Hansard — Thursday, May 8, 2008 a.m.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Reports from Committees		12153
	Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills, second report
	A. Horning

Tabling Documents		12153
	Office of the Auditor General, report No. 4, 2008-2009, Managing Government's Payment Processing

Second Reading of Bills		12153
	E-Health (Personal Health Information Access and Protection of Privacy) Act (Bill 24)
	Hon. G. Abbott
	A. Dix

Speaker's Statement		12168
	Rules for public bills in the hands of private members

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		12168
	Estimates: Ministry of Forests and Range and Minister Responsible for Housing (continued)
	D. Thorne
	Hon. R. Coleman

A. Horning: Hon. Speaker, I have the honour to present the second report of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills.

A. Horning: I ask leave of the House to permit the moving of the motion to adopt the report.

Bill Pr403 ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I have the honour to present the Auditor General's report 4, 2008-2009, Managing Government's Payment Processing.

Hon. B. Penner: I call second reading of Bill 24, entitled E-Health (Personal Health Information Access and Protection of Privacy) Act.

Hon. B. Penner: And for the interest of members, in the small House, as we like to refer to it, we'll have continued estimates debate on the Ministry of Forests and Range.

The new E-Health (Personal Health Information Access and Protection of Privacy) Act will govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal health information contained in health electronic databases that are designated by the minister in designation orders. The act sets clear rules for the collection, use and disclosure of the personal health information contained in ministry and health authority electronic databases. The collection, use and disclosure of personal health information will be permitted only for specific health-related purposes.

The E-Health (Personal Health Information Access and Protection of Privacy) Act will lay the foundation for individuals to have access to their own electronic health record. The electronic health record will permit individuals to access their personal health records and look at the electronic footprint or record of access to their information by others, and will allow individuals to make disclosure directives to limit access to their personal health information.

The act will create a data stewardship committee to approve individual requests for personal health information from health information banks for health research and other secondary purposes. The committee structure will enable government to make objective and expert decisions on the appropriate disclosure of personal health information for secondary purposes. The act will add whistle-blower protection for individuals who report privacy breaches.

There will be restrictions on the disclosure of personal health information from a health electronic database on a bulk or regular basis. Such disclosures will be limited to a restricted number of public bodies. The act will prohibit disclosure of information from a health electronic database for market research. On a case-by-case basis, with the approval of the Privacy Commissioner, health researchers will also be able to contact individuals to request their participation in health research studies.

The amendments to the Pharmacists, Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Act will harmonize its privacy and security provisions with the new E-Health (Personal Health Information Access and Protection of Privacy) Act, providing a legislative foundation for consistent implementation of the electronic health record.

They will also harmonize penalties for privacy and security breaches. Penalty provisions for privacy breaches

in the Pharmacists, Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Act and the personal health information access and protection of privacy act will be changed to a maximum fine of $200,000.

On a case-by-case basis, with the approval of the Privacy Commissioner, health researchers will now be able to request information from PharmaNet so they can contact individuals to request their participation in health research studies.

This legislation sets a framework for privacy protection for e-health initiatives. E-health is about using information technology to provide the best possible patient care. B.C. has seven e-health projects underway that will provide electronic health records, lab test results, diagnostic scans, electronic prescriptions and electronic medical record systems by 2012.

Authorized health care professionals will have secure access to their patients' information so they can make appropriate and timely clinical decisions. E-health will also give government reliable, de-identified — or anonymized — statistical information so we can make informed and evidence-based decisions on the allocation of valuable health care resources and future health system planning.

In e-health systems, access to patient information will be restricted to only those having legal authority and specific permission to do so in accordance with provincial e-health privacy protection policies. E-health systems are designed to provide enhanced patient privacy protection as compared to paper records.

Every time someone accesses e-health information, that access will be recorded, leaving an electronic footprint. The province will continue to work with health authorities, health professions, community groups and other partners to develop privacy protection measures to ensure that patients' personal information and confidentiality are protected.

In conclusion, this legislation will create an effective balance between individual rights and public responsibilities. It will help us pursue the goal of faster, better, safer health care through electronic health records while protecting privacy.

I know there are some organizations that have raised concerns on the balance in this legislation between individual privacy and the need for a properly functioning e-health system. Since introduction of this bill, our ministry has been consulting with those organizations that also had been consulted in the development of this bill, as well as with the Information and Privacy Commissioner, to see if we can bridge the gaps while ensuring the balance between privacy and a properly functioning e-health system.

Members of this House will be aware from today's orders of the day that I have tabled some amendments for committee stage debate that the government believes will address the concerns raised by the Privacy Commissioner and stakeholders.

For the members present, I can also advise that the staff from the Ministry of Health met with the official opposition yesterday to walk them through the amendments on the orders of the day. I look forward to the comments from the opposition Health critic shortly regarding this bill and these amendments, as well as discussing the bill and amendments in greater detail in committee stage.

With that, I conclude my remarks and look forward to comments from other members of the House.

A. Dix: Just for the interest of those who may watch these debates from time to time and who may be wondering what happens in the House, how they can know when legislation is going to be called and when legislation isn't going to be called.

In fact, generally speaking, what happens is that the discretion for when legislation is called is entirely in the hands of the government. They get to choose. They can start one bill, and then they bring in another bill, and that's the way it happens. So if you were watching yesterday at the end of the day….

A. Dix: I'm just explaining. I may need to explain it to the Minister of Transportation as well, who appears confused on these points.

Yesterday at the end of the day we were discussing Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act. We were in the middle of that debate, but we haven't finished that debate. We've moved on to this bill, which is also a very important piece of legislation. We're on to Bill 24, which deals with this really important issue of e-health.

It's very important, and I think the Minister of Health would agree with this. The potential for the health care system to use electronic health instruments to improve the quality of care is great. I think most of the reports, if you look into health care, which talk about the potential for improving primary care…. We're talking about the potential for improving and making more cost-effective but also improving the quality of care — patient control over their own care.

Most of those reports in the past have seen and envisioned a great potential for e-health, and indeed there is. We're going to go through some of the potential for that today. The potential is great, as one can imagine.

I actually left it in my office this morning, but previously, for example, it was often entirely dependent on whether or not one wore a MedicAlert bracelet at a time of great urgency that an emergency room nurse or doctor might know that a person was suffering from some sort of ongoing or chronic disease.

It's hard to deal with in the media sense, but having access to patient records in an appropriate way might help assist many patients and many doctors and nurses who might well be in trouble, who might be having difficulty in terms of providing care. The potential is great in that sense, and we talk about this.

These are some of the debates that take place in terms of the privacy of e-health legislation. So what happens? How do you balance those issues of privacy and those issues of disclosure?

I know another member is about to stand up to make an introduction. If that member will stand up so I can keep my place, I will allow her to do so.

S. Hammell: I'd like the House to welcome Wendy Kaland, a teacher from Green Timbers Elementary School, and the 65 grade 5 students and some teachers and parents who are visiting the precinct this morning.

Green Timbers School is in the constituency of Surrey–Green Timbers, which takes its name from the Green Timbers plantation that was one of the original nurseries for forest seedlings that went out throughout the province. However, that aside, would the House please welcome these students from Green Timbers.

A. Dix: It's wonderful, in fact, to have guests in the precinct today to listen to this very important debate.

As I was saying, I think the potential — if one looks at the reports, as we will this morning — of e-health to improve the quality of care across the system, a combination of e-health, for example, and telehealth…. We can think of important projects that have gone on around the province using both e-health and telehealth to improve the quality of primary care in communities.

One of the issues that I think is really important to many people when you're dealing, for example, with mental health services — and this becomes an important issue when you're talking about this debate — is the fact that often the place where people seek assistance for mental health services is either their primary care physician or nurse practitioner.

The ability for us to use telehealth, for example, which is not strictly dealt with in this bill, to improve performance measures, to inform doctors about the appropriate types and level of care in terms of primary care and mental health, which is an area often that doctors are not well suited to deal with…. They're not well trained to deal with it. It's only part of their training. They help people get well, but often their training in terms of providing mental health care isn't as good.

We've seen projects in the last few years in British Columbia that provide access to information for doctors on medical health information, but through telehealth and through other things that have in fact enhanced the ability of primary care doctors to deal with primary care and mental health, which is an important challenge for primary health care doctors — especially general practitioners and especially in areas which may not have ready access to mental health services because of their distance or their smaller population centres….

If you think of e-health and what we're talking about, what it means is that…. The minister has talked about the government's plans, their electronic health records scheme, their lab records, their diagnostic scan and so on — all the projects that we will be talking about shortly.

When we're talking about this, we're talking about enormous possibilities in the hospital care setting for improved levels of care. We talked about emergency room care a moment ago. What happens if someone is in trouble and doesn't have, for example, a MedicAlert bracelet? That's something we can all understand.

This is one of the debates we're going to have and talk about when we talk about privacy with respect to the bill. Often the debate is: how can you give consent if, for example, you're unconscious? So we have this debate.

The doctors may in fact be able to access information about you that would be critical to saving your life, but your privacy and consent is also very important in terms of saving your life. Ordinarily, you would say that something as private and essential as a medical health record could not be disclosed. But surely most people might reasonably say under those circumstances that they would want their medical health record disclosed.

Most people would, but maybe not all. These are the debates and the challenges you face when you're dealing with e-health issues — the privacy issues.

The advantages are so clearly before us, on the one hand, to improve the quality of care for patients, to improve the quality of care provided by doctors and nurse practitioners and health sciences workers and everyone else. The potential is so clearly there, but the dangers are very clearly there as well.

As we know, the context of this debate is a little bit set by the events of recent times not just in British Columbia but across the world. This of course is not, in fairness, really about e-health at all, but it shows the potential concern that people may have about the dissemination of health records.

It's an interesting context to this debate so that we understand the issues, both the privacy issues that are so much a part of this debate and, again, the potential advantages if we can resolve those privacy issues of dealing with e-health. But as you know, hon. Speaker, because you may well have been watching this yesterday, the freedom-of-information commissioner and the Ombudsman of New Brunswick issued concurrent reports yesterday about the failure of governments to protect personal health information.

So just to understand what happened…. What happened was that in October 2007, there was a shipment from New Brunswick to British Columbia of computer tapes. They contained the personal health information of a lot of citizens. They were in no way protected. The system, I think it's fair to say — the minister would probably agree with this — was sloppy in this regard not just here in British Columbia but in New Brunswick as well.

