The committee met at 7:16 p.m.

[P. Milobar in the chair.]

P. Milobar (Chair): Good evening, everyone. I think we’ve got everyone here, so we’ll get started.

My name is Peter Milobar. I’m the MLA for Kamloops–​North Thompson and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Tonight we have the consideration of the Auditor General’s report, Managing Hazardous Spills in B.C. Following this we’ll go in camera for our annual feedback session with the Auditor General and return to public session for the consideration of the committee’s ’23-24 annual report.

Welcome to our Auditor General, Michael Pickup. I will turn it over to him for his presentation.

Consideration of
Auditor General Reports

Managing Hazardous Spills in B.C.

M. Pickup: Thank you so much, Chair. I have a very brief presentation before I turn it over to Bradley from our team.

I want to begin by acknowledging with respect that at the Office of the Auditor General, we conduct our work on Coast Salish territories. I feel blessed to live and work on these lands, and even more so in springtime and on days like this. The camas have been blooming around the region and, in particular, our favourite Beacon Hill Park. It’s a wonderful reminder of their cultural importance to the lək̓ʷəŋən people for food, trade and social activity. They also inspired our choice of colour for the OAG logo that we use.

The natural environment of this area and the whole province, of course, is inspiring, and protecting the natural environment lies at the heart of the report that we are presenting tonight, entitled Managing Hazardous Spills in British Columbia.

I want to give thanks to our audit team for their contributions to this report. Three of our team members are with me to present the report. They are, on my far right and your far left, Bradley Robinson, Suzanne Smith and Laura Hatt, assistant Auditor General of the performance audit portfolio.

The team also included Amy Hart, Kelly Vijandre, Emily Yearwood Lee, Pam Hamilton, Jessica Watt and Atousa Tangestanipour. You can see how many people are in­volved in these performance audits.

I also want to recognize and acknowledge the represen­tatives of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, who worked with us so well during our audit. We truly appreciate your cooperation and professionalism that you provided throughout the entire process. The day-to-day work you do is important to the health and safety of British Columbians and our environment, and we thank you for what you do.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge two staff from the Office of the Auditor General of Guyana. They are a long way from home, and they are with us tonight. They are Marcel Pinder and Sadie Stewart back here.

Thank you for coming out tonight and joining us.

They are working with staff from our office on a learning experience for the next eight weeks here in Victoria.

Back to the audit. We did this audit because hazardous spills occur frequently in B.C. The audit focused on government’s role in protecting people and the environment when potentially damaging spills occur.

[7:20 p.m.]

Our central question concerned the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. We wanted to know if it had effectively managed hazardous spills to protect the welfare of the public and the environment. Indeed, we found that when high-risk incidents occurred, the ministry provided oversight of spill response and recovery activities. Of course, effective management is more than that.

I also want to add, that having read government’s responses to this audit over the weekend, that I’m really pleased to see specific timelines and tangible actions in those responses. I certainly say well done.

Next I’ll invite one of our performance auditors, Bradley Robinson, to walk you through the highlights of our report.

B. Robinson: Thank you, Michael.

Good evening, Chair and committee members. Thank you for your interest in our audit on managing hazardous spills in B.C., which was tabled on February 27, 2024.

For today’s presentation, I’ll walk you through the Audit at a Glance, which is a summary of the audit topic and main findings and indicates where we’ve made a recommendation. It’s a three-page document that you’ll find in the package that was provided to you.

In terms of why we did this audit, thousands of spills are reported every year in B.C., with the number of reports generally rising since 2018. Preparedness, response and recovery management help to prevent hazardous spills from causing significant harm to people and the environment. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, through the environmental emergency program, leads the province’s response to hazardous spills and other environmental emergencies.

The objective for this audit, which you’ll find in the white box on page 1 of the Audit at a Glance, was to determine whether the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy had effectively managed hazardous spills to protect the welfare of the public and the environment. The overall time period for the audit was from November 23, 2020, to June 13, 2023.

To summarize the audit’s key findings, we found that the ministry provided oversight of spill response and recovery activities after high-risk incidents. Specifically, we found response officers assessed and monitored high-risk inci­dents to ensure requirements were met and referred inci­dents to recovery staff, as required.

Recovery staff then reviewed all incidents referred to them and monitored the recovery of most high-risk inci­dents to ensure that the requirements were met. This included providing oversight of the restoration of the environment to as close as possible to pre-spill conditions. Compliance and enforcement staff acted when potential non-compliance was identified, including issuing warnings and advisories.

However, we found shortcomings and deficiencies in key areas. Specifically, we found that the ministry did not have a current provincial-level plan for responding to a major spill. Both provincial plans for responding to a major spill were ten years old and needed updating.

Response officers did not consistently notify First Nations communities of high-risk incidents, as required by procedures. Response officers did not consistently follow requirements to notify compliance and enforcement staff about potential cases of non-compliance.

The ministry had not initiated cost recovery or recovered substantive costs, as required. To elaborate on that, from April 2016 to February 2023, approximately $900,000 of spill-related costs were recovered from those responsible for spills, while approximately $13.9 million of spill-related costs remained outstanding at the end of February 2023. One incident at the bankrupt Neucel pulp mill, which is situated on Vancouver Island, accounted for almost all of the unpaid costs.

