The committee met at 8:34 a.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Deliberations

Paul Choi (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Paul Choi. I am the MLA for Burnaby South–Metrotown and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes government and opposition MLAs.

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

The purpose of today’s meeting is to consider statutory offices’ budget submissions for fiscal year 2026-27. We will be hearing from five offices today, having met with four offices last month.

We are going to begin with in-camera deliberation before hearing from our first statutory office. I will ask for a motion to meet in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 8:34 a.m. to 9:10 a.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): Okay, we are now back in public session.

We will take a two-minute recess for them to come in and get settled in. Thank you.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

The committee recessed from 9:10 a.m. to 9:11 a.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): We are back. Thank you very much for coming today. I apologize for running a little late.

The first statutory officer we will be hearing from today is Michael Harvey, Information and Privacy Commissioner and registrar of lobbyists. We have 25 minutes for your presentation, followed by 30 minutes for questions from the committee.

Review of Statutory Officers

Office of the Information
and Privacy Commissioner

Michael Harvey: Good morning, Chair, Deputy Chair and members of the committee. I would like to begin this morning by recognizing the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, where we are meeting today. As an officer of the Legislature, I also acknowledge that I am privileged to work with people across many traditional territories covering all regions of our province.

Joining me here this morning are Deputy Commissioner and Deputy Registrar oline Twiss, acting Deputy Commissioner Ethan Plato and Director of Communications Michelle Mitchell, in the back. I am also joined by Dave Van Swieten, deputy of corporate services.

The submission before you this morning encompasses the work of both the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and the office of the registrar of lobbyists for British Columbia. As the Information and Privacy Commissioner, I am designated the registrar of lobbyists under the Lobbyists Transparency Act.

Since my last appearance before you, we have launched our strategic plan, which sets out the direction of both the OIPC and the ORL over the next three years. I’m going to take a brief moment now to give you an overview of that plan, as I believe it helps set out the context for my request to you today.

To form the foundations of the strategic plan, I engaged in an intentional but informal engagement throughout my first year as Commissioner and met with politicians, public officials, businesses, professional associations, civil society organizations, students and academics.

In May, we held in-person sessions in seven regions around B.C., as part of a listening tour to learn more about what people in B.C. think our priorities should be. These discussions, in addition to written submissions that we solicited online throughout the spring, helped inform what ultimately became our three strategic priorities for the OIPC. These are trust and transparency, trusted innovation and enhancing rights equity.

The process to identify these three issues of focus was important, as this plan is meant not only to reflect my priorities as commissioner but those of my staff and the people of British Columbia as a whole. They reflect what I’ve heard people living in British Columbia, across many walks of life, identify about what matters to them in the areas of transparency and privacy.

I will say that, for the most part, we weren’t really surprised with what we heard. We heard a need to protect the privacy of our most vulnerable populations, including seniors, children and youth and those without stable housing. Protecting children and youth online, in particular, was a consistent theme, as the online world is now integrated into every aspect of our lives.

Yes, new technologies open up possibilities that we could have barely dreamt of when we were children ourselves, but much of the promise of the internet involves the collection and use of their personal information in ways that we now know can cause great harm.

[9:15 a.m.]

We heard how people are concerned about how fast technology is changing and what that means for our society. Increased use and functionality of surveillance, for example, was raised at every session. We heard a lot about transparency, transparency of public bodies and the link to accountability — after all, people should have a right to ask questions of their government and public bodies in general — but also transparency in the changing landscape of technology and how our visibility into how they work doesn’t work the same way that it used to.

We share the excitement about the potentials of AI to transform not only our economy but our ability to provide public services and work more efficiently, but we’re also concerned about the regulatory tools available to make sure that AI works for us and not the other way around.

I want to say we also published a strategic plan for the ORL as a separate document, and that ORL plan is focused on two priorities: raising awareness and agile enforcement. I don’t have a specific financial ask associated with the ORL for this year, so I have nothing further to add on that. I’m happy to answer any questions about the ORL strategic plan, if you have any that might occur to you.

I’ll now transition into the specific details of our request for the OIPC. If you turn to our submission, you will see that table 1 sets out our key funding requests in a stand-alone table, for ease of reference. I’ll start by emphasizing that I am sensitive to the fiscal circumstances facing the province and have put before you the most minimal responsible ask that will allow us to maintain current service levels and for me to discharge my statutory mandates.

This includes the request that I mentioned will be coming, during my appearance here before you in April, to address growing demand and the emerging issues that face people in British Columbia. I’ve also included all known factors affecting the next fiscal year, and you should have my updated submission to reflect the financial implications of the recent BCGEU agreement, which was ratified last week.

It’s important to understand that at our core, the OIPC is a demand-driven service that supports individuals who are in dispute with public bodies or with the private sector. We can’t control the volume of complaints and requests for review that come in through our door, and we have seen a consistent upward trend of files over the last five years and a rapid escalation in the past year. We expect that to continue and perhaps even accelerate.

Certainly the fiscal climate of government spending reductions can adversely affect individuals who in turn have a right to come to our office to request review or make a complaint in areas of my mandate. To meet this increased demand, we continuously review and update our internal processes to find resource efficiencies. For example, we encourage greater discontinuation of matters that do not serve to further accountability or the public interest.

We also restrict individuals’ access to OIPC services when behaviours threaten the integrity of our processes, and we’ve begun issuing written decisions in abuse of process situations. We have been able to swear multiple affidavits in-house with an internal legal counsel, instead of using contractor law firms, which has saved both time and money. We’ve also been able to leverage office space of the Police Complaint Commissioner when the commissioner or staff need to travel, meet and work in Vancouver for a day or so.

In addition to resource efficiencies like these, we continuously review our expenditures to identify savings to maintain a lean budget. To that end, we have reviewed our prior-year expenditures and identified savings in a number of areas. For example, we have realized savings from a reduction in the fixed cost of our rent at 947 Fort Street and have avoided increased costs by sharing office space among hybrid workers.

Whenever possible, we continue to complete work in-house with existing resources versus going to external vendors for assistance. An example of this is the maintenance of our case management tracking software, where technical changes are done in-house to avoid incurring costs with the vendor. Stabilizing our adjudication division, where some of the most complex files ended up being decided, has also decreased the use of external contractors this year to address inquiries.

[9:20 a.m.]

We were also able to bring graphic design work in-house over the past year, where we have historically had to rely on external contractors to develop materials and produce reports such as our annual report. This decision has brought efficiencies not only to our financial bottom line but also to our internal workflows.

We support work across independent offices, as we have an agreement with the Merit Commissioner that provides that office with communication support that is billed at an hourly rate. This agreement has reduced their reliance on an external contractor for the work, which yields savings on their end and leverages my office’s knowledge of the work of an office of the Legislature, and it also offsets costs for my office.

We have reduced our previous funding request for this fiscal for our IT modernization project that had been approved as part of our April submission. Two projects that were captured by that request will either be deferred indefinitely or completed with reduced resources.

Yet even with these improvements and efficiencies, we have found that the increasing demand for services — including demands relating to new and emerging technologies, which can be more complicated and resource-intensive — is outpacing gains that can be made from these continuous improvements.

With that background in mind, I’ll now move to our request for budget increases over previous years.

For wage inflation, we have updated our submission now to reflect a request of a 3 percent wage increase in ’26-27 in response to the BCGEU collective agreement and an additional 1 percent to reflect the impact that implementing that lift in ’25-26 will have on the ’26-27 salary baseline. We’ve also incorporated the 3 percent in subsequent years to ’28-29 to reflect the terms of the agreement.

For non-wage inflation, a factor of 2 percent based on the B.C. Stats consumer price index has been applied to expenditures that have an increase in unit costs. This is consistent with other offices, based on feedback from last year’s committee.

Our key request, which I did forecast in my April appearance before you, is for critical support core functions of the office’s mandates for access and particularly for privacy. I mentioned earlier that I am sensitive to the economic pressures the province faces, and I bring forward this request with this firmly in mind and the intent that the work of our office will help support trusted innovation in the technology sector that can ultimately help drive B.C.’s economy.

This most obviously flows from the second of my three OIPC strategic priorities that I mentioned — you’ll recall the second of those was trusted innovation — but indeed, a focus on emerging technologies will support all three of those strategic priorities.

Our requests include $315,000 for two positions, a director of emerging technologies and an investigator to lead the office’s work in the challenging field of emerging technologies. The intent is that these will be the first steps towards, over two years, growing out a team that will also involve people with policy and legal expertise.

I don’t have to tell you the impact that the rapid pace of technology has on all of our lives, and we know that AI, quantum computing, genomics, complex surveillance systems and other emerging technologies are here to stay. We also know that AI has tremendous potential for bringing efficiency to the public service in a time when demand for service continues to increase. But what we need first in place to realize this potential is trust in innovation.

The challenge with this, with particular focus on AI, is that AI can deepen the trust crisis we are currently experiencing in institutions by adding layers of opacity to decision-making. Unlike traditional systems, where there are visible organizational decisions, AI creates a black box where even the creators of the algorithm may not know what’s going on inside of the black box, how an algorithm may be making decisions.

Fortunately, I believe, there are ways to establish trusted innovation. It requires, however, a deep understanding of these emerging technologies to ensure the right regulatory approach is achieved. An approach that is too strict may stifle innovation, but one that is too loose or, even worse, undefined can also stifle it through confusion and uncertainty, resulting in a competitive disadvantage for British Columbia businesses and public sector entities.

[9:25 a.m.]

A clear and effective regulatory approach built on expertise and engagement can encourage trust and innovation. What I’m trying to get at here is that privacy and innovation are not competing priorities. They can and should be mutually reinforcing, and we need to ask how innovation can be done in a way that respects people’s rights.

The privacy challenges associated with the pace of technological change poses a risk to all of us if they are not implemented in a way that protects the privacy rights of individuals, and we will lose out opportunities to avail of these technologies in a positive way. This is not work that can be done off the side of a desk, and proper oversight requires specific expertise and focus that our current work chart doesn’t provide.

Further, a province without a regulatory structure that is capable of understanding modern technologies will discourage investment from firms who, we hear repeatedly, are looking for clarity and certainty. If we cannot respond as a regulator in this space in an agile way to private and public sector proposals, then we will impede and discourage innovation by local and global firms and in public services by public bodies across the province.

It’s clear that both the federal and provincial governments agree with the importance of this focus. We’ve seen them both create cabinet posts for AI. Other regulators across Canada, such as the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, have recognized the need to catch up by establishing similar positions in their office to the ones that I’m proposing to you today.

This work should matter to all of us. We know that the rapid pace of technological change is not going to slow down. It will only increase. But I should emphasize that there are benefits to be explored with these emerging technologies that we can potentially leverage to help ourselves at the OIPC to achieve efficiencies within our own office to help us better serve the public.

The emerging technologies team that I am proposing will offer office-wide, multidisciplinary, cross-functional support and expertise on files and investigations, as well as internal oversight of the use of emerging technologies within the OIPC itself. They will also contribute to the education mandate of my office by engaging and assisting organizations and public bodies looking to incorporate technologies such as AI into their own work.

We have identified this work as a priority in our strategic plan as we recognize the impact that these technologies, when used without guardrails, can have on anyone living in British Columbia. It is essential that we have the expertise available to help from the beginning, when companies are considering implementing or developing this technology, rather than having to investigate after the fact, after they have been implemented and after problems have emerged. If we don’t build capacity now, it will be infinitely more challenging to catch up later on, let alone keep pace with the rapidly changing environment.

B.C. has a major advantage in leading Canada in the 21st century, but our strategic regulatory infrastructure, and that’s what I’m arguing for here today, must keep pace. For my office to assist with promoting domestic investment and excellence in public service in this area, we need the expertise to even know the right questions to ask, the right guidance to give and the best recommendations to strengthen the guardrails we need.

I’ve already mentioned that we are continually looking to enhance efficiencies and improve service to the public and that this becomes more difficult as demand continues to rise. We expect that this team will ultimately guide us as we explore how these emerging technologies can improve our internal workflows and our service delivery to the public.

Further, as I have oversight over the privacy and access concerns of such technologies, it is my responsibility to make sure my office has the necessary expertise to do so. But we cannot undertake this work without the proper resources, and the most effective and prudent way to do so is with internal permanent positions that will yield cost savings to people in British Columbia.

So for this request, we are specifically asking for 1.75 FTEs in 2026-27 for a director and an investigator to get the team up and running. This accounts for an April 1 start date for the director and then, staggered, a July 1 start date for the investigator. That’s our major new ask.

[9:30 a.m.]

Finally, I’ll just take a moment to walk you through some additional STOB analysis of how money is moving around a little bit in our budget. We’ve made some cost-neutral efficiency adjustments by reallocating a number of STOBs throughout the year. This includes reallocating $14,000 in office and business expenses from STOB 65 to cover cost pressures in STOB 63.

We’ve allocated $15,000 from STOB 52 to STOB 70 to reflect the commissioner’s vehicle lease costs under the executive vehicle program. This change reflects the use of a vehicle lease rather than a vehicle allowance by the former commissioner and is consistent with the employment contract and core government policies. We adhere to all of those.

We’ve also reallocated $59,000 in amortization from STOB 73 to STOB 63 to cover pressures, and we’ve reallocated $139,000 in building occupancy costs from STOB 75 to STOBs 50 to 54 and 68. These taken together have realized the savings of $116,000.

I’d be happy to respond to any of your questions or to walk you through any of the STOBs in detail with the time we have left this morning.

Before I invite your questions, I want to acknowledge the OIPC and ORL teams. Their dedication is second to none, and it is a privilege to work with such excellent, committed public servants.

With that, Chair, I thank you and the committee for your care and attention to these matters. My team and I would now be pleased to answer any questions that you have.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. We’ll now turn to questions by members.

Darlene Rotchford: Thank you for all the work you folks and all your teams do for the province.

I just have a couple questions. The first one is…. Your office’s budget request includes an additional two FTEs in 2026-27 and one FTE in 2027 and ’28. What positions are expected to be filled in 2026-27?

Michael Harvey: Right. So this is the emerging technologies team that we’re looking to build out. So 1.175 that we’ll get started this year, and then we build out further in next year. As I mentioned in my speech, the total team will be four, but the policy position we’re looking to reallocate within our existing office.

Darlene Rotchford: Okay. What’s the estimated cost of the additional FTE for ’27 and ’28?

Michael Harvey: For ’26-27, I believe we said it was $315,000, and then the additional FTE that would come in the out-year would be in the range of about half of that again.

Darlene Rotchford: Okay. Your office budget submission notes that one additional FTE will be added through the reallocation of funding with the existing staff complement.

Michael Harvey: Yeah.

Darlene Rotchford: Just correct me. The position being created with the reallocation of funding is what again?

Michael Harvey: This is a policy position. So the team as a whole, our vision for the whole thing…. I will come back, by the way, next year. To be clear, if you approve my request for this year, then my plan is to come back next year and ask formally for that additional one FTE. That one FTE that I plan to ask for again next year would be a lawyer with technological expertise.

The position that I would then reallocate within our office would be a senior policy analyst, one of our existing policy analysts. We’d take the resources dedicated to that, and we’d re-profile it as a senior policy analyst and then move that over. So that’s how that would work.

Darlene Rotchford: Okay. Then does your office request for additional FTEs include a contribution towards corporate shared services? If it does, how is that funding being calculated?

Michael Harvey: It does. I have the details in here. But every position that we ask for we always add on a bit to account for CSS. That would include things like an amount of money for a new workstation but also for the contribution in general that we make to the CSS office. So there are a number of lines in that. I’d have to thumb through my pages, but perhaps…. Deputy Van Swieten probably knows this right at the top of his head.