The New Brunswick Ombudsman said in this report: "New Brunswick's health department failed to ensure that personal health information was protected through encryption, and that's not good enough." As a result of this episode, changes were made, fortunately. He went on to say that he's satisfied that the department had taken proper steps to ensure that this does not happen again.

What happened here is that the governments combined…. These tapes were sent from New Brunswick to British Columbia by courier. They weren't protected in

any way. So if someone obtained access, they would gain access to the information about, in this case, the 124 patients involved. Pretty serious stuff. I think none of us would want that to happen to our own personal health information.

This is an interesting context for what we're dealing with today. So 124 patients' data is out there somewhere, and what we hope is that it's kind of lost and thrown away and no one will get access to it. That's what we would hope, because obviously nobody wanted it to happen — not the government of British Columbia, not the government opposite, not the opposition, not the government of New Brunswick.

So this happened. The data involving 124 patients was lost. But the implications of that for those people might well be serious. That's why B.C.'s freedom-of-information and privacy commissioner Mr. David Loukidelis, who the minister is aware of and has in fact consulted in depth on this bill — or at least his staff has….

He agreed with his counterpart in New Brunswick. He said: "B.C.'s Health Ministry should not have been couriering around unprotected tapes of personal health information like this. It doesn't matter that the tapes can only be read using technology that's not commonly available. Proper encryption is the basic standard for portable data storage like this."

What he went on to say is — and I think this is important: "We agree that this highlights the need for all governments in New Brunswick and British Columbia to ensure that they properly protect personal information in transit. Citizens expect better, and they deserve it. It's also the law."

What we have here is quite a significant incident that puts all of this in context. In fact, what the Information and Privacy Commissioner said quite explicitly was that the measures put in place by the Ministry of Health, in this case, did not meet the measures required under section 30 of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act.

The other issue — and this comes to a fundamental issue that is dealt with on issues of e-health records and what's required in this system for us to realize the considerable benefits…. To just briefly talk about what those benefits might be…. We know this. There are e-health projects like this. The government of Canada has been promoting them. Some of the e-health projects put forward by the government of British Columbia have been, in part, funded by the government of Canada.

We know that to realize the many benefits we can find from an e-health network in terms of patient care — potentially patient control over their own care; patient information about their own care; access to their own records as well as access by doctors and others so that they can properly diagnose and treat patients…. There are enormous benefits here, and as the designated speaker for the NDP, I recognize those benefits.

To quote from the government of Canada, they say that e-health is in fact "an essential element of health care renewal. Its application to Canada's health care system will result in benefits to Canadians through improvements in system accessibility, quality and efficiency."

The government of Canada has been making investments in this area since the 1997 federal budget, including federal commitments towards first ministers agreements. Those include, of course, the agreements signed in September 2000 by the previous NDP government and in 2003 by the current government.

For example, they talk about the benefits, in their view, of electronic prescribing. So they have addressed some of those issues at the federal level, and I think it's important to know that.

What they talk about when they talk about the benefits of health is improved hospital care — so improved capacity to have telemedicine, teleconsults, telepathology, teledermatology. That's to name just a few of the areas they talk about in terms of the hospital setting that can benefit from the expansion of electronic health.

I know that in British Columbia, at least according to last week's report by the B.C. Medical Association, there are serious issues overall with home care in British Columbia that they've identified. You think about the advantages in terms of monitoring systems used for diabetic medicines, for asthma, for other chronic disease that you can find, people who require dialysis — all the systems that can assist people in providing a more efficient level of care in the home and home care efficiency. I know that the members opposite are particularly interested in that.

We talked about that a little bit earlier and the potential advantages in the primary care setting for the use of information by general practitioners and by pharmacists for medical records, potentially for electronic prescribing, and other advantages in the system — the ability to make the system more efficient but also to raise the level of care.

What is essential in doing that, it seems to me — in enhancing the level of care and the advantages that we can realize from the expansion of e-health — is public confidence in the system. If people do not have confidence that their privacy will be protected…. Further, if doctors don't have confidence that the privacy of patient records, in the appropriate way, need to be protected….

In other words, if you can imagine an e-health system, because it's kind of what we have in British Columbia, you know, as a system in the middle that's designed…. I think Sun Microsystems got this contract, and we'll talk about our friends at Sun Microsystems in a second. There's the centre, and then there are various spokes coming out from the centre. One would be electronic health records; another would be PharmaNet and other things.

What you want is for people to have access — and this is the challenge — to the parts of that system that they should appropriately have access to without having access to all of it. So you're setting up a system where maybe a pharmacist out here can have access to some of the records, the appropriate records, of a particular patient but surely, we would hope, wouldn't have access to specific electronic medical records from that primary care physician.

You have to be able to develop and build confidence in a system where people have access to records that they need but don't have access to records that are beyond their professional interest. That's a major challenge, and that's why we will be setting up, with the various contracts that the government has let…. I'll be going into those issues later in this speech.

There is an absolute key here in terms of building confidence of the public in the system. If the public has confidence in the system, then they will not, in fact, have any desire to withhold information because of — oh, I don't know — concerns that people in government, that employers — if their employer were to be the government — might somehow be able to access that information. So this issue of privacy seems important, but it's also essential to the efficacy of the system.

If people don't want to play, then the benefits can't be realized. So if there are significant concerns — for example, of people who suffer from AIDS — about the system and they don't want to be involved in this system…. And this was a major debate before in terms of the sharing of health information.

A former Minister of Health in Saskatchewan, for example, who is on the board of Fraser Health, took the position, in Saskatchewan, that was against confidentiality. In my view, he would have discouraged people from getting tested for AIDS at all. That was his position back in the 1980s. That position may well have changed. But that issue….

If as a patient you have concerns about that…. We would want people who might have risk to be tested, for example, for AIDS, for HIV — to get HIV-tested. But if people are concerned that those tests, in fact, may become more broadly available than they would like or that they wouldn't have control of that information, they might not get tested.

I think it's really critical that there be public confidence in the system, because without that, all of those benefits that we've talked about and that we'll be talking about here with respect to this bill will be lost.

Getting back to what happened yesterday, which frames our debate on this legislation, here's what the Information and Privacy Commissioner said about what happened in British Columbia. He said: "Large organizations have to invest in paying attention to the small stuff. I think it's a question of oversight."

But he expressed very strong concern with the fact that the ministry seemed to know that the information was lost, yet it took them 41 days to notify the people affected, by letter. To quote the Information and Privacy Commissioner on this point: "You notify affected individuals where there's a prospect of identity theft as soon as you practicably can. That wasn't done here."

Why is this important? Well, let's put it in a broader context. Why this issue of public confidence in the system? It goes beyond just the provisions of this bill. We're dealing with the bill now. The minister tabled some amendments to me which seem, at first blush…. We'll be looking at them at committee stage. They may, in fact, improve those parts of the bill and address at least some of the concerns of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Although, I don't think all of the concerns of groups that have expressed privacy concerns with respect to this legislation….

Why is it that people could appropriately be concerned? Well, let me give you an example, a high-profile example that's not in our jurisdiction.

We had this case, of course, this week where the Health Ministry was strongly criticized for losing medical records. And, like I say, our great hope in that case is that the 121 B.C. residents affected will not actually suffer a loss of privacy, because the tapes are lost and they won't turn up anywhere. They're hopefully somewhere, perhaps in some landfill.

Just to put in context how serious these issues can be and how important public confidence is to the success of legislation like Bill 24, we can talk about an international example which happened just last October. The breach happened in October, and people were informed of it in November.

What happened in the United Kingdom? Well, in that case, something quite similar, in a sense, to what happened in British Columbia occurred in the United Kingdom. What happened was that data related in that case to child benefits went missing. The two disks that went missing contained the personal details of all the families in the United Kingdom claiming the child benefit, of which the take-up, if you can believe it, is nearly 100 percent — so an enormous number of people.

It concerned in that case, not as it did in British Columbia…. If we take the case here in British Columbia yesterday, it concerned the medical health records of 124 patients, which is pretty serious, especially if you're one of the 124, but it's pretty serious for public confidence in the system. In the United Kingdom the lost data concerned approximately 25 million people. The personal data on the missing disks was reported to include names, addresses and dates of birth of children, together with the national insurance number and bank details of their parents. Further, there were issues raised, very significant concerns raised about the protection of the information.

So the entire data system in the United Kingdom, a lot of which had been contracted out in a very similar way to what's happened here in British Columbia…. A lot of that data, which involved approximately 25 million people in the United Kingdom, was lost.

Now the breakdown of the loss…. Let me just give you a sense of the breakdown of that loss. So 7.25 million claimants were involved; 15.5 million children were involved; 2.25 million alternative payees were involved; and so on.

Now, what happened in this case? There was lots of discussion of what happened in the case. But the system failed, as can be obvious to everyone, and the confidence in the entire government record system that included the records for health was affected by that. So in the wake of that serious breach of the U.K.'s Data Protection Act, there was a series of resignations that followed and police investigations.

Here's what a commentator said about that. "Let us be clear about the scale of this catastrophic mistake. The

names, the addresses and the dates of birth of every child in the country are sitting on two computer disks that are apparently lost in the post, and the bank account details and national insurance numbers of ten million parents and guardians have gone missing."

This was, according to critics, the final blow for the ambitions of this government to create a national ID database. There were also criticisms in that process of the use of disks, just as there has been in the process we've seen here this week in British Columbia.

These incidents have, of course, a profound and chilling effect on the entire system, and in particular, on electronic health. Why? Well, as you know, hon. Speaker, you can imagine why the effect would be particularly chilling in health, because some of our most intimate, personal details are shared with health professionals who assist us. Some of them include, for example, details, perhaps, about chronic diseases we may have which might affect our employment or events that happened, including events related to mental health and so on.

One can imagine that in one's own life, one would want to have control over the process by which such information was shared and divulged. Well, that control has never been absolute. Once information is shared, it always seems possible that it might be shared again.

This information, in terms of a mass loss of data…. In fact, the potential for that seems greater and the risks become greater, strangely enough, when one's ability, when our mechanisms to share data, also become greater. That's why the issues raised in this legislation are so important.

They're so important to people with an interest in the area. The Freedom of Information and Privacy Association would find it very important. The civil liberties association would find it important. Obviously, health care groups like the BCMA and the HSA and the BCNU would find it important. But I think this debate about medical health records and electronic health records is particularly important and will be seen as particularly important by ordinary people.

I think some of these issues were raised with people in the most recent consultation, the Conversation on Health. I do think one of the problems with consultation processes is that, in a sense, the people with specific interests and irregular interests have been consulted, but regular people — all of whom, I am sure, will have a real interest in this question — haven't been consulted. I don't think they have a sense of what's going on with this legislation.

