The committee met at 8:01 a.m.

[Peter Milobar in the chair.]

Consideration of
Auditor General Reports

Child Care Licensing Capacity:
Chapter 1

Peter Milobar (Chair): We’ll get started. I know we do have, I believe, another committee meeting that starts after us today, so I think they want us to be done on time.

We’ll call the meeting to order. My name is Peter Milobar. I’m the MLA for Kamloops Centre and Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

I’d like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

This morning we will be considering the Office of the Auditor General’s report titled Child Care Licensing Capacity. This report actually has two different chapters, so we’ll be considering each chapter individually.

With chapter 1, I would like to welcome the acting Auditor General Sheila Dodds to the meeting and turn it over to her for the office’s presentation on chapter 1 of the report.

Sheila Dodds: Good morning. Thank you, Chair, and good morning, Members.

The Office of the Auditor General acknowledges that we live and work with gratitude and respect on the traditional territories of Indigenous peoples, and we acknowledge that our office is located on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Our report on Childcare Licensing Capacity actually combines two audits. As the Chair noted, each audit has its own chapter, and we’re going to be presenting them to you individually.

I have the members of the team with me this morning. I have Laura Hatt, the assistant Auditor General for our performance audit group; Lisa Sevigny, who is a director in our performance audit group; Julianne King, a senior performance auditor, who will actually lead the presentation on the first audit, chapter 1; and Emilie Benoit, a senior performance auditor, who will lead our presentation on the second audit, chapter 2.

First, I’ll just review why we did these audits. In 2018, the provincial government introduced the ChildCareBC plan, its ten-year strategy to create more access to affordable, quality child care. Since the release of the plan, the provincial and federal governments have funded 39,000 new child care spaces. About 31,000 more spaces are expected by 2028.

To keep up with growth, the ChildCareBC plan includes a commitment to increase capacity in health authorities to license new spaces, conduct investigations and monitor compliance. This commitment is at the centre of both of the audits.

Implementing this commitment requires cooperation from several entities, given how child care planning, funding and operations are governed in this province. In B.C., the Ministry of Education and Child Care is responsible for child care planning and funding and leads implementation of the ChildCareBC plan. However, child care licensing falls to the Ministry of Health and the five regional health authorities.

Our first audit looked at how the Ministry of Education and Child Care worked with key partners, the Ministry of Health and the health authorities, to implement the commitment to increase capacity in health authorities’ licensing programs.

Julianne King will now tell you about what we looked for and what we found in that first audit of the Ministry of Education and Child Care.

[8:05 a.m.]

Julianne King: Good morning, Chair and committee members. Thank you for your interest in our audit of the Ministry of Education and Child Care, which we tabled on February 27, 2025.

This is the first audit in the report, which looks at the ministry’s efforts to increase the capacity of child care licensing programs by working with its health partners.

I’ll be walking you through the information in the Audit at a Glance, which provides a summary of the audit topic, our key findings and related recommendations. You can find this information on page 5 of the report.

The objective for this audit was to determine whether the Ministry of Education and Child Care had effectively worked with health partners, the Ministry of Health and the five regional health authorities, to implement the commitment in the ChildCareBC plan to increase capacity in health authorities to license new spaces, conduct investigations and monitor compliance in child care facilities.

Our audit found that the ministry hadn’t coordinated with the Ministry of Health or regional health authorities to establish expectations for implementing the commitment. The ministry hadn’t defined roles and responsibilities or established timelines and targets for implementing the commitment, and it hadn’t established how the commitment would be funded.

Responsibility over child care transitioned from the Ministry of Children and Family Development to the Ministry of Education and Child Care in April 2022, but the ministry’s first meeting with health partners to discuss the commitment was not until May 2024.

We also found that the ministry didn’t monitor or report publicly on the implementation of the commitment. It hadn’t confirmed whether health authorities had plans to increase capacity or obtained reporting from health partners on the commitment. It also hadn’t identified or managed risks related to achieving the commitment.

As a result, we found that the Ministry of Education and Child Care did not know whether health authorities had increased their capacity to license, monitor and investigate child care facilities in B.C.

We made five recommendations to the ministry to coordinate with health partners to document expectations for increasing capacity in the health authorities’ child care licensing programs and to monitor and report on progress. We are pleased to note that the ministry has accepted these recommendations.

Thank you. I will now pass it back to the acting Auditor General.

Sheila Dodds: Thank you, Julianne.

So that completes our presentation. I’d just like to, on behalf of the team, extend our appreciation to the staff in the Ministry of Education and Child Care throughout this audit.

We’re prepared to answer questions when it’s convenient.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Okay, thanks.

Before we get into questions, we’ll hear from the ministry as well. But does the comptroller general have anything to add? No? All right.

We’ll turn it over to the ministry, and then we’ll jump into questions for either-or.

Kaye Krishna: Good morning, Chair and committee. Thank you so much for having us today. My name is Kaye Krishna. I’m the Deputy Minister of Education and Child Care. Pleased to be joining you here today.

I want to also start by acknowledging that we are joining today’s committee meeting from the unceded traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, known today as the Esquimalt and the Songhees First Nations. It’s with gratitude that we’re able to convene here on these beautiful lands.

I’d also like to start by introducing our team. I’m joined by several ADMs: Patti Boyle from Child Care, Ross Hayward and Ally Butler from Health. I’m also joined today by executive directors: Sue Bedford from Health, Teresa Butler, Hugo Belanger — it says Butler, but it’s Belanger — and Clare Cronin from our Child Care team. I’d also like to thank the Auditor General and team for their partnership and work on this important audit.

Licensing is an integral part of the ChildCareBC plan, as you’ve probably seen in the report. Our ten-year roadmap is to ensure that child care is affordable and accessible and is a core service that families can rely on all across B.C.

We’ve made significant progress in our child care sector in only a few years’ time, and we’re on track to meet the commitments under our agreement with the government of Canada. Thanks to our accelerated space creation programs, the province has funded more than 40,000 new child care spaces in just under eight years, with more than 23,000 of these spaces already serving families. The remainder are a work in progress.

Part of the plan includes expanding child care licensing, monitoring and reporting, which is coordinated with regional health authorities through the Ministry of Health.

[8:10 a.m.]

As this work of the Office of the Auditor General…. This is the work that the Auditor General has examined and is the focus of the audit. I appreciate the importance of the work of the Auditor General’s office and all of the value that it brings to all of us to help us continue to improve the services that we provide. We find the feedback very valuable, so thank you.

In this case, the audit report identifies areas where we could be doing a better job coordinating between our ministries, the Ministry of Education and Child Care and the Ministry of Health. The coordination is essential to ensure that there are resources available to local health authorities to expand licensing capacity that is accurate, aligns with data and that the feedback can flow between ministries on how we continue to adapt and evolve as we grow the child care sector.

The central question of the audit was whether or not the commitments and mandates for both ministries were being met. The report lays out a series of recommendations which present a framework to allow the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education and Child Care to work together in a better way to meet our commitments, going forward. We accept the recommendations in the audit and are in the process of implementing them. Our presentation today will provide more information on the status of the work and our plan and our timeline, moving forward.

I’d like to again thank the committee for the opportunity to present today on the report. I want to reassure not just the committee but the families and the child care providers all across the province that we’re taking action to ensure that licensing, monitoring and investigation services are available in every health authority across B.C. Thanks again for your attention.

I’m going to pass it to Patti Boyle, our ADM for Child Care, who will walk us through the presentation this morning on behalf of the ministries.

Patricia Boyle: Good morning, everyone. As Kaye mentioned, I’m Patti Boyle. I’m the Assistant Deputy Minister for Child Care, and I’m pleased to be here today to outline our response to the report on child care licensing capacity by the Office of the Auditor General.

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m speaking to you today on the territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, and I’m grateful to be able to live and work on these beautiful lands.

We have a slide deck. I’m going to move on to slide 2 now, if you’re following along. The presentation will outline the results of the audit and the ministry’s actions to address the recommendations.

The ten-year ChildCareBC plan is government’s plan to build a future where access to affordable quality and inclusive child care is a core service that families can rely on. The plan is centred around three pillars: affordability, access and quality. Part of the access pillar is the commitment to enhance the capacity of health authorities to keep up with demand of new licensed spaces.

As you can see on the slide, if you’re following along, responsibility for achieving this goal is split between the Ministry of Education and Child Care and the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Education and Child Care is responsible for administering the Early Learning and Child Care Act and the Early Learning and Child Care Act regulations. We’re also responsible for administering grants and benefits to providers and parents and regulating the early childhood educator workforce and the post-secondary early childhood educator programs.