Dave Van Swieten: As Michael was saying, the new request for FTEs…. There’s a 10 percent addition onto that that supports corporate shared services, as well as the inflation factor. You’ll note that in STOB 85, there’s a lift for inflation for corporate services as well, and that’s where that funding flows through there.

Steve Morissette: Thank you for your presentation. Appreciate that.

[9:35 a.m.]

Your office is requesting 3 percent wage inflation increase for the next three fiscal years, as well as 1 percent top-up to the account for the 3 percent lift for ’25-26 in the BCGEU collective agreement. Are you proposing a 1 percent retroactive payment to April 1, 2025?

Michael Harvey: That’s not part of this submission. This submission is only about next year and then the out-years.

The additional 1 percent…. The reason that we’re asking for 4 percent next year is because we’re assuming that the baseline against which the 3 percent is calculated will increase.

Historically, what the independent offices do with their excluded staff, and all of our staff are excluded, is that we follow the PSEC, Public Sector Employers Council, guidance, which in turn tends to mirror — although not necessarily exactly lining up with time — what the BCGEU collective agreement is.

We don’t know what the PSEC guidance for this fiscal year is going to be, but we would be inclined to mirror it once we find out what it is. When that happens, and we understand what the financial implications of that are, we will look in our own budget and see if we have the ability to absorb that increase to match what is happening across the public service and see what we can do.

But that’s not what this request is about. This request is just about next year and the out-years.

Steve Morissette: Okay. Also, if I could, your office’s budget submission outlines several reallocations to base salaries, supplementary salaries and benefits to address cost pressures. What cost pressures are these reallocations addressing?

Michael Harvey: To base salaries?

Steve Morissette: Yeah.

Michael Harvey: I mean, the cost pressures that we’re regularly facing primarily drive from our increased demand. We have to think about how we are going to meet the increased demand. Some of that may include looking at bringing on auxiliaries. Some of it….

Another cost pressure, for example, would include parental leaves that we face. These aren’t funded. We absorb those costs. We’ve had a number of employees go on parental leave this year, so we have to fund those, of course. We need to make sure that, to the best of our ability, we backfill for them to make sure that we’re constantly meeting the demand of the files that just keep coming through the door. That’s an illustration of the kind of pressures that we’re talking about.

Jennifer Blatherwick: Thank you so much for your presentation.

Following up on your last statement, why isn’t there an allocation in the budget for parental leaves?

Michael Harvey: We asked for it, and it was declined.

Jennifer Blatherwick: You previously asked this committee for it? When?

Michael Harvey: In April, when we did our supplemental…. Technically speaking, our budget ask for the present fiscal year was a supplemental ask. We made that in April. That’s when we made that request.

Jennifer Blatherwick: Thank you. Now, can we move on? I have another question about the systemic investigation program.

What is the structure of the program?

Michael Harvey: A systemic investigation program?

Jennifer Blatherwick: In April 2024, the office received funding for two FTEs to design and develop the office’s new systemic investigation program.

Michael Harvey: Yeah. I think that’s the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner.

Jennifer Blatherwick: Oh my goodness. You are correct. Thank you.

Michael Harvey: That’s okay. But he’ll be here soon.

Jennifer Blatherwick: Thank you. I’m going to pass my next question.

Sunita Dhir: Thank you so much for the presentation.

My question is about your IT modernization project. Your offices and other offices under corporate shared services have noted that two items proposed in the IT modernization project for ’26-27 were eliminated. Which two items were eliminated, and is this funding being returned or reallocated?

Michael Harvey: I’ll answer the second part of your question. We’re reallocating that money internally to meet existing cost pressures.

[9:40 a.m.]

Our plan is…. We’ve managed within the bottom line. Reallocating that money means that we can respond to increased demand without having to ask you for anything additional beyond what I’m asking from you today.

In line with this principle that I’m asking you for the least amount of money that I feel I can do, we’re not proposing to return it.

As for the specifics of those projects, I’m going to turn to Deputy Van Swieten again as he’s really the expert in the specifics of that IT modernization program.

Dave Van Swieten: Thanks, Michael.

I just want to sort of recast a part of that first answer. The IT modernization project that was presented in April consisted of two fiscal years of requests. The request that we did not put forward again was in year 2. So we actually didn’t reallocate that funding. We’re actually not asking for any of that funding.

The two projects were related to the HR applicant tracking system as well as the building of a test environment, and we found ways to achieve those items without requiring new funding.

Sunita Dhir: Thank you. I have another question.

Your office’s budget request includes a 7 percent increase for STOB 85, which it notes is related to the BCGEU collective agreement. Could you please clarify how the collective agreement impacts your office’s contributions towards the corporate shared-services agreement?

Michael Harvey: This is similar to how we talked about before…. Oh, sorry. To the corporate shared-services agreement?

Sunita Dhir: Yes.

Michael Harvey: The collective agreement informs what our wage inflation ask is going to be, so the core wage inflation ask is 3 percent. All of our salaries, as Deputy Van Swieten has mentioned, include a 10 percent component that contributes to corporate shared services that is built into every one of the salary lines, every job, every FTE that we have.

When we increase…. When we follow through…. We are anticipating follow-through from the BCGEU collective agreement, as has happened historically in the past with…. The PSEC guidance follows BCGEU. We follow the PSEC guidance, and then the 10 percent would be included in that 3 percent wage inflation, which for next year is going to be 4 percent to adjust that baseline.

I hope that is clear.

Sunita Dhir: I have another one about savings and efficiencies. Your office’s budget submission outlines several steps taken to find savings and efficiencies. Will these approaches to cost savings be continued in future years?

Michael Harvey: The ones that I identified have.

I’ll give you an example. Our graphic design work — we used to send that to an external contractor. We built the capacity, we invested in staff, we bought pro software, and now we can do that in-house, so those savings are projected to increase and can be reallocated to address cost pressures throughout our budget.

The other things that we’ve talked about, like performing certain legal tasks in the office rather than having to go outside for legal services, the improvements that we’ve made, will certainly continue. In fact, we’ll continue to explore if there are any more legal services we can bring in-house rather than looking outside.

So the short answer is yes, that is our intent.

Sunita Dhir: Thank you. There’s another one. Your budget submission notes that savings from a reduction in building occupancy fixed costs were reallocated to address cost pressures.

Could you provide details on this reduction in costs and your office’s current lease agreement, including the length of the agreement and the square footage of the office space? How many of your staff work in-office versus remotely?

Michael Harvey: Okay, so there are a number of specific questions in there. I’m just going to….

Sunita Dhir: I can break it down if you want.

Michael Harvey: Okay.

Sunita Dhir: Could you give us some details on the reduction in costs for these building occupancy fixed costs and your office’s current lease agreement?

[9:45 a.m.]

Michael Harvey: Okay, so I’m just looking for the number here.

The current lease agreement that we’ve signed is a ten-year lease. We’ve just signed that. The amount of money that we’re saving from that….

Interjection.

Michael Harvey: Do you want to get that one?

Dave Van Swieten: It’s a good question. The lease we recently renegotiated had the fixed-cost portion of our lease drop from $36 a square foot to $32 a square foot. So we saved money on that front. Also, our office is in a sublease arrangement with the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, who will be here later today. They’ve subleased some of our space again. So that’s two areas of savings we’ve had for our office around the lease.

Sunita Dhir: How many of your staff is working in-office versus remotely?

Michael Harvey: Just about half — 55 percent — of our staff come in on a regular basis, and then many other staff come in every once in a while. So some days see about two-thirds of our staff come in. There are some days in which 100 percent of the offices are used.

I should point out that were it not for this hybrid arrangement, we would have had to increase our office’s footprint. But instead, we were able, as Deputy Van Swieten mentioned, to reduce our office’s footprint and then sublet some space out.

You asked about the square footage. Our Victoria office space is 9,594 square feet. Our contribution towards the corporate shared services is about 1,500 square feet. We have a share of common space, and that’s about 2,000 square feet.

Sunita Dhir: The Conflict of Interest Commissioner — are they on your lease? How is that subleasing incorporated in your lease? Is it going to be continued?

Michael Harvey: I’m going to have to ask you to deal with that, Dave.

Dave Van Swieten: The lease that’s signed with the current landlord is signed by the three major tenant commissioners there — the Ombudsperson, Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Merit Commissioner. Because the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, I believe, was at the end of her term, she didn’t want to commit the office to anything long term. So we have a three-year sublease signed with that commissioner.

Sunita Dhir: Is it going to be continuing to the next year?

Dave Van Swieten: I believe that’s a discussion for the new commissioner that’s recently been announced. We hope so. They’re good neighbours.

Sunita Dhir: I don’t have any further questions.

Paul Choi (Chair): Any other questions by members?

Jennifer Blatherwick: One of the things is…. There’s a 7 percent increase to STOB 85, which it notes is related to the BCGEU collective agreement. But how is the collective agreement affecting that particular cost increase?

Paul Choi (Chair): Sorry, that was already asked.

Jennifer Blatherwick: I think more coffee is my day today. I apologize to everyone. I think I’m just going to let this stop.

Paul Choi (Chair): That’s fine. I have a question. The office reported $222,000 underspent in its ’24-25 actual operating budget and $49,000 underspent in its actual capital budget. Do you anticipate similar underspend for ’25-26 as well?

Michael Harvey: The major source of the underspend was in legal costs. I should mention that we don’t have a whole lot of control over our legal costs. I made a supplementary request about that some time ago, I think, to your predecessors.

We actually asked for additional money because we have been projecting high legal costs for last fiscal, and it didn’t come to pass. But again, it’s the uncertainty of what cases will advance to appeal and how much money is going to end up being spent on those.

[9:50 a.m.]

That said, we didn’t reduce our ask. The reason is because we have every reason to believe that those legal costs will be high again next year.

Indeed, just yesterday we learned that the Supreme Court of Canada will hear a major case related to religious freedoms and privacy, and so we expect that that’s going to be a significant cost driver. We need to keep our legal budget where it is, because not only do we anticipate our legal costs will continue to be high, but we don’t have a whole lot of control over that and we need to be prepared and able to respond to these legal questions when they are heard by the courts. So that’s the main focus of that underspend.

On the capital side, I believe it was related to the IT modernization project. Is that…?

Dave Van Swieten: This would be for the last fiscal year, so no, not so much, because IT modernization is only the current fiscal year. The question was about last fiscal year.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much.

Any other questions from any members?

Seeing none, thank you very much for coming in and presenting to us and answering the questions.

Michael Harvey: My pleasure. Thank you for your attention this morning.

Paul Choi (Chair): Now we will just reset the room before we hear from our next office. We will take a quick recess.

The committee recessed from 9:51 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): Welcome back. Next we will hear from Prabhu Rajan, Police Complaint Commissioner. You have 25 minutes for your presentation followed by 30 minutes for questions from the committee. We do have a timer on the screen today to help us stay on schedule.

I’ll now turn it over to you, if you’d like to introduce your team and then begin your presentation.

Office of the Police
Complaint Commissioner

Prabhu Rajan: Good morning, Chair, Deputy Chair and members of the committee.

It is my pleasure to introduce people who are here with me: Andrea Spindler to my left, your right, deputy commissioner, systemic reform and outreach; Rachel Huggins to my right, your left, deputy commissioner, police accountability, who’s making her first appearance before the committee; and of course you know Dave Van Swieten, deputy of corporate shared services. I think he’s going to be here all day.

I begin my remarks today by acknowledging that the work of the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner takes place across unique and diverse traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples in B.C., and we respect the many territorial keepers of the land.

I thank the lək̓ʷəŋən People, also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations communities, past present and future, for their stewardship, care and leadership on the land on which our main office is located. I would also like to acknowledge that our new Vancouver office is located on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ Nations.

We remain committed to better understanding and incorporating Indigenous history and culture into our work as we strive towards true reconciliation, knowing that we operate within a justice system that is rooted in colonialism and where Indigenous people are overrepresented, resulting in ongoing inequality and trauma.

I will be discussing the following with you today: (1) a quick overview of the OPCC’s mandate, (2) cost savings we have made, (3) efficiencies we have implemented, (4) the context for our budget request and (5) details of our budget request.

Before I begin, I would like to express my honour and privilege of working with my excellent staff who demonstrate their commitment and hard work every day. I find myself very fortunate to be in this role. I would also like to acknowledge that while my decisions will inevitably call into question officer conduct, this should not take away from their daily dedication, 365 days a year, to protect British Columbians, and often placing themselves in harm’s way.

My office and I are governed by the B.C. Police Act. As you are aware, I’m an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly. You may not be aware that the other, similar offices across the country do not have this type of independence, which, in my view, speaks highly of B.C.’s commitment to the municipal police oversight system.

My office is responsible for overseeing and monitoring investigations into possible misconduct by municipal police officers, the administration of discipline, conducting systemic investigations and making recommendations to prevent the recurrence of misconduct.

As commissioner, I also have the authority to appoint a retired judge to consider allegations of police misconduct when I disagree with a decision of a senior police officer or if it’s considered to be in the public interest. Carrying out adjudications are exclusively the responsibility of retired judges who operate at arm’s length from the OPCC. However, my office is responsible for managing almost all associated costs — costs over which we have very little control.

Investigations under the Police Act arise in different situations, including a complaint from a member of the public regarding individual officer conduct, an investigation ordered by me into individual conduct, typically based on information from a police agency, and a public complaint about a more general police department policy or service.

[10:05 a.m.]

We do not have jurisdiction over RCMP members. That is the purview of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. We are distinct from B.C.’s independent investigations office, which investigates incidents of death or serious harm for possible criminal conduct.

The OPCC is a civilian oversight body, which provides external accountability that ensures that police officers are subjected to the same rule of law as everyone else. We are independent and guided by impartiality and fairness to all involved in the process. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure public confidence in policing and appropriate police accountability, which, I believe, is at the core of ensuring safer communities.

In 2024, the Legislative Assembly saw fit to grant my office the authority to self-initiate systemic investigations based largely on information we gather through individual disciplinary matters. We can now look upstream by proactively examining potential systemic issues, developing recommendations for improvement and preventing police misconduct rather than just reacting to it.

Systemic issues refer to recurring or entrenched problems within policing practices, policies or structures that result in or contribute to patterns of misconduct, inequitable treatment or failures in accountability.

We are now poised to announce our first systemic investigation, as we have done the extensive groundwork needed to realize the kind of transformative work the public expects of us. But more on this later in my submission.

I want to assure the committee that our submission has been fully considered in the context of the current and challenging fiscal climate. We started with a line-by-line review of last year’s expenditures and reallocated funding to address pressures on our core functions. For example, we reallocated savings from rent obligations at 947 Fort Street. We looked to leverage amortization costs against cost pressures elsewhere. We amended our IT modernization plans for the ’26-27 fiscal year. We have, wherever possible, completed work in-house.

Over and above these cost mitigation efforts, we’re seeking efficiencies without sacrificing our oversight obligations and commitment to fairness for all involved. While some cases require a full, often extensive, investigation, many are better suited to early resolution.

When handled fairly and transparently, complaint resolution can transform tension into dialogue, which helps rebuild trust in policing while also supporting a just, speedy and cost-efficient disciplinary process. There are more opportunities for an officer to take early responsibility for questionable conduct and for a complainant to better understand what happened to them and why, which could lead to resolving their concerns earlier in the process.

Our complaint resolution program was increasingly more successful this past year; 106 files were successfully resolved, versus 56 the previous year. This is an increase of 89 percent. Complaints concluded in this way are 50 percent faster than formal investigations and require fewer resources. One of our budget requests seeks to build on this program and its success.