What did this mean in Britain in terms of health records? Well, it meant that the planned database there of 50 million patient records, which is obviously bigger than our database…. The opposition in Britain, just to remind people who they are, are the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. It's an odd situation, but we're now, I think, in…. Is it the third or the fourth consecutive term of Labour government in Britain? I don't know what it is. I think something similar, no doubt, will be coming to British Columbia soon.

What the opposition and a lot of patient groups expressed in the wake of the fiasco that occurred with the child benefit records were concerns about the loss of health records. In the NHS…. The very health record system that we're talking about in this legislation has its own parallels in Britain, and here's what we know about what has happened in Britain.

Eight health trusts. They've developed a different model of health care than we have on the organizational side. I won't get into that, although I'm sure the minister would be extremely interested in that. Perhaps we can do that in another debate at another time. Eight health trusts are reported to have lost "168,000 patient details in total." That's what happened.

How did they find this out? Why did this find this out? I know the member for Delta North is particularly interested in this. They found this out only when they did checks after they lost 25 million child benefit records. Once they learned about that situation, they recognized that they needed to do their own checks, and they discovered in their audit that they'd lost 168,000 patient details. Now, that's a pretty serious situation.

They were forced — the trusts in question, the health trusts in the National Health Service in Britain — because the systems didn't work properly in terms of the protection of information, to bring in a whole bunch of new measures to ensure patient safety. Again, the consequences of that….

Just to give you an example of what we mean, because the 168,000 figure seems a bit out there in the sky. We don't know what that means when big numbers like that are thrown out. What we're talking about, for example, are the clinical details of 160,000 children by the City and Hackney Primary Care Trust. We're talking again, in that case, about child health. This is an important fact there as it is here in our case in British Columbia, which we learned about yesterday in the report by the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

People found out about it in November. It actually occurred in October, I should say, the New Brunswick case, at the same time as this British problem happened. People were informed 41 days later. The same kind of thing took place, and what it has led to is a profound concern in all of Britain about the potential security involved in protecting patient records.

I'll just give you another example. Another trust was also reported over the weekend to have lost patient data. Another trust lost patient records eight times in the last five years. It's not that they haven't gone to tender and gone to deal with electronic health records, as this government has. But what it shows, it seems to me — and this is a critical point — is that what's needed in addition to a framework for the debate is a great deal of public confidence.

That public confidence in the case of something as important as electronic health records can be quite easily shaken. The events of this week in British Columbia and in New Brunswick and the events in Great Britain last fall would tend to raise those issues of concern. What they say is that we as legislators have to be particularly vigilant, and the public has to become

The minister noted in his speech this morning that the government has tabled a number of amendments that deal with something called patient disclosure directives — patients having the right to give directives about the information about them that's disclosed. For example, it might conceivably be possible for me if I didn't want people to know about type 1 diabetes. If another patient who was HIV-positive didn't want them to know, they could do this disclosure directive around that.

It would probably be the opposite in my case. I'd want that to be disclosed. That would be the first thing I might want to be disclosed to other health professionals. The question and the key point is that that would be my choice. I have some mechanism to say to the government: "You can't just throw around my information if I don't want you to throw it around."

This was a critical question raised by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association and others. What the government did this morning was table some amendments to try and deal with some of those concerns that were raised. This issue of disclosure directives….

The bill that we're debating now — these amendments, of course, are not part of the bill we're debating now at second reading; they'll be dealt with at committee stage — said that the minister may include disclosure directives in an order designating a health information bank. The current legislation essentially gave the minister the discretion to determine whether or not they should exist. This obviously was a matter of great concern to organizations concerned with privacy.

What the amendments do — and we will certainly be supportive of this particular amendment…. This is an issue that I've been raising in discussing the bill as well, so I'm pleased to see this change. What they say is that the minister must now — not may, but must — include disclosure directives and orders.

One of the issues here, one of the challenges, is that we obviously have old record systems and new record systems coming into place. The reason, in fairness to the minister, why he may have originally preferred the "may" — I think this was his explanation — was that some of the old systems may not have the capacity to integrate this idea of a disclosure directive. The result was that the minister or the government wanted to have the discretion.

This issue of public confidence, which I'll be returning to in a little while…. I know particularly the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca is interested in this question. There's so much at stake in that that I think this idea that the minister might have discretion on the question of disclosure directives was of great concern to groups.

Now, what these amendments appear to do — and that's very important, it seems to me — is to ensure that people will have that right. Hopefully, what that does is put the onus away from people. The idea of privacy protection, which I think is fundamental to the success of this — not just to the protection of privacy, as if that's an impediment to the success of an e-health system…. I think it's essential to ensure that there's the confidence by doctors and nurses and health care workers and, of course, most importantly, patients.

In that system, this idea that patients should be allowed to give directions and that it will be up to the government to make sure that the systems change to meet the privacy needs of the patient and not the patient having to sacrifice their privacy needs because the government isn't ready yet or might not be ready yet….

That's one of the amendments that have been tabled today, and I think it's an important question, because it goes to this issue of confidence. This issue of patient disclosure directives, which are vital and which will be vital, I think, to the future success of the electronic health system…. In that regard, we're pleased with that change.

Now, as you know, the government has been contracting out a number of things with respect to health information for some time. Sometimes that contracting out takes place to companies that are in Canada. Sometimes that contracting out takes place to companies in the United States. This is another issue of great concern which we'll be dealing with, of course, at committee stage. It's a great concern to stakeholder groups.

Here's the concern they've expressed. It's that this legislation allows an exemption for IT maintenance to be done remotely from outside of Canada — okay? This concern has been ongoing with respect to several government databases. One can remember the concerns raised very eloquently by my colleague from Saanich South about the Maximus contract.

This concern has been ongoing with respect to several government databases that are contracted out to multinational companies with operations outside of Canada. Why is this so important? Well, as you know — and we know on this issue of e-health it's a central question — other jurisdictions do not have the same approach to these issues, I think, that we in Canada have. Indeed, the far-reaching implications of the Patriot Act in the United States cause concern to any Canadian who might think or might see that their health records are to leave Canada for any reason for the United States and potentially be subject to that act.

I think probably everyone in this House knows that for a bunch of reasons citizens from our country often have trouble at the border or have often in the past, in particular — sometimes for their political views, sometimes for other things — had problems getting access to the United States, or having their health records shared or having personal information about them developed by the United States. The Patriot Act has had, in fact, a profound effect and a profoundly chilling effect in the United States, because there are broad and sweeping powers in that act that override civil liberties.

If our health information crosses the border to the United States, as it does in terms of billing information now, there have been concerns raised, not just by the opposition — although the member for Saanich South raised these issues, I think, in a particularly eloquent way — but by the Information and Privacy Commissioner,

by civil liberties groups and, most importantly, by our constituents who have repeatedly come to us and said: "We are concerned about this. I do not want my medical records, my billing records, to go to the United States and be subject to the Patriot Act."

So those concerns of cross-border IT maintenance and system security as it relates to the security of the data we have here in Canada being secure from other governments…. Some people might think it's reasonable that the government we elect in British Columbia can be trusted to have control of our health records under a set of prescribed circumstances as are somewhat described here in Bill 24. But I think it's fair to say that we in Canada don't elect the government of the United States and that most Canadians think that the powers of the Patriot Act, which take a very different view of health information, are powers they wouldn't like to see applied to their personal information.

That's why there was so much concern in British Columbia beyond the contracting out concerns, beyond the cost of the contract concerns, beyond the fact that one couldn't seem to phone up and get an answer with contracts like the Maximus contract, which my colleague from Saanich South eloquently described as "Maximus minimus." That's why there was so much concern with that, it seems to me.

That concern grows when we think of all of those records now that, because of decisions by our government and the decision by our government to allow those records, potentially, to be accessed by the Patriot Act…. All those concerns of our citizens in British Columbia…. And they're not frivolous concerns. We've seen, with the loss of health records and with the experience in the United States with the use of the Patriot Act, that all of those conventions that we as Canadians, in terms of the protection of privacy, see as central concerns for us are frequently overridden in the United States.

Now, we love the United States. They're our dear friends and neighbours, but they have, particularly since the coming into force of the Patriot Act, a different view of these issues. Certainly, the government of the United States doesn't respect and wouldn't respect even the provisions, I suggest, of this legislation or other legislation with respect to privacy.

It's why those issues have been raised so eloquently by groups such as the B.C. Persons with AIDS Society, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. There are also issues, in the past, that have been raised by the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

So think of this. You've just put it in context, hon. Speaker, because we were talking about patient disclosure directives. That's what section 8 of the act says. It says that the minister may, in an order, create a health information bank — authorize individuals to make disclosure directives regarding their own health. This is why this change from "may" to "must" is important in B.C., because even here in B.C. we wouldn't want…. If a person wanted to give a directive not to release certain information regarding their own health, we wouldn't want even the government of B.C. to do that.

This is particularly important when you consider the possibility, and it's something we have to guard against, that such records might eventually be the subject of the U.S. Patriot Act. I think most people in British Columbia would be concerned about that and are concerned with that.

That's why there was so much concern expressed in this Legislature but also across British Columbia by regular citizens — not by the groups, not by what you'd call the usual participants in the public debate, but by citizens — about the government's decision to contract out certain health records. Some of them seemed to be able to go outside the country. There are some issues here about the power to enable such records to go outside of British Columbia.

Those are issues, clearly, that my constituents and, I know, the constituents of the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca will want to be discussed in detail at committee stage.

Getting back to the issue of disclosure directives for a moment. What they allow patients to do — and this is in section 8 of the legislation — is block access to their medical information. One of the reasons provided for this being left to the discretion of the minister was the inadequacy of existing technologies. We've talked about this.

So the fact is that some of the information systems that currently house that information, which would be affected by this act, aren't in a position to accommodate, from a technological point of view, the idea of disclosure directives.

What the Information and Privacy Commissioner said…. This is why it's so important that this bill, which currently says "may" but we hope after committee stage will say "must…." He urged the minister to ensure that the systems accommodate disclosure directives. He made that case, I think, very strongly to the minister.

I'm glad to see that those concerns and, just as importantly, the concerns put forward in detail by the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, amongst others, have been taken up at least in part in this legislation. I think that issue of being able to trust the system and being able to say to your government that this information shouldn't be shared, for whatever reason…. People don't have to, it seems to me, give reasons about access to their personal health information. Their reasons are their reasons. They're not really for us to judge.

