The committee met at 9:49 a.m.

[Amna Shah in the chair.]

Amna Shah (Chair): Good morning, everybody. My name is Amna Shah. I’m the MLA for Surrey City Centre and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Private Bills and Private Members’ Bills, an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly.

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

The purpose of today’s meeting is to receive presentations on Bill M216, Professional Reliance Act.

Before we move on to our agenda items, I would like to provide an update on our committee’s work. At our next meeting, the committee will hear additional presentations on Bill M216. I expect our consideration of that bill will continue into future meetings in April, as our report on the bill is due on May 6.

The committee will also continue its consideration of Bill M217, Dashboard Cameras in Commercial Vehicles Act, which is due back to the House on May 21.

[9:50 a.m.]

The other bills with our committee are Bill M226, Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, 2025; Bill M231, Veterans and First Responders Month Act; and Bill M232, Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act

back to the House on May 21.

The other bills with our committee are Bill M226, Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, 2025; Bill M231, Veterans and First Responders Month Act; and Bill M232, Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act.

The committee accepted written submissions on these bills, which are posted on our website. Members will be reviewing the written submissions, and we’ll continue our consideration of these bills in future meetings.

In addition, a reminder that timing in today’s meeting is quite tight, so we respectfully ask that all presenters and members just be mindful of the time. I will do my best to ensure that we stay on track.

Now, first, we are going to be hearing presentations on Bill M216, and we will begin with the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs.

We are joined by Teri Collins, Deputy Minister; Zachary May, executive director of the construction standards and digital solutions branch; and Aman Gill, director of building policy and legislation.

Welcome to you all today. As a reminder, you have up to ten minutes to present to the committee, followed by 20 minutes for questions from committee members. You’ll see a timer on the screen to assist you. Please take it away when you’re ready.

Presentations on Bills

Bill M216 — Professional Reliance Act

Ministry of Housing
and Municipal Affairs

Teri Collins: Good morning. Nice to see everyone. Thank you again for the opportunity to present to this committee the perspective and suggestions of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

I am Teri Collins, the Deputy Minister for Housing and Municipal Affairs, the ministry which is responsible for regulatory schemes for both land use and building and safety systems.

The ministry did make a detailed written submission in December outlining areas for clarification and further engagement with stakeholders. I will assume that the committee has had a chance to review that submission, and I’ll focus this presentation really on some of the suggested areas of focus and actions that may improve the outcomes of this bill.

It’s no surprise the building and regulatory system is quite complex. Reaching development decisions takes time and can add cost to housing, sometimes more than should be necessary.

We understand the goal of this bill is to simplify the processes for the technical review of permits required to build housing, making approvals faster and less expensive. The ministry supports these goals and also feels more clarity will be required to avoid creating confusion and uncertainty rather than clarity and speed.

Getting to simplicity within a complex regulatory system requires clarity of authority, liability and routes for appeal. This clarity comes through engagement of parties involved, because a lack of clarity will cause uncertainty and confusion, which could slow approvals down.

If the committee decides to proceed with this bill, the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs would recommend that the committee consider amendments to improve the clarity of the bill and include an implementation provision for a process that provides the time and flexibility to ensure that the bill could be implemented as successfully as possible.

I’ll talk a little bit about scope and application. One of the areas needing greater clarity is the bill’s scope. As drafted, this bill could apply to all types of permits for all types of buildings, including land use and other permits, such as environmental and archaeology permits and commercial and industrial buildings. This means the bill could be applied in situations either not considered or not intended.

The committee could consider making amendments that would focus the application of this bill to building permits for residential buildings and residential buildings with commercial mixed use only.

In support of this more focused scope, the committee could also consider an amendment to have the bill apply to a local authority as defined under the Building Act. The bill currently excludes some local authorities under the Building Act that issue permits for residential buildings, and this would also help clarify that the bill doesn’t apply to land use and other permits.

If this change was made, the bill’s application would extend to treaty nations. The committee would be advised to consult with First Nations or have the bill come into force by regulation, allowing for appropriate consultation time.

The committee could also consider clarifying what types of residential buildings and permits the bill applies to, as it may reduce confusion over the application of the bill. However, the ministry does not have a clear recommendation on this topic.

For instance, the bill could be amended to apply to only large, complex buildings, under part 3 of the building code, since these buildings already require the services of registered professionals, or the bill could be limited to just small homes and buildings, under part 9 of the building code.

[9:55 a.m.]

Consultation and feedback would provide for a more prescriptive statute and could help determine if narrowing to one part of the building code would indeed be beneficial.

Some administrative details. I’d like to touch on regulation-making authority. The bill includes administrative elements that are often set out in regulation to allow for a level

Consultation and feedback would provide for a more prescriptive statute and could help determine if narrowing to one part of the building code would indeed be beneficial.

Some administrative details, and I’d like to touch on regulation making authority. The bill includes administrative elements that are often set out in regulation to allow for a level of flexibility within the foundation of the bill itself, of course. For example, who makes what decision, what time frames apply to certain required steps, etc. Again, this would also allow time to consult with affected parties, to develop clarity and precision of the terms and application and allow for future adjustments post-implementation.

The ministry further recommends the bill be clear and specify which minister will ultimately be responsible for the bill if enacted and include regulation-making authority to develop key administrative provisions. The committee may want to consider amendments that would give the minister responsible regulation-making authority to prescribe further precision on the specific types of building and permit types the bill applies to, specific timelines for local governments to request peer reviews, list additional situations where a local government may request a peer review of the work of a registered professional to align with a certified professional program, to define key terms and concepts and to prescribe requirements related to submissions, documentation and permit submission review.

Given the concerns raised in the many submissions to this committee, providing broad regulation-making authority to the minister would allow the responsible ministry to quickly make changes and improvements if, in fact, any of the concerns that have been raised materialize.

The ministry further recommends that the committee consider an amendment so that this bill would only come into force by cabinet regulation. This is a crucial amendment that would allow government to do the analysis needed to determine what consequential amendments are needed to allow the bill to operate alongside other provincial legislation like the Building Act, which establishes that only qualified building officials may make code compliance decisions on behalf of a local government; to determine how to make the liability and immunity provisions work in practice while protecting the public; and to provide time to develop regulations to operationalize the bill and support local governments in updating their processes.

Thank you again for the opportunity to present. As I said at the beginning, the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs supports the goal of simplifying and speeding up approvals to build housing faster. Our feedback provided today aims to bring more clarity to the scope and allow time for additional analysis and engagement to be done to ensure that the bill could operate alongside existing legislation.

In summary, the amendments that we have suggested today are intended to maintain public trust and to ensure there is adequate oversight of housing construction, provide clarity and certainty to local governments, builders and developers.

Amna Shah (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation.

Members, we now have some time for questions, and I will start with Darlene.

Darlene Rotchford: Thank you for your presentation and your earlier session.

What is the process that the ministry goes through in advancing, developing proposed legislation?

Teri Collins: Yes, it’s quite a detailed process that we go through in developing legislation. It includes a rigorous kind of multi-stage process of policy development, interministry collaboration and review, stakeholder consultation, cabinet approvals, legal drafting and implementation planning.

Usually, we would see that process take about 12 months for a fairly straightforward bill.

As a private member’s bill, this bill has not gone through the same process and hasn’t been through the scrutiny of cabinet committees and other processes. It also has not been drafted by solicitors in the office of leg. counsel, who we work with in the government legislative drafting process. They’ve got a high level of expertise in drafting legislation and providing advice to government on operational aspects of the bill and whether there are conflicts or unintended consequences with other pieces of legislation.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): Darlene actually beat me to that question.

Help us understand. This bill has not been received favourably by stakeholders. Perhaps that is, in part, because there has not been a lot of consultation preceding it coming forward. Do you think that has done damage to the ability of government to have good-faith conversations with stakeholders around the kind of ideas that are proposed in the bill?

[10:00 a.m.]

If so, how do you envision resetting that relationship so that there can be a more fulsome conversation accompanied by consultation around some of the ideas that are embodied in the bill?

Teri Collins: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t want to wade in on whether I think this has caused damage.

I would say, from the ministry’s perspective on the work that we do to create policy and legislation,

can be a more fulsome conversation accompanied by consultation around some of the ideas that are embodied in the bill?

Teri Collins: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t want to weigh in on whether I think this has caused damage. I would say from the ministry’s perspective on the work that we do to create policy and legislation, we have a very robust process to work with our partners, including local governments, UBCM experts in the field. I think we’ve demonstrated that we are committed to that for bringing government legislation forward. I would expect that we would continue to do that.

Susie Chant: It was a very fulsome presentation very quickly. You talk faster than I write.

Interjection.

Susie Chant: No, not at all. It was very efficient.

There was something…. Right at the very beginning you said…. You suggested clarity, “clarify the authority….” It started with authority and ended with routes of appeal, and there were two things in the middle there.

Teri Collins: Yeah. Clarity of authority, clarity of liability and routes for appeal.

Susie Chant: Liability was the bit. Okay.

Are those things…? In other legislations, are those in place as the legislation is built? Or is that stuff that comes in once the legislation is sort of sorted out and comes in under regulation? What is the norm for that kind of thing? Because that makes total sense.