While the ministry reported annually to the Legislative Assembly on its spill preparedness, response and recovery work, the reports did not include required information on the effectiveness of the spill response regime.

As the deficiencies identified in the audit were in key areas impacting the ministry’s overall management of hazardous spills, we concluded that the ministry had not effectively managed hazardous spills. We made nine recommendations, and the ministry has accepted all nine.

In closing, on behalf of the audit team, I’d like to thank the staff of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, as well, for their cooperation and professionalism throughout our audit and, in particular, those in the environmental emergency program for making the time for us and for continuing to carry out this important work.

Thank you, Chair and committee.

With that, I’ll pass it back to the Auditor General for his closing remarks.

M. Pickup: Thank you, Brad.

I don’t have a lot more to add. In our Audit at a Glance, we propose…. There are three potential questions that people may be interested in.

Maybe, in the interest of time, Chair…. I won’t take time to read those out. I’ll pass it back to you.

[7:25 p.m.]

P. Milobar (Chair): Great. Thank you.

We’ll, as always, hold off on our questions, I guess, until after we hear from the ministry as well.

With that, we’ll turn it over to you, Kevin.

K. Jardine: Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to the staff of the Auditor General’s office.

I’d like to express my thanks, as well, for the very professional way in which we work together, and thanks, too, for listening to some of our responses as we worked our way through it. It made for a better and more reflective audit as well.

I’d like to introduce a couple of staff members, if I may, who are joining me this evening. On my left here is executive director Rod Allen, who is responsible for the environmental emergency branch, and acting director Kelli Kryzanowski, as well, who is joining me this evening.

I believe you have the presentation. I’ll start, then, on slide 2, the introduction. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy’s environmental emergency branch leads the province’s response to hazardous material spills. The branch itself consists of 52 staff members, and 14 of those staff members are currently in the flood debris management secretariat. This is a secretariat that was established after the atmospheric floods and is a non-permanent secretariat. So we disband it after time, which leaves the 44 permanent staff who carry out the activities to protect the environment.

They’re located in 14 communities across the province. During the audit time frame, from November 2020 to June 2023, EEB, the environmental emergency branch, received 12,749 dangerous goods incident reports, with about 2,300 of those requiring incident follow-up. And 340 of those were significant high-risk incidents that required site-level response. These would be things like overturned trucks, as an example, that would have hazardous waste in them or some sort of chemical product.

In 2022, prior to the OAG audit, EEB conducted a comprehensive gap analysis that has been addressing and reinforcing many of the findings that we saw from the OAG. We have developed a draft action plan that incorporates the audit recommendations to ensure that hazardous material spills are prevented, contained and the environment is restored effectively.

Slide 3, key OAG findings. The nine audit recommen­dations have been categorized into five themes, as you see: preparing for spills, oversight of response and non-compliance, oversight of recovery, cost recovery, monitoring and reporting. The ministry has accepted all nine recommen­dations, and all, I’m glad to say, are in progress and being addressed.

Slide 4. The ministry, of course, recognizes the importance of having a current hazardous material response plan. We’ve drafted an updated provincial land-based hazardous materials spill response plan that will adhere to the Environmental Management Act and the newly planned requirements in the Emergency and Disaster Management Act and associated regulations. EEB’s timelines are dependent upon Emergency Management Climate Readiness’s release of the methodology for the newly required hazardous risk assessment.

EEB will conduct engagement with First Nations to ensure adherence to UNDRIP and DRIPA. From January 2022 to June 2023, EEB worked collaboratively with Coastal First Nations and federal partners to develop the northern shelf bioregion marine preparedness response and recovery framework, which was a major milestone in integrated planning. Going forward, it will be the foundation framework for the development of emergency management planning with First Nations. We are working to find adequate financial supports to allow us to continue doing that work.

Slide 5. Recommendation 2, which is updated training and development. In the summer of 2024, the ministry will conduct a jurisdictional scan to inform the development of a modernized training program. The scan will include in-depth analysis of best practices, WorkSafeBC regulations and industry standards. By spring 2025, and based on the jurisdictional findings, EEB will modernize its training and development requirements. We’re committed to reviewing the branch’s training and development requirements annually.

[7:30 p.m.]

We’re also looking at innovative ways of approaching hiring and retention to ensure that many of the issues that we continue to have, which are not unique to our branch, they’re common across not only the public service, but many companies broadly…. Finding ways to secure our branch’s capacity….

Slide 6. Recommendation 3 is First Nations notification. Prior to the audit publication, EEB had already launched a spill notification enhancement pilot project to improve First Nations notifications using a web-based software system. It’s a software system that we call Alertable.

In phase 1, which was in 2022, EEB launched the spill notification enhancement project, or Alertable, to improve First Nations notifications using this web-based software. In phase 2, just in 2023, last year, we on-boarded 19 First Nations to Alertable. In phase 3, which will be happening this year, an additional 100 First Nations communities will be on-boarded.