It's absolutely critical to the confidence that people have in the electronic medical records system and in the e-health system that they be allowed to do that — that a constituent in Malahat–Juan de Fuca living in Sooke has the right to be able to say: "No. I don't care how fancy your system is and how much you've promised not to release it to other parts of government or what a great commitment you've made. I don't care about that, because I don't want this information shared — period. This issue is between me and my doctor or between me

and another health professional. I do not want the issue shared, and I want the right to give a disclosure directive."

What this implies, of course, is that subsequent to the passage of this legislation and the creation of these directives…. What it implies, it seems to me, is that there will need to be a very significant public campaign. If you think about it, people will only be able to use such a disclosure directive if they know one exists. As much as we know that the riveting debates held in this Legislature are widely heard throughout British Columbia, the fact of the matter is that most people, once this bill is passed, will not know that such a disclosure directive exists. So we need to inform them.

What I'm not suggesting is that participation in the system requires consent. It seems to me that that would be an enormous public undertaking, and it would be very unlikely that the system would be taken up to the degree you'd need to take it up in order to be effective, to realize the gains. What we're saying is that patients in British Columbia deserve at least the same rights as cable companies wanted to impose on subscribers back when there was negative-option billing — that you have the right to know that you could give a disclosure directive to your government with respect to your health information.

What will be required after this, it seems to me — because this is an individual right — is a significant effort by the government to let people know that such a disclosure directive exists, that the right to have a disclosure directive exists. I think that is a very significant situation.

Are people right to be concerned? Are groups such as the B.C. Persons with AIDS Society right to be concerned about the issue of cross-border IT maintenance?

Well, there will be a debate about that. The minister across, I'm sure, will say: "No. We've taken the proper safeguards." But just remember what the U.S. Patriot Act permits. Here's what it permits, and it's pretty serious for people who have concerns about this. It doesn't mean to say….

A. Dix: Oh, the minister thinks that the legitimate concerns people have about the application of the U.S. Patriot Act in Canada are not to be taken seriously, but of course they are.

We don't have an act like the Patriot Act in Canada because we have different views on this issue. Thank goodness we have different views on this issue. I know that the Minister of Health has different views on these issues. He wouldn't want to see the Patriot Act applied in Canada the way it is in the United States.

If you don't want the Patriot Act applied in Canada, then I think you've got to take special care, certainly more care than this government has taken in the past, to ensure that the personal health information of British Columbians is not accessible to the U.S. government. If that information goes across the border, we know that all of the protections we can provide in Bill C-24, in other legislation and in the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act go out the window. Of course, they would treat our Bill 24 a little like this government treats the Canada Health Act at times — like a scrap of paper. They would not take the protections that we provide very seriously, and I think that's a pretty important question to deal with.

What does the U.S. Patriot Act permit? It permits greater access to business records, increased use of Secret Service searches, increased ability to do surveillance and wiretapping. The FBI can obtain an order to search any type of record and does not have to go through any judicial assessment. The FBI can investigate an individual with no obligation to show probable cause, no procedure to challenge an order for disclosure. Failure to comply with an order constitutes contempt. Anyone served with an order for disclosure is forbidden from telling anyone else that the order exists. Individuals will not even know that their personal information has been handed over to authorities.

When you think of the outsourcing that we've already seen…. These aren't electronic medical records. They're often billing records and other things. The implications of these changes for the outsourcing we've already seen and the concerns about the loss of medical records, which we've seen in British Columbia this very week, not in some distant time in the past…. There was a report yesterday on the loss of records. This is an area of legitimate concern.

Just to give a sense of what Maximus has access to, they have access to much of this information, much of the information that we think…. They probably know, I would suggest, from their files about my chronic disease and other people's issues and health care issues here in this Legislature. So they have that information.

Whether or not it matters to me whether that information is shared with the United States government, I would not want it to be shared with the United States government in this context. In fact, what we have seen is that there aren't very many mitigation strategies that can be used to protect patient records or protect personal information if it leaves Canada and goes to the United States, because the Patriot Act, within the borders of the United States, overrides those concerns.

I think that far from being a boogeyman, as the Minister of Health would want to suggest, it's just a serious issue, one we need to discuss in detail to ensure and to provide the assurance to British Columbians that the access to their patient records and their personal health information is not going to in some fashion be subject to the U.S. Patriot Act. We're going to discuss that at some length at committee stage, and hopefully, the minister's answers to those questions will provide confidence to people.

We want people to want to participate in an e-health system. We want people to participate in the e-health system that works and improves the broader health care of everybody in British Columbia. But what's required to do that, what's required to make that work, are clear protections for that data and that information. The reason such protection is important isn't just because of the individual rights of the citizen, although those are very

Now, this brings me around to the really vital issue of system confidence. As you know — just to give a sense of what this bill does — the bill provides the framework. But the contracts that the minister talked about in his second reading speech, which was somewhat parsimonious in detail but nonetheless touched on these points…. The issues raised in this create the framework for the system.

But what we're doing is we're creating that legislative framework sort of after the contractual horse has left the barn. They've let the contracts. But the minister referred to those contracts in his second reading speech and those things, so I'm going to try in some detail to let people know some of the issues involved in those contracts and how they relate to this information.

What does this bill do? Let's remind people what the bill does. It allows patients, medical professionals and health research and planning organizations to access personal health information contained in what are called health information banks, as defined by the legislation. It creates rules around access to those data banks, including particular rules for the access to those data banks for health research but also for health services planning, for maintenance, for improvement, for billing, for the assessment of public health needs and for assessing and addressing public health threats.

Those information banks give us the possibility, give us the capacity, to learn a whole bunch of things about our entire health care system, especially people in the Ministry of Health who have to do some of the planning for that. It gives them access to that information, hopefully to improve things.

It creates, really, in addition to that thought, what we call the privacy framework for those health information banks that have been created and for the ministry databases that are created. That's important. We've been discussing the implications of that.

It creates, as the minister said, a data stewardship committee that will evaluate requests for the disclosure of data for health research. So you have a committee that will deal with requests.

If a researcher goes to them, they will assess both the value of it and the right of that project to have access to this information. That committee will be responsible for approving that access. Obviously, the membership on that committee, who is on that committee, becomes very important in that regard.

I think what the bill will therefore do is allow medical researchers with the specific, and only with the specific, approval of the Information and Privacy Commissioner…. For the information of people listening on TV, the Information and Privacy Commissioner is appointed by unanimous vote of a committee of this Legislature, meaning by the government and the opposition.

He's an independent officer of the Legislature. He doesn't report to the government. This is an important fact. He does not report to the government, but he has to provide medical researchers with specific approval.

I think what the government is trying to do, because they're trying to address this fundamental issue of confidence in the system that's required for the system to work…. What one would hope from that is that, in fact, it will build public confidence in the system and ensure that the Privacy Commissioner, whose first obligation is to protect the privacy of individuals, will consider those considerations even before he considers the possible research advantages of a particular project.

As well, individuals — and this is an important part of it — will be able to access their own medical records, and they will be able to know who has accessed their information, which is very important to the confidence of the system. Most importantly, as we've said, there is this whole issue of patient disclosure directives, which we'll be dealing with when we have the opportunity to deal with the minister's amendments at committee stage. So those are some of the issues that are raised.

Now, I just want to return briefly, because…. So that's the framework. It creates the frame from which these health information banks operate. But the government, of course, has set up a series of contracts already. It's a bit of a hub-and-spoke model, like we talked about earlier.

Sun Microsystems, I think, got the contract for the hub of the system, which has to be designed to sort of manage the traffic on the system and the access on the system so that somebody who has access to pharmaceutical records may not be able to get access to the rest of the records. That's the idea of this hub-and-spoke model.

Of course, one of the key spokes, if you will, is the government's contracts…. Others were involved. A committee involving representatives of the BCMA were involved. It's a contract that will involve both public funds and the funds of doctors to promote an electronic health record system through doctors' offices across British Columbia.

The government scheme, in that regard, is worth approximately $108 million. What the idea is, is that essentially that's a subsidy to doctors to adopt electronic medical record programs and systems for their own offices. So what you have is a subsidy. Then what you would hope is that the doctors would buy into it.

The government went through an elaborate process, a steering committee process out of the physician information technology office for British Columbia that was set up as part of the 2006 collective agreement with the BCMA. It set up a process and a bidding process for these contracts.

I think the issues involved are really serious. I think most people would say what you would want, first of all, is the best possible contractors, the most experienced possible contractors, contractors who have done similar projects in other jurisdictions to win the contract. Unfortunately, in British Columbia that didn't happen. We've raised and others have raised serious concerns about this.

Now, I think this is central to — the minister mentioned this process in his speech — our understanding of Bill 24, the E-Health (Personal Health Information

Access and Protection of Privacy) Act. Public confidence is essential, it seems to me.

There have been significant incidents with respect to contracting out of electronic health records that need to be addressed — and I don't believe they have been addressed — to ensure that that particular spoke in the electronic health system has public confidence, and public confidence, in particular, in the integrity of that initiative. I'm talking about this $108 million contract or subsidy contract for electronic health records.

Now, there's an issue involving a senior civil servant who was very much involved in this process, but we're not going to get into that, because that issue is still the subject of a police investigation. We're going to set that aside and not deal with that for the moment. Some of those issues are probably most appropriately dealt with in an estimates debate in any event.

But let's just give a sense of some of the concerns about how that contract was let, because that contract is central to our understanding of Bill 24. So what don't we know? We don't know, for example, what steps the Minister of Health and other senior officials took to ensure that potential conflict of interests were avoided with respect to this contract.

Remember, many experts have expressed concerns about the outcome of this contract, not with respect to the bids or the low bidding, but with respect to the quality of the bids themselves and whether they met the standards required, particularly the standards to ensure that both the system worked appropriately and that we wouldn't have to rebuild it after having tried to encourage people to be part of it, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the very privacy of the concerns.

So what we had was a process, and the people in charge of that process were very highly paid. There's a senior medical consultant in the Ministry of Health responsible for e-health who billed for, really, a salary contract — $368,000. He wasn't a minor official in this matter.

His name is Dr. Jonathan Burns, and he was involved in that. He was also, in his free time, when he wasn't earning the $368,000, a very significant contractor in e-health. All of which is interesting, and presumably, it's his very interest in e-health that led the government to hire him. There's nothing nefarious about that in particular, but what it did say was that to ensure public confidence in the system, surely, very strict rules with respect to dealing with potential conflict of interest should have been in place.