The Ministry of Health is responsible for licensing that falls under the Community Care and Assisted Living Act and child care licensing regulation. That also includes monitoring, assessing and investigating licensed child care facilities to assess compliance with the act.

In the 2019, ’20-21 — this is on slide 4 — 2021 and 2022 budgets for ChildCareBC, increased funding for licensing officers was included. In April of 2022, the child care division was moved to the Ministry of Education, which became the Ministry of Education and Child Care. The on-the-ground responsibilities around the licensing of care facilities in specific communities remained with local health authorities.

The Ministry of Education and Child Care’s child care division continues to use provincial and federal funding to invest in child care funding, including fee reductions for preschool and school-aged child care; expanding $10-a-day ChildCareBC spaces; increased wages for early childhood educators by $2 per hour, bringing the total wage enhancement for early childhood educators up to $6 per hour; and over $512 million in new child care project funding, creating 14,450 child care spaces. That’s just since 2022 to reflect the scope of this audit.

[8:15 a.m.]

Since the start of the ChildCareBC plan in 2018, we’ve funded over 40,000 new spaces through our space-creation programs, with over 23,000 of those spaces operational.

The Office of the Auditor General had two key findings. The first finding was that the Ministry of Education and Child Care did not effectively partner with health authorities to document expectations for increasing local capacity. And there’s the finding that there’s been a lack of monitoring, reporting and oversight on how health authority partners have been implementing their commitment to child care licensing.

Our ministry has accepted all five recommendations, as we’ve mentioned, and we’re on track to implement this fiscal year.

The first recommendation that the Office of the Auditor General had was to work with health partners to document expectations for implementing the commitment to increase the capacity of health authorities to license, monitor and investigate child care facilities, including identifying roles and responsibilities, objectives, timelines and targets and how the commitment will be funded.

While the audit was in progress, the Ministry of Education and Child Care worked with our Ministry of Health colleagues to establish a cross-ministry committee to document much of the existing coordination that our ministries already did together and to achieve our respective legislative requirements. The terms of reference for that committee define each ministry’s roles and responsibilities as follows.

The Ministry of Education and Child Care will be responsible for sharing information to support future planning and reporting and supporting funding requests and other requests from the Ministry of Health as needed.

The Ministry of Health will be responsible to monitor health authorities, including coordinating to establish targets and timelines, monitoring health authority performance, communicating funding needs and seeking funding as and when needed.

We’re in the process of formulating a memorandum of understanding to guide how our ministries will work together and an information-sharing agreement to guide how information shared between our ministries and health authorities is used, safeguarded and shared where appropriate. We’re in the process of implementing that, and we’re on track to ensure that we do all of this by the end of the current fiscal year.

The second recommendation was for the Ministry of Education and Child Care to work with health partners to ensure health authorities develop plans to increase capacity to license, monitor and investigate child care facilities that are aligned with existing and anticipating growth in child care spaces.

Here again we accept this recommendation, and we’re taking the following actions to ensure it’s also implemented this fiscal year. The Ministry of Health will ensure health authorities develop plans to align licence officer capacity with the current and anticipated number of child care spaces within their regions. The Ministry of Education and Child Care will support this by providing the Ministry of Health advance information on regional anticipated growth in child care spaces. These efforts are currently underway and are on track, as well, for ’25-26.

The remaining three recommendations are to improve monitoring of progress against timelines and targets, to identify and mitigate risks and to publicly report on progress. These recommendations have all been accepted, and the following steps are being taken.

The Ministry of Health will gather data from health authorities, monitor that progress against targets and timelines and establish the regional plans. A joint risk register will be developed by both ministries, and our ministry will release annual public reports on government’s progress to implement the ChildCareBC plan, as per section 6 of the Early Learning and Child Care Act.

The first report is scheduled to be released on December 1, 2025. These actions are in progress and are on track for implementation in ’25-26.

In summary, the Office of the Auditor General’s review and the report highlighted that we could be doing more to formalize, document and coordinate the strong working relationships our ministries have to uphold our legislative requirements.

[8:20 a.m.]

As such, we’ve established a key cross-ministry committee. Among other things, this committee will secure that the recommendations are implemented, as I’ve just described, by the end of the fiscal year.

We thank the Office of the Auditor General for its review and the valuable insights it has provided to strengthen child care licensing coordination, planning, monitoring and reporting capacity.

With that, we’ll just go to the last slide, and that’s just a question slide, for any that you might have for us today.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Thank you so much. We’ll jump right in.

Larry Neufeld: I did. With respect to the timelines, I did hear that we’re looking at having implementation finished by the end of this fiscal year. What type of — if any — key performance indicators or…? How would we track the quality of these follow-ups and how they’re being implemented?

Patricia Boyle: I can respond to that. With our cross-ministry committee, we will be able to set those targets for the health authorities, work together on ensuring that they’re implemented and bring that information back from the health authorities to our table to be able to look at those KPIs, to be able to respond into whether we think we need more information. We’ll be able to do that as two ministries together.

Kaye Krishna: Thanks. Just to add to ADM Boyle’s response, we also have regular dialogue with child care providers, and so there will be opportunities for feedback loops as we look at how we’re publishing the KPIs and having ongoing dialogue with the sector. So we’ll have an opportunity to make sure that the KPIs that we’re looking at and measuring are relevant, and we can adapt as we go if needed.

Larry Neufeld: Okay. Would this committee have access to those KPIs?

Patricia Boyle: Yes.

Peter Milobar (Chair): When you touched on the — what was it? — over 40,000, did you say funded spaces or open or what?

Patricia Boyle: New spaces.

Peter Milobar (Chair): New spaces. This is, I think, part of the frustration out there in terms of, and a lot of this report is about…. The last recommendation was around transparency and reporting out. Numbers get bandied about that never quite mesh.

So 40,000 new spaces to the public would sound like there’s space for 40,000 kids currently, yet your next sentence was 23,000 are operational, which means 43 percent aren’t. When will those 43 percent actually see kids in a space?

Patricia Boyle: The 40,000 spaces are new spaces that have been built since 2018. Those 23,000 are in the build stage, and as soon as they’re finished building — some of them will be in a year from now; some of them will be in a couple years from now — those will then be accepting children as well into their facilities.

We do have 159,000 spaces in all of B.C. These are just our new spaces in the last few years. So since 2018, 40,000 new spaces, and I think we’re above that right now. But I’ll just look down to my colleagues and see if they have anything more to add on space creation in that number.

Clare Cronin: Committee, my name is Clare Cronin. I’m executive director, and I have responsibility for our child care capital funding programs. What ADM Boyle says is correct. It does take time to create new spaces. I think in that sector we are still seeing some fallout from pandemic, and spaces take time to build. The additional spaces all, hopefully, will be completed by about 2028.

Peter Milobar (Chair): On slide 6 of your presentation, it’s accepted for targets and timelines to be established by the end of fiscal ’25-26, which would be March 31 next year. Yet on slide 10, we are supposed to be getting a report that is actually in December of this year and supposed to be tying into reporting out on how you’re doing meeting targets and timelines.

How can we have a report with any accuracy in December when the targets and timelines aren’t even going to be established until likely March?

[8:25 a.m.]

Patricia Boyle: The targets and timelines are for our committee that is meeting, but the public reporting is through the Early Learning and Child Care Act. It’s come into force in 2024, so that’s a new reporting.

We also have our Canada-wide early learning and child care action plans, and our reports are in every year. So this is just a new report that’s reporting on the ChildCareBC plan, ten-year plan overall. We’ll start posting that in December of 2025, and that’s required, as I mentioned, under the Early Learning and Child Care Act.

This report is going to include key licensing indicators, including the number of new spaces, licensing capacity and compliance rate. And our annual reporting will track key licensing indicators, including number of new spaces, licensing capacity and compliance data, ensuring full transparency. The committee will help us to work better together. This reporting is required under our new Early Learning and Child Care Act.

I’ll just check and see if anybody else has anything to add.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the work.

I just want to thank the Auditor General for the work you did on the report. It’s important. I also want to acknowledge that this is the largest rollout of child care in B.C.’s history. So there’s always going to be growth and room for growth.

As a parent who missed this bubble, I’m deeply appreciative of the efforts that are being taken to ensure that more families can have both parents in the workforce.