Pre-hearing conferences are a confidential, without prejudice, mechanism where officers accept responsibility following a preliminary misconduct decision. An agreement is reached on appropriate discipline or corrective measures, which must be approved by the OPCC.

We have also used an early resolution process at public hearings. In a high-profile public hearing earlier this year, a retired judge accepted a joint proposal to resolve a case involving sexualized misconduct admitted to by a Vancouver police sergeant involving multiple women. The discipline imposed, which included demotion and suspension, was the most severe possible under the Police Act, save dismissal.

This early resolution ensured accountability. The affected women did not have to go through a difficult hearing process and be re-traumatized. The system avoided the significant costs associated with a lengthy hearing.

We are also creating efficiencies by acknowledging that all investigations do not need to look the same. Some cases are complex, and some are straightforward.

The investigative process is time-consuming. It can involve many interviews, extensive statements and documents and hours of video footage. So we’re concurrently piloting an expedited investigative process with police departments. This process allows a police member to take responsibility for misconduct and accept disciplinary or corrective measures.

[10:10 a.m.]

The investigative timeline is significantly compressed from the typical six months or even longer in complex cases. We have thus far successfully completed four cases, on average, in less than two months in this pilot project.

Feedback from participating departments and police associations has been very positive. We are planning a wider rollout of this expedited process to all municipal police agencies in 2026.

In serious harm and death investigations, both the independent investigations office and OPCC mandates are engaged. The IIO investigates possible criminal conduct by an officer, while we focus on disciplinary matters. But we effectively look at the same factual circumstances.

Therefore, we can rely to some extent on the IIO’s investigation, rather than starting from scratch. We are now conducting comprehensive front-end reviews of IIO investigations to ensure that we don’t unnecessarily duplicate work already done. This allows for more resources to be focused on cases that need them the most.

I also look forward to the outcomes from the new special committee tasked to conduct a statutorily required audit on the outcome or resolution of randomly selected complaints and investigations to further our efficiencies. After spending the past year and a half extensively consulting with policing and public interest holders, I have a real sense of what we are doing well and what we must improve. I also have a real sense of what my office needs to properly achieve the ambitious mandate provided to us by the Legislative Assembly.

Respectfully, we require a modest increase to our budget to fulfil current demands for service and deliver on our statutory mandate. It is imperative that my office meet its fundamental obligations under the Police Act and does so in a way that is fair and timely. Our workload is almost entirely driven by external factors. We cannot control how many complaints we receive or how often departments ask us to order investigations. We can only look at trends and seek to maximize efficiencies.

It would be irresponsible of me, as an independent officer of the Legislature, to present a status quo budget that would limit my office’s ability to meet our statutory mandate. Our workload has increased between fiscal ’23-24 and fiscal ’24-25.

We have seen a 94 percent increase in public inquiry calls. Public complaints have gone from 682 to 814, an almost 20 percent increase, and an almost 40 percent increase from five years ago, when we received 584 complaints. This upward trend has continued into this fiscal year. I’ve also ordered more investigations, largely based on requests from police agencies.

Additionally, I know that every day we read about municipal police agencies seeking increases to both their ranks and budgets as they deal with a host of public safety issues and with an increase in calls related to complex social issues.

For example, Vancouver’s mayor is presenting a budget that includes $50 million more for police. The Victoria police department is hoping to receive a nearly 10 percent increase to its core budget. In Surrey, the mayor is calling for the temporary deployment of 150 more police officers. These three departments, which produce the highest volume of cases for our office, are asking for greater resources to meet their obligations. As police resources increase, so will my office’s caseload.

The Surrey police service is a perfect example of how our caseload has increased as they increase their officer complement. Despite these external drivers, we are limiting our request to areas where we can build on efficiencies and process and service delivery for those who need it the most.

I also must always have the health and well-being of my staff at the forefront of my mind. There is a limit as to how much I can ask of my people in the face of an increasing caseload and issues that are often very difficult to deal with.

In the circumstances, the following budget request, in my view, is both reasonable and necessary. Our request is summarized in table 1, at the bottom of page 1 of our submission, which you have.

[10:15 a.m.]

We are requesting $12.146 million in operating funding and $175,000 in capital for ’26-27; $12.461 million in operating funding and $86,000 in capital for ’27-28; and $12.787 million in operating funding and $77,000 in capital for ’28-29.

For wage inflation, our request reflects the increase recently ratified by the BCGEU. For fiscal ’26-27, a 3 percent wage increase effective April 1, ‘26 and a 1 percent increase to reflect the impact that the lift for April 1, 2025, had on the ‘26-27 salary baseline, which was previously funded at a 2 percent lift. This provides an overall wage inflation increase of 4 percent for ‘26-27. We have also incorporated the negotiated 3 percent lift in subsequent years to ‘28-29 to reflect the terms of the agreement.

In terms of non-wage inflation, a factor of 2 percent was applied to expenses with an increase in unit cost based on B.C. Stats’ consumer price index.

We are requesting funding for two full-time positions. We are requesting funding for a complaint resolution analyst position, which would build on the success of our complaint resolution processes and further improve efficiencies. A dedicated complaint resolution analyst will further streamline intake and early resolution of complaints, allowing investigative staff to focus on more complex oversight files. As previously mentioned, the complaint resolution process is much faster than formal investigations and requires fewer resources.

The second position we are seeking is a front-line intake and outreach coordinator. This committee previously supported our efforts to increase our presence on the Lower Mainland, including funding for our new office location in Vancouver, to ensure public access to our services in the Lower Mainland, from where 80 percent of our cases arise. I’m pleased to report that this office is now open in downtown Vancouver and currently houses our new deputy commissioner, who is sitting here with me, oversight staff and systemic investigations team for a total of 15 OPCC team members.

To maximize broader efficiencies, I have offered occasional use of this space to my colleagues in other independent offices of the Legislature. However, we are not yet open to the public because we do not have funding for our front-line intake position. Based on the many meetings I’ve had over the past year with community organizations and Indigenous groups, access to in-person support is critically important to members of the public who may be marginalized. They will be able to attend at our office and meet with our intake coordinator who could assist in receiving a police complaint in person rather than over the phone or online.

In addition, instead of asking for a separate position for outreach in the Lower Mainland, we combined intake and outreach into one position. We have this type of in-person capacity in Victoria, but we are not similarly accessible in the Lower Mainland. Our request for these two new positions amounts to $228,000.

We are also seeking contract dollars in the amount of $150,000 to allow us to retain specialized expertise to effectively carry out our legislated responsibility for systemic investigations. The Legislative Assembly, in amending the Police Act, implemented a recommendation from the 2019 Special Committee to Review the Police Complaint Process and empowers the OPCC to proactively identify, research and investigate systemic matters arising from police complaints or the complaint process.

Following an investigation, the OPCC would provide recommendations where needed to prevent police misconduct, to prepare and release a final report and inform the public and other interest holders of our findings. After building the program from the ground up, my office is now in position to conduct a systemic investigation. During my time as commissioner, I have identified where there may be areas that would benefit from a systemic review and, potentially, recommendations for change.

In meeting with community organizations and reviewing our complaint data, there appears to be some concerning patterns of conduct. For example, sexual harassment and sexualized misconduct in the workplace. I called a public hearing and a review on the record into these very concerns. Sexual harassment and the implicit or explicit use of power imbalance for a sexual purpose not only harms those directly affected, but also negatively impacts the integrity of and the public’s confidence in policing in B.C.

Another example is force used by police on vulnerable and marginalized persons. I recently called a public hearing into the rapid escalation of force used by police during the detention of an Indigenous man.

Crisis intervention and de-escalation are essential components of modern policing. By prioritizing communication, empathy and non-violent interactions, police can prevent unnecessary harm and reflect a commitment to human dignity and community safety.

[10:20 a.m.]

Another example are responses to missing persons who may be vulnerable. There are three ongoing investigations into the quality of the missing persons investigations involving young Indigenous women.

Our systemic investigations mandate would not only seek to address current issues but hopefully lead to fewer complaints in the future, along with enhanced confidence in policing. If systemic issues are left unaddressed, we risk allowing entrenched patterns or poor practices to continue, which can lead to repeated harms, a lack of meaningful accountability and missed opportunities for prevention.

Finally, we are requesting $100,000 to allow the OPCC to keep pace with modern policing tools and evidence collection. We live in a digital age. Body-worn cameras are increasingly being used and helping to transform the way police interact with the public. They are a key investigative tool and preserver of evidence, and they require massive amounts of data storage and file management that our current system simply cannot accommodate due to the size of high-definition video files typical of today’s technology.

We have worked hard to assess all options and keep costs down as much as possible. A modest request of $100,000 is critical for the OPCC to keep pace with modern policing tools and evidence collection.

We are also making a capital request of $175,000, which includes a net increase of $52,000. The largest portion of this request is for a new storage area network to help us manage our existing files. The current one is at the end of its useful life and will require replacing.

In addition to this dedicated equipment, there are shared capital costs that each office within the corporate shared services model takes a turn purchasing to maintain the IT infrastructure. This year is the OPCC’s turn for some of this equipment. As such, the OPCC must contribute more funding in ’26-27 than the prior year.

In terms of adjudicative costs, our past practice has been to request access to contingency funding should statutory obligation require additional adjudicative funding, which typically occurs in the latter part of the fiscal year. Currently, it’s too early in the year to identify the need for contingency funding. We will, however, continue to monitor and assess the adjudicative budget and identify any additional funding required for adjudicative reviews. As in past years, we will first look to operational savings as mitigation or other expenditure controls while minimizing impacts to core mandate.

I would note that the public hearing involving the death of Myles Gray is currently scheduled for ten weeks. Given the complexity and number of police officers involved, if you see me again, it may be because of high system costs that are beyond our control.

Today happens to mark 21 months to the day since I was chosen to be B.C.’s fifth Police Complaint Commissioner. Over that relatively short period of time, much has changed in terms of our legislative mandate, and much has been achieved by the OPCC with the support of this committee. Respectfully, if our very modest request and reasoned budget lift is not granted, I am concerned that my next appearance may focus on what my office has not been able to do, not because of a lack of will or ability but because of a lack of capacity.

At a time when public safety is a leading issue in our communities, there needs to be a concurrent commitment to strong civilian police oversight. Without such commitment, public confidence in police risks erosion.

We are encouraged that the government is providing an additional $4 million in funding to the Justice Institute so that they can now train significantly more new police recruits every year. It’s a forward-thinking investment necessary to realizing safer communities.

I hope the committee views our budget request in the same light in terms of being a necessary investment in meeting a shared goal. I’m happy to answer any questions, with the support of my deputies and Mr. Van Swieten as needed. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. We will now turn to questions by members.

Steve Morissette: Thank you for your presentation.

One thing I heard in your presentation was that you’re looking for two FTEs, one for intake and outreach in Vancouver and Victoria. Correct?

[10:25 a.m.]

Prabhu Rajan: The intake position would be in Vancouver, because we have a new office there that we want to make publicly accessible. So while we do have intake staff in Victoria who can assist in terms of dealing directly with the public, we do not have that capacity in our new office in Vancouver.

Steve Morissette: Okay. For follow-up, are there any of these offices elsewhere in the province that people can access in person?

Prabhu Rajan: Our offices? The OPCC? No. These are the only two offices. We’ve actually only had a Victoria office for most of the time, although historically there has been a Vancouver office. That was closed a number of years ago. But no, we only have two locations.

Steve Morissette: That concerns me, from a rural perspective, because a lot of rural places, particularly in the North and so on, have shoddy internet access. Not being able to attend in person makes it very challenging for people to access that service.

Is there any thought of, going forward, how you could have equitable service throughout the province?

Prabhu Rajan: Thank you for your question, MLA Morissette. I think that’s a fair question.

I would first say, though, that while this is not always the case, typically the rural areas are dealt with by the RCMP. We are focused on certain, typically larger municipalities, although that’s not completely the case. We have the Stl’atl’imx tribal police under our jurisdiction, and certainly, after we met with them a few months ago, there are clearly those types of challenges.

We also have Nelson. I’m not suggesting that Nelson’s rural. It’s currently a beautiful town that we visited last year. But I would suggest to you that that hasn’t necessarily been my observation in terms of accessibility.

That being said, your point about broader accessibility in person, I think, even goes beyond any issues you might have with internet or accessibility. I think that’s always good.

Now, I’m not sure, necessarily, it would be fiscally prudent to open more offices in this environment. However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t think of other ideas for in-person meetings. We could have our staff travel or maybe partner with a community agency somehow. But, with the greatest of respect, that requires funding, and we’re limited.

But if I had an unlimited pot, that would absolutely be near the top of the list in terms of granting greater public accessibility. I truly believe that, while we’re in a bit of an electronic age, you cannot replace meeting with somebody directly. Certainly with marginalized communities who…. They may have phones. They may not. There may be language issues. There may be communication issues. Frankly, our process is not simple. It’s complicated. So I think it helps to have somebody sitting in front of you explaining it.

Again, as an aside, and maybe I’m veering a little to the left from your question, one of the reasons for having had all the meetings we had last year with over 80, almost 90, community groups was to talk to them about what they’re seeing and the experiences of their communities and what we can do to improve accessibility to our process through them. Sort of a train-the-trainer type of situation. Some of them have suggested to us: “Why don’t you come and spend half a day with us every month? You can meet with our community, our clients.” We’re definitely exploring that.

There are different ways, different levers beyond just opening up another office, I would respectfully say. But I think your point is taken.

Donegal Wilson: Thank you for the presentation.

Your office is requesting $228,000 in operating funding for these two additional FTEs. I’m just wondering. Is that the full cost of those FTEs, is it intended that that’s only a partial year, or are those full FTEs?

Prabhu Rajan: No, that would be, as I understand it, annualized fully and includes benefits, costs, etc., and IT costs. So that would be all in.

Donegal Wilson: Your office has also indicated $157,000 from corporate service expenses reallocated for a human resource position. How does that change your relationship with corporate services?

Prabhu Rajan: Let me first off start by saying that we have certainly benefited from the services that corporate shared services provides us, and we will continue to have that benefit with the IT and finance, as we have Mr. Van Swieten here. I can’t imagine being here without him.

[10:30 a.m.]

But offices evolve. We moved from 947 Fort a couple of years ago, which is where corporate shared services and my colleagues who are meeting today are located. Our lines of work have also evolved. We have added responsibility. We felt as an organization this might be time to have somebody full-time in-house sitting at the executive table and being part of decision-making at all times.

The very nature of corporate shared services is to provide a similar service to all their clients, and they have done so admirably over the years. But the types of…. It would be unfair of me to ask for, in some ways, the bespoke type of service that I’m maybe looking for moving forward from corporate shared services because they have their limits and they have their obligations to other clients.

So it was all those considerations, and it’s cost neutral because it’s the same money that we had before, just moving over. We’re doing so with the full cooperation of the Ombudsperson and corporate shared services. I think it will help us in terms of our growth as an office.

Donegal Wilson: Just for clarification, then. You’re not using any human resource support now over from shared services?

Prabhu Rajan: We are until we have that position in place. We continue to use corporate shared services, HR services quite a lot because we have positions to fill and work to do. But once we do have that position in place…. I’m sure there will be a transition period and support from corporate shared services, but then, of course, at some point, we’ll have to bicycle without training wheels.

Donegal Wilson: Then the question would be for the shared services. Would the typical funding formula change specific for this office, being that they’re not going to be using your HR services?

Dave Van Swieten: The short answer is yes. For example, when a new position is hired, the standard formula had like a 10 percent addition. With the reduction of HR services, it’s now like 8.2 percent instead of 10 percent. We’ve done all the financial adjustments in the background.