Teri Collins: I think, as I talked about, the process for developing a government bill would have a very rigorous process working with the leg. counsel drafters who, again, are experts in designing and crafting legislation. A suite of legal team that gives us advice and really to weigh the risks and benefits and potential liabilities or unintended consequences…. We kind of bundle all of the stakeholder feedback that we get. We run that through legal. We work with the leg. counsel drafters to try and craft the bill in a way that addresses or mitigates those risks.

Your second question was around what is in regulation. There are a number of things that typically a government bill would put into regulation, more of the administrative items. Again, those places still maintaining the original intent and authority in the legislation itself but allowing a little bit of flexibility in amending the processes and administrative pieces that flow from the legislation….

George Chow: You mentioned an appeal process, so what would that envision? Does that mean property owner appealing to the municipality? Or maybe the municipality didn’t like the work of the professional and wanted to not approve it. Is that the appeal process you mentioned?

Teri Collins: I think this bill did touch on an appeals process.

Do you want to answer that? I’m going to ask Zach to answer the technical details there, because I will get it wrong.

Zachary May: The current appeal process, as we understand it, in the bill is that an appeal would go to the superintendent of professional governance. I understand there are some proposed amendments to look at a different process. Ultimately, what would be helpful from the ministry’s perspective is just clarity on what exactly the appeal process would be so that we can understand that and provide feedback.

We don’t have a proposed process. Really we would look to the committee for what that would be and to provide clarity on exactly what that appeal process would be so that we can understand the implications and work from there.

Jeremy Valeriote: Thank you for the presentation.

Maybe a little bit similar to Gavin’s question…. The ministry has suggested amendments. The sponsor themselves have suggested several amendments at this point. I think we’ve got more amendments than there are clauses in the bill. We have 400, almost 500, submissions. Is there, you know…? As I understand it, there’s no official process for this committee to refer this entire package back to the ministry, but we can send you correspondence.

[10:05 a.m.]

My question is: is it feasible to take…? As you said, you support the goal, and I think, many of us support an overall goal, but I think I would prefer to see it run-through your process that you’ve just described. Is it feasible to send you all this material and let the ministry make something of it or would you have to start from scratch in terms of consultation with stakeholders? I guess my question is: can I

but I think we’d prefer to see…. I would prefer to see a run-through of your process that you’ve just described.

Is it feasible to send you all this material and let the ministry make something of it, or would you have to start from scratch in terms of consultation with stakeholders? I guess my question is: can all this work lead to something good even if it’s outside of passing this bill?

Teri Collins: Yeah, thank you. I will leave it to the Chair to speak to the process that the committee can or can’t go through. I’m not familiar with that.

Again, I would just reiterate that I think the intent of the bill to streamline and speed up approvals is something that the ministry has had a focus on and we’ve done a lot of work on. The specific approach that’s been proposed here isn’t something that we had considered in our work around housing. But you are quite right that with more analysis and consultation and consideration of the feedback, I think there is a space where we could look at what more can be done to address permitting approvals and timelines.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): A bit of a double-barrelled question on two different aspects of consultation. The first question is: was the ministry consulted in the development of this bill, and if so, can you describe that consultation?

The second is: could you please expand on that 12-month process that you described in terms of consultation? Just help us understand the kind of resources that are available to you as a ministry and the kind of scope of what that consultative process would look like.

The reason I asked for both of those answers is that I’m trying to understand…. This is obviously a very consequential piece of legislation that has triggered significant engagement from stakeholders, and it has not been accompanied by the level of consultation that would be typical of a bill of this significance. So I’m just trying to understand, again, what consultation was undertaken with yourselves as ministry. Again, just compare and contrast what a normal consultation process would look like if you as the ministry were advancing a bill of this significance.

Teri Collins: Sure, thank you. The ministry was not consulted on the development of this bill. We weren’t involved in the drafting of it. We did meet with the sponsor of the bill after second reading and discussed some of our challenges, which have been highlighted in our submission, and relayed our recommendation that more consultation would be helpful.

I think, as I’ve mentioned, some of the potential amendments that the committee could consider would allow time to work with local governments and professional associations and stakeholders to address the issue.

On the process for government bills, earlier I gave you the shorter answer. I do have a more detailed listing of the steps here. I’m happy to run through them.

There’s a very structured process that government goes through to develop bills. It starts with a clear problem definition, so understanding, assessing the issue, doing the research and engaging in early consultation to analyze even what the options are, and providing recommendations then through the executive of the ministry to address the best way to address the policy question and to begin the work in the ministry.

We then have a process of putting together a legislative proposal where we seek approval from cabinet to proceed with the legislative project. We outline the proposed project, the rationale for bringing the item forward and the timing, any fiscal implications or legal advice, cross-ministry implications and what consultation we would go through.

We then develop a detailed request for a decision, which seeks approval of the policy direction generally from cabinet. And then we proceed to a request for legislation, which is more of an in-depth overview of all aspects of the proposed legislation. That also requires time for analysis, research and consultation. There are then a number of other steps that follow from that legislative review committee.

But I would say our engagement with partners and stakeholders really is throughout that whole process, understanding even the problem definition. Oftentimes, we policy folks can think we know the problem, and consultation with our local partners actually shifts us in one direction or another to more fully understand how that problem presents itself on the ground or if in fact it is seen to be a problem from folks that are doing the work at the local level.

We do, as I mentioned I think, consult with UBCM, local governments, First Nations, industry experts, subject-matter experts, if they exist, on different aspects of policy.

[10:10 a.m.]

Then there is also an interministry collaboration, that piece I mentioned earlier about understanding how a proposed bill would intersect with other pieces of legislation, any consequential amendments or unintended consequences. We get into a fairly full process there.

There’s also…. As part of all of this process, we go through a fairly detailed economic and fiscal impact analysis

understanding how a proposed bill would intersect with other pieces of legislation, any consequential amendments or unintended consequences. We get into a fairly full process there.

There’s also…. As part of all of this process, we go through a fairly detailed economic and fiscal impact analysis. There’s a framework provided to us by government where we review and assess the fiscal impacts. We work with Treasury Board staff. There’s a range of…. All of those perspectives are bundled into the material and the recommendations that go forward to cabinet.

Amna Shah (Chair): Do you have a follow-up?

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): I do, yeah.

Amna Shah (Chair): Yeah, sure.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Teri. That’s a very helpful explanation.

What I think we’re wrestling with as a committee is that we have none of those resources. We have none of those processes, and we have a bill that has all of those implications. We don’t have the toolkit to do what you’ve just described.

So I suppose what I think we’re attempting to do is take the spirit and the idea of the bill and find a way to move forward that is not dismissive of the bill but also is not dismissive of the complexities, the stakeholder feedback, all the things you’ve just described.

In your view, is this bill fixable? Is it even possible for there to be a process by which this bill is amended via this committee without any of the resources we’ve just described or sent back through the Legislature? Can we even fix this bill?

Or would we be better…? I’m not asking you to have a political opinion. Just would we be better, from an engagement, consultation, stakeholder buy-in perspective, to find the right and appropriate way to stop this bill in its tracks, to refer the materials submitted from hundreds of stakeholders to you and to encourage the ministry to come contemplate whether that thinking could be folded into other processes or legislation that you might be working toward already?

Teri Collins: Yeah. I mean, again, I can’t speak to the committee’s processes. I appreciate the dilemma that you’ve got.

I would say, from a government development of legislation perspective, in order to be true to all of the steps that that I’ve gone through that we would normally do, we could again start with the problem statement and begin that work with stakeholders to understand and then incrementally work through.

Obviously, we would be able to take the opportunity of all of the feedback presented here. But that’s the process that we would recommend for a government piece of legislation.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Teri.

Amna Shah (Chair): I’m just going to add myself to the list here.

I’m wondering if you could comment on how professional reliance is used currently by local governments in the certified professionals program.

Teri Collins: I can speak at a high level from what I know about the certified professionals program, and I’ll ask my staff to help me out if I get it wrong.

In terms of the local government’s application of that, I’m probably not the best expert, and I do think there are some local government folks to follow in presentations here today, so that might be best directed to them. I would say that there are some similarities between the certified professionals program and this bill, but they are two distinct approaches to streamlining and looking at oversight.

I would point out a couple of things. Not every registered professional is a certified professional under that program. It’s a unique distinction for architects and engineers that make the decisions to participate in that program.

It also has additional standards and expectations. It requires additional training and coursework, which covers advanced code knowledge and detailed application of the B.C. building code. Under the CP program, there are broader responsibilities to maintain a high level of knowledge in relevant portions of the building code. There also is no equivalent to the CP program for land use and development permit approvals.

I think, also, the CP program can streamline approval processes, but it does not remove the role of local governments. Under the CP program, local governments provide the necessary administrative processes, including reviewing building permit documents for completeness and correctness and making decisions to issue building permits. They also work through code interpretation issues with a certified professional. They don’t just accept the submissions as meeting the requirements.

[10:15 a.m.]

I think local governments may also request peer review reports because, as I mentioned, the CP program doesn’t cover all parts of the building code. So again, I may suggest that the committee also seek the advice of the local government folks.

the requirements.

I think local governments also may request peer review reports, because as I mentioned, the CP program doesn’t cover all parts of the building code. So again, may I suggest that the committee also seek the advice of the local government folks.

