you’ve been doing over these last couple of years. It was clearly needing to be done. I’m interested in rewrite the rules and how that landed and where it landed and what the uptake on it has been.

K. Govender: Yeah, thank you for the question. The campaign — just briefly, for those who may not be familiar with it — was the second public awareness campaign that we’ve run. It was aimed at ableism, so really helping people in British Columbia — general public audience was the goal — understand: what is ableism? How does it show up in our communities?

We designed the campaign alongside a number of community partners who advised us throughout the process, who are disability-serving organizations. The people who are part of that advisory were also people who had lived experience with disabilities. We were very honoured to be a recipient of their wisdom and sharing about what their experiences were. People were very open about their experiences but also had a lot to offer in how to educate the general public about those experiences. What does it mean to be a person with disabilities, in all different ways?

We created a series of ads. They were on billboards and bus shelters, a lot of SkyTrain ads. We had, for example, large banners. We had both the regular transit ads as well as large banners in some of the major SkyTrain stations like Broadway and Commercial. We had a very significant uptake just in terms of passersby. I mean, there were a lot of opportunities for some street-based engagement.

Then we were actually surprised by the level of media uptake on the campaign, because a public awareness campaign doesn’t generally have a great media hook. But we did actually get a lot of media engagement with the topic as well. There is a video product online, for those who want to look at it, that’s received some engagement as well.

There are some online materials as well. I don’t think I have the download rates of that right in front of me, but our resources have been downloaded over 15,000 times on that one. We estimate that more than four million people saw the ads. The marketing companies we worked with were able to do a projection of how many people would have street-based involvement — just being able to view it from the street.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. I just wanted to ask about a couple of the expenses here on the STOBs and the relationship between professional services STOB 60 and STOB 77 grants. Of course, it jumps out at you on the net change there on grants and how they work together.

Am I to understand that the grants that were put out for conducting research with post-secondary institutions and non-profits took away from professional services…. That were done by third-party contractors, I would imagine? How that works together like that…. Can you tell me which post-secondary institutions and non-profits were used for the research?

K. Govender: Yes, absolutely. Grants were used to offset professional services, so yes to that understanding. It does consist of research partnerships with post-secondaries, subject-matter experts and community-embedded re­search organizations.

We gave 18 grants. They were issued in support of all of our key priorities, which I have already listed, and the projects, some of which I have talked about. Some examples: the UBC Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship, B.C. Aboriginal Network on Disability Society, Terrace and District Community Services Society, and Tansi Friendship Centre. Those are some examples. I could list the longer list if you want me to.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): No. Is it possible just to provide us with that list of institutions and non-profits? That’d be really helpful.

K. Govender: Sure.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks. The next one is on capital budget requests, $35,000. It’s consistent with other years, but can you just detail what that capital expense is?

K. Govender: Sure. I’m going to pass that to Dianne, actually. She’ll be able to answer that better.

[1:40 p.m.]

D. Buljat: Thank you for the question. Government ac­counting practices require certain transactions to go through an operating budget or capital budget based on thresholds. If you buy a piece of software over $1,000, it cannot be processed as an operating expense. It has to have a capital budget associated.

Each of the independent offices has an ongoing capital budget for either break/fix, sometimes new acquisitions and that sort of thing. So if you don’t have a capital budget, you can’t necessarily make certain purchases. It’s a placeholder budget, so for break/fix items or anything that’s required.

There are two categories in OHRC’s request. One is office furniture and equipment, and the other is IMIT.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): So because it’s a holding type of budget, is it an underspend usually, traditionally, every year or….

D. Buljat: You cannot overspend either budget. It’s always an underspend. In a capital budget versus an operating budget, generally it’s a larger percentage underspend, because you’re required to have the money there, but you may or may not break an item or you may not require something. So it is a placeholder.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Okay. The final question….

Sorry, Chair.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I’m holding you to the final question.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Okay, sorry.

Just on the vehicle allowance, $5,000. It’s for excluded employees. How many employees would that $5,000…?

D. Buljat: It’s one.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Just one. Okay.

D. Buljat: And it’s a change in the terms and conditions. It’s not something we have control of.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Awesome. Thanks.