Donegal Wilson: Okay. Four new positions, I think, is what’s on your…. You’ve identified two of them. What are the other two new positions?

Prahbu Rajan: The other two are described…. I can’t recall where. One of them is just simply annualizing past granting of requests.

Sorry. Pass it over to you.

Andrea Spindler: So the other position is a position that we sought funding for. It was to support our adjudicative model. Our retired judges operate independently at arm’s length from the OPCC. That roster of retired judges has expanded. They require some dedicated administrative assistance to assist them administratively with the logistics of the hearing processes, the adjudicative processes. So we sought funding for that position. We received it, and now that is just the annualized cost for that position.

Then the other position is in relation to the annualized cost for two investigative analysts.

Donegal Wilson: Looking back, in the fall of 2023, we had talked about two FTEs for the Surrey Police transition services. Did those come in, just reallocated within existing positions?

Andrea Spindler: Those positions were hired, and those were in relation to the investigative analyst positions.

Donegal Wilson: The other one was, in April 2024, your office was provided funding to hire five FTEs related to the expansion of your mandate around the Police Amendment Act. In spring 2025, the office noted two of those have been hired. Have the remaining three been filled?

Prahbu Rajan: I believe those three are in progress.

Andrea Spindler: We’ve now hired an investigator position. That position now has been hired as it relates to our systemic investigations. We are just finalizing the competition for the data position for that, so that’s coming on board. We also hired….

We’re just finalizing the posting for the Indigenous initiatives position. We required that position to be restricted to the hiring of an Indigenous person, so we had to go through a process with the Human Rights Commission. So that is pending. But we anticipate filling that by the end of this fiscal year.

[10:35 a.m.]

Donegal Wilson: My last question, Chair. What, if any, difference is there between the requested front-line intake and coordinator position that you had this spring versus what’s in this ask? Is it the same position? You’re just re-requesting?

Prabhu Rajan: Yes, I believe so.

Darlene Rotchford: Your office is requesting a 3 percent wage inflation increase in the next three fiscal years as well as a 1 percent top-up to account for the 3 percent in the 2025-26, in the BCGEU collective agreement. Are you proposing, as well, a 1 percent retroactive payment from April 1, 2025?

Prabhu Rajan: No, we’re not.

I don’t know if you want to add to that.

Dave Van Swieten: To request funding for a retroactive application to April 1, 2025 would be the content of a supplementary submission, and we’re not making that today. Our intention is to carry on through the fiscal year. We monitor our budget projections monthly. We’re planning on coming right at zero. We’ll factor that along with other factors like the adjudicative costs and assess in January or February if, at all, we do need to have a supplemental request.

Darlene Rotchford: Okay. I think that answers the rest.

In April 2024, your office received funding for two FTEs to design and develop the office’s new systemic investigations program. What is the structure of that program?

Prabhu Rajan: I’ll pass that over to Deputy Spindler, who is responsible for it.

Andrea Spindler: Thank you so much for your question. With the new responsibilities that we have, we were building the program from the ground up. We started with the hiring of a director of systemic investigations, policy and research. In addition to that, we’ve now hired an investigator and legal counsel position for that.

We’ve also been supplementing with existing positions in the organization, so drawing on support from our communications and engagement team, because it’s important that we’re out there in the community. It’s also drawing on our existing policy analyst capacity that we have in the organization.

We recognize we needed to have new positions, but we were also looking for ways that we could find some capacity internally where that could support our new systemic program. As I mentioned, we also are just finalizing the competition on a new data position, which is going to be really instrumental to transforming our data infrastructure at the OPCC.

We have never had a dedicated data person despite our ability to, I would think, produce some really interesting statistics, if you look at our annual report. Being able to have this new position is going to really help us be able to better identify patterns, trends, systemic issues that we’re seeing coming across complaints. Instead of, now, dealing with individualized police misconduct issues as we see them on a one-off basis in complaints, it’s going to be now being able to look at a holistic picture and being able to pull out what those potential systemic issues are.

The other thing that we’re doing right now with the program is recognizing that our capacity is going to be limited to, likely, doing one full-scale systemic investigation a year. We are looking for ways to leverage other ways to look at matters systemically without the full powers that a systemic investigation provides us. For example, it’s about leveraging that data, leveraging that information that we see coming in from complaints.

It’s also about leveraging research capacity. We’re looking at partnerships with academic institutions, data-sharing agreements, so then we can sort of get a better understanding of the root causes. All of this is about looking at ways to prevent misconduct, reducing complaints that we’re filing and improving public confidence in policing.

Prabhu Rajan: If I could add, MLA Rotchford, much of my career before this role was involved in systemic issues investigations. In my view, they’re critically important. It’s the other side of the coin to individual complaints. Just looking at individual complaints, you’re looking at them oftentimes in a vacuum, so you need the other perspective. But it’s a lot of work to build up a program from scratch, from nothing.

[10:40 a.m.]

We’ve been really working very hard and within the construct of our current budget, which is hard, and we’re doing our best, which is why we have asked for some funding for not a full-time position but special expertise to deal with a particular issue.

Darlene Rotchford: That’s it for me.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much. Any other questions?

Okay, I will go. Just going back to the offices, you mentioned you have an office here in Victoria. How many complaints do you get in person here?

Prabhu Rajan: You know, I probably can’t tell you right off the top of my head. Obviously, much of it is online, but we certainly have many situations where our staff are required to meet individually with people who are looking to file complaints.

It goes just beyond that, the public accessibility component. Yes, it helps you file complaints, but oftentimes individuals have questions or concerns regarding their cases or generally, and they prefer to meet in person to talk to somebody. It may be about an ongoing case that they have. We certainly value that direct in-person interaction.

That does happen. I couldn’t give you numbers. If the committee would like that in the future, I’m sure we can try to find that, if we have that.

Just a reminder that 80 percent of our work and cases actually flow from the Lower Mainland; 20 percent are here on the Island.

Paul Choi (Chair): Right, yes. On average, just roughly, how many of the complaints you receive, proportionately, start with an in-person complaint versus online?

Prabhu Rajan: I apologize, but I probably wouldn’t have that number off the top of my head. I understand, MLA Choi, where you’re going with this, or at least trying to inquire as to what that need might be.

What I would emphasize, and we can look into those numbers, is what we heard from community groups during the meetings. It was that the possibility of having in-person access to somebody from our office who knows this very complex system was met with a lot of excitement. They felt it was very important, certainly for the communities that are very close to our new Vancouver office.

Sometimes if you build it, they will come, as well. Certainly, the folks that are clients and work with the community groups that we met with are aware of this possibility. I would hope and I would expect that they would attend, and I hope that they would take full advantage of that.

That might improve the quality of complaints that we get. Oftentimes they’re off on their own having to draft something, and maybe it doesn’t meet all the check boxes that they need to, but they can get some assistance in person.

I worked a long time ago for the Ontario Human Rights Commission. This is many moons ago. We had in-person capacity. That’s a different time, I take it, but I saw the benefits there, where you could work through an issue with somebody right in front of you.

It goes beyond just the complaint-filing piece. It’s also representative of us as an organization, what we mean to the public. As opposed to this office on a hill, maybe, we’re actually here to work for you and with you.

Elenore Sturko (Deputy Chair): I kind of would like to see the number of people that come in person. We’re in a tough fiscal position here. We need to be able to say that it would be justified that people would be using that.

It is nice to be able to meet people in person, granted, but if you can only afford one, then maybe the office needs to move away from Victoria and into the Lower Mainland and only have one. For the purpose of our deliberations, to fund the second office, I think we would need to see the utilization, what it looks like currently.

Prabhu Rajan: I take your point, MLA Sturko. One thing I neglected to say — and I should emphasize it; I did say it in my earlier submissions — is that it’s not just for intake. This position is also for outreach.

[10:45 a.m.]

In my view, it’s been a focus of my 21 months here to conduct outreach myself in terms of community groups and advocacy groups, Indigenous groups, communities, to understand what the issues are. In a perfect financial world, we would have separate positions.

Given that we have so much of our work arising from the Lower Mainland, it is really important for us to be connected with those communities. The outreach function is critically important as well. It’s not just one or the other; it’s both. It’s providing that capacity.

I can just tell you from my personal interactions, in the many meetings that I’ve attended, that the outreach has proven itself to be immensely important to our relationship to British Columbians and to communities. I truly believe that that needs not only to continue but to grow. There has been, I think, a disconnect between our work and British Columbians.

I can tell you that at the beginning of these meetings, I typically ask people to put up their hands if they’ve heard of us before this meeting. I don’t see hands being raised — maybe one or two. That is a real problem. I’m not trying to solicit complaints or anything like that, but I’m trying to create awareness. Without that awareness, how can we improve things here in terms of policing? How do we effect change?

I would just say that where 80 percent of our work comes from is having an outreach and intake person that can do that work and that can connect with communities in different ways. That intake may occur, as MLA Morissette suggested or implied, in more remote communities, remote areas.

We could have that person, say, attend at a community agency for half a day every two months or every month and meet with people, not just to take complaints but to answer questions and help them understand. If you inform one person, they’ll inform five, and maybe they’ll inform more. That’s how it spreads.

Clearly, I’m quite passionate about this work and this position. I would just caution the committee to attach some sort of complaint numbers to in-person, because it goes well beyond that. It speaks to a culture of the office.

Donegal Wilson: Just to quantify it, then, are you able to share how many outreach sessions the Victoria staff has led or created?

Prabhu Rajan: I’ve done 83 or 84 this past year. We did an online session where we had almost 80 people attend. That’s only the ones I’ve done. Deputy Spindler and Deputy Huggins have done it, and not just them. They themselves have done intakes. So I would say we’re upwards of 150. I don’t want to create a number, but there is a lot of work being done.

It may be written outreach versus in-person outreach, but I can tell you that the one main staff person that we have for outreach in Victoria is the one who, essentially, helped create this work that I’ve done, that the deputies have done, that she does and that other executive directors have done.

It’s a lot of work, just reaching out, organizing, connecting, understanding their needs, translating that into not just, “Okay, we’re done. We’re not going to talk to you again,” but to create that snowball effect and that we continue to meet with them. I try to tell her as often as I can that I am very grateful for the immense amount of work that she has done to help create what was….

This is no criticism of anybody, but outreach work frankly did not exist to this extent before I arrived. I can tell you that I would think it’s one of the reasons why I was chosen for this role. I believe it’s critically important for British Columbians to have a good sense of what we do, and this helps.

Donegal Wilson: Can you articulate, then, how the second person working out of Vancouver will be doing or supplementing the work of the first one in Victoria?

Prabhu Rajan: Sure. Again, it’s intake and outreach. They would work together. There would be work on the Island. They would combine. There is so much to do, let me just say, in terms of outreach. We’re scratching the surface. They would help organize dozens and dozens of meetings and try to connect with dozens and dozens of organizations. Following that, they would help prepare for more online sessions.

[10:50 a.m.]

I believe that we need an online presence. We would help, through our website, in creating outreach connections. Remember, that’s only part of that person’s job, so it’s not adding one full outreach person. They would attend, I would expect, outreach sessions.

Because it’s costly to send our outreach person here in Victoria, or us, on a regular basis, across the water to the Lower Mainland, I would expect that person to attend those meetings. I would expect that person to train others on how to have these meetings. I would expect, where the Lower Mainland creates a lot of opportunities, that that person would be right at the centre of that.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you. I don’t know if this was touched on already, but I know that the Vancouver and Delta police have now utilized bodycams, and I know there’s some funding regarding that.

Do you know if there are any other departments that are implementing that? What is the anticipated rollout for those remaining departments?

Prabhu Rajan: What a great question. I actually have notes here, because I asked for the numbers yesterday. Let me just find them.

Here we go. SPS, Surrey police service, has 20 body-worn cameras deployed. Saanich has eight. Abbotsford has 16. Transit is looking at a potential pilot in ’26. Delta has 50, and VPD has 981.

Paul Choi (Chair): Perfect.

Darlene Rotchford: Is the VicPD on that list of the in-progress? Victoria-Esquimalt?

Prabhu Rajan: I know there have been discussions about it. I know that it has been presented in the past in their budgets. As far as I know, there are no firm plans for that. Obviously, they have a new chief, and I’m not sure what her position is on that.

But I can just tell you, as an aside, that I do believe strongly in the use of body-worn cameras. I think it provides benefits in many respects, and I’ve made that clear to the chief.

Of course, they also have their own fiscal restraints, and I think they’re trying to figure that out.

Darlene Rotchford: Okay. Thanks. That was just my one question.

Paul Choi (Chair): Regarding that, your office received funding for an IT modernization project with other officers under the CSS. Was there any consideration to include your office’s need for additional digital storage under that project?

Prabhu Rajan: I can certainly pass that over to Mr. Van Swieten, who has more intimate knowledge of that.

Obviously, the landscape is shifting more recently in terms of body-worn cameras. If we had a crystal ball, maybe so. But it is…. Honestly, I read every morning that there are different approaches being taken. With all due respect, I highly doubt that that could have been predicted at that point, but I turn it over to Mr. Van Swieten to add.

Dave Van Swieten: The short answer is no. The IT modernization didn’t build in anything for extra storage. As corporate shared services kind of does a standard service for all offices, this is a unique problem for the Police Complaint Commissioner, where that high-definition video requires a lot of storage, and you have to be able to manage those files. It is kind of a specialized, individual cost for this office.

Prabhu Rajan: I would just offer, MLA Choi, that I would expect that this committee, if they were presented with a presentation at the time for body-worn cameras that did not exist, would have said: “Why are you asking for money when that does not exist right now?” That would have been a reasonable question.

I think, as I understand it and as I’ve been informed, that this committee would prefer to know what is actual as opposed to anticipatory as much as possible. That’s not always a perfect equation, but I would expect that if presented at that time, it would have been more presented in terms of anticipatory measures. We might have had that ball hit back to us and say, “Well, come back to us when it’s actual,” which we are doing today.

Paul Choi (Chair): Okay. Your office space is in West Hastings now. Could you provide an overview of the office space there, including length of each lease agreement and approximate square footage? What is the distribution of staff for each office space? How many work remotely versus in person in that office?

Prabhu Rajan: Oh, I have that here somewhere in terms of the actuals.

Your first part of your question was whether we could provide you with the space requirements and such, and if that’s what you would like, we certainly can easily provide that.

[10:55 a.m.]

Just some context. It was a long process, and we looked at a lot of different options, and we certainly looked at ways of reducing costs. I think we were pretty successful with that.

I can actually give you numbers. A great question to answer here. In Vancouver, the square footage is 5,793 square feet. The enclosed offices are nine, the open offices are ten, total work points are 22, and I think that can be expanded. I truly believe that there’s going to be expansion in the future for my office. Much of it will come in Vancouver. We had to think about that with the space. I think we have that capacity to add more workstations and add more staff. Depending on how the future goes, I anticipate that that’s where we would do it.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you so much. That concludes our questions. Thank you so much for coming and presenting and answering our questions.

Prabhu Rajan: Thank you very much for your time and for your very helpful questions.

Paul Choi (Chair): We’ll take a quick recess.

The committee recessed from 10:56 a.m. to 11:09 a.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): Okay, we are starting back up. We are back, and I would like to call the meeting back in order and seek a motion to meet in camera for deliberations.

The committee continued in camera from 11:09 a.m. to 11:17 a.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): The committee is now in public session. We’ll take a quick recess for them to come in and get settled in. Thank you.

The committee recessed from 11:17 a.m. to 11:20 a.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much. Welcome back. Next we will be hearing from Jay Chalke, Ombudsperson.

You have 25 minutes for your presentation followed by 30 minutes for questions from the committee. We do have a timer on the screen today to help us stay on schedule.