Amna Shah (Chair): Thank you. I just want to refer back to the submission, the written submission that you had made. Right at the end of the submission, there was something that caught my eye about…. Most PGA professionals carry liability insurance, which provides the claim-based coverage. But if they were to retire or if they were to change insurers, there is no coverage, and then the application of the liability really remains uncertain.

I’m wondering if you could expand on that a little bit, whether there are currently any…? Yeah. I’m starting to see that as a bit of a concern, but I’m wondering if you could expand a little bit on how that would kind of play out if there were any amendments made to that.

Is this something that can be addressed or it can…? It seems to me that, by design, there are no tools to be able to pursue that PGA professional.

Teri Collins: I think what I can say is that that’s an area that we have identified that would benefit from further consultation and legal advice. I don’t understand all of the nuances and relationships and have not had the time or the process to go into detailed legal advice around what the unintended consequences be or the legal liabilities. But it’s certainly an area that we wanted to point out for the committee to give due consideration.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): We’ve touched a little bit on consultation, and I really appreciate all the view that you’ve provided. Just to help us understand the response to this bill…. We had 484 submissions, of which 88 percent were opposed, including every municipality that submitted. How does that compare to a typical response to consultation on a government bill in the ministry?

Teri Collins: I’m not sure it’s similar, to be frank.

I think the process here is one where something has been tabled, a bill has been tabled publicly in the Legislature, and there have been many calls for feedback and response. The committee has a public process publicly available for people to provide feedback, and I think it’s great that folks have taken the committee up on that and provided feedback.

Our process, when we go through drafting a government bill, is quite different than that. We don’t typically have…. I mean, sometimes we do have a full public consultation up on our website, but it’s generally more targeted, and we do reach out. So I’m just not sure that I could even compare the two. Sorry.

Amna Shah (Chair): All right, Members, thank you for your questions, and thank you, DM Collins, for your presentation and your kind time to answer all of our questions.

Members, we will take a brief recess to set up for our next presenters.

The committee recessed from 10:18 a.m. to 10:20 a.m.

[Amna Shah in the chair.]

Amna Shah (Chair): All right. Welcome back, everybody.

[10:20 a.m.]

Next from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, we are joined by Trevor Hughes, deputy minister; Tony Loughran, assistant deputy minister of governance, legislation and engagement; and

The committee resumed at 10:20 a.m.

[Amna Shah in the chair.]

Amna Shah (Chair): Next, from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, we are joined by Trevor Hughes, deputy minister; Tony Loughran, assistant deputy minister of governance, legislation and engagement; and Alayna van Leeuwen, deputy superintendent of the office for international credential recognition.

Please correct me if I’ve mispronounced your name. I would not like to do that, ideally.

Thank you all for being here today. As a reminder, you have up to ten minutes to present to the committee, followed by 20 minutes for questions from committee members. You will see a timer on the screen to assist you with that.

Whenever you’re ready, please take it away.

Ministry of Post-Secondary Education
and Future Skills

Trevor Hughes: Thank you, Chair and Members, for the opportunity to be here to present to you.

We also appreciated the opportunity to hear our colleagues from the Housing Ministry, who did an outstanding job. We’ve been working in partnership with them in terms of understanding our shared concerns and process for trying to address the issues here.

I’m going to very quickly turn it over to my expert team here, who will give you a perspective from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills.

Just by way of introduction — and I appreciate the Chair’s introduction of the team — the key here is that we’re responsible for the office of the superintendent of professional governance. Alayna will take you through a number of pieces that relate to the impact on the office related to the provisions of the bill.

We’ll start with Tony, who will outline, at a high level, where we are on this.

Tony Loughran: Good morning, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity to speak with the committee today.

As Trevor mentioned, my name is Tony Loughran. I’m the assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills. The office of the superintendent of professional governance and the office for international credentials recognition are within my portfolio within the ministry. I’m the ADM for governance, legislation and engagement.

Alayna, who’s with us today, is the acting superintendent for both of those offices. Together they support statutory responsibilities of the superintendent under the Professional Governance Act and the International Credentials Recognition Act.

These offices oversee the governance of professional regulators and ensure accountability across six PGA — Professional Governance Act — regulatory bodies and 18 ICRA, or International Credential Recognition Act, regulatory authorities. The six PGA ones are the critical ones we’re talking about today, since the scope of the bill applies to all six. That’ll be an issue I want to cover shortly, just about the application of the bill itself.

The office is responsible, as well, for the Labour Mobility Act, which supports worker mobility across Canada and helps ensure British Columbia has the skilled workforce it needs. This work unit currently consists of 13 full-time equivalent staff, primarily policy professionals and managers with expertise in public administration and governance.

The work unit does not employ regulated professionals such as engineers, architects, technologists, biologists and agrologists, as objectivity for the office is really crucial to its oversight role.

In our written submission to the committee, we did not take a position on the policy objectives of the bill. I will say, though, like my predecessor, Teri, the objectives, the intent of the bill itself, have real merit, so we’re not contradicting that at all. I think there are really some positive objectives of the actual legislation itself.

Instead, we wanted to focus today, and in our written submission, on providing information about the superintendent’s current statutory responsibilities and the implications of making the superintendent responsible for dispute resolution.

In our submission, we made three key recommendations. The first was to reassign the superintendent’s dispute resolution function to a body that would be more appropriate for the bill’s intent. The superintendent’s mandate is systematic oversight of regulatory bodies, rather than actually adjudicating disputes between regulatory bodies.

Our office does not currently have the required skill set to administer highly technical disputes related to engineering, geotechnical, architectural and potentially other professional work that regulatory registrants carry out and are overseen by those PGA regulatory bodies.

The second recommendation was to bring the bill into force by regulation, to provide time to prepare for implementation. This is something the previous presenter suggested as well.

[10:25 a.m.]

Professionals and regulators would need time to prepare for the type of legislation proposed here to develop guidance and manage liability and conflict-of-interest implications. If the superintendent was to carry out a dispute resolution function, lots of policy and procedures would need to be developed and implemented in order to

as well.

Professionals and regulators would need time to prepare for the type of legislation proposed here to develop guidance and manage liability and conflict of interest implications. If the superintendent was to carry out a dispute resolution function, lots of policy and procedures would need to be developed and implemented in order to bring that into force to support that kind of regime.

The third recommendation was to clarify the scope of the bill itself. By specifying the PGA and the regulatory bodies underneath the PGA, it will inevitably bring all six professions under the scope of the legislation. There is some question about things like agrologists, biologists, whether the intent of this bill would really need to apply to them. This is likely more focused just to the building environment itself, so technologists, engineers and architects are likely the real intent and the focus of the bill. I think that scope needs to be clarified in the legislation.

We also anticipated that professionals would have concerns about the liability provision, which we heard in some of the questions that came up previously. We recommend that the committee further examine how the bill might shift liability onto individual professionals and what that might mean in practice.

Reducing local government’s review functions could place greater risk on professionals certifying submissions who may be underinsured relative to the risk and potential impacts from building failures. This could be a significant public concern, and we recommend further consideration on this really important issue, actually. It’s a very critical issue, I think, going forward.

Just some comments on what we’ve heard the sponsor proposed in the committee previously about potential changes to the bill. We understand that the bill sponsor is proposing the removal of the dispute resolution function previously assigned to the superintendent. That’s a very welcome change in direction if that’s the intent of the committee as it moves forward.

However, the change to that section of the proposed legislation, 2(b), which requires local government to accept a submission unless there is a competence-related concern…. It may not actually be an effective substitute for a dispute resolution function, and so that may also have some unintended impacts that need to, I think, be explored.

For example, concerns related to a professional’s ethics or compliance with their code of conduct are serious professional matters, but these are not necessarily a competence concern. I think that needs to be worked through as well.

Good faith errors can also arise in the activities that professionals undertake. Misunderstandings of bylaw or other legal and technical requirements happen even when professionals are competent and ethical.

At the same time as sharing our observation about competence being a narrow basis for refusing a submission, we should also point out that the regulatory body complaint avenue really risks being overused if that is the mechanism to look at these disputes, so we’d ask that also be looked at. This would likely impact the ability of regulatory bodies to handle other complaints that they review and undertake on a daily basis.

Our ministry continues to recommend that the legislation is passed, that it be brought into force only through regulation, just to allow that time necessary to be able to develop the policies, the procedures that would need to support a framework like this.

I’m going to turn it over to Alayna. There were some questions from professional reliance, and she’ll tackle that issue in a bit more detail.

Alayna van Leeuwen: Thank you, Tony.

I’ll just quickly wrap it up by taking a moment to reflect generally on professional reliance. The office of the superintendent of professional governance was created as part of implementing the 2018 recommendations of the professional reliance review, which was an independent review commissioned by the government and carried out by Mark Haddock, an environmental lawyer.

The review described professional reliance as a regulatory model in which government sets the objectives or results to be achieved, professionals hired by proponents decide how those objectives or results will be met, and government checks to ensure that the objectives have been achieved through compliance and enforcement.

In Mr. Haddock’s view, effective professional reliance model has several elements. One of those inputs is strong professional governance by the regulatory bodies responsible for overseeing the professionals. That’s the reason for the creation of the Professional Governance Act and our office.