R. Leonard: Hopefully you can hear me. I have a question, too, around the grants. In my understanding, it was…. This job was at $5,000, and there was a significant increase.

Is that going to continue in this next budget, where you stay low and then spend high or…? I’m assuming that there’s some thought gone into how you approach getting these services. I’m just curious if that’s a continuing trend, whether this past year was different.

K. Govender: Thank you. I’m going to defer that to Dianne as well.

D. Buljat: The $5,000 budget line for grants is a placeholder budget. Depending on the type of third-party service we’re acquiring, if it’s a professional service and is provided by a for-profit organization, we write a professional services agreement. That is a STOB 60 expense. If we’re dealing with a university or a non-profit society and it’s for research-based services, that becomes a grant.

Depending on the type of work you’re doing or the type of third-party assistance you require, it requires you to process it out of a different STOB. That’s why that bit of a balancing act happens. Bottom line, these are all services for subject-matter expertise, and often they offset expertise that you have in your office. You’re not going to be contracting or providing a grant for expertise you’ve got in your own space.

That’s the reason for the transactions and the way they are budgeted. Until you’re actually doing the work year over year, you’re not sure whether you’re getting a third-party service from a contractor or you’re going to get it through a university because it pertains to the type of project you’re working on.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Ronna-Rae, do you have a follow-up?

R. Leonard: Yeah, I guess I’m just wondering in terms of your service plan, going forward, if that’s something that you recognize is going to happen, that you’ll be seeking the post-secondary type of research. Or is it just what’s available out in the marketplace?

K. Govender: It is something that we anticipate having, going forward, because we know that we’re going to work on a breadth of projects. We don’t all have the in-house expertise for that. The range of human rights issues that we could work on is so broad, and we’re working at a very high level.

We, understandably and hopefully, are seen as the leading expert on human rights in the province, so we want to be able to provide the high-level of thought that goes into our work. So a piece of work that has needs deep in expertise in Indigenous legal traditions and conflict resolution is going to need very different expertise than a piece of work on community-embedded research on poverty and how poverty advocates are working on the ground in a particular community and on a particular encampment.

[1:45 p.m.]

We are trying to access the breadth of expertise we have in the province that we couldn’t possibly encapsulate in a staff of 37.

I do anticipate continuing to go out for those funds, and as Dianne has explained, some of that’s going to go within the STOB for professional services. Some is going to go in for grants. That part is hard to predict, going forward.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Commissioner. I’ve got a couple of questions.

One, I wanted to find out…. You mentioned or it was mentioned in your documents that there was a change in your office. You’ve got people working remotely. Of the 37 that you have, how many of those are now housed or not coming into an office?

S. Garrett: Thanks for the question. We moved…. Over the past year, we had a collaborative exercise within our office — as many of the offices did, the other independent offices and throughout government — around what a new or future or present-day model of work would look like. So we moved towards a fully decentralized model with different options, depending on locations where staff are based, for hybrid approaches where they have office availability.

We do maintain our office in Vancouver, and many of the staff leverage that opportunity to work from the office. Some work the full work week from the office. Some work part-time there. The Vancouver office comprises about two-thirds of our staff base. But we also have staff based here in Victoria, in Prince George, Kamloops and Kelowna, who all work remotely.

B. Stewart: Okay. Thanks very much. I just remember when we first met with you, the budget was finishing getting office space done. We must have been in the middle of COVID during that time. Anyways, I guess the question is: is there a surplus of office space at Canada Place now?

K. Govender: Yes, when we first met with you, it was actually, I think just…. I can’t remember when you were a part of the committee or not, but our very first budget presentation was about a month after I started in October 2019. So it was just prior to, and we were envisioning what we would need to build out the office space.

We were building that office space when in March 2020…. We met with you in September 2019, and then in March 2020, when we all went home with the pandemic, we were in the process right then of doing construction on our offices. It has been definitely a period of…. It wasn’t what we anticipated when we were building out what our office space would look like.