My overall view of this report is that, really, what we’re looking at is: do we have the infrastructure and necessary supports in place to properly support this plan? It’s good to have a plan, but then we’ve got to have all the parts that make the plan go. And this is one part of the infrastructure. It’s not all of it. It’s one part of a very massive program.

One of my questions is perhaps around recommendation 2 and future licensing needs. But what I didn’t see in here, and you can tell me if this is out of order, is really around…. It was slide 3, but also on page 23 of the report, that outlines key responsibilities. I’m wondering who’s responsible for doing an overall scan to project needs in areas to make sure that we’re putting child care in spaces into areas that need them?

I think there’s a public perception that it’s an application-based process, which of course it is, but who’s making sure that when we get applications, they’re being processed in areas that they’re needed?

Kaye Krishna: Thank you for the question. I’ll start, and then I’ll pass it to Clare to provide follow-up response.

It is an application-based process — you’re correct — but part of the review and the waiting process looks at need, such as child care deserts or other opportunities, areas of growth, projected growth, to rank and look at the applications and try to prioritize areas of need.

Clare, would you like to add?

Clare Cronin: No, I actually think you covered that very well. It is part of our waiting process to look at where we have some lower coverage rates and really target our efforts to those lower coverage rates.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Can I just have a quick follow-up?

Just clarifying. People can apply, but behind the scenes, it’s your job to make sure that you’re processing applications in areas of need. What is the process to determine the areas of need?

Clare Cronin: It’s forecasting and modelling. We have a team that does forecasting and modelling and looks at that natural sector growth as well as where we have funded previously. That’s another big thing. The new spaces fund has been targeting those larger projects since 2018, so we do look at the distribution over time as well as the natural growth in the sector to determine the coverage rate.

Kaye Krishna: If I may add, since child care has moved into the Ministry of Education, now the Ministry of Education and Child Care, there’s also been a concerted effort to expand with school districts. That’s much more a kind of broad-brush coverage ratio by working with all 61 districts across the province to find opportunities to expand in each of the areas.

It’s a little bit more of the on-the-ground planning and forecasting with the districts, but there’s an opportunity there, as we move forward, to continue to look at integration with school districts and more on-the-ground planning with them as well. So that’s going forward.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): This just brought up one more question, and then I’ll pass it on to my colleagues. You talked about the school district work. You talked about assessing where child care has been.

[8:30 a.m.]

There’s a difference between public and private, and we have private child care providers in communities, but we also have this real effort to have child care on school grounds because of the natural synergies that that provides for families.

How are we making sure that as we push for school districts to do this or to provide child care on school grounds — because they’re not all operated by school districts; some of them are contracts — there’s not an oversaturation in area between the private and either school districts or publicly run or funded ones?

Clare Cronin: I can speak to that. Currently, the new spaces fund eligibility criteria are for our public sector, not-for-profit and district partners. We do have some space creation funding available through start-up grants for private operators as well.

We do look at OSPIS when we’re looking at that balancing. There’s a whole priority matrix that’s put into decision-making. So we look at those different saturation rates in terms of age groupings as well as how we’re distributing that funding provincewide to create as many spaces as possible.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you to the Auditor General for taking on this work, and thank you to the Ministry of Education and Child Care for accepting the recommendations and looking through this very thoughtfully. And also to the Ministry of Health, obviously, for looking at this. Licensing is an important part of making sure that we do have safe child care spaces, that they’re properly run. It is an important component of it.

Just maybe a question to the Auditor General, and I want to focus on recommendation No. 4. It’s around identifying, monitoring and mitigating risks. I’m wondering if the Auditor General could elaborate at all on the types of risks they considered in making this recommendation.

Sheila Dodds: Thank you for the question, Member. Child care is an important area. It’s a huge topic, as we’ve heard from the Ministry of Education and Child Care. We had to figure out where could we best use our resources, and what we ended up focusing on was the licensing capacity. That was really part of the risk — the risk of having two ministries with that coordinated responsibility.

There are challenges when you have your own portfolios to be delivering. It was just an area that was not included, I think, in the federal-provincial child care plan, so there was not going to be regular monitoring and reporting as part of that agreement. But it was such a critical area.

In terms of the risk piece, it was the risk of not having the capacity to be licensing in a timely way when you have that much growth in the sector and to be able to have the staff to do those inspections, because it really comes down to the safety and quality of child care.

I’m just going to see if my colleagues would like to add anything. Lisa, would you have anything to add to that recommendation?

Lisa Sevigny: No, I think you answered that beautifully.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you to the Auditor General for the response. I think that also kind of brings back to, obviously, recommendation No. 2, ensuring that health authorities develop the plans to ensure there is that capacity.

I guess in developing the plans, there still is the funding challenge within the health authorities, so I’m wondering if, maybe, perhaps the Ministry of Health could respond to…. Developing plans from the ministry side is one thing, but did the health authorities actually have the ability within their budget to implement the licensing changes that are required here if we’re going to accept the recommendations?

Ross Hayward: Thanks for the question. I’m Ross Hayward. I’m the assistant deputy minister, currently on substance use treatment and recovery. I just moved portfolios. Ally Butler, my colleague, is now in the role of taking this over.

I’ll speak to this the best that I can. You’ll hear through Stephen Chung who will be speaking for VCH later, but with the health authorities, they are certainly looking at what their capacity needs are around licensing.

As far as the KPIs that they’re going to be collecting through our joint work and our group that we have with our partners now from Education, we are looking with health authorities to actually do some very clear work on identifying how many actual FTEs that are needed if there’s a shortfall.

[8:35 a.m.]

Based on that then, of course, our group will not have that ability to say if there’s extra funding needed, or the health authority says we don’t have funding. That’ll be a process we’ll have to take through the regular channel, through government, to get application for that funding.

However, I can say, certainly, that the health authorities, right now, with their existing staffing, always prioritize health and safety as the first thing and the actual licensing of new child care facilities. If they need to prioritize their current staff to meet the needs of licensing new facilities, that’s what they will do. They’ll prioritize their staff for that and, of course, the health and safety aspects of it.

I can’t clearly say where the shortfall is. This is part of the work that we’re doing right now. If there’s a shortfall of the staffing in the health authorities and any funding that may be required for that, health authorities do have a budget under their global budget to do that hiring, but we haven’t got any details from them yet as to: will there be a shortfall?

Kiel Giddens: Thank you for the response. I’m sure that work will continue. On the licensing work that is happening, how much currently is that dedicated to…? I think I heard there are 159,000 spaces currently, total, in the province. How much of that is currently fully allocated to the private licensee and non-profit versus the ChildCareBC spaces? Is there any sort of separation of duties, or are they kind of intertwined between the licensing officers?

Peter Milobar (Chair): Maybe if I could just jump in, though. I don’t want to get ahead to the Health presentation. So if it’s licensing specific, we’ll maybe hold that to the...

Kiel Giddens: I can ask a different question. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Just so they can do their presentation first before….

Kiel Giddens: Going back to recommendation No. 4 on the risk register, I’m wondering — to the Deputy Minister of Education and Child Care — if you could provide any update on: has that work of the risk register started, and, I guess, if so, are there any risks that are currently being looked at that are going to be included in that that you can share today?

Kaye Krishna: Yeah, thank you for the question. I’ll defer to our ADM who’s actually helping to chair the committee that’s involved in more of the detailed work.

Patricia Boyle: As I’ve mentioned in the presentation, the work has started just in looking at how we can develop our memorandum of understanding together and how we can look at information-sharing so that we can get that information from the health authorities and bring that in to our table to talk about what risks we might be seeing with that information that comes in. The risk register is yet to be developed once we’ve developed those first documents together.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you for the response. Certainly, just the risks that I would foresee…. Obviously, the funding risk for the health authorities is one. We talked about the capacity risk already. There’s also the risk of making sure that we have adequate child care options, not simply the ChildCareBC spaces but other options that parents may want to choose. If there is private licensing, making sure that that’s adequate.

I just wanted to put that out there and make sure that there is some sort of consideration in the risk register for ensuring that capacity.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that’s all I have for questions.

Peter Milobar (Chair): After saying we’ll stay away from licensing for the time being, I do have a question, but it’s more about the work that’s supposed to be happening in terms of Health and Education working together or figuring out a path forward.

I actually had a meeting with a child care provider in my riding, in Kamloops, last week. They were turned down for new spaces funding. It would have actually been for health authority employees. They were trying to work with the health authority. It still gets turned down. Second time they’ve been turned down, even though they’re an existing operator. A lot of problems with what they were asked to provide and changing goal posts.