Before we get started, we recognize that Jay is stepping down from his role in January, and this is likely his last appearance before us. On behalf of the committee, I’d like to express our sincere appreciation for his dedication and service to British Columbians. Thank you very much.

I will now turn it over to you, Jay, if you’d like to introduce your staff and begin your presentation.

Office of the Ombudsperson

Jay Chalke: Thank you for those kind words. Good morning, Chair, Deputy Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I’m joined by Deputy Ombudspersons David Paradiso and Stephanie Garrett and by Dave Van Swieten, deputy of corporate shared services, who you know well.

I want to begin by acknowledging that our office is located on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. Our work, of course, extends across all of British Columbia and across the homelands of many First Nations. We’re very grateful to have the opportunity to do the work both here and throughout those lands.

I know it’s already been a long morning for you and you’re not done yet, and I appreciate your attention to our submission.

Some of you know our office well, but for others who may be a little newer to it, a bit of background. Our work is grounded in two provincial statutes. The Ombudsperson Act, enforced since 1979, mandates us to investigate complaints from the public about unfair treatment by about 1,000 public bodies in the province, provincial and local; conduct systemic investigations; and make recommendations where we find unfair treatment to improve services.

The Public Interest Disclosure Act is the other act. It’s a relatively newer statute, enforced since 2019 and implemented in seven phases, as this committee knows well, because I have been back over those years a number of times because the government decided to implement it in seven phases over five years. It’s British Columbia’s public sector whistleblowing law, and it protects current and former public sector employees who are covered in the act — about 200 organizations — who report serious wrongdoing in their workplaces.

Our service under both acts is demand-driven. We do not choose the volume or complexity of the matters that arrive at our door. We respond to them. People come to us when something in a public system has gone wrong for them — when a benefit is denied, a process stalls, a service isn’t clear or an appeal is decided with no reasons.

Last year more than 7,300 people asked us for help with issues in public services, and over 300 public servants came to us to report serious concerns in their workplaces. That averages out to about 31 new matters every business day, about 635 a month.

All of this is occurring at a time when the broader public sector is under some strain. Public bodies are being asked to reduce spending, hold vacancies and do more with less. Many of you will be seeing that effect directly in your constituency offices. We see the same pressures at our front door. When services slow down or become harder to navigate, people get frustrated and complaints arise, and that’s when they turn to us.

I want to be very clear. Our budget submission before you is the result of two drivers. We’re demand-driven, as I say, and demand for our services is counter-cyclical. As public services tighten, complaints increase.

Before I begin, I want to take a moment to acknowledge those working in public bodies across the province. This has been a demanding period for them. Their commitment to fairness is real. We see it every day, and I want to express my appreciation for all the public employees that we deal with.

[11:25 a.m.]

Before I speak more on the current pressures we’re facing today, I want to share with you what we’ve already done to tighten our belt and make every dollar work harder, first by moving dollars within our budget to the highest-pressure areas, and second by changing how we work so people get quicker answers without unnecessary cost.

We reviewed our historic expenditures across all expense categories and moved funds into areas with cost pressures, thereby reducing the amount of funding in this budget request. We dug into historic contracts and reallocated funds. This has reduced the financial budget item that we’ve held in the past for unexpected legal costs, which does increase financial risk, but it kept our request to you smaller. We examined information management and IT spending and deferred two modernization projects, which we are seeking alternative solutions for.

We have a demonstrated history of spending virtually all of the funding allocated to our office. In the last three years since COVID, we’ve had an average of less than 1 percent surplus. We spend more than 99 percent of the budget you allocate to us. We’re making full use of those resources. We continue to work within a corporate shared service model, as you know, where my office and three others combine our resources to deliver common corporate functions like IT and HR. This reduces the need for us to each hire and manage those resources independently.

The simple result is this. We balanced within our existing budget first and accepted more risk where we reasonably could.

But I also mentioned process changes, so I’m going to ask David to speak to some of those process changes that we’ve made.

Dave Van Swieten: Thank you, Jay.

On processes, we focused on speed and clarity without sacrificing quality. As a direct result of our continuous improvement work, which this committee has supported — thank you — we were able to tighten intake workflows, scheduling and response templates so straightforward matters move faster and investigators can spend their time where it’s really needed.

We reallocated an existing role into a complaints analyst role to triage calls immediately and pass only jurisdictional, substantive issues to early resolution officers. We formalized an intake team lead model after a successful pilot showed improvements in supervision, training and efficiency.

We made it easier for people to help themselves without engaging staff. Our online complaint checker helps people figure out if their issue is within our authority to investigate and what to do next. Over the last year, more than 5,500 people used the tool, an increase of nearly 60 percent from the previous year. For many, it provides immediate answers at their convenience, 24-7, without having to make a call. It lets our staff focus on more complex jurisdictional complaints.

We added two simple phone tools: a spam screener and a short message explaining what we can and cannot help with and where to take the most common non-jurisdictional cases. We moved intake of digital complaints from email to an online form specifically designed to capture the details we need to review a complaint. This cuts down on the initial back-and-forth communication, significantly reducing staff handling time on each complaint.

Wherever it saves money, we do the work in-house, including changes to our case management system. We deferred indefinitely a planned peer review program to keep dollars on core operations.

These changes save minutes across thousands of interactions. Those minutes add up to real capacity.

Back to Ombudsperson Chalke.

Jay Chalke: I also want to acknowledge something that underpins all of this, namely our staff. The result of…. You may be familiar with something called the workplace engagement survey, which is a survey that is carried out across those people who are employed under the Public Service Act, which my staff are. It placed our office at an engagement score of 83, which reflects the positive work environment and the work that we do.

The important thing I want to say to you here, though, is that that matters. Obviously, it reflects high engagement and high morale. But it matters more than that, because high engagement increases employee retention, thereby reducing turnover, vacancies and onboarding time, all of which protect continuity and operational costs.

This is particularly true in our field. There’s no university degree in ombudsing. Our staff come to us from various backgrounds, but only rarely does that include ombuds experience. They learn on the job and from our in-house training, and that costs money. So high retention is, itself, an efficiency step.

[11:30 a.m.]

With that foundation, I’d like to turn to the pressures we’re seeing that directly impact the targeted request before you. The last few years have brought not just more matters but, as you heard last year, more complex matters. This year we began formally measuring complexity so we could better analyze what our investigators have been experiencing on the ground. That early data confirms what we’re seeing every day.

Files are becoming more layered, more serious and more time-sensitive. Nearly half of our settled complaints now involve complicated, multi-layered issues, and those files take about 50 percent longer to investigate.

In 85 percent of those complex files, our investigators face at least one of three things that significantly slow our work.

One, missing or incomplete records, which means we must reconstruct what happened across multiple systems before we can even assess fairness, sometimes involving having to interview public officials.

Secondly, multiple issues in a single complaint. For example, a housing matter that also involves health or income assistance and child and family supports. So each issue, because it often deals with multiple public authorities, must be assessed separately and under different legal and regulatory frameworks.

Then thirdly, traumatic or sensitive subject matter, where proceeding carefully to avoid re-traumatizing the person or family involved.

I want to make this tangible. In our most recent annual report, we report on a very painful case, a complex file we’ve handled recently, which involved a young man named Darwyn. Darwyn had multiple disabilities and serious heart conditions, and he died when he was 16. In the last two years of his life, his palliative care relied on a patchwork of ministries, health authorities, private and semi-private contractors, specialists and non-profits, each responsible for a different piece, but none directly accountable for the whole.

His parents described delays in getting him the pain medication he needed, confusion about who to call when he went into medical decline and a system that felt fragmented at the time they needed it the most. Darwyn’s story shows in a very real way what fragmentation in the health system looks like and what it feels like for a family. His parents came to us after his death because they wanted to make sure other children with complexities wouldn’t go through what their family had.

Our investigation required reviewing extensive records, coordinating with multiple public bodies and handling deeply sensitive subject matter. This is the kind of layered, multi-agency file we’re seeing more often — not to that degree, but it’s an example — and it can’t be rushed.

We’re also seeing more people in crisis. Since the pandemic, we’ve had more calls where the person is at risk of self-harm or is in otherwise immediate distress. Communicating effectively and safely in those moments takes time, skill and a trauma-informed approach. It’s necessary work, but it’s not fast work.

Another factor shaping our caseload is a complaint checker online. It’s a significant efficiency tool — you can find it on our website, if you’re interested — by helping people self-screen their issues, find the right pathway and resolve straightforward matters without staff intervention. That reduces calls that don’t need us, but it also means that the files that do reach us are more serious, more layered and more often within our jurisdiction. In other words, fewer easy calls, more hard ones.

Stephanie’s now going to address three other factors impacting demand: pressures on internal complaint systems, PIDA expansion and outreach.

Stephanie Garrett: Internal complaint systems within public bodies are themselves strained in many places. We’re increasingly hearing from people who tell us they were advised by a public body to come straight to us because that public body couldn’t meet its own timelines. Sometimes we agree that it’s not fair to send someone back into a system that’s already failing them, particularly where there is a risk-to-harm or trauma involved. Those are appropriate decisions, but they do add to our investigative workload.

PIDA expansion is another driver. As more public bodies have come under the act and confidence in the system grows, we’re receiving more disclosures of potential wrongdoing. These files are often complex, sensitive and document-heavy. We have implemented efficiencies, including streamlining approvals, greater delegation to reduce bottlenecks and earlier right-sizing of scope, but they don’t erase our workload.

We’re also seeing the impact of our outreach. Our office has invested in reaching Indigenous and underserved communities across the province, people who may not know that we exist or may not trust that government will hear them. When people from these communities bring concerns to us, it takes time to build safety, to listen fully, to honour their experiences that they share with us. As awareness grows, people who face real barriers are finding their way to our office.

[11:35 a.m.]

One recent example. Late last November, we heard from a grandmother who was caring for her daughter and her four grandchildren. She had applied for a crisis supplement for urgent financial need because her natural gas service had been disconnected, but she was told no. The result was immediate and very real. Her natural gas was shut off, and the whole family went an entire week without heat or hot water in winter.

When she reached out to us, our team identified urgency. We triaged immediately and asked the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction to reassess. The ministry did. Eligibility was confirmed, funds were issued, and the heat and hot water were restored, all within six days. So on the one hand, it can seem like a pretty small administrative error, but imagine what the impact was on that family living without heat and hot water, and that was in the winter.

Jay Chalke: So to be clear, if budget constraints continue to tighten, even our ability to protect timeliness on urgent matters will be at risk. We cannot allow a situation where a child going without heat or a person in crisis or someone facing immediate harm has to wait because the line is too long, but without capacity, that’s the direction this pressure moves us.

In fiscal ’25-26, this year, this committee provided 2 percent for inflation, when 4.2 percent was the actual cost of inflation to us. That gap is an ongoing base pressure. It’s meaning that we started this year already stretched, and we’re thinner than we’d planned.

At the same time, the broader fiscal environment means many public bodies are being asked to reduce spending or hold vacancies, and when that happens, services slow down and, as I said, internal complaint systems struggle, and more people turn to us for help. During the recent job action by the BCGEU, for instance, we saw a 44 percent increase in calls to our office.

So we’re facing a simple but important reality. Our budget is tightening at the same time that demand and complexity are rising, and that’s the paradox at the heart of ombuds work. As mentioned earlier, our workload is counter-cyclical. When governments tighten, our caseload increases. It’s common sense, but it’s precisely the time when fair and timely oversight is most needed.

We’re a demand-driven service. People will come to us when public services fail them. The only thing that changes with insufficient capacity for us is how long they’re going to wait and which issues we can meaningfully investigate. So with that reality in mind, we’ve prepared a budget submission before you today.

Before we begin, none of this is for new initiatives. This request is entirely about supporting our core functions so that people get timely fair service.

For ’26-27, our operating budget request is $17.692 million. That reflects three things: unavoidable wage and non-wage inflation; annualization of previously approved ongoing resources; and a small but crucial investment in capacity designed to reduce wait times, two investigators and one investigations manager.

Dave’s going to speak to the wage and non-wage inflation and annualization issues, and then I’ll pick up the other one.

Dave Van Swieten: Thanks, Jay.

Starting with the unavoidable wage and non-wage inflation, if you look at the overall increase in our salary budget, the majority is driven by wage inflation from the recent BCGEU settlement. In fiscal ’25-26, funding provided covered 2 percent of that settlement. Today’s request picks up the remaining 1 percent and then builds in a 3 percent settlement for ’26-27. These wage inflation pieces account for roughly $475,000 of the increase in salaries and benefits, or just over 4 percent.

Shifting to non-wage inflation, we’ve applied a 2 percent non-wage inflation factor, about $54,000, to the areas where unit costs are rising. The 2 percent is consistent with the B.C. Stats consumer price index.

The next piece is annualization. For the fiscal year ’25-26, several positions were approved which only included partial-year funding. This budget submission carries those previously approved positions for a full 12 months. Annualization accounts for about $286,000.

Jay Chalke: The final component in our request is the only new addition to support ongoing operations, and that’s two investigators and one manager of investigations, at a cost of $435,000. These roles are targeted, they’re not expansive, and they respond directly to the pressures that we’ve identified. Two investigators would allow us to complete about 130 additional investigations annually. That’s really the smallest cost-effective step that we can meaningfully reduce wait times without compromising the quality that people deserve.

[11:40 a.m.]

The investigations manager is equally important. Today a single manager can oversee up to 11 direct reports. That’s beyond what’s reasonable in a high-risk, high-judgment oversight environment. A new manager will allow us to reorganize existing teams into more effective units, ensure files are reviewed more frequently and risks managed appropriately and will free our current manager to pick up additional responsibilities that have arisen from recent organizational changes.

In short, the three positions are critical to reducing delays, managing risk and keeping pace with the rising complexity of our work. They’re not to launch new functions but to protect the core services the Legislature has already instructed us to deliver. That covers the operating side.

Briefly, on capital, our capital request is $87,000, which is significantly down this year due to a reduced requirement from my office to contribute to the shared IT infrastructure with the other independent offices.

Stepping back, I just want to underline two points for the committee. As I said, this is not a request to launch new programs. It’s about keeping pace with inflation, fully funding positions that were already approved and making one targeted investment in three roles that will both reduce wait times and manage risk as complaints and disclosures become more complex, including in areas like AI-driven decision-making.

Second, we’re already managing as close to the line as we reasonably can. Over the past three years, as I mentioned, our average expenditures are over 99 percent of our budget. We don’t have large recurring surpluses that could be used to absorb the pressures I just described.

I have listened as you’ve asked some of the other officers who have been here before you what they would do if the funding that they’re requesting wasn’t forthcoming. For some of them, those with highly discretionary mandates, their reply was that they would do less work, take on less work. They’re fortunate enough to have that availability under the respective laws that mandate them. They can turn the tap down.

My office is not so lucky. When we receive a jurisdictional complaint about over a thousand public bodies from a member of the public, we have statutory duties. Our ability to not start or to end an investigation is limited to criteria set out in the Ombudsperson Act. One of those reasons is not that we don’t have enough money. When we get those 31 new matters every day, we can’t say to number 29 or 30 or 31 that we’re done for the day and we’re not receiving their complaint. We take their matter, and we somehow have to address it.

Let me take a moment to outline, in plain terms, what it would mean if this request were not funded. If we don’t receive the funding, we’ll continue to serve the public as best we can, but we’ll have to revise our service plan to stay within our existing budget, and that would have real, tangible consequences — and, primarily, caseload pressures would increase.