The last year of our plan will be, for onboarding at least, next year, in 2025, when the remainder of communities plus First Nations governing bodies, Indigenous governing bodies, are to be on-boarded. We’re also looking at how we can on-board local governments and regional districts, eventually, to this program as well. We’re developing, then, performance measures for audit notifications so that we can strengthen our officer response accountability. We’ll be annually reviewing it for effectiveness in notifying First Nations.

Slide 7. Recommendation 6 was to ensure that response officers are notifying compliance staff. In December 2023, just a few months ago, internal compliance and enforcement policies and procedures were updated to help to ensure that this happens. Currently, EEB updated its compliance and enforcement training and education program to ensure that response officers understand regulatory requirements, including notifying compliance and recovery staff.

We’re also engaging with our compliance enforcement team to train and better manage the non-compliance and enforcement issues as and when they occur. Going forward, this is the foundation framework for the development of the emergency management planning as well, with First Nations and for ourselves.

Slide 8 is recommendation 4, which is to review reports and verify completion of recovery actions. EEB has developed internal guidance to identify and verify recovery endpoints. EEB is now developing the forms and templates to standardize the review and sign-off of environmental recovery activities. These endpoints, of course, are the standardized measures we use to determine when recovery activities have been completed or are complete.

By summer 2025, accompanying procedures and guidance will be developed to ensure that recovering activities are thorough and complete. The ministry is developing regular environmental audits to physically verify environmental recovery outcomes for the next two to five years. Again, we are working to prioritize this with resources that are currently available to us. This is to ensure, of course, that the endpoints that we’ve defined actually turn out to be real endpoints and that recovery actually has occurred.

Recommendation 5, which is on slide 8 as well: engage and partner with First Nations. EEB is committed to developing internal guidance on incorporating First Nation traditional knowledge into recovery actions and decisions, including guidance for building consensus. Indeed, we expect that this will also be applied to determining some of these endpoints that I mentioned previously.

In 2022, we released our first Indigenous reconciliation strategy. An updated strategy is being drafted now, in early 2024, in which we’ve engaged with 97 persons representing 61 B.C. First Nations to discuss Indigenous reconciliation and spill management.

[7:35 p.m.]

Now on to slide 9, cost recovery. This is recommen­dation 7, improved cost recovery process. We heard about some of this earlier, particularly Neucel. I just want to mention Neucel briefly because it is so unusual.

Neucel, I think as many of you know, was essentially an abandoned pulp mill that the province had to essentially take ownership of, and we have been addressing this very — in fact, more than we thought — contaminated site.

Costs have been extremely difficult — impossible, really — to recover due to the fact that the corporate entity is not only bankrupt, but it resides in China as well. It’s a lesson that we’ve taken from this. It’s one of the things that initiated, precipitated, some of the amendments that occurred last year in the House to EMA to allow for the public bonding, which is additional work that we’re working on now, to extend the bonding framework to other types of industrial locations or high-risk locations to ensure that the public is protected in the future from having to take on these kinds of costs of, in this case, abandonment.

To the recommendation itself: improving the cost-recovery processes. In September 2023, a cost-recovery spill dispute review process was developed to ensure administrative fairness for spillers and responsible persons — administrative fairness, of course, being required not only because it’s required by the law but also because it ensures that the actions that we take are robust and will be protected from any kind of litigation.

Phase 1, which will start in spring 2025, is to finalize the cost-recovery guidelines and updated procedures. Phase 2, in spring 2026, will be the implementation and development of cost-recovery quality assurance and quality control processes. We’re working with our corporate services for the natural resources ministries. This is our financial support group to maximize recovered funds and ensure that they’re returned directly to EEB.

Slide 10 is recommendation 8, improving access to data. We’re committed to ensuring the timely access to data and information for the public, for First Nations and for other levels of government. This is one of the reasons that we’re pursuing Alertable, in order to ensure that we’re not only notifying all other levels of governments and parties about spills when they occur, but also providing a means for us to ensure that other parties are made aware of data and information as it becomes available also. Currently we’re improving the search functions and data mining and reporting capabilities of our software system. We’re hoping and we’re working to have these enhancements completed by the end of summer 2025.

Recommendation 9, which is also on page 10: demonstrate effectiveness of a spill response in report to the Legislative Assembly. The ministry has been reporting, as required by the act, to the Legislative Assembly for some time. We are grateful to the Auditor General for pointing out, I think, how the report itself can be improved by having some performance standards in it. We’ll be working in the next reporting cycle to develop measures and targets for spill preparedness, response and recovery, to assess effectiveness and ensure continuous improvement of the spill response regime and the report back to the Legislative Assembly.

To the summary slide. That’s slide 11, then. The safety of British Columbians and protection of public health and/or environment is, of course, paramount to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and, in particular, to the environmental emergencies branch. We’re pleased to say that we’re already acting on these recommendations. Our action plan incorporates the audit recommendations, as we’ve accepted all of them, to ensure that hazardous materials spills are communicated, prevented, contained and the environment is restored.

The ministry takes the Auditor General’s findings seriously, as I hope I’ve demonstrated this evening, with the actions that we’re taking and the plan that we’ve put together against timelines to ensure that they’re fully implemented. We want to thank the Auditor General, again, for their work and assure that we are fully committed to continue to implement all of the recommendations.

On slide 12, you’ll see a table that outlines the completed actions to date on the audit recommendations.