The regulatory bodies under the act have made great strides since the PGA was passed, and I feel that British Columbians can now trust that their PGA regulatory bodies are truly focused on regulating in the public interest and continuously improving oversight of their professionals. But while strong professional governance is necessary for effective professional reliance, it isn’t sufficient. It is not the only input that you need in that system.

[10:30 a.m.]

Professional reliance models at the local level were not part of the 2018 professional reliance review, but as the title of this bill sort of suggests or reflects, that concept does exist at the local level, and I think in terms of building officials’ and local governments’ responsibilities for administering the

system.

Professional reliance models at the local level were not part of the 2018 professional reliance review, but as the title of this bill suggests or reflects, that concept does exist at the local level, I think in terms of building officials and local governments’ responsibilities for administering the building code and their own bylaws around land use.

I think this bill would impact local governments’ toolboxes for carrying out those governmental responsibilities that they hold, potentially certain provincial environmental regulations, depending on the scope of the bill, and potentially their own bylaws.

So it is possible that if the government’s checking function, as described by Mr. Haddock, was substantially changed by legislation like this, that there should perhaps be other changes considered to help balance that and add public trust into the system.

But you can look forward to hearing from the PGA regulatory bodies themselves who can tell you more about the CP program, about liability and about their views on their role in professional reliance.

Amna Shah (Chair): Great. Thank you so much for your presentation. I’ll now open it up to questions and we’ll start with Gavin.

Gavin Dew: I really appreciated the extent, in your submission, of coverage around the dispute resolution piece and the staffing. The bill, in its original form, calls for dispute resolution to be undertaken by the superintendent. There is a proposed but not-yet-accepted amendment brought forward by the sponsor of the bill, and you recommend in your submission substituting a dispute resolution body established in accordance with regulations.

Whether private members’ bills spend money is a very significant consideration for our purposes. Can you please help us to understand what the cost would be of the superintendent taking on dispute resolution. Separately, if, in fact, a separate body is established to engage in dispute resolution, what would those costs look like? Because I assume they would be different if they were not folded within the overall scaffolding of the ministry.

Trevor Hughes: So we haven’t done a specific costing to get at what we think this could cost. We’ve approached it from the perspective that we are not staffed at this time with the expertise to do that function. So depending on what the ultimate bill looks like and if it stays as it is currently drafted, we have an office in place, but we would obviously need to staff up to get the expertise in.

So it could start as basic as establishing a job description to describe what that skill set would need to look like in practise. Are there folks already in government who have that skill set that we could recruit from, or are we going to have to recruit externally?

The next assessment would be: how many people do you actually need? As I say, we’ve got the office and there’s some infrastructure there, but it could be everything from space to figuring out the number of FTEs that we would need. That can be complicated to work out at this stage, but those are some of the core elements that would go into it.

I can’t give you a number, but I think it would be safe to say that it would probably be $1 to $2 million if it’s going to be, say, ten FTEs. And that’s just a complete…. Not even the back of a cocktail napkin.

Gavin Dew: Thank you. That’s very helpful. So, in short, this is a money bill.

Trevor Hughes: Pardon me?

Amna Shah (Chair): Member, let me just call on you. Gavin, do you have a follow-up?

Gavin Dew: My apologies. Thank you, Trevor. Appreciate the outline. So in short, this is a money bill.

Trevor Hughes: What I would say is that there are potential fiscal implications to us that we have not mapped out that would cause us concern as drafted now without having the expertise. The core piece of our concern is that we don’t have the expertise in that office to run that function.

So how do we get it? Could there be fiscal implications? It’s possible.

Amna Shah (Chair): Thank you and I’ll just do a quick reminder to members on the committee that it is not within the committee’s capacity to decide whether a bill is in or out of order.

Darlene Rotchford: Thank you, I appreciate that and I think part of this would also go back to your comments about why, when we’re looking at the bill and one of your recommendations is it should be within regulation, it’s because that gives you more time to actually look at some of the things from Member Dew’s question, right?

There’s going to be a lot of moving parts, is what I’m hearing. Whether that’s the staffing, because I heard you raise concerns about workload, but also that engagement from the previous conversations. So I appreciate that.

[10:35 a.m.]

Amna Shah (Chair): Great. Are there any further questions?

Gavin Dew: I think that what we’ve heard from the Ministry of Housing

You know what? No. I’m okay. That was it.

Amna Shah (Chair): Great.

Are there any further questions?

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): I think that what we’ve heard from Ministry of Housing was very extensive in terms of the level of consultation that would be undertaken if this had been moved forward as a government bill and in terms of the level of consultation that was undertaken with the ministry.

We recognize and understand that this is a new committee and a new structure, and we’re still figuring out how this works or ought to work. But can you help us understand what consultation was undertaken with the ministry in the development of this bill?

Trevor Hughes: I would give the exact same answer as my colleague. We were not consulted until we saw the bill on the order paper or tabled in the Legislature.

Susie Chant: When you were speaking about the liability provisions and so on, one of the things that you talked about that caught my attention was what you called good-faith errors. I totally understand what those are, from a different perspective.

So good faith-errors currently, if they occur…. Perhaps this is better asked to my municipal friends. Do people have sufficient insurance to cover those things?

Alayna van Leeuwen: I would recommend consulting with the municipal representatives, local government representatives and the professionals.

Susie Chant: Okay. Thank you.

Tony Loughran: If I could add. Likely, in those situations, they would be referred to the regulatory body overseeing those registrants. There may be different levels of discipline that might be necessary to respond, depending on the severity of the incident itself, but it’s all the way from just a reprimand to having a registration removed, potentially. It’s normally the regulatory body that would investigate, conduct a hearing and then carry this out.

Susie Chant: Right. Okay. I’m a nurse by profession, so similar behaviours.

Amna Shah (Chair): Are there any further questions?

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): I’ll ask the same question that I asked the Ministry of Housing. Again, I think that there is a general belief on this committee that there is something there in this bill, a conversation that is worth having. What we’re struggling with as a committee with limited resources and limited processes is how we go about, in good faith, continuing that conversation without sticking ourselves down a rabbit hole we can’t get out of.

So I’ll ask the same question I asked with the ministry. Do you believe this bill is salvageable? Is there a way to actually fix this bill going forward, or would we be better to take the conversation that has emerged around the bill, the content that has been submitted around the bill, and find a way to refer it to government to consider how they might move forward or might not move forward in that general spirit?

Trevor Hughes: I expected that you were going to ask that question when I heard you ask my colleague that question.

I would concur with her answer, and I would perhaps offer a little bit more of a blunt assessment, which would be that as a long-serving public servant, I’m actually a fan of the processes that we engage to develop legislation. While some might describe them as cumbersome and time-consuming, there is a method to that madness. The ability to do the good policy work that public servants do…. I’m an absolute champion for those processes and for the work that the teams do, the engagement with other ministries, the engagement with stakeholders, experts.

I would highly recommend that we clearly identify what the problem statement is, go back to brass tacks and figure out where this should be led, from which ministry, figure out a process where government can bring this legislation forward, having the full and usual processes all the way up to legislative drafters to get involved in this. And if needed at some point, you can engage folks under NDAs to review some of the principles and even some of the language that’s chosen. I think that would be my best suggestion to you.

I recognize that that leaves the sponsor perhaps not particularly happy with the answer, but you can still get at the problem that he’s identified, which I think he would be happy to hear in terms of my answer. I appreciate the question.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Trevor.

Tony Loughran: If I could just add a complement to that. I will say that one of the things…. The deputy for Housing mentioned this. The legislation process that government undertakes is very comprehensive, but the consultations tend to be very targeted. What’s very unusual in this situation is the amount of written response that came in, in response to this bill.

[10:40 a.m.]

We’ve reviewed a large portion of those responses. They’re very well done. They’re very comprehensive. There are some really thoughtful propositions put forward for consideration of how to improve the legislation

written response that came in, in response to this bill.

We’ve reviewed a large portion of those responses. They’re quite…. They’re very well done. They’re very comprehensive. There’s some really thoughtful propositions put forward for consideration of how to improve the legislation, about the policy intent behind it. So I think we would benefit really from reviewing that from a policy and then a legislative analysis perspective to really get the gems in there because they’re really there. That was clear in the feedback. And then put that through the process that we would normally do in developing legislation.

Amna Shah (Chair): Great, thank you. Are there any further questions from members?

Wonderful. Thank you all so much for your time. Wish you the best of day.

And folks, we’ll go into a brief recess to set up for the next presenters. Thanks.

The committee recessed from 10:40 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.

[Amna Shah in the chair.]

Amna Shah (Chair): All right, welcome back.

Next we are joined by representatives from the six regulatory bodies that made a joint submission to the committee.

We are joined by Heidi Yang, Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. Welcome back, Heidi. Nice to see you again.

Heidi Yang: Nice to see you too.

The committee resumed at 10:45 a.m.

[Amna Shah in the chair.]

Amna Shah (Chair): All right, welcome back.

Next, we are joined by representatives from the six regulatory bodies that made a joint submission to the committee.

We are joined by Heidi Yang, Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. Welcome back, Heidi. Nice to see you again.

Heidi Yang: Nice to see you too.

Amna Shah (Chair): Mark Vernon, Architectural Institute of B.C. Welcome, Mark.