With proportionally fewer investigators to handle a rising volume of complex complaints, people will have to wait longer for their matters to be resolved. Non-urgent matters will have to wait significantly longer. Remember we’re the office people turn to when they’re impacted by undue delay by those thousand public bodies. We can’t become a place that replicates delay.

Workload pressures would also increase the rate of attrition. When staff operate at maximum capacity for extended periods, the risk of burnout and turnover rises. Losing experienced investigators leads to short-term service degradation and long-term impacts, vacancies, slower file completion and the loss of expertise that’s essential for handling complex complaints. A reduction in employee retention costs money. These aren’t hypothetical risks. They’re the practical consequence of trying to deliver a demand-driven service when demand is rising and resources remain static.

Last year we received 7,307 inquiries and complaints under the Ombudsperson Act and 300 inquiries, advice requests and disclosure reports under the Public Interest Disclosure Act — those 31 fairness or wrongdoing concerns every day. The fiscal environment that tightens belts across more than those 1,000 public bodies also increases the matters that reach us. Our role is countercyclical. We’ve tightened our own belt first, moving dollars within our budget, changing how we work, and reducing reliance on external vendors.

The request before you, we believe, is narrow and targeted. It protects timeliness. It protects quality and risk management. It protects the investment that we have made, with this committee’s support, in prevention, and it protects fairness for people who don’t have another option. It’s an access-to-justice mechanism.

Chair and members, in a tight year we brought you a lean request focused on timeliness, complexity and sustaining the core. We’ve already delivered savings and efficiencies, and we have more demand, more complexity and greater public need just at the moment when oversight is most essential. Approving this budget will allow us to continue providing to B.C. what they deserve from their public services: fair process, clear reasons and practical solutions.

Thanks for your time. We’d be happy to answer your questions.

[11:45 a.m.]

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much for that presentation. We’ll now move to questions by members.

Darlene Rotchford: The business case for traditional Ombudsperson officer FTEs to investigate complaints under the act presented last spring indicated that while the office was still complying with statistics for 2024, it appeared that there was a 13 percent increase in jurisdictional complaints.

The office is now requesting additional investigators for ’26-27. What was the actual increase in jurisdictional complaints? Did you guys have a percentage? What was it?

Jay Chalke: The actual number?

Darlene Rotchford: Yeah. The percentage of what the increase was.

Jay Chalke: I’m not 100 percent sure. I do know that our overall complaints and inquiries are up about 300. That includes things that aren’t necessarily investigations. Of those 7,307, jurisdictional went from 4,745 to 5,106 — about 400 of those numbers.

Darlene Rotchford: Thank you. The budget submission notes that the cost of the three requested FTEs is about $435,000 operating and about $6,000 capital for ’26-27.

What are the costs for the two investigators for ’26-27, ’27-28 and ’28-29?

Jay Chalke: Stephanie will look at the question of the cost of the investigators specifically.

I can assure you that these are fully annualized positions, unlike last year, when we were only in front of you partway through the year. Inevitably, our request for this fiscal year, the one we’re in right now, was for only a partial year, because the year was already going by the time we were in front of the committee. We had non-full-year positions.

That’s why, as Dave described, we have some annualization impact for next year, whereas these positions all would start on April 1. There’s no annualization impact in subsequent years. The only impact would be wage inflation, if that were to occur subsequently.

Dave, do you have the answer on the investigators?

Dave Van Swieten: I have. The answer I’d offer to that one is that the total cost you see is for three resources, and that’s all costs in — support costs, benefits and salary. The classifications are fairly close in the position, so I would say two-thirds of that is for the actual investigators. Going forward we factored in a 3 percent lift each of the years to mirror the BCGEU settlement that was recently reached.

Darlene Rotchford: Thank you for that. I have just one more question.

Last spring your office requested supplementary funding for four Ombudsperson officers, an early resolution officer and a manager of investigations. The committee requested that you prioritize these positions in order of the importance. You ranked the manager of investigations as the lowest. The committee subsequently approved funding for the three positions but declined the early resolution officer and the manager of investigations.

Is the manager position now being requested again for ’26-27?

Jay Chalke: It is being requested again for ’26-27. What we’ve found is that we’re continuing to strain, and it’s an important need. I don’t recall ranking those positions last year, but I am aware that the position wasn’t funded last year.

Darlene Rotchford: Thank you for your answers.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much. Other questions?

Donegal Wilson: Thank you for coming. Bear with me, as I’m new to the committee.

I understand that last spring the committee approved funding for three FTE Ombudsperson officers, a continuous improvement analyst and one FTE for AI digital fairness.

What is the status of hiring for those positions?

Jay Chalke: Those two are hired.

Donegal Wilson: They’re hired? Okay. It sounds like we also approved $30,000 for the reassignment of two early resolution officer FTEs to serve in a new role as intake team leads.

Did that occur?

Jay Chalke: Yes, absolutely.

[11:50 a.m.]

Donegal Wilson: Okay. Then the budget submission states that the office reallocated a portion of intake resources to establish a complaints analyst role. Is there any connection between this role and the reallocation last spring?

Jay Chalke: No. Without being too hierarchical about how I describe this, the complaint analyst role is the first person that you would encounter if you called us. The team leads are team leads for the second person that you would contact with us, which are early resolution officers. So a matter would go from a complaint analyst to an early resolution officer, and then we have those two team leads that you referred to. They supervise those people.

Donegal Wilson: I think this one is probably straightforward. Your office is requesting a 3 percent wage inflation for ’26-27, ’27-28, ’28-29 as well as a 1 percent top-up for ’26-27 to address the impact of the 3 percent lift for the ’25-26 related to the BCGEU collective agreement. Are you proposing a 1 percent retroactive payment?

Jay Chalke: All right. I’m going to ask Dave to speak to the sort of wage-inflation basis, but yes, that is correct.

Dave Van Swieten: A similar question was asked earlier. At this point, we’re not asking for any supplementary funding for any wage increases for this year. Again, we monitor our budget monthly, and as we get closer to the fiscal year end, we’ll make an assessment if the budget can support the wage lift that was implemented April 1, 2025 for this year. But at this point, we don’t anticipate asking.

Donegal Wilson: Just one more.

The budget submission notes that the office is not requesting funding for in-band increases for ’26-27. Is that true or not?

Jay Chalke: That’s correct.

Donegal Wilson: Okay. Will you be doing in-band increases through other methods?

Jay Chalke: We intend to. I will explain that that salary approach is, basically, because we are in a circumstance where retention in an organization like ours is extremely important, as you might imagine. People don’t necessarily have the career opportunities that they would have if they worked, let’s say, in ministries, for example. So, yes, that would be our intention.

Donegal Wilson: Supplemental to that, then: what is the anticipated in-band increase for ’26-27?

Jay Chalke: Give us a moment. Not sure that we….

Dave Van Swieten: We don’t have the exact figure in front of us, but in past analysis we’ve done it’s roughly just under 1 percent per year that that ends up costing the organization.

The lift isn’t done for all staff every year. It’s done based on sort of three, six and nine years of service. So there are some years where…. There are two years of periods where someone will not receive that increase. Because of that, we felt we could look at absorbing that and assess it as the fiscal year goes on.

Sunita Dhir: I thank you for your presentation.

I have a question about your corporate shared services. Your office and other offices under corporate shared services have noted that two items proposed in the IT modernization project for ’26-27 were eliminated. Which two items were eliminated, and is this funding being returned or reallocated to other cost pressures?

Jay Chalke: I’ll ask Dave to speak to that.

Dave Van Swieten: There was a similar question asked earlier, and it’s the same answer. The two projects that were eliminated from the request were the HR applicant tracking system as well as the building of a test environment for the IT team.

The funding was a year 2 request made in the spring. What we’ve essentially done is looked at the fiscal impact and decided to not request that funding. So it’s not actually funding we can give back, because we actually don’t have it to start with.

We found other ways of achieving both of those projects in the current fiscal year.

Steve Morissette: Thank you for the presentation. The office reported a $222,000, or 1 percent, operating underspend for ’24-25. Are you on track for similar in ’25-26?

Jay Chalke: We’re monitoring. Obviously, we monitor through the year. We manage our budget pretty intensely through the year.

I think if you look at the past three years together, it comes out at around an 0.8 percent underspend, another 99.2 percent spent.

[11:55 a.m.]

I’m expecting that we’re going to be pretty close to the line again this year. Right now we’re working hard not to overspend, which we don’t intend to do. But that involves managing our budget every week, and that’s what the good people I work with have to do.

I think we’ll get there. But, you know, it’s certainly not a given and not something that we don’t spend considerable time on through the year.

Steve Morissette: In your budget submission notes, savings from a reduction in building occupancy fixed costs were reallocated to address cost pressures. Could you provide details on this reduction in costs in your office’s current lease agreement, like the length of agreement and square footage? How many of your staff work in office versus remotely?

Jay Chalke: I’ll turn the building occupancy over to Dave, and then I’ll come back and deal with the question about staff in the office.

Dave Van Swieten: Again, it’s a similar question that was asked earlier of another office, but of course Ombuds is distinct in its space. The lease agreement we signed was for ten years, and the cost savings achieved was the reduction of the fixed cost portion of the lease from $36 a square foot to $32 a square foot. The total square feet of the space that the Ombudsperson occupies is 17,744 square feet.

Did that answer the building occupancy question?

Steve Morissette: Yes.

Dave Van Swieten: I’ll turn it back to Jay.

Jay Chalke: In terms of the number of people in the office each day to work, this committee will be familiar with the fact that because the Public Interest Disclosure Act was implemented in these seven phases, I’ve been in front of the committee each year as more and more public bodies were added to the coverage of the act. This committee has understood the workload impact of that, and we’ve added staff.

But since 2020, we have not requested any additional square footage space or real estate space to accompany those staff. The first couple of years, it was because of the pandemic. We didn’t need incremental space. Then following the pandemic, we adopted a hybrid model of work. So even in those years, we didn’t seek incremental square footage.

What we do now is sometimes we have offices where multiple people work on different days of the week in those offices. Some days we’re full. Some days we’re about two-thirds full. We could not accommodate everybody in our office if they all showed up on one day. When we all have to meet, sometimes we have to go elsewhere to do so.

Typically, I would say somewhere in the range of 65 to 70 percent on any given workday would be about the range.

Steve Morissette: Just one more, if I could. I assume the demand in service…. You must triage the requests that come in. For those that are of lesser importance or less urgent, typically, what would be a wait time?

Jay Chalke: Great question. It’s something we deal with all the time.

When people come to us there are pretty much six pathways that people will go through. I won’t take you through all. But to get to your question, the pathway that is a jurisdictional complaint, where they have done what they can to resolve the problem themselves, and we accept for investigation, but it’s not urgent…. It’s not life, health or safety. It’s not somebody in custody. It’s not a young person. It doesn’t meet any of those criteria for more urgent cases.

It’s around 8 percent of our cases. Very typically, it would be not unusual in those sorts of cases for someone to wait for the matter to be assigned to an investigator for somewhere in the range of four months, six months — even to be assigned to the investigator.

That’s too long for those non-urgent cases, but it’s essential that we give priority to those life, health, safety cases. But for that person who’s making that complaint, that’s their only complaint. For them to be told: “Well, you have to wait this period of time….” You know, my concern is that for that 8 percent of our cases, that’s too long. That is something that we don’t want to see get any longer, for sure, and would like to reduce.

[12:00 p.m.]

Once the investigation starts, then we look at how long an investigation takes, and that’s not so based on urgency. That’s much more based on the type of investigation it is, the challenges that we might have in conducting the investigation, the number of witnesses we need to talk to, the availability of records, all of those sort of factors.

Those aren’t really related to the urgency question, which I think is underlying what you’re asking about. Some of those investigations we can do in a day. Some of those investigations, once we start, take years.

Steve Morissette: Thank you for the fulsome answer. I appreciate it.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much. Any other questions from other members?

Okay. Seeing none, thank you so much for coming and presenting to us. Again, thank you for your service to the province and to British Columbians over the last many years. We wish you the best in the future, if not retirement.

Jay Chalke: Thank you. If I could just take a moment, just specifically about my relationship with this committee. My first appearance before you was July 15, 2015, a day I remember well. I have been in front of this committee I don’t know how many times, but so many — maybe not as many as Dave Van Swieten, but getting up there.

I want to thank you and all the members of the committee, the previous members of the committee and the staff of the Legislature for the support, attention and care that you’ve always paid to every appearance that I’ve had the opportunity to be part of.

You have an incredibly important job in both superintending and supporting the independent officers as we conduct our oversight work. It’s essential to democracy, and you’re really that linchpin between our democratic institutions and our offices. I just wanted to say thank you very much for that over the last decade.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much for that.

That will end our morning session. We will take a break for lunch and reconvene.

The committee recessed from 12:01 p.m. to 12:45 p.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): Okay. We are back. Thank you for returning.

I will call the meeting back to order and seek a motion to meet in camera for deliberations.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 12:46 p.m. to 1:32 p.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): The committee is now in public session. We’ll take a one-minute recess while they are settled in. Thank you.

The committee recessed from 1:32 p.m. to 1:33 p.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): Welcome back. Next up, we have David McCoy, Merit Commissioner. You have 20 minutes for your presentation, followed by 25 minutes for questions from the committee. We do have a timer on the screen today to help us stay on schedule.

I will now turn it over to you, David, if you’d like to introduce your team and begin your presentation.

Office of the Merit Commissioner

David McCoy: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Chair, and good afternoon, everybody. My name is David McCoy, the Merit Commissioner. With me is Elizabeth Maurer, my deputy commissioner, and Dave Van Swieten, deputy commissioner of corporate services, who you may recognize. Thank you, again, for inviting me here once again. I appreciate your time, particularly when we’re the second-to-last of many presentations that you’ve heard from independent offices.

I would like to begin by acknowledging with respect that we are meeting on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking Peoples, known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. Our office respectfully acknowledges that our work extends across the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples within what we now call British Columbia.

I appreciate this opportunity to come before the committee today for a budget request of $1.774 million for fiscal 2026-27. I’ve already had the pleasure of talking with some of you before, so I won’t dwell on an in-depth overview of my office.

[1:35 p.m.]

However, with a few new members on the committee, I’ll briefly speak to my mandate. I hope this will provide some context for the efforts my office has made to manage costs this year without sacrificing service to the Legislative Assembly and the citizens of British Columbia.

As Merit Commissioner, the largest part of my mandate and my budget is providing independent oversight of the hiring practices for those organizations and ministries who hire under the Public Service Act, of which there are 69.

British Columbia is well served when its public servants are hired on the principle of merit through a fair, impartial and transparent process and candidates are treated consistently. There is an incredible diversity of work that needs to be done in British Columbia by our public servants, from mining and natural resource development to social services and health care and from managing the province’s finances to emergency preparedness.

All of these important sectors require employees who are qualified for their role, who are engaged in what they do and who have a trusting and foundational relationship with their employer. To deliver on government’s commitments requiring hiring the right people for the right roles through a fair and merit-based process, merit-based hiring is a key foundation of a successful public service. All British Columbians need to be assured that those who serve them are hired through fair and non-partisan hiring practices. This is where I seek to provide such assurance.

For those of you who are new to the committee, I provide independent oversight of hiring in two ways, with the support of my office. Very briefly, to provide some context for the budget request…. First, I have a mandate under the Public Service Act to conduct random quarterly audits of public service hiring. We conduct an annual merit performance audit program, and I report the findings to deputy ministers and other organizational heads throughout the year. I report publicly as well, including in my annual report and a detailed audit report, which comes out next month.

Second, I provide employees with somewhere to go when they believe that the hiring process in which they participated was not based on merit. I conduct a thorough investigation into such allegations, providing findings and directions to the deputy ministers and organizational heads in terms of the outcome of their competition in question. The scope of this is outlined in the legislation under the Public Service Act and the review of staffing decisions regulation.