With that, Chair, that’s the end of my presentation.

[7:40 p.m.]

P. Milobar (Chair): Great. Thank you so much.

Anything else from that end of the table before we hop into questions?

Nicole, do you have anything from the comptroller general side of things?

N. Wright: Thank you, Chair. No.

D. Routley: In the engagement and partnership with First Nations, spills would, I think, maybe not commonly but sometimes, spread over adjacent territories, so you might be dealing with multiple nations or a spill where multiple nations overlap their territories. How are you prioritizing and balancing the interests of nations that might be affected?

K. Jardine: I would say we overcompensate in general. Most of the spills are quite discrete in nature. Usually an overturned railcar, an overturned train. Sometimes it would be pollution, as an example, from a waste treatment plant or chemical plant, something like that.

Notification typically…. It’s not often that we have something that would be wide-ranging like that, although it’s not unknown. In which case, we would notify all First Nations that have the potential to be affected. Of course, as you know, there are many overlapping territorial claims as well. It leads us to ensure that we’re capturing as many as we can, far and wide.

If you don’t mind, I’ll just ask my colleagues here, Rod and Kelli, if they’d like to add anything.

R. Allen: Certainly. Thank you, Kevin.

In addition to what Kevin mentioned, when we go out into the field with our teams, we engage with the nations where the spill has impacted their territory, and we bring them into our incident command post so that they can be working closely with us, setting objectives that meet their requirements and needs.

D. Routley: As a follow-up, I’m thinking about, for example, a railcar derailing in the Fraser Canyon or the old B.C. Rail line. There were some examples of that happening. If that were to happen, there would be a potential, then, for that impact to be spread over potentially many different nations. Would you, then, predict the extent of the spill and only notify or involve those nations, or would there be a…? I’m just wondering how you would balance that.

R. Allen: When there’s a spill, often you’ll see it on the surface, but quite often it goes underground as well. So we need to bring in qualified professionals to assess the migration and the distance and provide our team with estimates of how far that can go.

While we’re doing that, we have relations built with nations, especially in the Lower Mainland — the emergency preparedness secretariat, made up of 31 nations in the Lower Mainland. We have worked with them very closely. We leverage those relationships to ensure that all of the nations that are impacted and those that want to participate with our incident management teams can do that.

The other part of it is there is a responsible party, as well, and we regulate those responsible parties to ensure that they clean up the spill effectively. We also provide oversight to ensure that they’re working closely with the nation as well.

R. Leonard: So many questions, but I’ll try to contain myself here.

Neucel. It’s obvious that there was a big, huge cost to the issue around this spill, as identified by the Auditor General. And it’s unrecoverable, is my understanding, because of the circumstances.

That’s because, I’m assuming, what the regulatory regime was before. Neucel has been an issue for a lot of years. Trying to play catch-up under old regulations that didn’t force responsibility is kind of what we’re playing a catch-up game with.

[7:45 p.m.]

My question is around the regulations that are now in place, that, going forward, we’re not going to see future Neucel problems, that this is a good example of why we have to have these new regulations in place. I just want to confirm that that framework — that my understanding is correct so that we will see that.

Now, it’s interesting to see that there have been more spills since 2018. What might you attribute that to, and are they small spills or bigger spills? What does that look like?

I’ll stop there for now.

K. Jardine: Thank you, Member. I’ll answer your first question and, partially, your second one, and then I’ll pass it over to Rod and Kelli who, of course, work on this on a day-to-day basis and will be able to add a little bit more nuance to the answer.

In terms of the first question, we made amendments to the Environmental Management Act that allow for the development of regulations in something that we’ve been calling…. Well, it is now called public interest bonding, which will allow us to extend the bonding regime to other types of facilities, like, for instance, a pulp mill or a Neucel in the future. It’s, of course, distinct from bonding regimes that are currently in place, like we have in the mining sector, as an example.

We are now working on the regulations. Regulations are going to take some time. We expect there are going to be quite considerable consultations that are required with First Nations, with industry and others as we develop them.

As you might imagine, the bonding will be material in nature. It has to be in order for it to be meaningful. It presents a fairly considerable potential cost to industry, and we want to make sure that we get it right. So we expect that we’ll be working over the next 18 months, perhaps 24 months. Of course, it’ll be up to government to decide when we bring the regulations forward to enact them. But it’s that sort of time frame that we are looking at.

In terms of the spills, my own sense is that one of the reasons why we have more spills is that we have more reporting of spills than we’ve potentially had in the past.

I’ll ask Rod and Kelli to perhaps add a little bit more colour.

R. Allen: Thank you, Member.

We have seen an increase, since around 2011, of about 33 percent in the number of spills, dangerous goods incident reports. Again, that’s probably because there are more people reporting. Information is getting out there so that people recognize what their obligations are. In addition to that, it’s my understanding that our population in B.C. is increasing during that period, and there are more dangerous goods, hazardous materials being transported. So that is another factor.

There was another part to that question, was there?

R. Leonard: Just the degree of spills, like the size of them. Are we talking about big spills? Over time, what is the profile of the spills?