I’ve heard the same, actually, from the city of Kamloops in terms of their application for a city-operated child care space. There’s a lot of need out there, and these applications are getting rejected because of over-subscription or things of that nature.

[8:40 a.m.]

One of the things that’s starting to come out, at least in an Interior Health realm…. You have now a want for more square footage per child, yet new spaces funding that won’t really cover…. I mean, lease space is lease space. If you have to add an extra doubling of square footage per child, that’s an added cost to your lease space.

Where are we at if licensing and Education still aren’t even talking with each other currently, if we’re all waiting for MOUs and everything else to get into place for another year almost? That seems like it’s going to continue to drag and/or create situations where the left hand and the right hand, again, are making demands that either the money or one side or the other aren’t connecting, if that’s making some sense.

So where are we at with that cooperation in terms of who’s actually driving the bus here on child care? Because it seems like both ministries are still kind of working at cross purposes at times.

Kaye Krishna: I’ll start and then pass to the team. What I would say is that our teams are working together on a regular basis, on the ground and coordinating operationally, and the work continues in response to this audit to formalize and improve the information-sharing and the tracking and monitoring in a much more structured way. That’s really what the audit has helped us find and put more structure and process in place and get access to more information-sharing across ministries and with the health authority, etc.

So the work continues on the ground while our teams are working on continuous process-improvement to add those more formalized structures. I’ll ask my team to continue to provide support on that.

Patricia Boyle: I wouldn’t want the committee to get the opinion or the wrong idea that we aren’t working together or that we’re just starting work together. We have worked together regularly on priorities since the transition to Education and Child Care, when we came over from MCFD to Education and Child Care. We were working well before that as well.

Some of the initiatives that we’ve worked on together…. And one of them you touched on just in terms of space: the development, for example, of the new design guidelines we have. These guidelines aren’t intended to replace legislative framework, but they provide information on planning quality child care projects where the legislation is silent and to encourage exceeding minimum standards where possible. So Health was a critical part of the working group, and health authorities were consulted on the guidelines several times before the release of those design guidelines.

We also have what you might have heard out in community called child care resource and referral programs. They report into the Ministry of Education and Child Care. We fund those programs. And they actually have a health authority and Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education and Child Care working group. They’ve had that since April of 2023. That group works to strengthen the working relationships between community care facility licensing programs and the child care resource and referral centres to support the expansion of quality, inclusive and affordable licensed child care throughout the province. So they work together well.

We also have what we call early learning community and care leads within the school districts. They all work together. So there’s been quite a bit of work done in that area.

Our policy divisions have worked together with health authorities on both the School Act— Health’s been at the table for talking about the School Act when we’ve made changes there — and the child care licensing regulations amendments in 2020 and 2021.

We continue to meet with health authorities and the Ministry of Health on an ad hoc basis. As Clare Cronin was mentioning, we are constantly going out and meeting with health authorities to talk about new spaces fund and to share and exchange ideas there. As Deputy Minister Kaye said, we are just more formalizing those meetings that we do already have.

I think working groups…. We have conferences. The licensing officer symposium and working groups in 2023, as an example, was something that our staff attended and had breakout rooms and talked about things that we could do better together. We presented on initiatives like the new spaces fund and all of the other initiatives that we have on the go right now.

[8:45 a.m.]

Nina Krieger: Thank you so much to all the presenters. Affordable, accessible, quality child care is so critical for working families, and the work done to increase spaces and reduce costs has been really appreciated by residents in my riding of Victoria–Swan Lake and, I know, far beyond. We know there’s a lot more work to do, as well, and I appreciate the work of the Auditor General on this report.

It’s noted that B.C. is the only jurisdiction where there is the distinction and the split between the licensing, and this is separate from the planning and funding. Many of the gaps identified in this audit stem from that decentralized model.

Just a couple questions. One, quite big picture: are there any insights to be gleaned from other jurisdictions that are not decentralized that could be helpful for us to consider in the B.C. context?

Now that the cross-ministry committee is a key body to advance recommendations, is the committee able to access the terms of reference for that committee?

Patricia Boyle: I think, obviously, we would like to see what other jurisdictions are doing, and we have done a lot of research on other jurisdictions. I think in terms of us being the only ones wherein licensing is separated, we definitely could learn a lot and do that work together. I think up until now, that work has been done individually, but we could certainly do that work together to see what we could bring to that in a more robust way.

I would just also, maybe, look to my colleagues to see if there’s anything else they want to add to that.

But in the terms of reference…. I think, definitely, we can share those with this committee. We’ve done a lot of work on them already, and that’s been — we meet quarterly — some of what we’ve been doing to look at what else we need to add in.

As we’re doing those terms of reference, we think to ourselves: “Oh, we should probably invite someone else to this committee.” For example, at the last committee, we invited somebody who wanted to talk more about the Indigenous lens and how we could bring that to this committee as well. We added to the terms of reference in that piece, making sure that we had a connection from Health back to our tripartite memo of understanding that we’ve developed with FNLC and the government of Canada. That venue just allows us to bring those things back.

I’ll just look down and see if Teresa has anything to add. You might have.

Teresa Butler: Great. Yeah, thanks, Patty. I’m Teresa Butler. I’m the executive director for child care policy with the Ministry of Education and Child Care.

The one thing I would add would be that the separation of responsibility…. With medical health officers holding accountability for the inspection and the licensing and the health and safety of these facilities, they are one step removed from any funding decisions or allocations that are being made through the Ministry of Education and Child Care. It gives them a level of independence in terms of the recommendations that they are making.

I think that provides a second layer of support or protection for the people and the children that are in those programs, so that we know that the recommendations are not being influenced by any kind of funding decisions or allocations and that they are independent of that. So that’s just one aspect that I would like to add. Thanks.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): It’s around inclusion and accessibility for child care, and back to my making sure that we have the right spaces in the right places for the right folks.

Whose job in these key responsibilities is it to make sure that while we have the right number of child care spaces being put into the right communities, we also make sure that we have the right levels of supports to make sure that neurodiverse kids have equal access, to make sure that children who are hard of hearing have equal access and supports? Whose responsibility is it, between the two entities here?

Kaye Krishna: I’ll start with that. Thank you for the question.

Inclusivity is a critical pillar of ChildCareBC. I’ll turn to the team to give some examples of the work that we’ve done, but a number of our programs really focus on ensuring inclusivity across all child cares. Our policies really have been evolving to focus on inclusivity.

[8:50 a.m.]

It’s part of our policy and program and funding model — less so on the side of the licensing, although Health can speak to what they may look for from a licensing point of view, or the authorities. It’s really part of our program design. It is built-in and inherent in all of the work that we are doing across all child care funding and spaces.

Patricia Boyle: Yeah, I’ll just add that we’ve got a lot of disparate funding models because child care has been around for a long period of time, but we’re working on an operating funding model right now, which brings all of those funding models in together.

One of the things that we’re looking at in there is: what is the need for inclusion, and how can we fund that within that operating funding model? We have about 70 providers in that funding model right now, and they’re bringing forward what the needs for inclusion are and how we should be looking at that together. It’s kind of a test that we’ll be able to take back to government, to cabinet, to talk about.

We have a Treasury Board check-in on the operating funding model so that we can look at things like inclusion and how we’re providing funding for that.

Also, in our $10-a-day program, all of the providers must have an inclusion policy in order to be a $10-a-day provider. So those are a couple instances where we really do require the provider to have an inclusion strategy.

Teresa Butler: Thank you so much for the question. I would also add to Patty’s comments that the Ministry of Education and Child Care released an inclusive child care strategy last June. That’s a public document and outlines some of the cross-ministry work underway to take a look at providing more inclusive, accessible child care spaces for all children and families. We will be reporting publicly on the progress under that strategy, so there’s more to come on that.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): I’m just going to drill it down a little further on this, if that’s okay. I guess I’m looking for some specifics. This is about capacity on licensing and inspection services, but also capacity to provide the service as needed.

And so my wonder is about early childhood educators, for instance. In a community, Health has the data to know that there are ten children in the community that are deaf and hard-of-hearing. Parents who have children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing are walking into child care centres and having a hard time accessing child care for their children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing because we don’t have early childhood educators who are also trained to support these kids.

So what are we doing, when we get down to the ground level, to actually provide the support to make sure in our capacity planning that we’re able to ensure accessibility as barrier-free as possible for parents who have children with diverse needs?

Kaye Krishna: Thanks for the detailed follow-up. No, I appreciate it.