Also, in that process, we have let go of any permanent space here in Victoria. So we’ve narrowed our options in that way. We’ve gone to a more remote model in Victoria, and we’re still waiting to see how it will shake out in Vancouver about how many people are — whether we need to take some further steps on narrowing down our Vancouver office space. We’re in the process of assessing that at the moment.

B. Stewart: Okay. Thanks very much.

Now, I’ve got another question. I believe last year you mentioned that you filed as an intervener in the Gibraltar v. Harvey case, and I see that it’s come to a conclusion. What did that cost the taxpayer for that intervention? Do you have an idea?

K. Govender: Let me just see if we have that number at our fingertips. That one cost about $20,000. We’ve done other interventions as well. They do vary in costs, but that one cost about $20,000.

B. Stewart: Okay. I want to go back to…. In your opening remarks, you talked about an area that you’re looking into, and it’s mentioned also, about encampment rights. It’s an interesting comment you make.

Of course, in Vancouver, in the Downtown Eastside, there was a fairly major disturbance. I don’t know ex­actly…. Where does that land within the human rights world, between the people that own the property and the city and stuff like that?

I’m sure that’s an issue in my community, as well, be­cause we have public property that…. There are encampments of a couple hundred people living on a public trail system here. So I’m just wondering. Where do you see that going, or you don’t know at this point?

K. Govender: We produce some guidance for local governments on how to respond to encampments according to a human rights–based approach. There is actually a national protocol on a human rights approach to housing that was written by the former UN special rapporteur on housing, a Canadian lawyer in Ontario who pulled together a coalition to write that national guidance.

[1:50 p.m.]

We created a more localized version, adopted that but created a more localized version here as guidance for local municipalities. We have had an opportunity to meet with Vancouver representatives and the province, around the Hastings encampments in particular, on multiple occasions over the last year or so and to urge upon them very, very particular steps that need to be taken, from a legal perspective, about what’s required under both domestic law as well as international human rights law.

There is actually a body of law developing here in B.C. around what the legal requirements are — for example, not forcibly moving people out of spaces without accessible housing or shelter spaces available to them.

We then put out an invitation to all local governments that had reported encampment issues in their communities to come and meet with us during UBCM, during the municipalities conference. We are in the building right next door, so some local governments took us up on that offer. We had an opportunity to meet with six, and we’ve got a few more upcoming who couldn’t quite fit it into their week of UBCM but were able to meet with us afterwards. I had some really productive conversations with a range of municipalities that are dealing with a range of issues.

One of the great surprises from that was also the good practices or the wise practices that have emerged from some communities about how they’ve been dealing with encampments in a way that has balanced out the interests in their communities as well as respecting the rights of people living in them, which was a really encouraging step and something we don’t always hear about in the news.

B. Stewart: Yeah, it’s a difficult and sensitive topic in terms of how to exercise it properly. Anyways, you know what? I know that even in my case, the office I rent…. We had some people, and we got them housing and we moved them. Needless to say, they chose to leave that and come back, because they found it was too structured, and they wanted to live in the rough.

My last question, probably to Dianne, is the budget for your three-year budget only changes by what looks like $1,000 in ’27. I’m just wondering. Are you not foreseeing any forecast increased costs in the coming years? In ’25-26, ’26-27?

D. Buljat: Well, at this point, we just don’t have that information. We don’t know what the province is going to do around salaries in the coming years. Our practice has been to use the best information that we have, and today we have no information about that. So no, I have not forecasted or included a budget ask for salaries in out-years.

S. Chant: I’m just wondering about some of the work that you’re doing around adult guardianship, please.

K. Govender: Sure. You are familiar with our hate in­quiry, which was the first big public inquiry that we launched. There are certain legislative provisions that give powers around inquiries, and that was the first time that we’d exercised those in a fairly fulsome way. This time we’re using those powers in a much more narrow way, hopefully to produce guidance to government and health authorities in a narrower time frame and on a much narrower issue.

The issue in this case is that under the adult guardianship regime, there are mechanisms that health authorities and Community Living B.C., delegated agencies under the legislation, can take to keep people safe, essentially, who are deemed unable to consent and deemed at risk of or that they are being abused or neglected. This is a regime aimed at adults, of course, not young people. That’s obviously a different legislative regime and a different officer working on those.