I am here to ensure that employee applicants who have concerns about a competition are investigated in a timely, transparent, fair and merit-based way. This is a critical part of my mandate, in which I conduct reviews of staffing decisions through a formal process subject only to judicial review — however, only available to unsuccessful employee applicants to bargaining unit positions.

On top of this oversight, investigation and reporting, my office provides guidance based on our data and analysis to support the public service in enhancing merit-based hiring. For example, in July of this year, my office published a special investigative study on the shortlisting stage of recent hiring activities, and our annual report identified significant deficiencies in this area of hiring.

As you may also be aware, public service hiring is being managed tightly at this time as a part of managing in this current fiscal climate. When organizations are under pressure to deliver services with fewer options to hire, this can create conditions that may pose challenges to merit-based hiring.

My office and I are here to audit public service hiring to ensure that if hiring managers begin to struggle with new challenges, organizations get the feedback to correct these errors and maintain public confidence. I want to be able to assure the Legislative Assembly and British Columbians that public service hiring continues to meet high standards and remains merit-based.

The final and third piece of my mandate is to review just cause dismissal processes where these reviews of administrative fairness were an important outcome of the Ombudsperson’s Misfire report into the Ministry of Health firings, 2014.

For the whole committee, I can share a brief update that this year, in addition to our regular reviews of dismissal processes, I plan to complete our reviews of the COVID-19-related dismissals, with the help of the supplemental amount that this committee granted me in April of this year.

Now to the budget request. Today I brought forward to this committee a modest request. I understand the fiscal pressures that British Columbia is facing, and the amounts I’ve put forward are to cover only the costs of our core services. The budget request I’m making for ’26-27 is for a budget amount of $1.774 million in operating and $29,000 for capital.

Two adjustments for savings were made in my budget submission. First, this committee granted my office a supplementary amount of $10,000 for the COVID-19 vaccination dismissal reviews earlier this calendar year.

[1:40 p.m.]

I’ve removed that one-time amount from this year’s request. I also reduced the amount for a joint IT modernization project, something I’m sure you have heard about from my colleagues who have presented earlier today.

The increase in my budget request over the prior year is entirely inflation-based. The largest portion of inflation is a result of the BCGEU’s recent settlement of a 3 percent wage increase effective April 1, 2025. Although this inflation amount is now defined for schedule A positions, a similar amount is anticipated for positions in excluded classifications.

This same wage inflation that affects my office also impacts a proportional contribution that my office makes in supporting the corporate shared services model.

I would put forward that, given the significant depth of expertise needed for the specialized work of this office, as well as the strength of teamwork needed for such a small team to accomplish as much as we do, the cost of continuing to fund salary inflation is much less than the cost and risks of employee turnover.

The other portion of my operating cost is a small request for $8,000 for non-wage inflation. This is calculated at 2 percent consumer price index and has been applied to a small number of expenditures that have anticipated increases in unit costs.

In total, this year’s operating budget request of $1.774 million is a 1.6 percent increase from 2025-26.

Now onto the capital costs. Our increase in capital costs over the prior year is a function of the shared-services model that we use for IT services, which reduces our overall costs. Every four years, each of the four independent offices takes their turn in purchasing equipment required to maintain the IT infrastructure. These costs fluctuate from year to year for each office. The IT team schedules replacement needs on a five-year cycle.

This year is my year, and my office’s contribution under the arrangement must be larger than last year and previous years. It will purchase a new domain controller, which is a type of server, that will keep the data centre running effectively and significantly reduce the risk of failure that can be caused by using older equipment in production. It’s for all four offices.

This is my budget request overview. I’ll turn now to share details that I alluded to in my submission about ways that my office has worked to reduce costs and will continue to do so.

My team and I have been and continue to be committed to fiscal prudence, even as the team has faced some challenges this year. We’re not a large team, and, as I shared in my submission, we’ve had the challenge of working short-handed for a good part of this year due to long-term absences experienced on my seven-person team.

Understanding the province’s difficult financial climate, I did not seek supplementary funding to fill the gap. This is in part because I was able to build internal expertise. The team was able, temporarily at least, to shoulder the unplanned additional workload. It’s also a testament to the staff’s teamwork that we have been able to proceed in the short term without additional funds and without sacrificing quality in our audits, reviews or publications.

To continue to get our core work done within budget in the face of these staffing gaps will be our challenge from now to the end of the fiscal year.

Returning to the cost savings from this year, strong teamwork and having the right bench strength for this complex work both remain critical to our success. To that end, I’ve continued to focus on learning and development, maintaining a respectful and psychologically safe workplace and building an engaged and empowered team. In doing so, I’ve taken a cost-savings approach.

For example, we focused on learning and development on low-cost or no-cost opportunities, such as conducting in-house workshops on topics like effective writing and artificial intelligence. Where possible, we’ve done work in-house rather than going to external vendors — for example, conducting staffing review investigations internally as both a development opportunity and a cost-savings opportunity.

Another area where I found savings is in communication costs. To protect fairness in hiring and dismissal processes, it is critical that my office communicates effectively and more accessibly. Such efforts often mean increased costs. I arranged to reduce these costs, however, by collaborating with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner to use the services of their expert communications staff already established.

This has helped us to achieve our goal in a more cost-effective manner than if we had contracted out this work. It also supports my fellow officer of the Legislature in his budgetary pursuits.

From a cost-saving perspective, my office continues to collaborate with three other independent offices of the Legislature through the use of the corporate shared services model, which allows us to leverage common administrative support for finance, human resource and information technology.

[1:45 p.m.]

Members of my team maintain a passionate focus on continuous improvement. As an example, they have identified improvements in our new case management system to reduce manual work, and they reduced duplication in workflows to save time and costs. These steps, along with reallocating some responsibilities on the team, have allowed us over the past year to streamline daily operations in all three of our lines of business.

Finally, as I outlined in my submission, we conducted a detailed review of prior years expenditures and reallocated funding from underspent areas to cover areas where we anticipate a higher spending rate. You’ll be able to see that in the STOB reallocation table in appendix A of the submission.

I’ll end there and would like to express again my appreciation for your time and attention, and I welcome any questions that you may have.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. We’ll now turn to questions by members.

Donegal Wilson: Thank you very much for the presentation.

Your office’s budget submission noted workload challenges due to long-term employees on leave. Have those employees returned to work, or what is the anticipated return date?

David McCoy: They have not returned to work, and we do not have an anticipated date.

Donegal Wilson: Can you describe, then, the strategies or what your office has implemented to manage that challenge?

David McCoy: What we initially had to do was work harder with fewer. We have some money for some temporary backfilling now. It literally just began last week. We’ll do what we can within our budget confines. After that, we’ll triple up again.

Donegal Wilson: Yeah. I’m not going to ask that one.

David McCoy: Sorry, can I ask Elizabeth to add to that?

Donegal Wilson: Sure.

Elizabeth Maurer: I will shout out to my team if they’re listening, because that working harder has also been working smarter. We’ve got a lot of deep expertise but also a real commitment to teamwork in our little team, so they have stepped up very graciously but also looking always for opportunities to do things more effectively, more efficiently.

One of the things that we also did was come to this committee two years ago to look at bringing some of our internal auditing in-house, partly to build a bit of a talent pipeline so that we could build some of the deep expertise internally on the team in the office with us. Then if we had a vacancy at this other level, we would have somebody internally that we could help fill those kinds of gaps.

Of course, you never want to have gaps, but we were happy that we had done that because it helped us this year that we had put that in place. So that’s one of the strategies that we’ve been happy to take advantage of.

Donegal Wilson: Thank you. Just on that then, I think there was overspend on professional services due to external audit contractors. You brought it in-house, yet there’s still an increase in this STOB. So what is the…?

Elizabeth Maurer: In the professional services STOB?

Donegal Wilson: Yeah.

David McCoy: Because it was our first year of building the talent pipeline, we were still bringing this new person up to scratch at the level that we need, that our external auditors were doing. So during this transition year, there was an overlap in costs, and therefore you wouldn’t have seen the drop that you will next time.

Donegal Wilson: Your office’s budget request includes a reallocation of $12,000 from base salaries over to legislative salaries and indemnities to accommodate for employment benefits related to your position. Noting that the base salaries face consistent financial pressure and that the office is maintaining this reallocation in outer fiscal years, how is this office managing the reduction of funding and base salaries?

Dave Van Swieten: If I can repeat the question back. We reallocated some funding from STOB 50 to 54, so base salaries to commissioner’s salaries. Not having the numbers specifically in front of me, the corporate memory goes that a number of years ago, there were many senior staff who were being paid at the top of their band. When they left, we brought in staff that, of course, have some more learning to do and weren’t at the top of their band.

[1:50 p.m.]

So we looked to inflation to repopulate that STOB 50 salary budget, and we used the delta between the two — that $12,000 — to top up the commissioner’s salary, based on the new compensation package that was introduced when Commissioner McCoy started.

Donegal Wilson: Thank you for the answer. That clarified it.

Your office received funding in ’24-25 for a program audit analyst. Your current submission states it’s now providing coverage for the other staff on leave, so sort of seconded into that. Noting that your office is seeking to increase its professional services budget, is there still an expectation that this position will reduce that reliance going forward?

David McCoy: Yes. That was our talent pipeline person. That person was trained up and then moved up, due to unplanned absences of two. Only could do, of course, one. Then when that absence issue sorts itself out, that person will return back to their base role.

In the meantime, we backed up very temporarily to try and relieve the pressures off that external STOB account and keep some of the audit inside. But it takes at least six months to become really familiar with audit. It’s pretty detailed work. But we’re doing our best to get there.

Donegal Wilson: Thank you for your work, and I appreciate your detailed answers.

Steve Morissette: Thank you for the presentation. Your office has noted that two items proposed in the IT modernization project for ’26-27 were eliminated. Which two items were eliminated? Is this funding being returned, reallocated to other cost pressures?

David McCoy: I’m going to let Dave take this one, if you don’t mind.

Dave Van Swieten: Sure. Basically, the IT modernization budget as proposed earlier this calendar year…. The proposal covered two fiscal years. The funding that was requested in grant for the current fiscal year, all those projects are well underway, and most of them are actually completed.

The year 2 funding contemplated two projects, which were the HR applicant tracking system as well as the development of an IT test environment for introducing new software or making changes. We withdrew those requests as part of this submission, so it’s actually not there. It’s not funding we received. It’s actually cost avoidance, is how we’d explain it. We’re still getting those projects done, but just using existing resources.

Steve Morissette: Good, thank you.

Also, your office’s budget request includes a 4 percent increase for STOB 85, which, it notes, is related to the BCGEU collective agreement. Could you please clarify how the collective agreement impacts your office’s contributions toward the corporate shared services agreement?

David McCoy: Yes, but I’m going to ask Dave because he’s the expert on this.

Dave Van Swieten: That’s absolutely why I’m here, Dave. Thank you.

If you look…. The BCGEU agreement applies to salaries. As an accountant, I love this stuff, but as a layperson, I understand it’s a little trickier to follow. When you look at the budget submissions, it talks about salaries in the STOBs 50-to-54 range. Here’s this lonely STOB 85 at the bottom that has salary pressures. What’s that about?

The way the accounting works, it’s a recovery from the other programs. It’s an expense for Commissioner McCoy in STOB 85. The dollars that come to corporate shared services — 95 percent of those cover salaries. Without that STOB 85 wage inflation contributed by the three shared offices, it would fall to the Ombudsperson to cover all the wage inflation for services that are being provided to the three other offices. So it’s broken out that way from an accounting perspective.

Steve Morissette: Okay. Your submission notes: “Savings from a reduction in building occupancy fixed costs were reallocated to address cost pressures.” Could you provide details on this reduction of costs and your office’s current lease agreement? Three-year agreement, or…?

David McCoy: Ten-year, I believe. Is it not?

Dave Van Swieten: I can take on that one, too, if you like.

David McCoy: Dave, I’m going to have to give you more money, but yes, sure.

Dave Van Swieten: Noted on Hansard: you have to give me more money. All right.

[1:55 p.m.]

The savings for the Merit Commissioner come from two sources. One is the renegotiation of the lease that saw a drop in the fixed cost component from $36 to $32. Second, credit to the Merit Commissioner, they’ve increased the densification of the space that’s utilized. For example, there wasn’t an increase in footprint, but we actually added two offices within the existing footprint. It’s a little more crowded. They need a bigger meeting room that they use in part of the common space of the building now, when they have team meetings. But essentially it was an effective measure to keep costs down. Both cost avoidance and cost savings apply here.

Steve Morissette: Good. Thank you for that. I understand that you have a very small staff, really small right now. Do you have some remote, or is everybody in the office?

David McCoy: Everybody comes in the office every week, but a minimum three-ish days and some full-time. I do feel that meeting and working in person is just that water-cooler level that you don’t get on Teams, personally. So that is something the team does, and it’s worked quite well.

Steve Morissette: Excellent. Your office has engaged in several special studies related to public service hiring. Despite this not being part of the office’s core mandate as defined in the Public Service Act, using your office’s recent study on shortlisting trends as an example, what is the resource requirement of this work?

David McCoy: Special studies — the office has done these over the last several years. Those special studies are done, no more than one a year because we just can’t do that. When we work as a team on the special studies, it’s shared. It’s not one person; it’s shared across all staff. It’s something we work on when we need a break from the solid auditing that’s going on or the investigating that’s going on or the dismissal…. When we need a break from that, we can work towards something that is to keep.

My goal is for us to always be relevant to the public service and the internal folks and yourselves. To do that, we want to not only provide the results; we also want to provide some of the things that maybe we can make recommendations for fixes. So we’re doing both. But as you said, court work comes first, and if we’re down a set of hands, then that’s the one thing that would come off the table.

Steve Morissette: Thank you for your answers, and I appreciate the work you do.

Paul Choi (Chair): Any other questions?

Seeing none, thank you so much for coming and presenting to us today.

We will take a quick recess to reset the room before we hear from the next office.

The committee recessed from 1:58 p.m. to 2:06 p.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): We will get it started again. Next we will be hearing from the hon. Victoria Gray, acting Conflict of Interest Commissioner. Welcome. You have 20 minutes for your presentation, followed by 25 minutes for questions from the committee.

Before we begin, noting that Victoria’s term concludes in January, I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the committee, to express our sincere appreciation for her dedicated service as commissioner. Thanks very much.

Office of the Conflict
of Interest Commissioner

Victoria Gray: Thank you, Mr. Chair, Madam Deputy Chair, members of the committee.

This is my first appearance before this committee since the election, because I didn’t seek any supplementary funding for my office. As Mr. Chair has just pointed out, it will also be my final appearance before this committee, because my successor’s term commences in early January. So I appreciate this final opportunity to tell you about the conflict-of-interest office.

With me is Carol Hoyer, the office’s executive coordinator, who has the greatest familiarity with financial matters.

It’s nice to see everybody. I will be pretty brief, but I was going to cover four topics: a brief overview of the role of my office, a brief update on our key activities, any anticipated changes to our budget and the budget impact relating to the incoming commissioner.

First a brief overview of my role and mandate and recent changes. Our office exists to ensure that members of the Legislative Assembly act with integrity and are seen to do so. We have three staff members. One is a part-time administrative assistant, one is a full-time legal officer, and one is a full-time management person; that’s Carol.

Although our office is the smallest statutory office in B.C., it performs an important duty. The specific concern addressed by legislation is the need to prevent members from using their office as MLAs to further their private interest. Whether or not a member actually favours their private interest over the public interest, the concern is that being seen to be in that position taints the member’s conduct, and the public will lose confidence in the institution of government. That concern is mainly addressed in three ways, which I will quickly summarize.