I think there’s probably more we can do to coordinate the actual planning and understanding the needs from a health point of view and from any data that may exist around that. I would say that part of what we’re doing is trying to build capacity for inclusivity training for all ECEs and looking at curriculum and opportunities for that. Part of this is part of our strategy as we’re rolling it out. So we’re evolving our programs, our capacity training for the workforce.

I think there’s probably some opportunity that we can take from your question to think about how we can build that into information sharing that goes above and beyond licensing, but around projected need for individual families and community.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Following up on, especially, the neurodiverse side. The system does not serve the individual well — I’m only talking inclusivity — because it is very much around the institution and including kids into an actual physical daycare.

I’ll give you another example that needs to be reconsidered in terms of flexibility, because these are children that need flexible solutions. Again, I have a constituent that I met with. His child, neurodiverse, tried two different daycares. Both of them just couldn’t accommodate the child based on the child’s needs. Both were subsidized child care spaces.

[8:55 a.m.]

Yet for them to bring someone into their home to try to provide that same care for the child on a regular basis…. They don’t qualify for any subsidy. They’re not asking for the whole thing to be paid. They were asking for the same subsidy they would have got if they were in a physical daycare space to be provided to them, and they would pay the difference for whatever it cost them to get that proper support for their child.

That’s not flexibility in a child care situation. That’s forcing one of the two parents to not work anymore. Yet if you somehow shoehorn a child into a setting that’s not appropriate for the child or the other children in that space, the government will provide some funding for it, the $900 a month or whatever it is.

So there needs to be a broader look as you’re working through your policies here, with Health and with yourselves, as to the special, unique needs that a lot of these families actually have to truly benefit the child. The goal may be great to have inclusivity in every centre, but that doesn’t work for every child to be in that setting.

These are the real-world implications. So when Stephanie mentions things about need in a community, I’m at a loss to find a community that doesn’t have need for child care and a ranking. In my own family, my wife stopped working to look after our grandchildren because there were no child care spaces in Kamloops to access.

The need is real out there. And the lack of flexibility and the lack of moving forward with these new spaces and the timelines is becoming…. The problem hasn’t gone away anywhere I guess is what I’m saying. I guess I’ll just leave it at that, my soapbox or advocacy for my constituent there.

But it is very real. Like I say, there needs to start being a more logical flow for these families to understand why: “If I if I send my child across the street from my house, I can get funding, but if I leave the child in my home and hire somebody in to provide that more specialized care that child needs, there suddenly isn’t funding, even at the same level of dollar figure.” Right?

Any other questions before we move to the next? I recognize with Health, once you’re done your presentation, there might be a lot of overlap, at that point, of the questions. Hopefully, Education is able to stick around, as well, until the end of the meeting.

With that, then, we’ll move on to chapter 2 and more of the health-related side of the report.

Child Care Licensing Capacity:
Chapter 2

Sheila Dodds: I just wanted to acknowledge the work that the ministry is doing and the proactive response to the recommendations and the timeline. It’s really putting that structure around the relationship so expectations are clear and there is the ability to monitor. I really appreciate the effort.

Our second audit, which is the second chapter of the report, looks at the child care licensing capacity in the context of one regional health authority. We chose to look at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority because it serves a large population, has a significant number of child care spaces and facilities and includes both urban and rural communities. So the findings and the recommendations from this audit are specific to Vancouver Coastal Health, but they may be relevant to the other four regional health authorities.

Emilie Benoit is going to provide an overview of this second chapter.

Emilie Benoit: I’ll discuss our second audit, which looked at Vancouver Coastal Health’s child care licensing capacity. I’ll be walking through the information, which is in the “Audits at a Glance.” You can find that on page 6 of the report.

The objective for this audit was to determine whether Vancouver Coastal had assessed its capacity to license new spaces, investigate complaints and monitor compliance for child care facilities. We concluded that it had not.

First, we looked at whether Vancouver Coastal had set key performance indicators, or KPIs, and timelines for its licensing activities, approving new licence applications, conducting routine facility inspections and investigating complaints. KPIs and timelines can help an organization to understand what it wants to achieve and the staff that it needs to be successful.

We found that Vancouver Coastal tracked a KPI for child care site inspections, but it had incomplete indicators and timelines for its licensing and investigation activities. It also didn’t collect basic information about these activities, like how long it took for licensing officers to approve new licensing applications or investigate complaints. Without complete KPIs or timelines for its licensing and investigation activities, VCH is limited in its ability to determine how many staff are needed to meet expectations.

[9:00 a.m.]

We also found that VCH didn’t adequately assess its resource needs. VCH had collected some information to support resource planning but lacked key information, including projections from the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Education and Child Care about how ChildCareBC initiatives are expected to increase the number of child care facilities in Vancouver Coastal’s area.

Vancouver Coastal last received funding for new child care licensing staff in 2019, but since then, the number of child care facilities has increased by 19 percent. We made five recommendations to Vancouver Coastal to collect program data, develop performance indicators and to use that information to determine the number of staff needed to meet program demands. I’m happy to say that the recommendations have all been accepted.

Thank you, and I’ll now pass it back to the acting Auditor General.

Sheila Dodds: Thank you, Emilie.

Again, we just would like to express our appreciation to the staff at Vancouver Coastal Health for their cooperation through this second audit on the child care topic. After you’ve had an opportunity to present, we’re happy to answer any questions.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Okay, thank you.

Anything from the comptroller general? No? All right. I always like to double-check; you never know.

With that, we’ll turn it over to the Health side of things, and then we’ll jump into questions after.

Ally Butler: Good morning. My name is Ally Butler, and I’m really grateful to be joining you today from the unceded territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, presently known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

As Ross mentioned, I’ve very recently been appointed as the assistant deputy minister for health service integration, which is a newly created division in the Ministry of Health that includes stewardship responsibility for community care licensing.

I also have with me today Ross Hayward, who until recently was the assistant deputy minister for senior services and the director of licensing. I’d also like to introduce Sue Bedford, who is the executive director of the assisted living registry and community care licensing.

Finally, joining us virtually today, from Vancouver Coastal Health, is Steve Chong, who is the executive director of health protection, which is the area of the health authority that has the operational responsibility for the child care licensing program. Recognizing that Vancouver Coastal Health is the subject of the audit, I’ll turn it over to Steve in just a moment to walk through the presentation.

Before I do, I wanted to take a moment to add a bit of context about how the community care licensing program was established and the distinct roles and responsibilities that the Ministry of Health and health authorities hold in this space. When health authorities were created in 1997, they were assigned the responsibility for the delivery of licensing services for child care as well as residential care facilities.

That continues to be the case today as set out in the Community Care and Assisted Living Act. This act assigns statutory responsibility for licensing directly to medical health officers in our health authorities, who in turn are responsible for delegating some or all of their statutory duties through to licensing officers.

In practice, this means that day-to-day responsibility for licensing programs sits within our regional health authorities. The ministry continues to maintain a stewardship responsibility for the licensing program, and we are responsible for keeping the act and the regulations current and for leading any policy or legislative work required to guide improvements.

The Ministry of Health licensing program does not directly inspect care facilities, nor do we have any authority to issue licences or take action against an operator of a facility. Issuing licences, monitoring facilities on a regular basis, conducting investigations into non-compliance and taking action if needed is the responsibility of the health authorities. Of course, as a ministry, we are closely working with our health authority licensing programs to ensure and promote policy alignment, assist with problem-solving and move initiatives forward as needed.

The ministry and health authorities, along with our colleagues in the Ministry of Education and Child Care, as you’ve heard today, have been collaborating informally in various ways for many years now. We’re very happy to be moving forward now into a more formal structure to ensure that we have that closer contact and greater alignment, and we can work together as we look to implement these recommendations.

This work really does build off the relationships that have been established, both on the ground and at the ministry level for a number of years, and we’ll be able to better understand and respond to emerging issues through this work going forward.

In closing, I’d like to thank the Auditor General for their work and insightful and thoughtful response on this audit and recommendations and thank the committee for the opportunity to be here today to speak to this audit.

I’ll turn it over now to Steve Chong, who will speak to the presentation and VCH’s response to the audit.

[9:05 a.m.]

Steve Chong: Thank you, ADM Butler, for the introduction.

Good morning, Chair and committee members.

For those of you that are following along, I am starting on slide 2 in the presentation deck. Again, my name is Steve Chong, executive director of health protection with Vancouver Coastal Health.