There is no provision under the Adult Guardianship Act that explicitly allows for people to be detained — for people to be held in health facilities, for example, against their will. But we do know that practice is occurring. So we’re trying to better understand that practice and to figure out: is this happening in accordance with law and hu­man rights principles, and if not, how must things change, either legislatively or in practice, to ensure that people’s human rights are being respected in that process?

M. Starchuk (Chair): I do have one question. You talked at the beginning about some new strategic planning you’re expecting to go through and that, generally speaking, when you’re going through that process, you’re looking for something or hoping for something. Can you share what it is?

K. Govender: Sorry. That generally you’re hoping for something.

M. Starchuk (Chair): When you’re doing a strategic planning session, you’re actually looking for either what you’re doing right or what you can do better. Is there anything that you could share?

[1:55 p.m.]

K. Govender: I’m not sure if this totally answers your question, but we’re doing an organization-wide evaluation before that, so we should have a sense of what we’re trying to do better the next time, at that point. Our strategic plan is coming to an end, so the five strategic priorities that we have are winding up at the end of next calendar year. That’s the incentive to do a new strategic plan, to think: what are our new key priorities?

We’ll likely do it for a shorter period of time in our fast-changing world, realizing that five years is likely too long a time to be able to predict. Certainly we didn’t have public health on our bingo card in December of 2019, and it has ended up being a major strategic priority for us, about looking at human rights in the context of a public health crisis.

We’re going to try to keep a little bit more focus this next time around. I’m not sure what will show up yet as those strategic priorities. I think there’ll definitely be some consistency with what we’ve already been working on.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I do not see anything else coming from those virtually attending and nobody else inside of here.

Kasari, thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon, and, of course, thank you very much for what you do for the people of British Columbia.

We will take a short recess to reset the room.

The committee recessed from 1:56 p.m. to 2:02 p.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Welcome back, everyone.

Before we get started, Michael, because there are a couple of new faces that are around the table, or newish faces, we’ll start off with introductions. We’ll start off with the Deputy Chair.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Chair.

I’m the Deputy Chair, Tom Shypitka. I’m the MLA for Kootenay East.

G. Chow: George Chow, MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview.

S. Chant: Susie Chant, MLA North Vancouver–Seymour.

C. Oakes: Hi. Coralee Oakes, MLA Cariboo North.

B. Stewart: Hi, it’s MLA Ben Stewart from Kelowna West. Good to see you again, Michael and the rest of the team.

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

M. Starchuk (Chair): And I’m Mike Starchuk, the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.

Just in case we’re watching Ronna-Rae, her voice is just on its brink of everything, so if she’s got a question to ask, you may see some of us get a text, or we’ll hear her. That’s there.

Michael, there is a new format which we’re doing this year. There’s a timer in front of you. No pressure, though. It does count down. We’ll have bonus marks.

The floor is yours, Michael.

OFFICE OF THE INFORMATION
AND PRIVACY COMMISSIONER
AND REGISTRAR OF LOBBYISTS

M. McEvoy: Unaccustomed as I am to speaking shortly, but thank you for that, Chair. Good afternoon to all of you, Chair, Deputy Chair and members of the committee.

I first acknowledge and respect the fact that we are meeting today on the traditional territories of lək̓ʷəŋən people, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations.

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

The submission before you this afternoon encompasses the work of both the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the office of the registrar of lobbyists for British Columbia.

[2:05 p.m.]

As the Information and Privacy Commissioner, I am designated the registrar of lobbyists under the Lobbyists Transparency Act.

Assisting me this afternoon are Deputy Commissioners oline Twiss, to my right, and Jeannette Van Den Bulk, to my left, along with Dave Van Swieten, the deputy of corporate shared services for the four offices of the Legislature headquartered at 947 Fort Street.

I begin with thanks to you, Chair and committee, for introducing the revamped template and submission process, which my office agrees streamlines these proceedings.