Christine Gelowitz, Association of B.C. Forest Professionals. Welcome.

And Christine Houghton, College of Applied Biology. Welcome.

Jennifer Lawrence, B.C. Institute of Agrologists.

And Theresa McCurry, Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of B.C.

Welcome to you all to this committee.

As a reminder, you have up to 10 minutes to present to the committee, followed by 20 minutes for questions from committee members, and you’ll see a timer just down here to assist you. And please go ahead whenever you’re ready.

Presentations on Bills

Bill M216 — Professional Reliance Act

Heidi Yang/ Panel of Professional and
Regulatory Organizations

Heidi Yang: Great, thank you. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for giving us this opportunity to appear before you today.As mentioned, my name is Heidi Yang, and I am the CEO of Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. As also mentioned, all six of the professional regulatory bodies governed by the Professional Governance Act are represented here today.

Collectively, we regulate more than 65,000 professionals whose work directly affects public safety, environmental protection and public confidence in decision-making across British Columbia. Our shared statutory role is to protect the public interest by setting standards, enforcing ethical and competency requirements and taking action where professional practice falls short.

We are six distinct regulators with different statutory mandates, professions and areas of practice. While engineers and architects are often the most visible in the development processes, they are far from the only professionals involved. Applied biologists, agrologists, forest professionals and technologists and technicians play critical roles in permitting, particularly with respect to environmental protection, land and water impacts and site feasibility.

We appreciate the intent behind Bill M216. We recognize the urgency around housing supply and the desire to streamline development approvals. Our written submission raises several considerations that we believe are important for the committee’s review.

And at a high level, our observations relate to the distinction between building permits and development permits and the risks of conflating the two, the uncertainty around how technical submissions are evaluated for completeness, the need to recognize municipal oversight and professional communities of practice as key supports in navigating complex permitting decisions, the transfer of liability and risk from public authorities to individual professionals, the proposed approach to dispute resolution, and the need for clear roles and safeguards to avoid unintended consequences for the permitting system and for professional regulation.

Given the time today, we won’t walk through every aspect of our submission in detail. Instead, we’ll focus on a few areas, and we would be very happy to answer any questions that you have as part of the submissions.

The certified professional or the CP program has been referenced in recent discussions about Bill M216, so we feel it’s very important to be clear about what that program is and is not. The CP program is a voluntary alternative pathway used by some local governments and First Nations for building permits not development permits. It applies only to part 3 buildings such as large residential, commercial or institutional buildings. Under the program, architects and engineers who have completed additional training and examinations provide assurances that a project substantially complies with the B.C. building code.

Currently there are 182 engineers and architects in British Columbia who have this certification, serving the building permit needs for part 3 buildings in most of the population centres in the province.

[10:50 a.m.]

Development permits are fundamentally different. They are land use approvals rooted in official community plans and the Local Government Act. They address issues such as form and character, environmental protection, flood and slope hazards and community objectives. They often involve multiple professions and a mix of technical and discretionary judgment.

Development permit requirements vary significantly from one jurisdiction

They address issues, such as form and character, environmental protection, flood and slope hazards and community objectives. They often involve multiple professions and a mix of technical and discretionary judgment.

Development permit requirements vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another and are not governed by the uniform rules like the B.C. building code. The Professional Reliance Act seems to assume CP-style professional assurances can be extended into this development permitting space. In our view, that conflates two very different regulatory regimes.

Without clear, consistent and codified provincial rules for development permits, professionals cannot provide CP-like assurances in a defensible way.

I will now pass the mic over to Mark Vernon, CEO of Architectural Institute of B.C., who will touch upon dispute resolution and finish off our remarks.

Mark Vernon: Thank you, Heidi.

Mark Vernon, AIBC.

We understand that amendments have been proposed that would shift responsibility for resolving disputes to the professional regulators. Professional regulators are here to protect the public. We set standards, make sure professionals are competent and step in when there are serious issues with conduct or ethics.

We are not set up to handle permitting disputes, decide whether applications are complete, or sort out land use disagreements. That work belongs to local governments and First Nations. Moving those decisions to the professional’s regulatory system would mix up rules and slow things down.

Our complaint processes are thorough by design because they deal with real risks to public safety and the environment, not day-to-day project disputes. Using them as part of the permitting process would delay outcomes and pull focus away from serious issues.

As the bill is written, it could also encourage complaints being used to delay or block projects, even when there is no real concern about professional conduct or competence. That is a real concern for us because it would strain the system and could undermine trust in the regulators’ role and independence.

For these reasons, we do not believe assigning dispute resolution to the regulators is the right solution.

Next we will touch on the issue of liability and risk transfer. Bill M216 has the potential to significantly shift responsibility for development approvals from public authorities to individual professionals, and that change in risk is not trivial. This potential change in liability requires significant investigation by the professions and the authorities having jurisdiction in order to understand the real implications.

If liability risks are too high or too uncertain, some professionals may choose to step away from development-related work. That would shrink the available workforce and undermine the goals of the bill.

Before concluding, we would like to briefly speak to the context in which this bill has evolved. We, the PGA regulators, met with MLA Anderson twice late last year after the bill was introduced in the Legislature. He shared with us some draft amendments he was looking to propose, and we appreciated the opportunity to get clarification and provide some thoughts on the proposed amendments. Our comments were meant to clarify aspects of the amendments but not inform future versions. We subsequently received a further set of potential amendments, which we have not provided feedback on, and we are not entirely certain how they relate to the version currently before the committee.

From our perspective, this back and forth reflects that the bill is actively evolving and that there are open questions about how key elements are defined and intended to function in practice. Given the significance of the changes contemplated by Bill M216 and the number of parties affected — including local governments, First Nations, regulators, professionals and the public — we do not believe the bill is workable in its current form.

At the same time, we want to be clear that we are committed partners in improving development approval processes in British Columbia. We bring experience from across the province and across professions. We support thoughtful, evidence-informed reform, and we believe that with the right foundation, professional reliance can play a constructive role.

We thank you for your time, and we would be pleased to answer questions.

Amna Shah (Chair): Great, thank you very much for your presentation.

We’ll start with questions, Members and Darlene.

[10:55 a.m.]

Darlene Rotchford: You actually kind of near the end answered one of my questions, which I appreciate.

One of the questions, similar to the other ministries, is when we were looking at this bill, bringing it in upon regulation instead of royal assent so we can have that conversation. I just want to be clear what I hear you saying is that at this point, we would have to just take it away and look at it as a whole new bill.

Darlene Rotchford: You actually kind of near the end answered one of my questions, which I appreciate. One of the questions, similar to the other ministries, is…. When we were looking at this bill, bringing it upon regulation instead of royal assent, so we can have that conversation.

But I just want to be clear. What I hear you saying is that at this point, we would have to just take it away and look at it as a whole new bill and really start from the beginning, in your opinion, because of the type of amendments that are looking to being put forward. It would change the intent. Is that correct?

Mark Vernon: Our preference would be that the government undertake its traditional thoughtful, comprehensive consultation process in moving something forward.

Darlene Rotchford: Okay. I appreciate that answer. Thank you very much.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): I had a different question, but I’ll just tag on to Darlene’s first.

In your submission, your language is very diplomatic, and it suggests a pause for consultation. Is it fair to say, based on what we’re hearing, that perhaps stop might be a better answer than pause as it relates to the advancement of this bill in its present form versus the conversation as a whole?

Mark Vernon: Again, given the success that government has with the more traditional processes of putting forward legislation, we think greater success would be had taking that route.

Amna Shah (Chair): Gavin, follow up?

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): Yeah, thank you very much. I’ll return to my prior question.

Could I just ask you…? Both in your presentation today and your submission, I found your coverage of the changing risk profile for professionals significant. I’m wondering if you could expand a little bit on what the cost and insurability implications would be for professionals so that we can understand that dynamic a little bit better.

Mark Vernon: That is one of the areas that we’ve indicated would need investigation. At this point, we are uncertain of what those implications would be and if there would be an appetite amongst professionals to bear that risk and liability.

George Chow: This is more of an open question, more political than anything else. Certainly, in my opinion, the delay between development permit and building permit contributes to the delay. Not all the projects require development permits, but at some point, even in the city of Vancouver, when I was on council, some single-family house requires a development permit. That was for heritage preservation.

In your opinion, with the professional, how can you actually improve this lag between development permits and building permits?

Heidi Yang: Thank you for the question. I think what’s really important for us as a province is really to understand why there are delays in development permits. As an engineer, I’m a systems thinker, so I would want to be looking at development permit process from start to finish and really evaluate the root causes behind where the delay is, why the delays are happening, what is causing that, and how can we help support it. Once we understand why it’s happening and where it’s happening, then we can really work together and build solutions.

Development permits, as I mentioned in my portion of the presentation, involve so many different aspects and so many different professions and so many different groups of individuals that it is a better approach to really work together in collaboration and consultation to understand what those issues are and figure out solutions together.

Jeremy Valeriote: I just want to focus on two areas that were being presented as, you know, both a disincentive to professionals exceeding their scope or their skills and remedies. I’m not expecting you to have data on this but a subjective view would be really helpful.