I would like to walk the committee through chapter 2 this morning: “Vancouver Coastal Health’s child care licensing capacity.”

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that I am calling in from the traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ First Nations.

The audit period covered a little over a two-year span from April 1, 2022 to July 31, 2024. Vancouver Coastal Health is one of five regional health authorities delivering community care facilities licensing programs and is responsible for licensing child care facilities in the VCH region. Our region includes Richmond, Vancouver, North Shore, Sea to Sky, Sunshine Coast–Powell River and the Central Coast. The Auditor General selected VCH as an example health authority to audit because, again, we serve a large population, we have a large number of child care facilities, and it includes both urban and rural communities.

The purpose of the Community Care and Assisted Living Act and Child Care Licensing Regulation are to ensure that the health, safety and dignity of persons in care are promoted and protected by establishing minimum standards for acceptable care that facilities must meet to be licensed. This includes such things as looking at staff qualifications, recordkeeping, facility space and equipment, child-to-staff ratios and the facility’s programming.

Our VCH child care licensing officers issue new licences and licence amendments. That work includes providing guidance to applicants, assessing application materials, conducting initial inspections of proposed facilities to determine compliance with requirements and approving or denying applications.

Licensing officers conduct routine inspections of all licensed child care facilities through assessing compliance with the act and regulation, by inspecting the physical space, reviewing permits and documentation and observing program operations to identify and prevent risks to the health and safety of children.

Also, our licensing officers investigate complaints. By collecting and reviewing evidence to determine if operators are in noncompliance with the act and regulation, our licensing officers can take action to suspend a licence if necessary to protect children in care. VCH has accepted all five recommendations from the Auditor.

Recommendation 1: VCH to collect data on its child care licensing process and use the data to determine what an appropriate key performance indicator or timeline would be. VCH accepts the recommendation. The application time key performance indicator is complete, and we have started the collection of data as of April 1, 2025. This KPI tracks the time from the date a licence application is submitted to VCH until the date the licence is issued.

Recommendation 2: VCH to collect data on its child care investigation process and use the data to determine what an appropriate key performance indicator or timeline would be. VCH accepts the recommendation. The investigation time key performance indicator is complete, and we have started the collection of data as of April 1. This KPI tracks the date from when an investigation is initiated to the date when the investigation is closed.

[9:10 a.m.]

Recommendation 3: VCH to monitor whether staff are meeting the key performance indicator or timeline it develops for child care licensing and investigations. Again, we accept the recommendation. As you heard from recommendations 1 and 2, the data collection for licence applications and investigations has already begun.

For monitoring against those KPIs, we are on track for implementation by quarter 4 of this fiscal year. We will first need to establish initial VCH benchmarks after collecting and reviewing the data after six months, as currently there are no provincial benchmarks to compare against at this time for either application or investigation times.

Recommendation 4. VCH to identify the resources needed to meet current year program demands based on key performance indicators or timelines for its child care licensing, inspection and investigation activities. We accept the recommendation. The status is in progress and on track for completion by the end of this fiscal year.

By using the application and investigation KPI monitoring data, VCH will assess its short-term resource needs to meet the demand for new licensed spaces under the B.C. child care plan.

Recommendation 5. VCH to develop a multi-year plan that identifies the number and type of staff that would be needed to meet projected program demands based on up-to-date information such as anticipated population growth and planned number of new child care spaces. This recommendation is in progress and on track for completion by the end of this fiscal year.

Similar to recommendation 4 and in conjunction with the short-term staffing assessment, we will use the application and investigation KPI monitoring data, along with the regional anticipated growth in child care spaces information from the Ministry of Education and Child Care, to develop a multi-year plan that identifies the number and type of staff needed to meet projected program demands.

In summary, Vancouver Coastal Health is fully committed to implementing all five Auditor recommendations. The audit to assess VCH’s child care licensing capacity was timely and brought to light the current staffing challenges. We are thankful for their work, and we will use this opportunity to obtain the necessary resources to meet the demand for new licensed spaces under the B.C. child care plan.

Thank you for your time this morning. I’m happy to answer any questions from the committee at this time.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Great. Thanks, everyone, for the presentations. We’ll jump right in with Kiel back to his licensing question.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you to Ms. Butler and Mr. Chong.

I do appreciate the Auditor General combined these two audits into one report, because we’re seeing sort of the progression of this. It makes a lot of sense. It’s quite helpful for both ministries, I think, as we’re trying to do this work and improve licensing capacity.

I started on these questions…. Forgive me that I jumped ahead earlier in my questions, but I’m trying to understand, I guess…. Before this audit, how did health authorities really establish staffing levels for licensing? Obviously, we’re hearing there are capacity challenges and things like that.

Mr. Chong just alluded to things like anticipated population growth and the number of new child care spaces, things that could be part of the new multi-year plan. But as we’re looking to improve, what’s the current state of how staffing levels of licensing are actually established in health authorities? What kind of metrics were used? Is there any information that can be provided there?

[9:15 a.m.]

Steve Chong: Well, certainly staffing levels are something that we look at carefully. We have a budget that is set by government, and we utilize those set resources to establish the baseline staffing.

As far as future growth and demand, we conducted a capacity assessment to project ten and 20 years into the future that looked at the growth in terms of the number of facilities, the number of inspections that we have conducted and the number of complaints and incidents that we have received, year over year, from 2015 to 2022.

We tracked all of that data, and we had some projections based on that information that estimated that we would need to increase our staffing levels by 61 percent by 2031 and 109 percent by 2041, 20 years into the future.

But what the audit was valuable in bringing to light was that the assessment was incomplete because we did not include in that analysis data around the amount of time it was taking to process licence applications and the amount of time it was taking to conduct and complete our investigations.

So what we are committed to doing through this audit is acquiring that additional data to have more precise estimates to establish a business case that we can put forward to have sufficient staffing to meet the B.C. child care plan and commitment.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you, Mr. Chong.

Maybe just to further dig into that, I appreciate that some of that work has been done. It will be needed as you’re developing that multi-year plan. It sounds like a lot of that work and data is already going to go into it. It existed previously. So I think that’s helpful.

But I guess I just want to understand a little bit more. What tangible improvement is going to come because of the work of the audit? I’m thinking of the fact that Peter had talked about a challenge in B.C. The spaces, overall, seem to be what we hear about the most. There simply aren’t enough spaces. There were, we hear, 159,000 spaces total of those by 2028. We’re trying to get to 43,000 in ChildCareBC.

I have gone through this in this past number of years. I’ve got young kids. With my youngest, we couldn’t get a space, so we relied on a private daycare for a couple of days. We relied on friends and family for the other days for about a year and a half until we finally secured a space.

The spaces are still a challenge for the parents. So I’m trying to…. If licensing is a gap to making sure that we get those spaces out quickly, that we have enough of them…. I want to ask about how big the capacity gap actually is currently. You said you’re anticipating that you need an increase of 63 percent by 2031. Is that because of the fact there is more complexity in the type of licensing and inspections that are happening because of the ChildCareBC spaces, compared to the private spaces or other kinds of spaces that make up that 159,000?

Steve Chong: That is a question that I cannot answer. That is information that we don’t collect to make that determination of what’s actually driving that demand, whether it’s based on private or publicly funded. Maybe I can defer that question to my Health colleagues.

Ally Butler: Thank you for the question. I think that what you’re getting at is the work that the committee is going to be able to look at together as we do get more information through the level of data now being collected through these KPIs at VCH.

[9:20 a.m.]

Certainly, within the Ministry of Health, we’re going to be looking to the data that VCH will be collecting through this and how we can bring that process to all of the other health authorities, too, so that we get a better, consistent, more insightful level of data on what some of those key drivers are.

The time it takes to do something like license a facility or complete an inspection, I’m sure you can appreciate, can wildly vary. Sometimes that’s driven by capacity; but it also can be driven by the complexity of the investigation or how complete an application is when it comes in from a provider and how quickly that provider is then to respond to licensing upon request for more information.

There are so many different factors that can really go into determining how long those processes can take. And as we get more data, we’ll be able to set more meaningful benchmarks over time, recognizing that each case is quite unique and our licensing departments are always, as Ross said, prioritizing health- and safety-related concerns. So they’re always, day to day, prioritizing from a risk-based perspective where they need to undertake investigation.