Since we last met, very significant developments have taken place in the technology world. Large language models, a term virtually unheard of a year ago, have been etched in the public consciousness as we have witnessed rapid acceleration in the world of artificial intelligence. These technologies have tremendous potential to benefit us all but present dangers as well. Against this backdrop, I have joined my federal and provincial counterparts in Alberta and Quebec to undertake a joint investigation into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

I also note the provincial government has proposed a set of principles to guide its deployment of AI. I welcome the government consulting the public about these principles and, of course, my office is available to assist its deliberations.

At the same time, I remind government and other public and private bodies thinking about deploying AI in British Columbia that there are existing laws that apply to its use now. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection Act, though in need of reform, provide some measure of protection for the public when it comes to the collection and use of our personal information using AI.

It is also important that we remain cognizant of the fact that these and other emergent technologies have a particular impact on our young people. It’s why earlier this month I joined my federal, provincial and territorial colleagues in calling on governments to improve our privacy legislation in a way that puts the best interests of our young people first.

B.C. should be looking to harmonize our privacy law to align with leading jurisdictions like the U.K. and California. A children’s code, which I mentioned in previous appearances, would do just that. I continue to encourage government to consider these protections for our children.

Let me now turn to the details of the budget submission before you.

Table 1 of the OIPC budget submission sets out our key funding requests in a stand-alone table, for ease of reference. I will start with inflationary costs.

On July 1, 2023, management staff in our office received an increment equal to a 7.15 percent lift, consistent with public service policies. To address this, our first request to you is for $538,000 to support the financial impact of that wage inflation increase in 2024-25. Related to this is a supplemental request of $402,000 to cover that same wage increment for this fiscal year starting July 1, 2023, to the conclusion of this fiscal year.

I’m also putting forward an increase of $27,000 in operating expenses for building occupancy costs for inflation and a request for a minor capital increase of $2,000 for refreshing old computers.

I have two other modest but key asks. One is capital, and the other is operational.

First, I’m seeking a one-time capital funding of $40,000 contingency for the 2024-25 fiscal year for our case tracker replacement project. You will have received an update on the project just last week. Currently, we anticipate going live with the project on April 1, 2024, three months later than originally planned but important to enable the developers to ensure the system is fine-tuned to our operational requirements.

While the work on this project will be completed in this fiscal year, we need to provide for the contingent possibility of required system enhancements in 2024-25, should those become necessary. We will, of course, make every effort to complete any of this work in-house before using this capital funding.

My second request is for $50,000 for each of 2024-25 and ’25-26 fiscal years to continue the OIPC’s leading role as Secretariat to the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities.

I mentioned near the outset of my presentation our office’s joint enforcement actions with federal-provincial counterparts. Those coordinated efforts are important because your personal information does not stop at B.C.’s border with Alberta, nor does it stop at our national borders.

[2:10 p.m.]

Data flow seamlessly across borders of all description, and a significant impetus for that is trade. Where trade goes, so goes our data. It is therefore vital that personal information data flows underpinning these trading links are trusted by our citizens.

For B.C., our strongest trade ties are with those jurisdictions around the Asia-Pacific rim. That is why our office joined with other privacy regulators in the region to be members of the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities more than a decade ago.

I would add that we are more than members in this space; we are leaders. Since 2016, B.C. has served as the secretariat for APPA, working to facilitate cross-border enforcement and sharing information and knowledge with 20 authorities from 12 countries across the Asia-Pacific region. We manage the organization’s day-to-day operations, administer its fees and expenses and act as a clearinghouse for member issues and concerns.

In this role, we guide and organize the agenda for APPA’s twice-yearly forums, working closely with host jurisdictions, advising on the meeting’s agenda and collating and disseminating all documents related to it. The ultimate objective is to enhance the protection of British Columbians’ personal information.

Interjurisdictional privacy cooperation is never more important than when a privacy breach strikes a global business. Its impact is felt across many jurisdictions simultaneously, which in turn requires a coordinated approach among those jurisdictions’ regulators.