R. Allen: Okay, thank you.

We’re not seeing a significant change in the size or the scope and scale of those spills. We are very keenly aware that there’s potential out there for some much larger and possibly more impactful spills, and that’s why we’re working hard to improve the way we do our business.

Obviously, there are things that are occurring around new pipelines, and we’re working with our partners to ensure that we’re prepared for the potential need to respond if there were spills as a result of that. But I would say, overall, we haven’t seen an increase in the size and the scope and scale of spills during that period.

[7:50 p.m.]

J. Tegart: I’ve got a comment and then a couple of questions, if I can.

In regards to the spills, of course I’ve got both railways going through my riding. We seem to be the epicentre of “anything that can happen will happen,” but we really appreciate the work being done by you guys and how quickly you let my office know and the communication links.

I have a question about Alertable. I’m concerned about how many different programs are used by different ministries to let people know what’s going on. My question is, is there collaboration between different ministries that deal with disasters and need to communicate with all First Nations or whatever so that they don’t have to have, or we don’t have to have, five different programs and watch all of them very diligently to see if something’s coming in? That’s my first question.

The second one is, when you sign off on a spill that the recovery is completed, is there staff capacity to do that right now? I guess my concern is, being the epicentre of natural disasters is…. I often hear from people the slowness sometimes, and I believe sometimes it’s staff capacity to be able to get to a rural area and to actually be able to sign something off, which is often very, very important to the community.

K. Jardine: Thank you for that first question. Thank you for your kind comments as well. Of course, it really is the staff and the team that can take credit for those comments.

In terms of the systems, I would say that in the 20 years or so I’ve been an executive, I have not seen as much collaboration across ministries as there is now. While I think there is much more to do, particularly to get to the kind of result that you’re mentioning, one where we have some sort of integrated way of notifying First Nations and communities, I would say we’re well on our way to get to those kind of discussions. It’s especially true in wildfire, flood and some of the integrated responses.

I’ll answer your second question, and then maybe I’ll turn it over to Rod and Kelli in terms of any work that might be happening right now around integrating Alertable with some of the other mechanisms or alerting systems that are out there.

I did mention the challenges that we are having with attrition and with retention. It’s not unique to us, but it is something that is a challenge for us. We are located in 14 different communities around the province. Spills happen everywhere, including, of course, your backyard, as you say. It’s a real challenge to ensure that we have that staff in place, and one of the things that suffers is some of these back-end things.

You can imagine that our priority is responding to spills, is getting out there, ensuring that responsible parties are in place, ensuring we’re connecting with First Nations, ensuring we have plans in place, etc. etc. Some of the other work, the back end, to sign off the recovery, may suffer as a consequence of that. Yes, it is, to some degree, down to staff resources, sometimes to a combination of resources and geography.

I’ll ask Rod and Kelli to maybe speak a little bit around Alertable and anything else you’d like to add on the staff resourcing piece, please.

R. Allen: Sure. Thank you, Kevin, and thank you for the question, Member.

We prioritize all of the incidents, and sometimes we have multiple incidents at the same time. Obviously, the highest-risk incidents and those ones that have greater impact or potential impact on communities, we will move our resources to those first.

Some of the delays might be because we haven’t got all of the data to be able to assess what those endpoints are. As mentioned previously, we work closely with consultants and qualified professionals, and they produce reports for us. Those reports have to be reviewed and then courses of action taken to address any of those recommendations.

[7:55 p.m.]

I think that contributes a lot. It depends on the type of substance that spilled as well as how easy it is to clean up the site. Some of those locations where those spills are…. They’re remote, and the logistics of getting resources to those places can be very challenging.

Rest assured that the teams that are involved are good at planning, and they’re definitely very technically high-quality people that can go out there and ensure that the cleanup is done effectively. In some cases, it does take a bit longer than perhaps we all wish it would take.

K. Kryzanowski: Thank you again for your comments.

For Alertable, there are three key partners that we are looking to work with. There are two that we’re very closely working with. The B.C. Energy Regulator, of course, is a very strong partner with us. The other one is the Canadian Coast Guard, for the work that we do collaboratively in the marine environment.

What we’re seeing is that First Nations are being notified by the federal government, as well as us. Sometimes one comes out sooner than the other, and they have conflicting information. So we’re looking at combining our two notification systems in order to ensure that communities are getting the information at the same time, and the right information — that is, that they’re getting the same information.

Then the other one is our partner, Emergency Management and Climate Readiness, and we’re speaking with them about how we may be able to work collaboratively with them as well. They have some of the bigger systems. You know, you get your AMBER alerts and those sorts of notifications. Then there are some other, smaller-level notifications, like with First Nations and some of the other local authorities. We’re looking to collaborate with them as well.

With Alertable, the good thing is that you don’t have to monitor it too closely, because it will phone you, or it will give you a ping on your phone. It’ll let you know when something is happening.

K. Kirkpatrick: My first question is about the trending numbers that Ronna-Rae had asked about, and I was cur­ious about them. There’s $13 million there has been in fines, and I believe it’s about $12 million that is outstanding. I didn’t hear the first number. It was $1 million that is being collected, and $12 million that hasn’t.

I’m just curious on two things. Are those dollars uncollectible, or have they just not been collected? The second is: how many different companies or instances does that number represent?