Kaye Krishna: If I could add to your question, just to clarify, all spaces are licensed independent of funding. So whether or not they receive funding through the variety of ChildCareBC programs or capital funding through a new spaces fund, they all have to have a license. That licensing is what triggers the inspection. From an inspections point of view, I don’t think there’s a distinction between or prioritization around funding. They’re all treated the same way, whether they’re private or have any sort of public subsidy associated with them, just to clarify.

Kiel Giddens: Appreciate that. I think that’s part of my question. I’m wondering if there is increased complexity and administrative staff time for the licensing perspective for those who are doing the licensing for the ChildCareBC or the provincially funded spaces versus the private ones, if there’s any difference in, kind of, staff time that needs to be allocated to because of requirements that the ministry has put on to the additional inspection conditions that they have or things like that.

Sue Bedford: Thank you for that question.

There is no differentiation in the licensing program between a private pay operator or a publicly subsidized operator. We have a duty to be fair to all applicants and to not privilege one over the other. As our ADM previously stated, what really drives the process and the length of time it takes to consider is the completeness of the application, the number of times you have to go back and forth and request additional information. It’s largely driven by that — the ability and sophistication almost of the operator to be able to provide fulsome information, how much support and education the licensing officer has to provide to get that operator up and running.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you for the response and just one further question. Overall, I’m wondering if there is data that could be tabled for the committee from the licensing perspective on…. It sounds like from Mr. Chong since 2015, — I think he said — there is data available that could really show the capacity of the licensing. I’m wondering about the total spaces and facilities, whether private or public, all spaces in the province…. If it can be tabled — some information that shows the trend in public versus private and the total spaces available in that time that need to be licensed…. Just to be able to show that, just so we can see….

I say that because, as I hear from my constituents, the lack of spaces is still what I hear the most. So if we’re looking at licensing being part of that, just understanding that data for the committee, I think, would be important. I’m just wondering if that would be possible.

Steve Chong: Maybe I’ll just say to that, that although we do collect the data with respect to the number of licensed facilities, we currently do not break it down between those kinds of distinctions.

Ally Butler: I’ll just add to that, I definitely think that’s something we can work on getting for the committee. That might take us a little bit of time, to Steve’s point that it’s not something we routinely collect, but as part of the work we’re doing with our colleagues in Education and Child Care, we can absolutely work towards that.

[9:25 a.m.]

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the information.

I just want to start by acknowledging, Mr. Chong, that Vancouver Coastal Health was disproportionately impacted by the mass murder tragedy this weekend. This may or may not have impacted you directly, but I’m sure it’s hit everyone. I appreciate you taking the time to continue and be able to be here today. This is a very hard time for your work, and I appreciate the response and the efforts that you’re taking to deal with what’s happened in Vancouver on Saturday.

With that, I’ll take you off the hot seat actually and go to your Ministry of Health colleagues. My question actually is related to…. This is Vancouver Coastal Health. What has the Ministry of Health done to determine whether this is a unique situation to Vancouver Coastal Health, or is this happening across all facilities? Perhaps this is an Education and Child Care question; I’m not sure. Maybe this is your whole new committee question.

But what we’re seeing here is the light being shone on just one. So is this provincial? What have you done to see what this is across the province?

Ally Butler: Maybe I’ll start and then I’ll see if my colleagues in Child Care want to add anything.

I think you’re absolutely right. This is the work of the committee. Certainly we have been constantly engaged with our health authority colleagues and their licensing programs to understand day to day what’s happening for them over the last several years. But as we look more systematically now and systemically across all of our health authorities, the work to develop those targets and KPIs will be work that we do with all our health authority colleagues, not just VCH, so we can get that better global picture.

As ADM Boyle spoke to, some of the information-sharing agreements that we’re in the process of putting in place, I think, will really help us fine-tune some of that work to better understand need and projection because it will look different in different parts of the province. We know that proportionally, we see new facilities open at different rates, depending on whether or not they’re urban or rural and where operators tend to want to establish business. The capacity of our existing licensing programs also varies depending on need to date in those regional health authorities.

So we really do need to look across all of them as we think about targets and KPIs and what makes sense. That is at the core and the heart of the work that this committee will be doing.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Something that Mr. Chong said sort of struck me about the need for a 63 percent increase in staffing levels and putting together the KPIs in order to be able to create the ask for an increase in staffing. I’m kind of surprised that we have a provincial program that has a target of creating more space, and we’re asking the health authorities to come to us to ask for more staffing.

I’m wondering: where is the overall provincial coordination? Maybe this goes back to this committee we’ve created. But the overall provincial coordination on this, in terms of not forcing the health authorities to create the ask, but for us to be forward-thinking and say we know that you’re going to need some…. Obviously, they can provide you with fine-tuning in numbers. But how do we get in front of this and be proactive in the planning as opposed to reactive in the planning?

Kaye Krishna: Maybe I’ll start. I think it’s both, to be honest. I mean I think we have to do the projections; we have to understand demand; we have to look where new spaces are being created either through our funding or otherwise.

But then it’s really the health authority, at the end of the day, that is responsible for its own operations and staffing. We don’t have line of sight, nor would we direct how and where they’re staffing or the efficiencies they find with other responsibilities that those licensing officers may have.

It really has to be kind of a feedback loop, if you will. We continue to kind of look at the opportunities on a regular basis of what are their projections and what are their needs. Then I really think that’s the work of the committee to identify the proactive opportunity in better ways and then the feedback loop for anticipating net new needs well in advance so we can try to stay ahead of the issues and challenges.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Last follow-up. I guess what I’m also looking at is that I see this feeding into Finance as well. Budget opportunities and budget preparation and making sure that the proactive side that I see to this is us saying we know we need this much money to run this program, based on the staffing projections that people are giving us and making sure that the provincial coordination on this program is actually going across all the ministries that are necessary.

Kaye Krishna: Yes.

Peter Milobar (Chair): So again, we’re similar in thinking today, Stephanie. I was going to go down this path a little bit as well.

[9:30 a.m.]

I recognize everyone does great work, so take this for what it is. But I mean, we’re here to scrutinize reports. As far as audit reports that have come forward in the three years I’ve been on this committee, this one, frankly, is pretty poor in the overall deliverables that have happened over the last seven years as it relates to child care and access.

It’s a ten-year plan, and we’re on year 7. The answers I’m hearing today are, “We’re still developing KPIs,” which shocks me that we don’t have KPIs for licensing to begin with, let alone standardized across the province. So now we’re going to go out and talk to five different health authorities based on Vancouver Coastal Health’s work.

I totally understand why the Auditor General would pick Vancouver Coastal Health to be the one to look at, but there are four other ones. Not all health authorities are the same. I think it doesn’t matter what issue or topic we’re talking about. There’s a wide range of issues going on within each health authority when they’re left to their own management, frankly. Ultimately, the minister responsible is the minister responsible.

I do not understand how KPIs are not mandated to health authorities. We’re going to spend Lord knows how many years trying to figure out with each health authority based on Vancouver Coastal Health’s work whether it’s an appropriate KPI or not. If it’s a difference between rural and urban, then have two different KPIs. But it needs to be directive.

If this were seniors’ care…. When the province wanted to change the hours of care for seniors’ homes — a standard of care — it was directed and it was done. Yet with children, we seem to be in this perpetual loop of criss-crossed jurisdictions and no one wanting to take full responsibility and clear, transparent accountability for the numbers, the implementation, where the clog in the system is. A lot of that is because we’re not even measuring it — after seven years.

How, for any of the ministry here…? Again, I’m leaving the Health Authority out of this, because I view this as…. This has been a program created by the province and the federal government. It’s supposed to be directed by the ministries responsible, be it MCFD or now Education and Health on the licensing side.

But we’re seven years in when governments finally, based on an Auditor General report, realize that there are a whole lot of ministries working at cross-purposes, and we still don’t even have KPIs. We’re going to spend how many years developing future KPIs, instead of actually just delivering child care spaces?

If I sound frustrated, it’s because I’ve spent those whole seven years as an MLA listening to people begging for child care in Kamloops, and the newer MLAs are starting to have their email boxes filled up. At what point will the minister or the ministries just decree that this is the standard and this is what shall happen?

If health authorities need to make adjustments to their staffing, they need to talk to the Minister of Health about funding or they need to look at their own internal administrative structure, just as they do if any other decree comes down related to health care, and how they’re going to operationalize what the new standard is.

I guess this is the crux of the question: am I honestly hearing from the Ministry of Health that despite the work VCH has done to establish KPIs for licensing, we’re now going to embark on talking to four other health authorities to decide if those health authorities agree with Vancouver Coastal Health’s KPIs for licensing, or if we’re going to have a patchwork of five different KPI standards across this province for each health authority?