B.C.’s leadership role in APPA has been supported by this committee since 2016, the funding for which is slated to end this year. We, together with other APPA members, are currently assessing the organization’s processes, in­cluding which jurisdiction should be responsible for the secretariat’s role.

APPA needs additional time to complete this work, but what is apparent from our discussions with fellow APPA members is that in the interim, there is a desire to have our office continue in the secretariat role. We believe this would both serve the interests of British Columbians and APPA members to do so for the next two years to ensure consistency and continuity.

To summarize our request of the committee, the inflationary wage cost pressures, together with our APPA funding request, would mean that we are asking you to approve an operating budget for the fiscal year 2024-25 of $10.776 million.

Assuming you were to provide us with the $402,000 to cover inflationary wage costs for this fiscal year, our ’24-25 ask represents essentially no increase over the previous year, as you will see by looking at column I of your table 1 template. On the capital side, we are seeking approval in the amount of $105,000, which is inclusive of the $40,000 resolve contingency fund that I mentioned above.

I will now turn your attention to the two items in our 2024-25 budget, which represent a greater than 5 percent increase. The first is the lift for wage inflation, which stands at 5.29 percent, as is indicated in table 1 of our budget submission. The second is for amortizing the cost of the case tracker replacement system. This figure, found at STOB 73 of table 1 of the committee’s template, is in the amount of 27 percent.

I’d be happy to respond to any of the questions or walk you through any of the STOB items, item by item, with the time we have left this afternoon. But just before I do that, Chair, if I may be permitted just a moment of reflection.

Although one can never be certain of these things, this may be my last committee appearance as commissioner. I want to publicly thank Dave Van Swieten of shared services, who has served our office so well in these proceedings. I also want to publicly thank my senior leadership team: my deputies, Jeannette Van Den Bulk and oline Twiss, and seated in the back, Michelle Mitchell, our director of communications. Together with our whole staff, this is a group of people who have a deep appreciation for the unique role of the office and its contribution to the democratic fabric of our province and who work very hard every day to fulfil their public responsibilities.

To you and the committee, though, and I have to say I’ve been at this for a while, I have never lost my sense of how fortunate we all are to be part of a vibrant, healthy democracy in B.C.

I still wonder at the fact British Columbia governments of all political stripes over time have devolved special responsibilities to the whole of the Legislative Assembly to oversee the executive branch of government through these unique creatures called officers of the Legislature. I wake up every day grateful for the opportunity to serve as one of those creatures whose office, I trust, has helped strengthen our democratic system.

[2:15 p.m.]

I know that none of this can be taken for granted, and for that, Chair and committee, I want to express my deepest thanks to all of you and your predecessors for the support afforded our offices and, in fact, all of the independent offices that serve this assembly and the public.

With that, Chair, I turn it to you and the committee for any questions you may have of us this afternoon.

M. Starchuk (Chair): On that note, Michael, I will say thank you for being one of those creatures that finished early.

Thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. It is very succinct and to the point, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to generate a number of questions.

I think I saw the first hand over there.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Bonus marks, too, for 15 minutes left. That’s great.

Thanks, Michael, for the presentation. A couple of questions here.

Obviously, we heard from Elections B.C. Certain threats to our democracy, whether it’s through foreign influence or privacy breaches….

You mentioned a report or something that’s going on with looking into AI and how that affects our privacy.

I was going to ask a question more on data storage and where that location…. I heard previously, in another committee, that it doesn’t really matter, maybe, so much where the data is stored; it’s how that data is secured. I’ve also heard that within our own Canadian jurisdictions, it could be more valuable placing that data here.

What’s your opinion on that? Is data more secure here than anywhere else? Or does it really matter? I mean, we’re all receptive to cyberattacks and all those kinds of things. What’s your opinion on that?

M. McEvoy: Well, it does matter where, I think, the data is stored and under what circumstances. Both of those things, together, are very important.

If the data is stored with a reputable company who has a solid track record and invests considerably in the security of their data, whether it’s here in Canada or in the United States, for example, may not matter so much. But one of the things, I think….

I’ve said this to public bodies — and private institutions, for that matter. The jurisdiction in which that server may rest could be very important. That jurisdiction may not have the kinds of privacy laws or privacy law in place to protect our citizens, for example.