K. Jardine: The numbers themselves, I think, may have been a reference, Bradley, that maybe you made, too: that for the uncollected, the vast majority of that being attributable to Neucel is most certainly the case.

Is it uncollectible? It would appear, at the moment, that it will be uncollectible, and the province is paying for it. Of course, we have regular report-backs to Treasury Board on the work that we’re doing on the remediation of the site.

In terms of the numbers, I don’t believe…. We may have some additional information, but I don’t think so, on the numbers that we have to recover. We can certainly get back to you with more detailed information on outstanding obligations.

K. Kirkpatrick: I appreciate the answer. I was just trying to get a picture. There are small incidents that happen, and there are large ones. I wasn’t sure if the majority of that was from one particular company. It is, so that helps me to understand. I don’t need follow-up on that.

K. Jardine: I believe the Auditor General just kindly pointed out to me — pointing things out to me seems to be his job — that on page 29 is a reference to the outstanding debts, $400,000 of which is not Neucel.

K. Kirkpatrick: Great. Thank you very much.

S. Chant: I’m going back to Alertable again. With its implementation, are we finding that the responses are any faster, and the containment? Like, are things contained more than they might have been prior to Alertable being instituted, or are we not far enough ahead to have that information?

[8:00 p.m.]

R. Allen: Thank you for the question.

We have onboarded 19 First Nations communities, so it’s a small number of the, I believe, 203 nations in the province. My understanding is that that is improving communication with those nations.

The information is going out in a timely manner, so that’s obviously one of our objectives. The engagement, and then the back-and-forth that occurs when looking at actions or developing actions, is occurring much quicker than perhaps what we’ve seen in the past.

There still is a lot of work to do on that. As Kevin mentioned in the presentation, we’re hoping to onboard an additional 100 nations in the next year here.

S. Chant: You’re going to add something? Go ahead, please.

K. Kryzanowski: I was just going to add that the nations we have onboarded have been extremely pleased. We have heard some very positive feedback about being notified really quickly. What’s great about Alertable is that each nation was given the opportunity to….

They create their own boundary, and their boundary may actually overlap with some of those other boundaries that you had mentioned earlier, sir. We really left it up to those nations to decide what they need for their notification. There’ve been nothing but positive results back so far.

S. Chant: So Alertable is separate from what you’re doing with other regions and communities in terms of communications, I take it. This is very similar to what you were saying. Are they getting compatible? Are you finding that the word is…? If a community is in…. I’m not articulating very well. I apologize.

So a First Nations group has Alertable, and there’s a community that is at risk as well, a different community, a non–First Nations community. Are those cross-communications pretty good?

K. Kryzanowski: Well, non–First Nations communities at this point are…. It’s telephone calls out to them. The difference is that regional districts and local authorities are legislated to have an emergency management program, and they have to have 24-7 contact information that’s available. First Nations are in a different category. They don’t need to have that 24-7.

At two o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, calling the band office is not going to work. That’s where we were really finding that we were hitting up in some really bad spots, because First Nations…. We couldn’t find them, and we really, really wanted to get them involved.

This is a really great way to have the First Nations available online. It’s a really easy system to sign up on. It’s the user who actually goes in and signs up and updates their information. So it’s not as much of a burden on the province, but it also ensures that that information is updated as much as possible.

S. Chant: That is the answer that I didn’t ask the right question for. Thank you so much.

P. Milobar (Chair): On the deepest, darkest recesses of the Internet, we have Jennifer.

Fire away.

J. Rice (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much. This is an area I’m really interested in. I’m not going to torture my colleagues with the numerous questions I have.

I wanted to go back to…. I’m the MLA for North Coast. I have Prince Rupert, north coast First Nations, Haida Gwaii, the entire Central Coast. You’re talking about the 45 staff, and I noticed….

Our region is essentially the top two-thirds of British Columbia, with staff in Prince George, Smithers and, I think, Fort St. John. I’m not sure.

I guess in the case of the Central Coast, if you needed people there in a hurry for a spill — we had a big, disastrous one in 2016 with the Nathan E. Stewart spill — do people fly up from Vancouver? That’s the only way you really get to the Central Coast unless you hop, skip and jump with seaplanes.

[8:05 p.m.]

I made the assumption because the Haíłzaqv First Nation and Coastal First Nations have been doing so much work on having their own oil spill response regime. I assumed that there were provincial response people somewhere situated on the coast. Is that because there are others, Indigenous oil spill response people situated there? How does that look? If you look at the map, it looks like there’s nobody around for the central coast, but I don’t believe that to be true.

R. Allen: As far as mobilizing resources, for all of our response officers that are across the province, including Victoria, we can mobilize them and fly them to any location in British Columbia, or drive. In particular, in the marine environment, that’s federal jurisdiction. The Canadian Coast Guard, who are close partners with our work, would typically respond to a marine incident, and we would support them or engage in unified command. Then, of course, the responsible party has to bring to bear all of their resources necessary to respond to that spill as well.

I’ll let Kelli speak to the northern shelf bioregion work that we’ve been doing related to that.

K. Kryzanowski: You’re asking me about something very dear to my heart, something I’m incredibly proud of: the last 2½ years that we’ve worked with Coastal First Nations, building the northern shelf bioregion marine incident preparedness, response and recovery framework.