One, all members must disclose their financial circumstances and that of certain family members. A summary is available publicly through the Clerk’s office and website. This transparency enables the public to consider whether members’ ability to perform their official duties may be affected by their financial interests.

For example, the public can learn that a member owns one or more shares in a company. If that company will be affected by proposed legislation, a member of the public can raise a concern. Another example is that the public disclosure statements enable the press to write articles about which members are tenants and which have multiple real estate holdings, on the basis that this information was relevant to government action regarding housing issues.

In B.C., the disclosure is essentially a list of the member’s assets and liabilities. This is in contrast to some jurisdictions. B.C. MLAs are not required to disclose the market value of assets or liabilities or to divest themselves of certain assets upon assuming office.

[2:10 p.m.]

The second way our legislation addresses conflicts of interest is to permit members to seek my confidential opinion. If I conclude, for example, that a member will not be in a conflict of interest in a certain situation, that opinion will be binding. As a result, the member can act with confidence on the basis of my advice.

The third way is that I can be asked to investigate complaints about a member’s conduct. Under the B.C. legislation, there are four groups of people that can make complaints. First are members of the Legislative Assembly. Second are members of the public. Third is cabinet, and the fourth is the Legislative Assembly itself. Unlike some jurisdictions, I cannot initiate a complaint myself. This gives members the comfort that by seeking my opinion, they don’t have to worry that they will essentially be fueling a complaint that I could then investigate. My office also collaborates with similar offices across Canada to coordinate the development of best practices.

Second, I will give you an overview of our key activities. Some of the information is in our annual report for the last calendar year. I will also make some comments about 2025 so far.

The annual disclosure process proceeded as usual, starting in late 2024 and into 2025. First, members provided my office with their Form 1, their confidential disclosure statement, together with other relevant forms. After that, my staff reviewed the forms to ensure proper disclosure and for returning MLAs to ensure that they were consistent with the pre-election disclosures.

I then met, virtually, with each of the 93 MLAs. My office prepared public disclosure statements summarizing the information which is made public and confirmed the accuracy with all MLAs. The public disclosure statements for all 93 MLAs were filed with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly on the same day, June 3, 2025, and the Clerk makes the documentation publicly available, both online and in person.

My office is currently preparing for the next annual financial disclosure process. Next month we will send all MLAs drafts of the forms updated with changes from any notices of material change filed with our office since their last disclosure statement.

Jeffrey Schnoor’s appointment as my successor begins January 5, 2025. He will have the opportunity to become familiar with our office, the disclosures and the MLAs, and he can then commence his first set of meetings with all MLAs.

In 2024, my office received 109 requests from members and their staff for advice. In 2023, it was 105. Most of the requests come directly from MLAs, some through constituency assistants or caucus chairs. Most advice is confirmed in writing. For this calendar year, as of mid-November, we received 97 requests from members for advice. This reflects a culture of concern about conflicts of interest and, perhaps, the significant scrutiny by the press of politicians nationally.

I did not do any formal investigations and opinions in 2024 or so far in 2025.

I’ll quickly tell you the three-stage process I use to consider complaints. The first stage is to determine whether I have jurisdiction. I have often received complaints about senior bureaucrats or municipal officials, and my jurisdiction extends only to MLAs, so I reject those non-jurisdictional complaints.

The second stage is determining whether the complainant has satisfied the statutory requirements for me to pursue the complaint. The complainant must provide reasonable and probable grounds to believe that the MLA in question has contravened the act. I will reject complaints if the evidence does not provide such reasonable and probable grounds. Typically, this would happen if the complainant does not correctly understand the legislative requirements for the MLA’s private interest to be engaged.

The third stage is designing and pursuing the necessary investigation and opinion. There were fewer total complaints in 2024 and so far in 2025 than in recent years but more complaints against MLAs which I rejected on the basis that the complaint did not provide reasonable and probable grounds.

I received 26 complaints in 2021 and 12 in 2022, many of which related to COVID and which I rejected because they were not against MLAs and, therefore, were outside my jurisdiction.

In 2023, I received four complaints, all of which were non-jurisdictional. That was 2023.

In 2024, I received three complaints, two of which were not against MLAs, and the third I rejected on a failure to provide reasonable and probable grounds.

[2:15 p.m.]

So far in 2025, I’ve received seven complaints. I rejected four because they were not against MLAs. I rejected the remaining three because I concluded there were no reasonable and probable grounds.

Sometimes people complain and give us large volumes of material. We have to wade through it and determine whether it provides any reasonable and probable grounds. But it’s not really an investigation.

In September, our office hosted the annual conference of the Canadian Conflict of Interest Network. The commissioner or a person with a similar title for all 15 jurisdictions in Canada attended. So we had a representative from all ten provinces, three territories, the House of Commons and the Senate. The 15 jurisdictions take turns hosting, and I believe the last time we hosted was 15 years ago, so it was our turn. It was very successful. The weather cooperated, too, and our expenses were on budget.

Third, I’ll make a few comments about financial and budget items. I hope you noticed that we were 18 percent under budget for 2024-2025. The main items affecting our continuing financial situation and budgeting are inflation, which is also reflected in the recent agreement with the BCGEU regarding cost-of-living increases.

While my staff are not members of the BCGEU, I try to ensure that my staff are generally treated similarly. This reflects the importance of retaining experienced staff for handling sensitive and confidential information regarding MLAs. We have retained staff. In the six years I’ve been commissioner, including the one year as acting commissioner, there was only one change of personnel, and that was because Amber Derricourt retired. So we’ve been able to retain staff.

Our budget proposal requests a minimal lift of $10,000 for staffing. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Our budget proposals for 2026-2027 are $915,000; next year, $937,000; and for the following year, $956,000; all reflecting modest anticipated cost-of-living increases.

Budget for capital expenditures previously approved for fiscal 2026-2027 is $10,000, and we’re proposing just $5,000 for the following two years.

There are some key assumptions on our budget proposal. We’ve got recurring annual building occupancy costs of $84,000. This reflects the sublease agreement we made in respect to the premises in the building we share with the Ombudsperson and other statutory officers.

We’ve included cost-of-living increases for staff for the fiscal years, a regular annual salary increase of 2 percent for the commissioner, which is what, I understand, should be in the order in council set by the Lieutenant Governor.

If our office is faced with investigations requiring unexpectedly high costs, such as for the commissioner to obtain legal counsel or court reporters or similar things, we would have to return to this committee to seek supplementary funding. Because our complaint process is driven by complaints, we cannot control or anticipate possible investigation expenses.

As you’ve heard, my term as commissioner ended last January 2025. I agreed to continue as acting commissioner until my successor could take over the position. Jeffrey Schnoor has been chosen to become commissioner effective January 5, 2026.

I understand that the arrangements made with him include paying his relocation expenses from Winnipeg. I do not know what those will be, but I assume they’ll come from my office’s budget. As well as relocation, there will be some minor expenses, things like business cards. There may be other expenses, such as new computers or other technology and travel. There might be some other minor costs, such as a payout to me for unused vacation. I’m not sure about that.

Our office remains a team of four dedicated staff supporting 93 MLAs. This staff complement enables the office to have either the commissioner or a legal officer and either the executive coordinator or the administrative assistant available virtually every business day. We did not increase our staff complement when the MLA complement increased from 87 members to 93 members.

When I was first appointed as commissioner, we had an office on the legislative precinct. When the MLA complement was increased, we were asked to find new premises. We tried hard to find something closer to the Legislature, but we couldn’t find anything as small as the four of us needed.

[2:20 p.m.]

So we moved, in 2024, to the building we share with other statutory officers. This space is only 746 square feet for the four of us, but we have the use of a staff lunchroom on another floor and boardrooms when needed and available. So our space is modest, but it meets our needs.

I’ll give a quick summary of the request for increase in funding from our prior fiscal year. We want a 2 percent lift for ’26-27, being $22,000. The breakdown of that is $10,000 on staff salaries, based on 2 percent wage inflation and 4 percent in-band increases; benefits, a $4,000 lift, based on 2.6 percent; and the legislative salary, a $6,000 increase, based on 2 percent.

For building occupancy, we are requesting a $3,000 lift to better reflect actual cost. The approved amount for 2025-26 is $81,000. The total approved budget for 2024-25 was $82,000. The actual spent was $84,000. I believe this has a bit to do with where you register some other costs, because the $84,000 is not just rent; it’s also hydro and some base supports. There has been a new lease agreement negotiated, and we expect the amount for 2026-27 to be $84,000.

I welcome any questions. I hope they’re financial so that I can turn it over to Carol. I do want to thank each of you and all the other MLAs for cooperating with me and my office over the years, which has made my job a pleasure.

Paul Choi (Chair): Thank you very much for that presentation. We’ll now turn it over to questions by members.

Sunita Dhir: Thank you, Victoria, for your service and for the presentation — and to your team. These questions are on behalf of us all. Some of them are just clarifications, because you gave us a lot of information, but in writing, you told us that you have negotiated a new lease agreement. Is that for three years, you said?

Victoria Gray: You know, I can’t remember whether it’s three or two. As you may know, for the building that houses a number of statutory officers, they negotiated a further ten-year lease. I didn’t want to hamstring my successor, so I didn’t ask to sign on for a further ten years.

I think it is better if you can be closer to the Legislature, and who knows what would happen with the rental market? I could imagine my successor looking around to find space closer to the Legislature. Although we didn’t have any luck, maybe someone else would. We just signed on. I think you’re right in that it’s another three years.

I expect that if we wanted to continue it, they would all agree, because I think we all work quite well together. I think it’s, as they say, a win-win. This space is useful for us, and I think that we’re the right kind of subtenant for the other statutory officers.

Sunita Dhir: Would it be possible for us to know the term of the lease? How long is it?

Victoria Gray: I didn’t bring it. I thought it was three years. It might be, if I sat and went through my phone, that I could figure something out. Do you want me to do that?

Sunita Dhir: Yeah, you can provide that after. That’s not urgent.

You mentioned that you have four staff sharing this 746-square-feet office. Are all of them in person, or do you have some virtual staff? How does that work?

Victoria Gray: When I say “four staff,” it’s the others and I who work — a total of 2.6, but it’s for the four of us. We all work somewhat from home, and I think that goes a fair way to helping it work with such small premises.

Sunita Dhir: So mainly virtually?

Victoria Gray: Mainly, yes. My meetings with MLAs have been generally virtual since COVID. I started doing it when COVID occurred.

[2:25 p.m.]

Then it appeared that many MLAs, particularly those who had constituencies that were far from Victoria, appreciated being able to schedule things in with their constituency times. So I’ve carried on with doing the virtual meetings. Once or twice, people have asked me in person, and I’m quite happy to do that.

Sunita Dhir: What’s the physical space being used for then? If all the meetings are virtual, does anybody work in the office at all or no?

Victoria Gray: We have a lot of financial information about MLAs, and we keep a paper copy — for a certain period — of that stuff. So the office is used for working on members’ confidential financial material and storing the paper, essentially. So we each have an office there.

Sunita Dhir: The other one is about salaries. Your submission includes 2 percent wage inflation for next year, ’26-27. You gave us a dollar amount of $5,500. What about ’27-28, ’28-29? What does that look like, the percentage and dollar amount?

Victoria Gray: I think that was all done at 2 percent, wasn’t it, Carol?

Carol Hoyer: Yes. That was 2 percent.

Sunita Dhir: Then you have an in-band increase request of 4 percent for ’26-27 for one staff. What about ’27-28 and ’28-29 for in-band increases?

Carol Hoyer: That would be me.

Victoria Gray: Just the 2 percent? Did you put 2 percent?

Sunita Dhir: So 2 percent? You have 4 percent now.

Carol Hoyer: So mine would be 4 percent at the minimum if we follow the band, because it goes 4 to 6 percent or something like that, because I’m a band 1 level. So this is actually based on 3 percent for the staff and 4 percent for me, and it’s just rounded. Does that make sense?

Sunita Dhir: Okay. Thank you.

Carol Hoyer: I can send the breakdown of that if you want.

Sunita Dhir: Do we need more information?

Interjection.

Sunita Dhir: Yes. Thank you.

Okay. So from 2023 and 2024-25, those fiscal years, the office has an average operating budget underspend of 16.3 percent. Do you anticipate a similar operating underspend for 2025-2026?

Victoria Gray: The problem is I have no idea what the relocation costs are going to be for the new commissioner. You may know better. I have no idea what it costs to pack up a household in Winnipeg and bring it here. But we have generally budgeted for travel and possibly having an investigation — some costs relating to that.

I mean, Jeffrey Schnoor in Manitoba, I think, had no investigations for four or five years, and then he’s had eight in the last calendar year. I just tell you that…. Not that he’s going to be bad luck and bring a lot of investigation, just that it’s very unpredictable what complaints will come in that do require an investigation. I know that at least with some of the ones he did in Manitoba, he ended up having to hire a legal counsel and so on.

You know, I’m still surprised that in six years, I’ve only done one formal investigation. But I was able to do it entirely in-house. We didn’t have to hire lawyers or anybody else. Between oline and myself, we were able to cover off everything I needed to for that investigation. So it depends a bit on the nature of the investigation.

Some years ago…. I mix up the territories. I think it was in Nunavut that there was an investigation, and it required legal counsel. It related to COVID. It was something like $800,000 that got spent on that investigation. A lot of that expense would have not been required in this jurisdiction owing to having a salaried commissioner who does investigations.

Without knowing the nature of the investigation, it’s actually unpredictable. But based on the time I’ve been in this position, we’ll likely underspend on the hiring of external professional services. So we would likely come in under budget, depending on the relocation costs.

Carol Hoyer: Were you asking 2025-26?

[2:30 p.m.]

Sunita Dhir: For ’25-26, yes.

Carol Hoyer: My concerns were, basically, the new commissioner’s relocation costs, which we should be able to cover, because we haven’t spent a lot in any of the other STOBs. But if we go beyond the amount that we have set aside in the budget for that, I understand we can come to this committee if we need to request supplementary funding. Is that possible?

We have no idea how much the cost is going to be. I wouldn’t expect it’s much.

Victoria Gray: I think the likelihood is that it would be that expenses will be covered in the budget. I think that’s most likely.

Carol Hoyer: We just have to pull from other STOBs.

Victoria Gray: But a number of things we can’t anticipate.

Sunita Dhir: Thank you so much. I have no further questions.

Paul Choi (Chair): Okay. Any other questions?

Elenore Sturko (Deputy Chair): Not a question.

Commissioner Gray, thank you so much for your service to B.C. I personally found your advice very helpful. The guidance and directions on making sure that I’m accountable to my constituents has been very appreciated, easy to understand. I just thank you and your team, and I hope that you enjoy your next chapter.

Victoria Gray: Thank you very much.

Paul Choi (Chair): Any other questions or comments?

Seeing none, thank you so much. Again, I would also like to echo and say thank you for all your hard work and your service to British Columbians. I wish you the best in the future.

Victoria Gray: Thank you very much.

Paul Choi (Chair): Okay. That wraps up our presentations for today.

I will now seek a motion to meet in camera for deliberations.

The committee continued in camera from 2:31 p.m. to 3:33 p.m.

[Paul Choi in the chair.]

Paul Choi (Chair): The committee is now in public session.

All right. Thank you so much to the members for all your hard work today, on Friday, along with all the statutory offices that took the time to come and present to us and answer questions, all the staff and Hansard staff and all those in the legislative precinct that make us be able to do what we do.

With that, I would like to ask a member for adjournment.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:33 p.m.