I was caught out a little bit because when I was an active member of APEG or EGBC, I think there were maybe one or two disciplinary actions per year. Recently, you know, as the sponsor pointed out, more than that. And post-secondary basically referred to regulatory bodies as levelling up on this piece.

[11:00 a.m.]

But I’m curious, in all of your views, how effective this is both to discouraging — I don’t want to call them bad actors — mistakes and errors and whether it actually represents whether you have the resources to tackle all the disciplinary hearings that need to be tackled and

discouraging — I don’t want to call them bad actors — mistakes and errors, and whether it actually represents whether you have the resources to tackle all the disciplinary hearings that need to be tackled and how timely they are.

I think sometimes it takes years for these to come around, and by that point, members retire or leave the profession anyway. So just if you can give me a snapshot of how effective that is, whether it’s the superintendent or yourselves, whether that actually is a remedy that is effective.

Heidi Yang: MLA Valeriote, may I ask a clarifying question? So are you asking us about the disciplinary processes and any changes, should dispute resolution come to the regulator? Is that your question?

Jeremy Valeriote: Thank you for the clarification. I mean, the dispute resolution is up in the air as to who it would be, so I’m more thinking of the reliance on this, as if bad things happen because we’ve streamlined, these professionals will be disciplined and will potentially lose their licenses or their careers. And that’s supposed to be a disincentive art. Do you see that play out with the resources that you have and the number of complaints and the complaint processes that you have within each of your respective associations?

Heidi Yang: I’ll start, and then others can chime in.

In 2021, the Professional Governance Act came into force, and we were all under it. And I think during that time as well, people became more clear and understanding about the disciplinary processes within our regulatory systems.

I can let you know that within ours, Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C., we have seen an uptick in terms of complaints that have been brought forward by the general public. We continue to work towards resourcing so that we can deal with those effectively.

And we are dealing with them effectively and comprehensively. This year alone, or this past year alone, we’ve had over 120 complaints come through our door. As you know, some of those may or may not move forward, but we’ve been very active in dealing with disciplinary cases related to engineering and geoscience.

Others?

Christine Gelowitz: With respect to the forest profession, we’ve seen a very significant impact on our discipline processes since we’ve come under the Professional Governance Act. From 2021 until now, we have quadrupled the volume of complaints that we receive. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that translates into quadrupled discipline, but proper investigative processes and thorough processes are still undertaken in all of those.

I think part of your question also is about the timeliness about these processes. I could share with you that due process on a complaint, even for a complaint that does not proceed fully and is dismissed, is not unreasonable to be approximately six months.

For a full investigation through due process, that is really dependent on the issues that are at hand, the context of the issue. A very timely, timely complaint process would be a year. An average process could be more than that, two or three years, depending on the detail, the complexity of the complaint, the number of parties involved.

So to the question of the capacity of the regulators, obviously contending with such an increase of volume has impacted our organization quite significantly. We’ve resourced professionals. The body, the organization is funded through the fees that professionals pay. And those increased compliance costs have been borne by the profession over the last number of years. So increasing the number of complaints would transfer that cost to the organization, which would impact the individuals who are participants to the organization.

Christine Houghton: I want to echo what my colleagues have said.

[11:05 a.m.]

But also, as was said in the presentation, if there is no other avenue for people who are not happy with the way a development permit is going, if their only avenue to stop it is to use our complaints processes as a surrogate for other long-standing processes at the municipal level, it will not only…. We’ve all seen big increases in our complaint process, but it’s unknown what that would add to our whole complaints process going forward.

is to use our complaints processes as a surrogate for other long-standing processes at the municipal level.

It will not only…. We’ve all seen big increases in our complaint process, but it’s unknown what that would add to our whole complaints process going forward. We are one of the smaller regulators, with just under 4,000 registrants. We saw our complaints go from five to 20 in the last few years. And it’s the same 4,000 people who are funding our complaint process, which is just as thorough as some of the larger regulators.

Jennifer Lawrence: Yeah, and again, I would also echo my colleagues.

And I think there is a nuance between receiving a complaint about a professional, and the fulsomeness and seriousness we treat that — and we ensure that we’re fulfilling that regulatory mandate — versus conversations that happen at a local government level about local requirements.

I think we’ve touched on, in our presentation, that there is a diversity across the province around some of those requirements, and so I would hesitate to say that perhaps this bill would somehow enhance the quality. We have full confidence in the competent and ethical conduct of our registrants.

I think, to what my colleague was just mentioning, what the conflation might be is that if there is disagreement at the local level, then this dispute resolution process could be sort of co-opted in order to try to resolve that complaint, which is just simply not our role as a professional regulator.

Theresa McCurry: And I’ll just add one item.

With ASTTBC, we had one inquiry about filing an anonymous complaint from a municipality in the entire time we’ve been under the PGA, up until the end of November. At the end of November, we received three inquiries from three different municipalities about the ability to file an anonymous complaint and what that would look like vis-à-vis this process.

Amna Shah (Chair): Do you have a follow-up, Jeremy?

Jeremy Valeriote: Yeah. I want to leave time for others, but if nobody’s got…?

Amna Shah (Chair): I think you’re good to go.

Jeremy Valeriote: Okay, yeah.

Just shifting to the other backstop that was proposed for this, which is liability insurance. Just hoping to get your, again, overview thoughts of how effective that is and how often you see insurance actually payout versus basically sending professionals to bankruptcy and whether you see the insurance aspect as a feasible sort of remedy or backstop to this, or whether insurance is really…. Yeah, just your thoughts on how liability, professional liability insurance actually plays out in the real world from your perspectives, please.

Mark Vernon: If I may start, the requirement to have liability insurance is set by the regulators. The dollar amount is traditionally set by the municipality or the authorities having jurisdiction. We view that, once the minimum required is met, as a commercial activity, not under the purview of a regulator.

Ideally, no insurance payouts would ever be made. That is the public’s desire. We do not have a requirement to be notified of insurance payouts. We would only hear of them incidentally if there was a competence or conduct complaint associated with the action that resulted in the insurance payout.

Heidi Yang: And from the Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. group, I have no data on liability. But similar processes as the architects.

Christine Gelowitz: Similar to forestry.

I would also just add that not all regulators mandatorily require professional liability insurance. It really depends on the work of the profession and the context of the profession. So while, for example, with the forest profession, forest professionals may carry professional liability insurance, it depends who their employer is and their circumstance. Not every forest professional opts to and is required to.

So it would also differ, likely, amongst the six regulatory bodies, whether there’s a mandatory requirement for professional liability insurance — or not — of their registrant.

Amna Shah (Chair): Gavin.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

[11:10 a.m.]

If the conceptual problem statement that is at the heart of this legislation were put to you through a fulsome consultative process to develop legislation or develop an approach to solve the problems that are pointed to in this bill, how would you

If the conceptual problem statement that is at the heart of this legislation were put to you through a fulsome consultative process to develop legislation or develop an approach to solve the problems that are pointed to in this bill, how would you go about doing so?

Mark Vernon: If I may start, and I might characterize this more as a personal response than the official view of the AIBC.

The province has had great success with the CP program, certified professional, because it has a provincial building code. Similarly, the province has brought in the step code that municipalities, authorities having jurisdiction can choose which aspects they sign on to.

The challenge with development permits is that there is no standardization. There is no harmonization. We cannot provide any certification to technical experts because there is nothing against which they can be measured, nothing against which we can train them.

If the province were looking to improve the system, perhaps an effort to standardize, harmonize or, like the step code, provide a suite of options that municipalities could choose from.

Heidi Yang: I’ll just add to that.

Coming back to my prior answer to MLA Chow, and then also in listening to Deputy Minister Hughes, the important piece is really looking at the system of development permits from start to finish and really identifying the root causes — why, what, where — and then coming up with solutions.

With development permitting processes, as I mentioned, it involves a lot of people, and a lot of people’s perspectives will help provide the better solution. That’s how I would go about it, is really look at it from a system standpoint.

I think what Mark brings forward about the differences or the diversity of the different jurisdictions and the requirements in each of them, creates a challenge for professionals in being able to do their work effectively and at a high standard.

Those are just some aspects, from my perspective.

Christine Houghton: We work with the provincial government on all kinds of regulatory and legislative initiatives. We view ourselves as partners of the provincial government, not just stakeholders.

Any initiative to look at…. Whether it’s a systems approach — I’m not an engineer — to move forward, we would be happy to engage and offer our expertise and also the expertise of some of our professionals.

We are led by volunteers who would be more than willing to offer their voices into any process, as we do with other government initiatives around regulatory legislative development.

Amna Shah (Chair): Perfect. Are there any questions from members?

All right, seeing none, thank you all so much for being with us today. I wish you a wonderful rest of the day ahead.

All right, folks, we will take a five-minute recess, after which we will return for our next presentation.

The committee recessed at 11:13 a.m.

The committee resumed at 11:20 a.m.

[Amna Shah in the chair.]

Amna Shah (Chair): Welcome back, everybody.

We are now joined by Cori Ramsay, Jenna Stoner, Gary MacIsaac and Josh van Loon from the Union of B.C. Municipalities.

Thank you all for being here today, and we’re looking forward to your presentation. As a reminder, you have up to ten minutes to present to the committee, followed by 20 minutes of questions from members, and there’s a timer here to assist you with that. Please take it away when you’re ready.