As Deputy Minister Jardine mentioned, it is a foundational piece of work — a tripartite reconciliation framework between the federal government, 13 First Nations and the province. We have created a framework about shared decision-making, the integration of traditional and Indigenous knowledge and many other components I’m a bit nervous I’m forgetting about.

It’s just such great work that we are using it as a template, recognizing, of course, a distinctions-based approach, working with First Nations for other parts of the coast. Even key pieces about decision-making can also be transferred into the land base. A huge portion of our resources — certainly my team, on the planning side over the last 2½ years — were in your area, doing the best we could to ensure that we’ve got a great plan. We’re looking forward to exercising it coming up in the run in the fall.

P. Milobar (Chair): Jennifer, did you have more to add?

J. Rice (Deputy Chair): I assume you mean exercising it in a practice run, not on the real thing?

K. Kryzanowski: Oh yeah, sorry, jargon. We’re doing a series of exercises, building up to a bigger piece, where we’re testing each component of the plan, so that when a bad thing happens, we know how we work together, and we know where we have some of our pinch points and can be feeling much more confident that we’re in a good place.

J. Rice (Deputy Chair): May I have two follow-ups, Mr. Chair?

P. Milobar (Chair): Yep.

J. Rice (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that. I’m glad that you share the same enthusiasm that I do for the central coast and ensuring that their resources, particularly their marine resources, are secure for food, social and ceremonial purposes.

I spent quite a bit of time on the ground during the Nathan E. Stewart spill. It was such an eye-opener for me. I guess, to frame it this way, the opportunity out of that crisis sounds like it’s really manifesting into something more robust. I’m happy about the work that has been going on as a tripartite partnership.

[8:10 p.m.]

On that, I guess, one of the questions I had…. I can’t remember who just said that; maybe it was Deputy Minister Jardine. No? Nonetheless, I guess the federal government is responsible for spills that happen in the marine environment. I do recall, from the Nathan E. Stewart, that the challenge is with jurisdiction when there’s an oil spill in the ocean that is washing up continuously on the foreshore, which then becomes provincial jurisdiction. How do we manage that?

I guess the question is: do we have any authority to sort of prevent or to mitigate those impacts? Or do we, essentially, have to wait till the spill and the disaster, or does the toxic stuff have to hit the shore, before we can act provincially? I would like to assume not. I’m hoping that that has been worked out.

Then the second question I had was just basically going back to the bond or the escrows and then hearing that we can’t even recover $1 million of a $3 million cost. I understand that that’s particularly on one incident, but I think about sites like Namu and other sort of abandoned sites that had spills or abandoned toxic chemicals. I’m wondering if we have progress on that, on how to really enforce the notion of polluter-pay.

I think of other things, like the Banks Island Gold situation, where that First Nation did not want mining activity to happen in its territory and fought against it and fought against it. Their worst fear was that their food sources would be impacted, and their worst disaster came true.

Now we’re in a court case around that. How are we pro­gressing on mitigating, ahead of time, those types of impacts?

Sorry, that’s very long. I apologize. It’s two different questions, but they’re burning questions I’ve had for a long time.

K. Jardine: Thanks, Member.

Maybe I’ll answer the second one first, if I may, which is around, broadly speaking, the public interest bonding system we have.

I think, as I may have mentioned, like Banks as an example, that would come under the mining regulation and the mining legislation, of course. We do have separate jurisdictions that have some form of security for land-based activities on Crown land.

The public interest bonding is very specifically intended to fill what we see as a gap — a gap brought to light not only by Neucel but by others that you’ve mentioned, other types of abandoned industrial sites that the province and the taxpayers have been left to clean up, often at considerable expense. It’s really that that this is intended for.

Where we have a responsible party, where there is a party that can be linked to the activity and that we’re able to litigate against, essentially to sue, we do pursue those. We do have some degree of success in being able to recover some of the dollars associated with spill recovery.

Now, for many spills that occur, many that we address or deal with every year, the responsible parties pick up the tab in its entirety. It really is a relatively small number, but with large costs, of specific sites or instances that we typically see. It’s kind of disproportionate or inverse, where there are four, five, six or ten that everyone thinks of and that are responsible for the vast majority of the outstanding costs. In most cases, with those other 3,500 that we have a year, those typically get addressed and are covered by the polluter.

[8:15 p.m.]

On spill jurisdiction, again I’ll ask Kelli and Rod to add, but it really is through the coordination. The truth is yes. It is the federal government, constitutionally, by jurisdiction, that has responsibility for a spill response. You see some of the investments that have been made over the last several years with WCMRC and the new sites that have been set up on the coast to more rapidly address spill response.

We’ve been coordinating — I’ll ask Kelli and Rod to speak to this — on the type of foreshore response as well. I’m pleased to say that we are probably better suited today, as a jurisdiction, than we have ever been in the past to be able to respond to marine spills. I’m not sure it will ever be good enough, but I’m pleased to say that it’s continuing to get better.

Kelli or Rod, is there anything you’d like to add?

R. Allen: That was a very good answer, Kevin.

What I will add, though, is…. We do have unified command, and we enter into unified command as quickly as possible when needed. So we’re planning the actions before that substance gets to the shoreline. That could include deploying a boom.