Now, we asked about these questions in question period, and the Minister of Health at the time refused to answer. We did not know…. It's another question that has not been answered: what steps were taken to ensure that no PITO members had conflict of interest? We don't know the answer to that. The government hasn't said.

Dr. Jonathan Burns attended all of the PITO steering committee meetings. On his business website, Dr. Burns describes Wolf Medical, one of the winners, as a partner. Was this relationship disclosed prior to the development of the PITO EMR RFP? We don't know that.

Again, it's central. These are questions that surely could simply be answered by the government. They're not complicated questions, and the government has chosen instead to leave them unanswered. The government was reluctant in this case. Again, it relates to this issue of public confidence, which is central, it seems to me, to how this bill will come into force, how it will be received, what impact it will have on our public health care system.

The very purpose of the bill is placed into question when people lose confidence in the government's contracting model that they've set up around this legislation. They didn't answer that question. They were reluctant to discuss who was involved in the development, shortlisting, testing and evaluation of the RFP. We asked; other people asked. It's not just us. Other people asked, and the government refused to say.

Many of the bidders have wide business and personal relationships in the e-health fields. How did the government assure itself that none of these relationships, directly or indirectly, involved those in the design of the RFP, the selection, the original shortlist and the final decision? The RFP was scheduled to be launched in October 2006. It was delayed, and the requirements were significantly changed and softened to allow more bidders.

That's not what you want to hear when it's a matter of your health records. You don't want to hear that the requirements were softened. But they were. Eventually the RFP was set out in February 2007. There were 37 bidders who were released to a shortlist of ten and then to six successful vendors. They're the vendors who will be allowed to sell their products, and the people who buy those products will have access to this $108 million in public funds which is a central piece of the whole architecture of what's being set in place by this legislation, I would suggest.

We don't know why the RFP requirements were changed. We'd like to know. We don't know why they were changed. We don't know what pre-RFP meetings took place between bidders and government officials to lobby for looser requirements. The requirements very plainly were loosened. This is central to this issue, again, of public confidence, it seems to me. Without that public confidence in the system, which we want to see succeed and improve the running of our health care system, it will not succeed, I submit.

We want to know why the key requirements of ASP capability and clinical standards were downgraded at that time. We would like to know the answer to that question. I think that's a legitimate and reasonable question to know about, especially in the context of this legislation. How many of the successful bidders, those that will be in charge of elements of the system, were allowed to bid as a result of the softening of the requirements? This would be very interesting. It would be very compelling.

We don't know who lobbied for softening the requirements. The government hasn't explained why they softened the requirements, and we don't know who

was successful and who wasn't successful in the bidding process as a result of the softening of the requirements. When you're talking about legislation here that deals with the most personal of health information, these are vital questions for us to know. They're vital questions of system confidence for us to know.

They're not small issues. They're large issues, and ones that we surely should want and have a desire to learn about. Further — and it's important to go through this, I think, in detail — we'd like to know if any of the physicians involved in that process resigned during the course of testing and, if they did, why.

Given the stated requirements of that RFP, which as the minister stated is central to the notion of Bill 24, why did several of the successful bidders have little or no experience in B.C.? We want to know. Given the stated requirements of the RFP, why did several of the successful bidders have little or no experience dealing with the security and privacy considerations of managing patient data?

This is an important question when you consider the stakes here and consider what happened in Britain, what's happened with the loss of information in the United States, what's happened in other jurisdictions. That seems to me to be a reasonable question to ask. Why did so many inexperienced bidders win?

Now, there may be answers to those questions — answers that those bidders can provide, answers that the government can provide. But it seemed to me that what the government was doing — and ended up doing, in this case — was valuing a low bid over experience with security, and it was completely unnecessary.

Remember what these contracts do. It's still up to the doctors to buy the systems. What the government was managing was the number of companies who had access. So the companies would still have had to bid and compete on price with the doctors, to have access for the doctors to be able to use the $108 million to buy their systems.

Why was the bidding process seen as more important by the government than these questions of experience? That's the question. Given the state of the requirements of the RFP — which, as the minister said, is central to this legislation — why did several of the successful bidders have little or no experience in delivering electronic medical record applications in Canada? These are, I think, fairly serious questions.

Five of the six successful bidders had no production experience as an ASP. Why did the government take a chance on unproven vendors, especially with something as vital as patient records at stake? There may be an answer to that question. Hopefully, the answer, given the nature of the process….

This wasn't a low-bid process per se, although that was part of it, but the competitive process is happening after the fact. This is access, in a sense, to a subsidy by only six businesses. Again, it's very central to this whole discussion of Bill 24. The question is: why were the requirements loosened?

Those are the questions that we need an answer for. They become central to this debate for the very reasons that we've discussed. This is a very fundamental question of patient confidence, because if there is a lack of patient confidence in a system, then the architecture one puts in place won't matter. One has to build confidence in that architecture and an understanding of that architecture.

What will be required here is in addition to a vigorous government campaign to explain to people their rights under section 8 of this legislation — I would suggest, a vigorous government campaign to explain to people that they have the right, in fact, to provide disclosure directives regarding their own health. What will be required, as well, is public confidence and physician confidence in that system.

A lot of physicians I've talked to…. A doctor named Dr. Tom Elliott, who is a very innovative endocrinologist, was involved in this bidding process. He has grave concerns with how the process was conducted, and this is not a central part of his business. He's an endocrinologist, but he knows a lot about electronic medical records. He has devised systems through his own practice that worked for his own practice. He is amongst the many people who have expressed very grave concerns about this process.

Again, one can build a legislative architecture — and this is what we're doing today — that can, hopefully, meet the tests that people have. But if as a practical matter, the contracts — the records themselves — do not have adequate protection or have not met the test of adequate protection, if the systems that the government has put forward do not meet that test and if the contractors do not have adequate experience in that area, then all of our good wishes in a bill such as Bill 24 can in fact be compromised. I think that's not a small issue.

You'll just remember, hon. Speaker, in addition to that…. The Auditor General — we talked about the freedom-of-information and privacy commissioner — has had things to say recently about some of these issues as well. His recent report about alternative service delivery, called ASD, found that some aspects of the e-health plan, such as the inclusion of provincial laboratory information services, did not have a sufficient business plan.

Again, this is central to what the government says it intends to do. The PLIS contract was awarded to Sun Microsystems for $140 million in public funds. The one we were just talking about, which we raised very significant questions about in this House, was a $108 million contract. This contract is a $149 million contract. Add those together, and just for those two contracts it's $257 million.

These are not small investments that are being made. They're being made by federal money in part and by provincial money in part, but the process has been organized principally here by this provincial government. The minister talked about those processes briefly in his second reading speech related to Bill 24. The contract was awarded to Sun Microsystems for $149 million.

"All the facts available." I think that's what our concern is with this circumstance. It's not that we can't, especially with the amendments that have been put forward by the minister last night, which appeared on this morning's order paper a few minutes before this debate was scheduled to begin….

The fact of the matter is that when one is talking about one's personal health information and about health records in the system, one doesn't want to hear about decisions taken without all facts available. One doesn't want to hear about decisions taken without a sufficient business plan. One doesn't want to hear about a government loosening standards in the RFP process without explanation.

These are things we don't want to hear about, and they're not minor matters. They're central, I would argue, to the potential efficacy of the entire process. When we're talking about this issue of system confidence, we're talking about the issues that have been raised about cross-border IT maintenance. We're talking about the issues and concerns that have been raised about patient directives.

I think all of these tell me one thing — that the people of B.C. have important interests involved in this debate and in this bill. Questions that we are dealing with today in this bill have a central interest to people. I believe that in many ways, people have been excluded from that debate.

For example, I think one of the reasons that consultation processes are important is that they give people the sense, even if they're not directly involved…. If you have a consultation process that includes, for example, the Civil Liberties Association and the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, that consultation process will in fact lead…. Even if you don't directly get involved to protect your interests, there are other people out there providing what you would describe as checks and balances in the system to ensure that those interests are protected.

What can we say about this? That's particularly important in this case because, remember, this is not a small matter — the issues raised in this debate. The privacy of personal health information is a constitutional right in Canada, and even without it being a constitutional right, it's a common-law right in Canada. The essence of it is simply this. You should have the right to withhold consent.

Further, you should have the right to believe that the government that is holding that information on your behalf is taking every step necessary to protect that information and to ensure that in fact the only people who might have access to that information are individuals who should have access to it, and that that information doesn't get out to people who certainly don't need it, who don't have to have a look at it, who don't want to look at it for curiosity, who don't want to look at it for nefarious reasons. Their motives really don't matter.

I understand one of my colleagues is going to stand up and seek leave to make an introduction, so I'll sit down for a moment and hold my place.

J. Horgan: Hon. Speaker, on behalf of yourself, the member for Surrey–Green Timbers, I would like to welcome, again, Wendy Kaland and her grade 5 students from Surrey's Green Timbers Elementary School. This is the second group to visit the chamber this morning. They're enjoying a very pleasant tour, and I know they're very pleased to see their member of the Legislature sitting in the Speaker's chair presiding over the proceedings here today.

A. Dix: As the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca said, everybody who is here in the House is involved in some way in this bill. Sometimes, as the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca knows, we deal with bills that have very narrow interests. Sometimes government decisions, like the decision to give preferential treatment in a place, in a community — oh, let me just pick one out of the hat: Jordan River — involve very narrow interests.

But in the case of this legislation, in the case of Bill 24, every single person who's with us today is affected by it. Everybody watching today is affected by it. Everyone not watching today — maybe most importantly, everyone not watching today — is affected by the issues raised in this legislation. That's why I think it's really our obligation as members of the opposition and as all members of the Legislature — government members, as well, government MLAs not in cabinet — to give this legislation a great deal of scrutiny.

There's an argument that this kind of legislation, with all of the issues involved, with the system that's being put in place now — this architecture for the system with people's health records in question — would have been an ideal topic to be addressed by the Select Standing Committee on Health. The outstanding Chairman of that committee, from West Vancouver, and myself…. I think I might well be…. The committee hasn't been constituted since I've been the Health critic, much to our disappointment.

This issue, though, of personal privacy, of how to balance the advantages of the expansion of e-health against the potential risks of the development of e-health…. That subject area, the concerns that have been raised about the contracts that have been let, would be an ideal subject for a referral of the whole thing to a legislative committee to review, maybe over the summer.