Cori Ramsay: Thank you so much, Chair. It’s an honour to be here today to present before the committee. Thank you for affording UBCM the opportunity today.

Just to start, the Union of B.C. Municipalities is a policy-based organization that has advocated for local government members since 1905. Our membership consists of all 161 municipalities and 27 regional districts in British Columbia, as well as 14 First Nations.

It is our position that Bill M216 is fundamentally flawed and should not proceed further. This partly stems from the fact that the bill was developed in a vacuum without local government impact and lacks real-world ground-truthing.

Our primary concern is that the legislation creates unreasonable risks for the public health and safety. Closely related to this, it also increases liability risks for both local governments and the professionals making submissions.

I’ll first speak to the process of policy development. Astonishingly, neither local governments nor UBCM were consulted in advance of the drafting of the legislation, despite the fact that it is exclusively focused on local approvals. The lack of ground-truthing is clearly reflected in the content of the bill.

At its core, the bill misrepresents the function of local reviews, which are not to duplicate the work of registered professionals but to perform critical checks for completeness and regulatory compliance and to confirm that the correct disciplines have signed off on work. Unfortunately, in the course of such checks, local governments regularly find errors, omissions and inconsistencies, so to suggest that these reviews can simply be stripped away without consequence is highly misleading.

This is especially true because many of the errors that local governments find pertain to life safety. As summarized by one chief building official: “I have seldom seen an initial submission by a registered professional that met the requirements of the building code. I truly wish I could say that the items I questioned were minor in scope, but they were not.”

To give some specific examples of errors and omissions found by local governments, this includes post-construction compliance reports submitted for buildings that were not yet built; designs that led to cracked and sloughed shoring walls; occupancy of buildings with unfinished building envelopes; completion of large apartment buildings without required fire hydrants; a six-storey residential building without basic accessibility requirements, ramps or lifts for people in wheelchairs or with mobility impairment; undersized sanitary drainage and water distribution systems; and a parkade for a six-storey building proposed without a mechanical ventilation system to remove vehicle exhaust and carbon monoxide.

As one of our members puts it, slowing down unsafe or incomplete applications is a safety feature. Development proponents also rely on local governments for expertise and knowledge of the unique local environment, neighbourhood context and infrastructure.

[11:25 a.m.]

It is unrealistic to assume that any individual consultant, however qualified, has the capability to fully appreciate local, site-specific factors that municipalities rely on when making decisions. B.C. communities are situated in highly complex development conditions that include steep slopes, bluff areas, wildfire and riparian areas.

has the capability to fully appreciate local site-specific factors that municipalities rely on when making decisions.

B.C. communities are situated in highly complex development conditions that include steep slopes, bluff areas, wildfire and riparian areas, seismic risks and tsunami zones and coastal floodplains. These conditions require rigorous, locally informed reviews of geotechnical and drainage designs to avoid major public safety risks such as slope failures, erosion and flooding.

Local review adds value for the proponent and future owners and ensures that problems are caught early on in the process instead of leaving them to be discovered later when they are more costly and challenging to address. Closely related to the risks of stripping away critical checks that routinely uncover life-safety deficiencies in submissions, Bill M216 raises many red flags about liability risk for local governments, development professionals and homebuyers.

As noted by the Municipal Insurance Association of B.C., wording, in the legislation, to limit local government liability is narrow and ambiguous, leaving room for litigation to proceed in circumstances it may not have intended. For example, if the certified professional in question is unavailable to be held accountable or is underinsured, then affected residents, tenants and businesses may find themselves with limited recourse to seek reparations for damages, and local governments could be held liable as well. This, in turn, increases risk for homeowners who may be saddled with unexpected costs and safety risks.

On the other hand, if PGA professionals do take on significantly greater liability, this is likely to result in a chilling effect whereby they choose not to practice in B.C. or choose to practice without adequate insurance. In other words, the very professionals intended to benefit from this bill may in fact choose to limit their practice in the province because this bill was so poorly conceived.

Another major problem with the bill is how it structures dispute resolution. Under the current system, local governments and applicants can work jointly to address deficiencies early in the process. Shifting dispute resolution to a single provincial office at a later stage in the process would create a major bottleneck. This approach would also require staffing up of the provincial office and move dispute resolution away from the impacted communities.

It is likely that the proposed legislation also would not reduce local government staff time because it raises so many questions around liability, planning roles and responsibilities. For example, it would effectively displace registered professional planners since they are not currently regulated under the Professional Governance Act, and yet planners play critical roles in coordinating development approvals across multiple disciplines ensuring that the work of engineers, biologists, surveyors and other professionals is coordinated, aligned and consistent with federal, provincial and local regulations.

Bill M216 also needs to be considered within the broader context of significant recent legislative changes addressing small-scale multi-unit housing, transit-oriented areas, housing targets and more. Together these pieces of legislation represent a sweeping overhaul of local planning, and their ongoing implementation has required a huge amount of staff time to address. Simply adding in more and more legislation is not the solution. It would in fact just further complicate matters for local governments already grappling with the many recent changes.

Furthermore, the overarching trend in recent legislation has been to centralize land use planning at the provincial level. The approach envisioned by Bill M216 would further strip away consideration of local context from planning, with dangerous consequences.

For all these reasons, we would argue that the legislation is not salvageable. It would be unrealistic for such fundamental flaws to be simply addressed by amendment. We would instead urge the province to focus on other proven approaches to supporting local governments in the delivery of needed housing.

[11:30 a.m.]

Local governments continue to work collaboratively to support housing supply by establishing housing authorities, contributing land, providing tax exemptions for affordable homes and undertaking wide-ranging and innovative approaches to the streamlining of development approvals.

I’ll end by noting that our observations here today are not just UBCM conclusions. Much of what I’ve highlighted has been corroborated by other parties making submissions.

affordable homes and undertaking wide-ranging and innovative approaches to the streamlining of development approvals.

I’ll end by noting that our observations here today are not just UBCM conclusions. Much of what I’ve highlighted has been corroborated by other parties making submissions. For example, the chilling effect whereby PGA professionals could choose not to practise due to increased liability they would be taking on has been suggested as a possible outcome by both the office of professional governance and the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies, B.C., in their submissions.

In addition, widespread examples of the significant defects found in applications that local governments receive have been documented across the 70-plus submissions that you received from local governments, which were not consulted during the development of this legislation. The liability risks posed by this legislation have further been noted by the Municipal Insurance Association, municipal law firms and others.

In conclusion, it is UBCM’s position that Bill M216 creates unreasonable risks for public health and safety, lacks real-world ground-truthing and increases liability risks for local governments and professionals. As such, we would respectfully request that the committee recommends back to the House that Bill M216 not proceed further.

We appreciate the opportunity to attend and present on this bill.

Amna Shah (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. We’ll start off with questions with Gavin.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Councillor Ramsay. Certainly appreciate the presentation.

In reviewing the many submissions we received — we got 484 submissions — 88 percent of them were explicitly opposed. As you just touched on, almost 80 submissions from municipal entities, of which all were opposed.

In your experience with UBCM or anyone else at the table on behalf of UBCM, how does that compare to the typical feedback received on legislation from municipalities?

Cori Ramsay: Thank you, MLA Dew. I would say in our experience, it is unprecedented. We have never seen such a response this negative and united. Local governments, which are solely committed to the public interest, are saying that this bill is an incredibly bad idea. And local governments are waving a huge red flag, and we’re really hoping that the committee hears us today and chooses not to proceed further with this bill.

George Chow: A bit of a hypothetical question, but in terms of streamlining the regulations so we could actually build faster, in your opinion, with the UBCM, if we separate the municipality into large and smaller and do legislation accordingly, does that help in terms of streamlining, particularly the building process?

Cori Ramsay: I think it’s important to maybe touch on the DABR program, so I’m just going to hand it over to Councillor Stoner.

Jenna Stoner: Thank you for the question. I think it’s important to reiterate that local governments are also here showing up as partners. We know that the delivery of housing across our communities from corner to corner in this province is required.

Back in 2018, the government did the work on the development approval permit review, and out of that, came a number of really thoughtful considerations, one of which was to start funding the local government development approvals program, which is a funding envelope that helps local governments improve their development application process. Through that funding program, we’ve seen 76 projects funded from 2021 to 2024, with a further 213 applications.

There’s a lot of interest from local governments to address this issue in creative ways that will be right-sized for their communities. Some of the examples we’ve seen. The city of Burnaby made its development approvals quicker and more efficient by updating processes and workflows. This saw a cutting of their processing time by 75 percent.

When you look at the town of Comox, they updated their bylaws and streamlined their processes and internal procedures, as well as an improved coordination with their neighbouring jurisdictions so that there’s more clarity across that region.

I don’t think that this is a one-size-fits-all approach. I think this is about enabling and empowering local governments to be able to do the good work that they do and reflect their local realities in development processes that will be efficient for everyone.

[11:35 a.m.]

Darlene Rotchford: I appreciate you coming. As some of you may know, I also came from local government and came in as Bill 44 was being introduced, so I appreciate some of the comments you’re making.