Because if that’s the case, this is all window dressing, frankly, of saying we’re agreeing with recommendations. It’s not going to speed anything up, if we’re just going to be in this perpetual “we’re having meetings and symposiums to talk about things” and not actually just get the stuff implemented.

So is that actually the case that Vancouver Coastal House has done the KPI work, but it has not been accepted by the Ministry of Health as that is the new acceptable KPI for licensing, and that in fact it’s going to have to now turn into four other conversations around the province as to what each health authority would deem to be their own acceptable level of KPIs?

[9:35 a.m.]

Ross Hayward: I agree with you with respect to the fact that we need to do a better job with KPIs that are consistent across the province. I would not say that the ministry will be looking at what Vancouver Coastal Health is doing and going out to the other health authorities and saying: “Are these acceptable to you?”

I think the role of this group and the advantage of having the Auditor General’s report to identify this gap is that this creates the opportunity for the Ministry of Health, as far as the licensing component, to be more directive on: “This is the minimum standard that we are expecting for KPIs.”

What we will be doing is looking at what Vancouver Coastal Health’s current KPIs are, what they are looking at doing, as well as what the other health authorities are doing. We, as a group — the collective, this committee and the Ministry of Health around the licensing side — will be taking that and will be being more directive around: these are the minimum-standard KPIs across the province we’ll be looking at.

As Ally mentioned before, and it’s been talked about around this group, and I think some of the questions you’ve had around…. When it gets down to looking at KPIs and developing them, how many licensing officers do we need? You know, it depends on setting those clear standards as to what is a suitable amount of time, an acceptable amount of time, for licence application from start to finish. What is an acceptable amount of time for an investigation? And frankly, yes, you’re right. That hasn’t been standardized across the province.

The job, I would say, of the Ministry of Health is to make sure that we have those standards across the province and to be more directive with them and not say: “These are what we expect you to do in VCH, and this is going to be different over here.”

That is the work that we have to do. That’s the work that we’ll be doing around this cross-ministry table and through the Ministry of Health.

I might just look to my colleagues if there are any other comments they’d like to add.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Just a quick follow-up to that, then. Once KPIs are directed and established, is the intention, in the interest of transparency…? Frankly, health authorities, at least Interior Health…. I’ll only speak from my experience with Interior Health over the last 20-plus years I’ve been an elected official. It’s like pulling teeth to get information.

Will KPIs be regularly and transparently posted, and what target is actually being hit or not hit in relation to child care and licensing? Or is it just going to be internal reviews that people really don’t understand what’s going on as it relates to licensing or not across the province?

Ross Hayward: I think it would be similar to what we do at the ministry now with the assisted living registrar, for example, and the licensing of assisted living facilities. We report out on investigations. We report out on that level of detail. My intent — and I’ll leave that to Ally, who’s in the new role — would be to have that transparency around that reporting.

Kiel Giddens: I’ll be very quick because I think Stephanie and Peter actually covered the questions that I had. But I think I’m coming from the same theme that they have started here.

It’s just that, obviously, Vancouver Coastal was a good example. It had serviced remote communities. But I will say that Northern Health, in particular, as a health authority, does have unique challenges. Interior Health as well, but I think of Northern Health — the very, very rural, remote Indigenous and rural communities, some of these spaces, some of the inspections that need to take place there.

So I would hope that the consideration would take into account the unique needs of the North as well, and I have to say that as a northern representative on the committee.

Nina Krieger: This line of questioning has been also very helpful in the line of what I’ve been thinking as well.

Just a comment that the report touches on the changing landscape for both child care and staffing and uncertainties that I think all institutions grapple with. There’s reference to interviews with staff that indicate the review of applications is taking longer than anticipated because there are more applicants with no previous experience.

The report also references the staffing constraints and the fact that attention was put on staffing and addressing staff vacancies rather than considering how to increase capacity. I think of the section of report that talks about two unfilled positions, two staff on leave.

[9:40 a.m.]

These are broad trends that we see in many institutions that make planning extremely challenging. I just appreciate those challenges and appreciate the audit and the opportunities for refinement that it reveals and the cooperation of all involved.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Nina just touched on something that was concerning me a little bit in the KPIs that were determined, which was, you know, the time from which a submission is issued until it’s completed, the time from which an investigation begins until it’s completed. What I’m seeing there is speed. And I totally understand, like: what’s the average time so that we know what we have to staff at? Also, what are the number of applications we think we’re going to need? I get why time is important, but there are a lot of other variables in there than just speed.

A few years ago — well before you, Deputy Minister Krishna, and even before your predecessor — there became this thing in education about the number of students you’re graduating within five years. And what that led to was an increase in the number of students who are graduating with an adult Dogwood.

We lowered our quality of service to increase our quantity of service. And there’s all sorts of really good reasons for that and justifiable reasons for that. What it did was show a positive increase in an indicator, but didn’t actually dig down, deep down, to address what are we doing that’s requiring these students to be graduated with an adult Dogwood instead of a regular Dogwood, which we now know goes all the way back to the service they’re provided from the minute they walk into the schools when they’re four years old — some of them are four years old.

So I’m cautioning us to use speed only as an indicator and, also, without wanting to slow this down, because I agree with the frustration that’s been expressed here, but I also agree with the fact that this is a very large program we’re implementing. There’s a lot of learning from these audits. They provided a really good public service, I think, for all of us to see in terms of system improvement, but making sure that we’re looking back on our KPIs and creating KPIs for our KPIs that include quality as well as quantity, if that makes sense.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Yeah, and just to maybe clarify two things. Sorry if I…. Truly I am not…. I get how the system works. The people in this room and the people on screen can only do what they’re tasked with doing from ministers and changing landscapes and stuff. I do get that. Unfortunately, you’re the ones here that I am speaking with versus the ministers themselves. So, don’t take it personally, as rough as I may come across sometimes.

Secondly, I just want to be clear. In terms of when I’m talking KPI, I’m not even trying to say what the KPI should be. If it needs to be six months to be a proper KPI, then it’s six months.

I think back to my city of Kamloops days, where our planning department would come forward and they’d have 12 different types of applications, and they would have six weeks for this or nine weeks for that, and they would present a report every six months that they were at 95 percent of the applications hitting those targets and the other application that was supposed to take longer was….

To me, a KPI doesn’t necessarily mean fast as possible. It means: are we even tracking and hitting what we should be hitting, based on developing that standard of what an appropriate timeline is to move forward an application of X? If you’re not tracking that, you don’t even know what’s happening.

Apparently, Vancouver Coastal Health didn’t have KPIs, and they’re working to get those all established. They’re starting to track, and that’s wonderful. Does the ministry know if there were any health authorities that were tracking their workflow and trying to achieve any actual targeted timelines? Or has Vancouver Coastal Health truly broken trail here for everybody in the province when it comes to child care and tracking licensing timelines?

Ally Butler: I think each individual health authority has been collecting data to an extent and monitoring their own work along the way around just looking at general trends, how many active open applications they have, how many active investigations. I think where we haven’t necessarily had consistent practice is taking that data and setting it against a KPI and benchmark.

[9:45 a.m.]

That work that VCH is doing…. I wouldn’t want the committee to think we’re going to wait for VCH to finish that work in a year and then engage in conversation with the other health authorities. That work will happen parallel to the work that VCH is doing and with the committee so that we can look at setting similar standards and KPIs across the health authorities, alongside the work that VCH is doing this year.

Peter Milobar (Chair): The other piece that we haven’t mentioned with the KPIs, and it would blend in with education as well, is if you’re trying to attract operators, trying to attract potential lease space or put holds on and things of that nature, they need certainty, too, or you’ve added a whole other level of risk to applicants, where they’re not sure what any timeline is going to be as they’re trying to project cash flows and trying to project when they may or may not be open, ramping up hiring or not, trying to secure leases.

Without those types of certainties, it creates a whole other problem on the back end in terms of even having someone interested in trying to create a space, because they’re left to guess as to will it be six months, will it be a year, will it be three months or could I have a leased space potentially locked up for two years waiting on licensing or waiting on confirmation from the education side in terms of spaces.

There’s that component too. That’s why these are so critical in terms of people understanding, in the whole system, what timelines in the system are reasonable. There are always going to be exceptions, obviously. You’re never going to be 100 percent of anything, but people need to have that certainty as well.

Any other questions? No? Okay, I think that wraps it up. Any new business? Then a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 9:46 a.m.