You can even make the argument, I dare say — and it's something that members of the House might consider — that this legislation should be put off for that period, not to oppose it but to ensure that there's more public understanding about the legislation and that we ourselves have gone over the details of it to justify the important issues involved in the bill. There's an argument for that. I'm not going to make that argument right now, of course, because there's also an opportunity to raise some of those issues at committee stage, I would guess, although there is not an ability at committee stage to do what we really need to do, to do that well.

Wouldn't it be important, wouldn't it be useful, for example, to be able to call doctors who had concerns about the EMR system, to call doctors who have left health authorities because of their concerns about the sharing of information, to call ordinary citizens who have concerns about the potential and what it would mean for them for their health information to leave the country? They listen to the government to have them make the case and, hopefully, to address those concerns, to have witnesses come before the committee and address those concerns. If the government, in fact, proceeds as one would expect….

Certainly, in principle we support the bill, particularly with the government's intention to make amendments made explicit now on the order paper. This isn't a debate where we're fighting legislation and they're putting forward legislation. This is a case of where we would hope the legislative process would make improvements to this legislation.

I think the minister would have to agree with that, given that he's tabled amendments today that we will be dealing with and that he referred to in his speech here at second reading. Given that he's tabled legislation and amendments today, he would agree that the process since first reading has already led to improvements in the legislation.

What do some of the groups say? There are four groups that were involved in this process and that tabled concerns, and here is sort of the crux of their concerns. Who are they? The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, a highly respected group in this province; the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities, a very highly respected group in this province — they're all very highly respected groups; the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association; and the Persons with Aids Society.

What do they say? Well, they note — and this is good news for the government — that patient and privacy groups were consulted on this legislation. They were concerned, they had to say, when the bill was tabled at first reading. They had an expectation — what they said they expected to see — around privacy rights enshrined in an e-health bill consistent with the constitutional and common-law right of Canadians to privacy of their personal health information — that that right would be fully enshrined in the legislation.

One of the key issues. The minister has dealt with this issue a little bit, we hope, and we hope we'll deal with this issue at committee stage. They suggested — we talked about this earlier — that a pure consent model would not work. I think that if they had their druthers they would probably prefer that consent model, which would say that you kind of have to opt into the system — as a patient, I mean. The only way your e-health information would become part of the system would be for you to opt in. But I think most of us would argue that that's unrealistic.

Why? Because, you know, we have things that we advertise for, like elections, where people can opt in, and not all of them opt in. In fact, a significant percentage of people — in the hundreds of millions of people in that case — in spite of all of our efforts of all MLAs and the media and everything else, choose to opt out. They opt out for their own reasons. In some cases, opting out is a statement. In that case, not voting is a statement.

But in this case, in the case of Bill 24, it was generally thought that that consent model wouldn't work because it would be too hard to launch a campaign to get enough people integrated into the system for it to work. So the model that was selected instead — that that fundamental right to privacy that we talked about, that right enshrined in the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Act but also in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and in the common law, could be adequately protected by disclosure directives….

That's why I think that question — that central question that, hopefully, we'll deal with at committee stage of this bill with the amendment proposed by the government — is so central, and we have to discuss that, and we have to involve it. So that's the first set of issues they have.

I want to just quote from their brief, because they believe…. They have concerns about the number of people — even with that — who will now have access to your health information, including…. I think they just don't know the Minister of Health as I know him, but they say in this brief: "…including the Minister of Health and other officials such as planners, managers and researchers."

They say that the bill creates a huge conflict between, on the one hand, the desire and legal right of individuals to keep their health information private and to control who has access to their health information and, on the other hand, the desire of government planners and managers for access to personal health information for a wide range of secondary purposes.

What does that mean in connection to this piece of legislation? It means that this core debate, which needs

to be resolved, I think, in the public mind…. And not just the public's mind, if you will — the public that's directly involved in medical records, meaning doctors, nurses and officials in the Ministry of Health and others. So there's that public. They have to have confidence in the system and a belief in the mechanisms that we are putting forward in Bill 24. That's really essential, and I think we know that on the one hand. They need to have confidence in that system.

On the other hand, the patient needs to have confidence in that system. That's everybody. There's nobody excluded from that. When we pass this legislation, every single person, hon. Speaker — you, me, our staff here in the Legislature, all the MLAs, all the staff who work for government and all the other people in British Columbia — will have the right to make disclosure directives. In fact, this right may be exercised more than we would like.

So if, and this will be a crucial question, they aren't informed about that right — their need to have that right that's contained here in section 8 of this legislation — that, I submit, will be a serious issue. I think that is a subject that should be publicized — that the government should make every effort. That's good — how they spent $6 million promoting the idea of sustainability. I think they might need to spend a little bit of money in that case to let people know what their rights are once Bill 24 is passed and then brought into force by regulation. They may have a period in between those two events where they can do that.

It seems to me that is a necessity, in this case, that people not just have the right but be informed of what's going on — beyond, of course, the large television audience for these proceedings — but that all members of the public have that right and have that information — the opportunity that's contained in section 8.

As we say, hon. Speaker, as the bill clearly says, section 8 previously had disclosure directives that were inadequate. We've corrected that problem. Section 24 allows parts of the e-health system to be launched before disclosure directives are fully implemented. They've dealt in part with that problem, but not without comment from people. Let me just read the concerns, for example, of Ross Harvey of the B.C. Persons with AIDS group. He says that e-health is proceeding this year with the provincial laboratory information system data system, the PLIS system, and perhaps PharmaNet too, bereft of all but the most primitive, clumsy and unacceptable disclosure directives. That's what he said.

So if you're going ahead with such a system, the public needs to know. They need to be informed of their rights. It's not enough for us in this Legislature to vote those rights. We have to do more than that. We have to believe more than that. We have to, in fact, ensure that in this legislative process they are informed fully. That argues for…. And we're not arguing for this, but it argues, potentially, for committee hearings. That's what it would argue for.

In some jurisdictions we go that route, where we invite witnesses to come and say, "This is what we would like to see changed, and that's what we would like to see changed," and the government to come and be cross-examined about why that is. We do that process here at committee stage in the House — that latter part of the process — but we don't have the former part of the process when we deal with legislation.

Instead what often happens, and this is a problem, is that the government introduces dozens of bills right at the end of the session and then wants them passed right away without debate.

This is not, of course, what's happening here. We're having a very significant and important debate on Bill 24. I think that's a good thing, but it argues for that potentially, because the issues in this legislation are so central.

Now, what else do these groups say about the legislation? They say…. They deal with issues about the range of purposes that the minister can use this information for, in section 4 of the bill, that are neither what you'd call planning or research. Many are management purposes for which access to personally identified information is not necessary at all. That's what these groups say.

Which groups are they? They're not small groups. They're the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities — all members of this House have met with representatives of both groups — and the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

Let me say what an extraordinary job that group and its executive director, Darrell Evans, do of bringing issues to our attention and the public's attention, of fighting for the very rights of access to information from government and, at the same time, for protection of the individual right of privacy that all British Columbians need. Many groups and many of us are busy with other issues.

But the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, which has presented a very significant brief, was involved in this process, was very concerned about some of the decisions in this process and continues to be concerned about some of the decisions in this process. They've put forward these ideas. That's what they've said.

What else have they said? They've said that the different purposes of the legislation should be separated out and clarified. Purpose should be categorized for them — that's what they said — in five categories, as follows: (1) health services planning, development, maintenance and improvement, (2) health insurance and health services billing and administration, (3) management, monitoring and evaluation necessary for the direct delivery of health care services, (4) public health surveillance and management, (5) health research.

Now, they said that personal health information should not be available for category 1, which is, to repeat, health services planning, development, maintenance and improvement. That's what they said. They said that they didn't think that was appropriate. And remember who these groups are. These groups are interested. These were the groups that brought the public interest test to this discussion. There are lots of broader tests.

J. Horgan: I'm very reluctant to interrupt the member for Vancouver-Kingsway when he's doing such important work, but I do want to take the opportunity to advise this House that today we've had the pleasure of a visit from two classes: Ms. Anderson and Ms. de la Salle from Discovery Elementary School at Shawnigan Lake in my constituency of Malahat–Juan de Fuca. The kids had a tremendous tour. I even took one of the classes into the basement and showed them the dungeon. What grade 4 kid could resist that?

A. Dix: Would you like me to note the hour, hon. Speaker? Well, then, I will happily move adjournment of the debate.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I had the opportunity to review Bill M206, Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Amendment Act, 2008, which was introduced on April 30 by the member for Surrey-Newton. I note that sections 2 and 3 create an impost, and the bill is, therefore, out of order in the hands of the private member and will not proceed to second reading.

Also, Members, I've had the opportunity to review Bill M205, Residential Tenancy Act Amendment Act, 2008, which was introduced on April 29 by the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville. I note that sections 1 and 6 create an impost in the bill, and it is, therefore, out of order in the hands of a private member and will not proceed to second reading.

Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported resolution, was granted leave to sit again.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF FORESTS
AND RANGE AND MINISTER
RESPONSIBLE FOR HOUSING
(continued)

D. Thorne: I want to thank the minister and the staff for coming out today to answer some questions. Right off the top, I'll say that two hours will just be hardly enough time to even get started with the type of questions that I have. I'm hoping, actually, with some of you that are here, the staff and the minister, to continue this dialogue over the next year. I have had many, many stakeholders who have been getting in touch with me and asking questions that I have not been able to answer to my own satisfaction. So I'm hoping to continue the dialogue after today, which I have actually started with some of you.

I think what I'm going to do is just go through my pile, my issue areas, and ask probably one question on each of them. Then, hopefully, I might get back to a second round in the area, because I'm thinking I won't get through all the questions, and I don't want to leave some areas out.

I just have some general questions around the service plans and some statistics and a few questions in those areas. Then I was going to look at a couple of HPO questions, manufactured homes, floating homes, residential tenancy issues, stratas, and seniors housing. So I've narrowed down my original list, which I think my LA sent off to Karen, of all the different areas that fall under my critic area. Those are the areas I've concentrated on because I think, perhaps, they're in the most crisis or the most important for this year.

I know that last year I did Ken's questions for HPO first because he wanted to go home, and I'm happy to do that again.

D. Thorne: No, you can't go home. I'd like to go home too. It's Thursday. We're not allowed to go home. But, you know, I'm always happy to send Ken on his way if he wants to go — right? Yeah, sometimes you probably all feel that way. Okay, we're not going to go down that road, not when I only have till noon — right?

Looking at the general goals at the beginning of the service plan, the first statement under goal 3 is affordable rental housing, and the private market is becoming increasingly scarce. Then it goes into the vacancy rates, which are even lower now — at 0.7 in Vancouver and 0.5 in Victoria — than when this was written.