I think you heard from some of the people. I appreciate you, also, being here and listening to what people before you said as well. I think you’re hearing them say that MLA Anderson

Great, thank you. And I appreciate you coming. As some of you may know, I also came from local government and came in as Bill 44 had been introduced. So, I appreciate some of the comments you’re making.

I think you heard from some of the people. I appreciate you also being here and listening to what people before you said as well. And I think, you know, you’re hearing them say that MLA Anderson’s identified a problem and that was the intent of the bill.

Do you believe with this bill…. You heard some of the feedback about it going into regulation or taking it away from a legislative perspective, starting from scratch and actually looking and identifying what that problem is and then working with people to fix it? Is there something here that could move forward, either within this bill or similar to what you’re saying is the other…. Sorry, the other speakers are saying that we need to go and actually do a normal legislative process.

Cori Ramsay: Thank you for the question. So as with the legislation itself, you know the process for…. Our opinion is that the legislation is not salvageable.

With the amount of feedback, it’s not at all realistic to suggest that the multitude of concerns identified by local governments as well as the other presenters you’ve heard from can really addressed by a small number of minor tweaks to the legislation.

I would suggest that the committee turn this down and if it is of interest, then really refer this back to the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs to work with local government to really find a solution to the problem that’s been identified.

Jenna Stoner: If I may, I think it’s also important to note how much time and resources have gone into even just the process thus far. You see here today, a number of us have sat here to provide I think very fulsome submissions. You saw 77 written submissions from local governments who are already stretched thin trying to respond to other government changes in legislative reform.

So I can’t understate how much additional pressure this puts, even the uncertainty of how this is going to go forward, on the work that we do in our communities. Thank you.

Amna Shah (Chair): Thank you. I’ve put myself on the list before we get to you, Gavin.

I was a little bit alarmed by some of the examples that you provided in terms of life…. Sorry, I forget the term. Life-saving errors or omissions related to that. I’m wondering, and you may not have this on hand, but do you know if municipalities keep records of the frequency of applications that come in with omissions and errors that you have to or that departments have to go in and address?

I know every municipality is likely different, but I’m wondering if you have any comments on the frequency of those types of applications.

Cori Ramsay: I would say that the value of the local peer review is that our staff become really familiar with the submissions that are coming from frequent engineers and certified professionals. If there’s an experience with an application that has had an issue, I think they’ll more diligently put their eyes on it in the future to make sure that that there’s a catch-all in that safety measure to make sure we’re not letting anything slip through the cracks.

So I think qualitatively our staff really perhaps put an extra eye to those applications that have had and those developers and certified professionals that have seen issues in the past. I know my city is working on a fast-track program right now whereby developers without errors and omissions would be fast-tracked to the front of queue to really encourage those fulsome applications.

And just back to Councillor Stoner’s point around DAPR, I think in the recommendations there’s a significant amount of time that’s spent on the incomplete applications and catching those sorts of things. And the DAPR review I think had really recommended finding processes to really streamline that function itself.

So in answer to your question, I don’t know that we have a fulsome database, but I think our staff qualitatively understand, you know, which applications perhaps need a better set of eyes on them.

Jenna Stoner: I will, if I may, through the Chair also add that local government development approvals program, that has funded some innovative shifts in the way that local governments are processing development permits.

[11:40 a.m.]

One piece of that has really been around digitization of the development process, so it’s improving that data to answer those questions that you’re asking. I know a number of communities — Nanaimo, Kelowna, Squamish — have started to go through that process so that we have better data to help support, like some of the previous speakers had mentioned, that more systematic review of where the

piece of that has really been around digitization of the development process. So it’s improving that data to answer those questions that you’re asking.

I know a number of communities — Nanaimo, Kelowna, Squamish — have started to go through that process so that we have better data to help support, like some of the previous speakers have mentioned, that more systematic review of where the challenges are. Those challenges are going to be different depending on which community you come from.

Amna Shah (Chair): Yeah, absolutely, and I don’t mean to stray from the content here, but it was out of a place of genuine curiosity of how often…. It’s nice to hear that there are accounts and records of certain experiences that folks in departments have in municipalities but again, every municipality is different and I think that there’s also…. When you’re certified in the province, when you’re licensed in the province…. There could be projects in all different areas of the province that could be submitted by one professional.

I think essential record keeping is likely quite beneficial for that because I’m quite interested in some of the “bad actors” that may be out there. Nonetheless I’ll reserve the rest of my comments and we’ll go to Gavin.

Gavin Dew: Councillor Stoner, you’ve pointed toward the cumulative effect of recent legislative changes, which is something that’s also outlined in the overall UBCM submission with regard to the housing targets, Bill 44, Bill 47, Bill 46, Bill 15, Bill 25 — sort of an avalanche of legislation.

One of the comments I found very striking in the submission was just the sheer pace of change and the complexity of all this legislation that municipalities are being asked to absorb. Taking into account your comments on that, Councillor Stoner, as well as Councillor Ramsay’s comments that the bill is functionally unsalvageable, what I think we’ve heard thematically over the day is that probably the best path forward is to take what can be salvaged from this, send it back to the Ministry of Housing and encourage an appropriate and fulsome process that takes some of these thoughts into mind.

If we were to do so and if we were thinking about what can be salvaged here, what would you like from government and from the Ministry of Housing in particular in order to enable UBCM and its members to move forward constructively on the housing file?

Cori Ramsay: I’ll just start…. I think that fulsome consultation with our members is an expectation. As we’ve indicated, this is about local approvals and when the legislation affects us this directly, it’s important that we be consulted. Part of the reason we’re saying that this is unsalvageable is that to try and piecemeal together something that will work out of a process that has already been just so faulty, is not going to do anyone justice.

There’s so many unintended consequences in the drafting of this bill. So our preference is to — if this is of interest of government to pursue, of the province to pursue — direct the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs to work with local governments in a collaborative process that includes our really critical and important local context and experiences.

Amna Shah (Chair): Follow-up for Gavin?

Gavin Dew: Is it fair to say that Bill 216 and the process around it has diminished the relationship and diminished the trust between UBCM and its members, and government?

Cori Ramsay: I would say this is really challenging for my members. It does question our staff, it questions a lot of what we do and the experiences we have. I do think that there is the potential in this bill to damage our reputation with developers.

The process around dispute resolution…. Currently we’re able to have really collaborative conversations with developers and work together to produce an outcome that’s better for everyone.

[11:45 a.m.]

To remove that process, to have to go through a superintendent’s office on dispute resolution…. I think you’re going to find that that’s really going to put a strain on that important and collaborative relationship.

So in answer to your question, it’s more than just local government’s

to have to go through a superintendent’s office on dispute resolution — I think you’re going to find that that’s really going to put a strain on that really important and collaborative relationship.

So in answer to your question, it’s more than just local government’s relationship with the province. It’s also our relationship with key partners too.

Amna Shah (Chair): Before I go to Darlene, I just want to give two reminders to members on the committee. One is that this is a private member’s bill. I just want to ensure that we’re distinguishing between a private member’s bill and a government bill, so I’ll just remind members of that. This is a private member’s bill that is before committee.

The second reminder, because I know it’s been mentioned a couple of times, is about referring to potential ministries. As it stands, the terms of reference of this committee are to empower committee members to recommend to the House that a bill is complete with amendment or without amendment or that a bill not proceed. We are currently…. Well, we are not empowered through our terms of reference to recommend to an outside body.

So just making that clarification here and, of course, respecting that there are obviously all sorts of ideas and opinions about the possibilities that may exist beyond this committee as well. So just respecting that, though. Yeah, just reminders.

Darlene Rotchford: Great, Chair.

You had made a comment there, and I want to just go back to it, talking about red tape. We’re adding red tape by looking at having another body this bill would need to go to for a resolution process. I’m trying to think of how to ask this question, because I think the intent of the bill is to look at how we can remove red tape or how we can make the processes better.

I appreciate some of the comments you’ve made about the great work local government’s doing. I also have four municipalities in my riding, so it’s never boring. And they’re great. So we talk about, even together…. I appreciate your comments you’re making about…. It’s also about working collaboratively together, right? So as MLAs, no matter what side of the House we sit on, we should be doing that work with our local government folks and doing that work anyway.

So in regard to the comments about red tape and that resolution process, can you go in just a little bit more on it? It would be probably more time, because it’s going to add that time by having another step in process, correct?

Cori Ramsay: I do think you will find that local governments will exercise an abundance of caution. You know, this is about life safety in our communities. We don’t want to see any building that’s unsafe, that puts our residents at risk, and so out of an abundance of caution, I do think that you will see a significant number of applications go to the superintendent’s office to ensure that we’re having that oversight, to ensure that we are able to protect our residents from unsafe builds in our community. So I do think you are going to see a significant bottleneck utilizing that dispute resolution process.

Darlene Rotchford: Okay. Thank you very much.

[11:50 a.m.]

Amna Shah (Chair): Are there any further questions from members?

Seeing none, thank you all so much for being here today, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Amna Shah (Chair): We will take a two-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 11:50 a.m. to 11:51 a.m.

Amna Shah (Chair): All right, welcome back, Members.

I’ll get a motion to go in camera.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 11:51 a.m. to 11:55 a.m.

Amna Shah (Chair): We are back in public session, and I will ask if there is any other business.

Gavin Dew (Deputy Chair): I move to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:55 a.m.