Of course, there’s a timeliness challenge when it’s in a remote area like the north coast. So we do rely on those partners, as well as First Nations, to be able to respond. Whenever it’s feasible, we can fly people directly to the site. Or we would have to fly them to the nearest location where they can base from to be able to deploy into the field.

P. Milobar (Chair): Susie, do you still have a question?

J. Rice (Deputy Chair): Sorry. Just to conclude, Mr. Chair.

I realize the Auditor General is poking holes at you here for a couple of things. I’m trying to think of how many recommendations….

I guess I do want to just thank you for the work that you’re doing, particularly since the Nathan E. Stewart, and working in partnership with other levels of government around coastal response. I see there’s more work to do. I also see the progress and appreciate you actually updating me tonight while we’re here. Thank you.

S. Chant: You can tell that this is not my area of expertise. We talked a little bit about responsible parties. I understand the bonding and everything else.

If there is a location that has a potential for a spill…. It’s somewhere that stays in place. It’s not a moving railcar or a boat. Are they expected to have spill plans that are looked at by somebody from your office to determine (a) whether it’s a reasonable plan and (b) whether they actually have the equipment, supplies and resources to implement the plan? They are able to start their work as soon as something happens and trigger the spill response system but be able to start right away.

R. Allen: I’ll let Kelli answer that. That’s her area.

K. Kryzanowski: Oh, okay.

If it’s a static facility, then that is actually not within our legislated responsibility. It depends on what…. There are so many different legislations. We generally are…. It could be the B.C. Energy Regulator if it’s a hydrocarbon. If there’s a spill that migrates off site, then that is where we would come in.

At this point in time, we regulate rail, pipe and trucking. We do take a look at some of the….

They are legislated to have spill contingency plans. We do randomly ask for the spill contingency plans. We do an analysis. It’s primarily a presence or an absence, ensuring that they have the right components within their plan. So there is an oversight.

S. Chant: I’m catching up here.

Rail, pipe and trucking. How about tailing ponds, for instance?

K. Jardine: I’m happy to answer that.

[8:20 p.m.]

That would be a requirement under the Mines Act and likely a requirement under whatever authorizations they have.

S. Chant: So they’re under a different….

K. Jardine: Absolutely. Those that have geotechnical reviews — they have engineers. There would be an engineer of record. There would be all of those things.

Similarly, for instance, environmental assessments. If an environmental assessment is done on a major facility, quite often there’ll be legally enforceable conditions on the environmental assessment certificate that would require things like a spill response plan, as an example. In order to be in compliance, often those plans would be required to be developed with the communities that they may be proximal to — First Nations, fire departments, others as well.

Then similarly, for other types of authorizations at different levels, permits and other things, there’s often a requirement, where there may be a risk, to have a spill response, as necessary. If it’s in a community, then fire departments and others may have their own requirements that the facility would have to attend to.

P. Milobar (Chair): Doug, do you have one final thing?

D. Routley: Just as a follow-up to that, would the Mount Polley disaster, which did migrate away from the containment area…? Would that, then, come into some management from your…?

K. Jardine: Yes, it did. Yes.

P. Milobar (Chair): Thank you so much for the report.

We are going to move on now. We have to clear the room of anyone who does not need to be here for the in-camera portion. You will know if you are supposed to be already.

We will take a couple of minutes of recess to let that happen.

The committee recessed from 8:21 p.m. to 8:27 p.m.

[P. Milobar in the chair.]

P. Milobar (Chair): We’ll pick this back up. If I could have a motion to go in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 8:27 p.m. to 8:43 p.m.

[P. Milobar in the chair.]

Committee Report to the House

REPORT ON
SUMMARY OF ACTIVITIES 2023-24

P. Milobar (Chair): Okay, we are back in regular meeting.

We still have our annual report to approve and adopt. Typically, we have a bit of discussion if people have any questions about it or any glaring errors or omissions. Other than that, we do have a motion, as well, if there are no major amendments, that the Chair and the Deputy Chair can work with the committee staff to finalize any further editorial or grammatical errors that may be in play.

S. Chandra Herbert: I’m happy to move that motion. I did read through the report. I didn’t notice anything, myself, but if others have it, maybe now’s the time. I’m certainly happy if the Chair and Deputy Chair are able to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

P. Milobar (Chair): Perfect.

S. Chandra Herbert: I move:

[That the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts approve and adopt the report titled Summary of Activities 2023-24 as presented today and further, that the Committee authorize the Chair and Deputy Chair to work with Committee staff to finalize further editorial changes to complete the supporting text.]

Motion approved.

J. Tegart: I move:

[That the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts present the report titled Summary of Activities 2023-24 to the Legislative Assembly at the earliest available opportunity.]

Motion approved.

P. Milobar (Chair): Any other new business we weren’t aware of?

S. Chandra Herbert: Division. No, just kidding.

P. Milobar (Chair): Good thing my bell finger’s a little slow.

All right. Well, folks, then, a motion to adjourn.

S. Chandra Herbert: So moved.

P. Milobar (Chair): Okay, we’re adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 8:45 p.m.