Then, of course, it talks about how in October the rental assistance program was introduced. Now, I have always found that, as the minister and the staff know, a bit of an oxymoron. The rent supp program, as good as it is for some people…. It does change the lives of people who have good rental accommodation and who are paying high, high percentages of their income for rent. It makes a tremendous difference for those people.

But the government is admitting that there are virtually no apartments to rent. So for the vast majority of people who might be eligible for a rental supplement, it hardly qualifies as a housing program, because there just are no apartments available. The supply is not there, and what is there is dwindling daily.

I think that it's incumbent upon the provincial government to start working with the federal government to try and bring in some tax incentives and other programs to encourage the private market to start building more rental housing.

I know that I'm talking to people who know that it's been years and years since we've had any significant new supply of rental housing. It's a terrible, terrible problem, because the majority of people in the province are still renters. With land prices the way they are, none of us see that changing in the near future.

Market housing, market rental housing and all of those issues fall under my critic area. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute. I'm not going to spend too much time on it, though, because I just want to get this into the record more than anything else. I know we're all aware of these problems.

I guess my first question, then…. I know that over the last few years since the rent supp program was introduced, we have made the entry level easier and easier. I think now it's at $38,000 for income. I know that originally in '06 when the minister announced the program, he said he was hoping it was going to immediately benefit up to 15,000 families. I'm wondering if I can have a figure — you know, the last figure at the end of last month or whatever it would be — for how many people are actively involved right now in getting rent supps in B.C.

Hon. R. Coleman: I'm going to clarify a couple of points the member made. First of all, the majority of people in British Columbia do not rent. About 70 percent of our population own their own homes, so I think that that figure should be clear. On the rent supplement, the rental assistance program threshold for income is $35,000, not $38,000. That was changed in this year's budget. The number of people on the program today is over 4,800 families.

I do take exception when the member opposite says that…. Actually, I forget what the comment was, but I can tell you…. I'll just give you one quote. A lady by the name of Savannah, a single mother with a young man who is 12 years old, wrote me. She wrote me a letter personally, handwritten, and said: "Thank you for changing our lives. You have made all the difference in the world to both my son and myself. He can now participate in organized sports. We have better health, we have better nutrition, and our fear of affordability in our home is gone."

You know, when $338 is the average amount that a person gets on rent assistance, it makes a big difference to those people. The actual fact of the matter is that 4,800-plus families plus, I think, 16,000 seniors all receive some form of rental assistance in British Columbia today, just so they can stay affordably in their homes where they are. I can tell you that in the 18 months of the program…. The member is correct: our goal is 15,000. We didn't say we'd get 15,000 the first month. We've adjusted the program. We started out at a $21,000 income. We took it to $28,000 in income. We've now taken it to $35,000 in income.

I have reams of notes and letters from people who tell me what a big difference this has made in their lives for the risk of homelessness because they're now affordable. I have had reams of letters from people who actually think it's one of the greatest things that's ever happened for them because it's changed their lives.

I know that if in an 18-month period anybody thought they could go out and build 5,000 units for people…. If you had the land, could go on the ground and then go through the zoning…. The member used to be a member of local government and knows the time frame just to do that. Then you've got to build it. It would take you three years, maybe, to get a piece of property done.

Now, if you add 5,000 units onto that figure, if it's 50 units per unit, it doesn't take long to figure out how many rezonings in properties and stuff you have to find in order to find that affordable housing stock when you can help those people immediately. If you can have them helped immediately, you change their lives immediately. When you change their lives immediately, a whole bunch of things happen. Somebody doesn't sit on a waiting list for three or four years while their teenaged child isn't getting the proper nutrition, because all of a sudden the money is there immediately. Somebody's life changes because of those types of things.

Now, the member did make a very valid point with regards to affordable rental housing in British Columbia. For the member's information, we have been trying to work with the federal government. All the Housing ministers across the country have been basically trying

to get the federal government to recognize that if they could move back to some form of tax incentives, recapture on capital gain, we could get some more rental housing built in our communities.

There are other ways to do it, as well, though. Communities, when they're doing their plans and when they want to add density, can make some of that density contingent on some rental housing being included into projects by adding more density into it and trading it off with the development community. The affordability factors can be addressed with how you deal with your development cost charges on rental housing, how much parking you require — those sorts of things.

Certainly on the federal side, the federal Ministers for Housing have been meeting…. I was the chair for a year and a half. Since I've been minister, I think I've had three federal ministers responsible for the Housing portfolio. The present minister, I think, is live to the issue in and around taxation, and I know that discussion is taking place. But certainly it would be helpful if we could have some incentives to create some more rental housing stock in our communities.

But it's not just the federal government. It's also the densification, stuff that needs to be done at the local government level in cooperation with all levels of government, quite frankly. That's why we have a piece of legislation that we recently brought to make sure that we can do supportive housing in communities, that this gets included in community plans so that these big public hearings, which the member is probably familiar with, take place every time somebody wants to build some housing for someone less fortunate. All of those things are pieces of the puzzle.

That's where it is right now. We're actually very pleased to see that we're getting much more increase in interest as we've raised the income, because more people are eligible.

D. Thorne: Thank you for all that information, which really didn't have much to do with my question. I'm talking about the lack of supply of rental housing. I do stand corrected on saying there are more renters than homeowners. I know that. I don't know where that came from, actually. I just think there are more and more renters coming on the market all the time because of the high cost of home-ownership. I think in time we'll find that unless we are more creative around new kinds of home-ownership for entry-level people, that ratio is going to change. We will see that in years to come.

I'm talking about supply. I said right off the top that I thought rent supps are terrific for people who are paying a high percentage of their income for rent, if they have good accommodation. However, the rental market is fraught with problems. The Residential Tenancy Act is full of loopholes. That's my word. I'm using that word because right away everybody on the other side knows what I'm talking about. I don't have to use a lot of language. It's full of loopholes that can be used — are not always used, and I want that made clear, but can be used — against tenants.

Tenants are in a very vulnerable position where landlords are concerned. I know that we have staff here from the residential tenancy branch. We have discussed this ourselves privately. There are a lot of problems in the rental market. Rent supps are one part of a problem — the financial end of the problem. However, when we only have 4,000 people….

I remember. I was at the announcement in '06 — if it wasn't at the UBCM, it was right around the UBCM time — and the minister did say that he immediately thought there would be — and I don't want to get into a tangle of words on that — 15,000 people who would be helped.

I think the program has probably been a big disappointment in terms of numbers, in terms of the uptake for the Ministry for Housing because 4,000 people, give or take, is not a huge number of people. So one of the things that I have asked before, and I know other people have asked, is: why, for instance, are we not sending out information on rent supps through a program like MSP, where it will reach everybody in British Columbia?

There are still people renting out there that I talk to that didn't know there was a rent supp program. They don't read newspapers or whatever, for whatever reason. So there are some things we can do. We can increase the supply, number one, to help renters. If you increase it, you can get the word out better on rent supplements, make an effort that's more coordinated rather than ads scattered throughout newspapers. Get the word out about rent supps.

Let's get those numbers up. Let's get them up to 15,000. If the minister thinks that the opposition doesn't want to get those numbers up, the minister would be wrong. I would like to see 15,000 or more people in British Columbia who can find apartments and get rent supps to help their lives get more on track.

I know that story the minister just told about the woman. He's told it before. I've heard it before. I could tell stories about people that I know and that I've met for whom rent supps have helped. That's not the issue. The issue is supply. The issue is that getting rent supplements does not help you find an apartment if there are no apartments. It doesn't help you if you're in the grip of an unscrupulous landlord — somebody, for instance, who will take advantage of what I was calling the loopholes, like section 49 in the Residential Tenancy Act, where people can be evicted for renovations.

You know, there's so little qualification for doing that. I mean, we have tenants in the west end who are now comparing the renovations in buildings from where they were evicted a couple of years ago and from where people are just being evicted now — the same sort of: "Oh yeah, the white bathtub." I mean, everybody is talking about that. The level of renovations seems to be getting lower to qualify for evicting a whole building and putting people out, possibly on the street, when there is no stock for them to go into.

We're worried about homelessness and all those other issues, yet we are not doing anything with the Residential Tenancy Act, where it is too easy for a landlord. A

landlord can go in, evict people and not even have the permits yet from the city. It's happened in New Westminster; it's happened in Vancouver. They should have to have those permits in hand before people are evicted, and there should be somebody at the residential tenancy branch who makes sure that these are genuine renovations. Too many renovations are being done while people still live in the building — minor to medium renovations.

When I brought in my private member's bill…. The ministry probably hasn't even looked at it. It's modelled on the Ontario bill, which was an amendment bill two years ago, around the rights of first refusal. In Ontario it's working very, very well. They were having exactly the same kinds of problems that we're having here with evictions. Rents then sometimes were being up to doubled after minor renovations are done, and there goes more affordable housing stock.

How can we, on the one hand, have rent supplements and, on the other hand, watch without doing anything while landlords…? It's like the old scales of justice. It's just another model of it.

I'm not criticizing rent supps. I'm glad there are 4,000 people getting them. I hope they don't get evicted next week, all of those people, from their apartments, because their rent supps won't help them then.

So we have a huge problem in the rental area in British Columbia. Ontario did too. They saw the light, and two years ago they brought in some changes to the act, and things are starting to even out a little bit now in Ontario.

I have hundreds of e-mails here and in my office from people who are having problems with the residential tenancy branch, and landlords as well. I mean, I gave one of your staff, I think the director, a copy of an e-mail that I had recently from a landlord who was finding the same problems with the residential tenancy branch as many of the tenants are.

I'm very happy. The minister told me yesterday, when I asked him a question in question period, that in fact that very day — which is, amazingly, such a coincidence that I can hardly imagine it happening…. Yesterday, the very day I asked the question, he had just hired a number of new staff for the branches. That is very good news for the renters in British Columbia and the landlords as well.

A reporter called me from The Vancouver Sun the other day. She was waiting on the line to get through to the branch for 50 minutes — a reporter. She phoned me right afterwards. She said: "How is this possible? How do people who have jobs, who maybe don't speak English very well, who are seniors or who are disabled — who maybe don't even have a telephone because they can't afford one…? How do they sit on a line for 50 minutes to get through that first call to the residential tenancy branch?" This is a reporter from a newspaper.