If the data moves to a jurisdiction where those protections don’t exist, where a breach might occur, where there may be no reporting requirements, where there may be no obligation on that company who has the data to report that data loss to British Columbians….

Two things public bodies and private institutions have to think about are…. When they contract out with a third-party provider to store data, they need to ensure that the contractual provisions in place for its protection are strong and that there are clear remedies and notifications that have to be given in the event something were to go wrong.

Secondly, again, the jurisdiction is important. One can think of a number of countries around the world where I don’t think any British Columbian would necessarily want to see their data going or stored. Other jurisdictions — for example, in Europe — have very strong protections around data. This is a significant issue going on internationally now.

I just came back from an international conference. At the centre of it was a discussion among jurisdictions about, essentially, who can trust who. If I’m somebody doing business in Europe…. The European governments are very particular and want to ensure that if the data is leaving Europe, the jurisdiction to where it’s going has adequate data protection in place. Canada is one of those countries now. We’re considered adequate by Europe. Similarly, we need to be thinking about that as we send our data to other places.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Just a quick follow-up to that.

You mentioned the United States. Obviously, on Sep­tember 10, 2001…. Things looked a lot different on privacy the next day. The Patriot Act came in. That changed the game a little bit for privacy and storage in the United States. That’s what I was leaning to. You’re always at the hand of government or political change or whatever it is, threats and those kinds of things.

[2:20 p.m.]

I struggle with this one a lot. Obviously, wherever you store it, it has to be secure. Data storage in B.C. could be less secure than something in Russia or China. It depends on who that third party is. I always lean on “it’s best at home.”

Anyway, I just wanted to hear your opinion on that.

S. Chant: Thank you again for your presentation and for the work that you do. If this may be your last term, then thank you for your service.

The APPA funding. Now, this is me just being something. However, if we’ve been doing it for that long, at that expense, what benefit is it to British Columbia, other than being part of APPA? Which I don’t disagree with at all. But being the secretariat that is doing this additional work to keep APPA going, what benefit do you feel that…? Is that a worthwhile investment of our taxpayers’ money to keep that role? Or is it not time that some other state or whatever took it on?

M. McEvoy: On the last part of your question, that’s part of the discussion that’s going to take place amongst APPA members, actually, coming up in a month or so. We took it on from Australia in 2016, and it may well be time for another jurisdiction to take it on. What benefits? Well, British Columbia is a leader in the Asia-Pacific. It’s important.

To the previous question about data flows, when our data flows, with the trade that we have in the Asia-Pacific, British Columbians want to be assured that that data resides safely in other jurisdictions. That happens when jurisdictions talk to one another about issues. When we can have joint enforcement actions and when we talk about common standards that are through the Asia-Pacific, those are fundamentally important. As you can see from the ask, it’s not a large investment, but it’s an important one.

I note that others on this committee…. I think of MLA Stewart, who has been at one time, I think, a representative for the British Columbia government in Asia; MLA Chow, who was the Minister of State for Trade; and others. I’m sure all recognize the importance of those links.

We want to make sure that the data flows that underpin that trade are trusted by the citizens in our province and, when things sometimes go wrong, that we’re able to act in concert with other authorities. When we are leading those authorities, it makes that job so much easier.

S. Chant: Okay, thank you.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Commissioner. I just wanted to ask a further follow-on comment to what MLA Shypitka was talking about in talking about data storage.

I guess the question is…. Why is it that B.C. doesn’t have greater attraction as a jurisdiction? At least in my perception, having been the minister before, is we have strong privacy protection rules and, secondly, I think, seismically and security and electricity, all the things.

What I can’t figure out is why we’re not attracting that storage. I know we built one outside of Kamloops when I was the minister. Why haven’t we been able to…? What do we have to do to capitalize on the opportunity as a jurisdiction that’s trusted and safe?

M. McEvoy: Well, there’s some capacity in the province now, I think, and not just in British Columbia, but there’s also capacity throughout the country. You’ve identified a couple of issues, one of which is just the environmental nature of these servers, which absorb a huge amount of energy — making them, I think, more beneficial to have in cooler climates, for one thing.

In terms of the number of other servers, a number of multinational companies have set up servers in Canada. I think of Microsoft; I think of Adobe. There may be others that don’t come to me readily off the top of my head; a number of other providers have. The nature of these systems is such that often the data within these servers often flows globally, which is why you want to have protection. in order to get some sense of scale and use of analytics.

[2:25 p.m.]

Even where the servers may be outside of Canada, there are now technologies in place where they allow for what might be called a lockbox. So it might be, for example, in the United States that the data resides, but you in British Columbia are the only one that has the encryption key allowing you access to that data. It can’t be accessed from anywhere else.

I think that provides some measure of security in some instances. But I do think, further to your question, that there is an increasing number of servers residing in Canada.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much. I appreciate that.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Michael, I have a question with regards to, inside your budget paper, about the shift of flexible work and office space. Being that we’re just migrating ourselves outside of COVID, what do you see as the future imprint for office space and office workspace?

M. McEvoy: Yes. The situation, I don’t think, has completely settled, but I think it’s becoming clearer. I don’t think there’s much doubt. I think that the landscape has changed for the foreseeable future, at least in terms of what workplaces look like — remote versus in-place work.

I would say, at this point, with our office…. We were at a point, pre-COVID, where we were outside the walls of the space we had. We were either going to have to move or look at a new lease going forward. The lease from our building is coming up in 2025.

COVID has changed all of that. There’s no question. I would describe our mix now, probably, as something in the nature of 60-40. So 60 percent of the workforce is working remotely. Another 40 percent…. Some percentage would be in the office all the time. Some would be in a number of days a week. Some would be in a handful of days. Probably 40 percent of the staff has a presence in the office.

The expansion in the number of employees we have working for us over the last three years…. In a way, we’re able to accommodate those expansions within our given space requirements. It’s something, now, that we’re in…. Dave Van Swieten and the other officers in the building are in discussion about the space requirements, whether what we have within the building is going to be sufficient to look after all of our needs.

I’m inclined to the view that at this stage, we are comfortable with the space that we have. We’re not going to be needing additional space to expand and are working with our colleagues to figure out the best configuration going forward.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I guess on that note, as staff retire and as new staff are taken on, is there a flavour for the new hires to be in an office, or is there a flavour for the new hires to be at home?

M. McEvoy: The answer to that is: it’s a mixed bag, I think we found. We brought on, for example, thanks to the committee recommending, a number of new adjudicators. This has taken and relieved a lot of the pressure.

We are now working at that backlog actively and on target for the tar­gets we set to this committee. I’m pleased to say that to you.

A number of those adjudicators are in the office. They want the solitude of being within a room and being next to colleagues where they can bounce matters off of.

On the other hand, we are very lucky to secure the talents of some just outstanding investigators and policy analysts who wouldn’t otherwise be able to come here, to be able to afford or find housing in Victoria, but are residing in other parts of British Columbia. It’s a reminder that our offices, these officers of the Legislature, represent and act for all British Columbians.

Is it a condition of employment? “You can only do that if you can come to Victoria and find a place to live.” I think the answer is no. So it’s a balance. As I say, some do want to work in, and some outside the office.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I do not see anybody virtually with a hand or a thumb or anything up wanting a question. I don’t see anybody from inside of the room that’s there.

On that note, then, Michael, thank you to you and to your staff for your presentation this afternoon. Thank you for what you do for the people of British Columbia when taking a look at it.

I know you and I had a conversation before we started about those doorbells that are out there and what they can or cannot see. I’m waiting for that day when somebody makes some comment that way as well.

M. McEvoy: Thank you. Thank you all.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay. On that note, we will take a brief recess.

The committee recessed from 2:30 p.m. to 2:44 p.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay, we’ll call the meeting back to order. If Ben and Coralee can turn their cameras on…. There we go.

Motion to go into closed.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 2:45 p.m. to 3:38 p.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you, everyone, for your time today.

A motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:38 p.m.