I hope, in any case, that the minister is not going to stand up and spend 15 minutes telling me how the residential tenancy branch is going to be perfect now that they've hired these extra people. There are other problems besides the wait times. There's the dispute resolution process itself. I really want the minister to tell me how he is going to fix that process, because I heard him say: "If this doesn't work, I will fix it." That's a pretty big promise to make to the residents of British Columbia and all of the renters.

I want to know how he is going to fix the telephone dispute resolution process. I know that it works for the majority of people — people who have the wherewithal and the understanding of English. They phone in, and everything works out just fine. But there are too many people — the most vulnerable people — who the system is not working for.

I think we have to have a system where we can somehow differentiate between people who are vulnerable and need a little extra assistance and possibly need their dispute resolution to be done in person rather than on the telephone…. We have to have a way, and we also have to look at the review process. When somebody has failed or been turned down in their process, we have to do something different in the review process rather than just have another lone arbitrator making another decision based on the same facts. That part of the system may be the weak link.

I just want the minister to tell me that he's going to review this process and make sure that it is working up to speed. If he does review the process and is assured and can assure me and the renters of British Columbia that it is working for 99 percent of the people — of course, we will never get it absolutely perfect — then next year when I stand up here, I'll have a different kind of question.

D. Thorne: Through you, Mr. Chair. I know I sounded like I had a lot of questions there, but they were really just me making a bunch of points.

My question is: will you tell me and the renters of British Columbia that you will have your staff review the act, review the dispute resolution process and fix the kinks, the loopholes — whatever we want to call them — that are in it? Can you assure me and the renters that you will do this?

Hon. R. Coleman: The member started out questioning whether we're going to do something with the federal government with regards to trying to do something on rental housing. I had answered that question when you were talking to the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith — that we had been in conversation with the federal government, that all Housing ministers across the country have identified that issue as an issue, that we would like to see them do something with taxation.

I went on to explain that through density and some management at the municipal level, they could also help with regards to…. You know, our communities have to start to recognize density as an opportunity. If you're going to give somebody a few higher floors, maybe you could ask for some rental to be put into the building, which would then be able to be tied into a

You can see how some people change how they do business in B.C. We have one community in British Columbia right now that, if you want to put a legal suite in a home — which, frankly, is a very good form of affordable housing for many people…. There are many very good basement suites or secondary suites in homes. We have one community in B.C. that actually charges a second $25,000 development cost charge if you want to do that. Yet they come to us and ask us to solve a problem with rentals in their community, when they do that to the people that might be able to deliver it.

The member also spoke about the rental assistance program. You know, when we announced this program, we had about 15,000 people, according to the statistics on the one line of the Revenue Canada lines, who we felt would probably come forward. As it turns out, that's why we moved the income level up, to change it. As it turns out, oftentimes people are reporting incomes separately, but there could be dual-income households. So we actually moved it up, as we've learned from the experience of doing this. We think 4,800-plus people is actually a pretty good start. I'm actually quite proud of that program, and we'll continue to build on it.

I want to sort of caution the member, just only on one way of thinking. That is this: there are over 500,000 renters in British Columbia today, and not all of them have problems with their landlords. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of people who honour that business relationship between the two parties, tenants and landlords alike.

In everything that's that large you're going to have some players that aren't particularly good, both landlord and tenant. That's what the entire Residential Tenancy Act is supposed to deal with.

When the act was changed, there was an automatic tenancy agreement put in place so that if nobody signed a tenancy agreement, there was one deemed to be in place, which is an addendum to the act. It states pretty clearly what that relationship is between people.

As I said, we actually canvassed this yesterday with members from your caucus with regards to residential tenancies. I'll give some of the same answers that I gave to them yesterday afternoon, because some of your members came in and wanted to talk about residential tenancy. So it's a bit of duplication for Hansard. I apologize.

Basically, a year or so ago in 2006-2007, our average waiting time was 90 minutes. That wasn't acceptable. I said that yesterday. In 2007-2008 it was at 55 minutes — still not acceptable. The current phone waits are 40 minutes, based on demand. Frankly, even though it's down again, it's still not acceptable to us. But we are getting it there.

What we have done is basically changed a number of things over the last few years. There used to be an arbitration system where arbitrators were on contract. They would work as much or as little as they liked and on however many arbitrations they wanted in a period of time.

We moved to dispute resolution officers, who are now employees, who can do more capacity and do more work and who now can be measured with regards to their decisions so we can actually see that there's some understanding for people as to what constitutes a breach on either side, landlord or tenant.

The residential tenancy branch now works two afternoons per week in the downtown east side of Vancouver. It's working with the city of Vancouver to expand this to five afternoons per week. If that's successful, we're going to consider a further increase.

The Kelowna office is expanding to provide better service to the Okanagan and the rest of the province through the call centre. We're actually putting a call centre in Kelowna. We provide service through Service B.C. to 59 locations around the province.

For dispute resolution hearings, orders of the possession, emergency and the tenancy matters are currently being scheduled within three weeks. RTB is improving instructions to conference call hearings so participants won't be confused and miss hearings.

The budget has been increased by over $2 million for the branch, and the reason for that is to be able to bring more capacity to it. Basically, there are a number of other things that we're doing as well that the member talked about. We'll go on to more specific questions.

D. Thorne: Well, I'm certainly very happy to hear that you're going on to the conference call system, because that will eliminate a lot of the problems that I know are out there with people waiting and not getting through to their calls. So that's very good.

I'm not sure what a call centre means in Kelowna. I was hoping that the office would be back to a full-time office, but the minister….

D. Thorne: It is. Okay. I'm just not familiar with the terminology. It's the residential tenancy branch — right? That's how I think of it — not as a call centre. But okay, it's the same thing. Okay, so that all sounds good.

So that's for the branches. That answers one of my questions. I certainly look forward to monitoring and hearing about the improvements to the wait times, etc.

I'm still very concerned about the review process. When somebody is turned down and they go back for a review, it just seems to me that there has to be something else built in there for the tenants, particularly for new Canadians who have such a problem with the language. There is so little money out there to hire tenancy advocates. I know MOSAIC has a little bit of money, and they do some of that. There are offices here in Vancouver for TRAC and a few places like that, but most people don't have an advocate.

What ends up happening in the cases with what I call the most vulnerable people is that they keep falling

through the cracks. They go back for a review, and they don't understand the system any more at that point than they did in their first conference, and they end up often being turned down again.

It's like the case that I brought up yesterday in the Legislature about June Ross. She went through two hearings and lost. She was lucky enough…. She came here with her son. She took her son out of school — he's about six years old — and she was protesting on the lawn of the Legislature, and somebody came in and told me that she was out there. She had a sign about her rental dispute or whatever. I went out on the front lawn and brought her into my office, and that's when she told me her story. I put her in touch with somebody that I know knows a lawyer who will work pro bono on these cases.

She ended up in the Supreme Court after losing twice at her dispute resolutions. She won her case, got another hearing with the residential tenancy office, won that one as well and was awarded full costs, etc. But, you know, that has taken two years out of her and her family's lives, and if we can do anything at all to mitigate these bad situations, I think that we have an obligation as government to do this for people.

So it's people like that. It's new Canadians. It's people who are falling through the cracks. Somewhere in the system there's a weak link. I don't know the system as well as the people on the other side, so I count on them to help me and help the renters who are in these positions.

My next question, then, to the minister is: will he review the dispute resolution process and find a way to find, I guess is a word to use, the vulnerable people in that system so they don't have to go through that and we don't have to end up trying to find lawyers to work for nothing in the Supreme Court? Will the minister have his staff do that?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, let's be clear. If somebody doesn't like the decision, they can ask for a review. The review gets done by a separate dispute resolution officer, not the one that did the file. The reviews are not the rehearing of the facts.

Reviews can try to consider the following: new evidence that wasn't presented at the hearing and inability to attend the hearing for extreme circumstances, which includes a problem with language. We will give them a rehearing on those bases.

We will also adjourn the original hearing for language issues, and we refer people to where they can get language services. If evidence was fraudulently obtained and therefore the decision would have been tainted, they can consider that. In-person hearings are actually available upon request. If somebody wants an in-person hearing, they can request one. We also send them to agencies to help them with regards to language, etc.

In addition to that, and just for the clarification on Kelowna…. Kelowna is going full time, but it's also adding a call centre to take the calls in the Interior so that the calls on the Lower Mainland, the central calls, can be lowered in pressure and we can reduce our times on the phone.

There are better instructions today than there were in the past for people with regards to dispute resolution hearings with regards to tenancies. They are improving the instructions for conference call hearings so participants won't be confused or miss the hearings. One of the challenges is somebody that doesn't actually call in because they forgot or whatever the case may be.

We're also translating more of our material this year into a multitude of languages so that we can address the language issue.

D. Thorne: Okay, I'm going to leave that area. Thanks to the minister for that information.

I'm just moving on to the act itself and section 49, with the changes in Ontario to putting into the act the rights of first refusal for evictions for renos, and wondering if the minister is going to consider reviewing the act at all to look at that particular section.

There are several issues in there that are a problem, not just the rights of first refusal, but that's the main one. If somebody doesn't want to take the right of first refusal and they're going to leave…. Ontario has also significantly increased the time, the notice given, and also the compensation to help the tenant find new accommodation in the housing market. Their vacancy rate is much higher than ours. I mean, there are many, many more apartments in Ontario than there are in B.C. available to people.

I think those are areas that…. I would like to ask the minister if he will consider looking at section 49 and looking at the rights of first refusal as a way to balance the act after several years of what many, many people consider imbalance.

The Chair: I just want to remind the member: legislation is not a proper subject for Committee of Supply. This is from the Clerk's information. Legislation is not to be discussed at Committee of Supply.

D. Thorne: Does that mean I have to withdraw my question? Or the minister can choose to answer it if he wants.

The Chair: You can put it into context of Committee of Supply, of the estimates.

Hon. R. Coleman: I'm comfortable giving broad latitude to questions, because residential tenancy is in the budget and that sort of thing. The section of the act that the member is…. No, we're not debating a piece of legislation, but she's referring to something that brings us into conversation, so I have no problem with that.

If somebody wants to renovate a building, they have to have the permits that are required by whatever municipality that's in. The reason I say "by whatever municipality it's in" is that, quite frankly, that can vary from municipality to municipality. The renovation has to be proven to be needed with vacant possession if they're going to have somebody that has to leave.

Our dispute resolution officers have been told to focus more aggressively on this as far as paying attention to this particular issue, because it is a concern. But at the same time, we are going to have to recognize that there are buildings that need to be renovated. If they don't get renovated, the next thing that is going to happen is that stock will start to disappear. One of the arguments or discussions that I had with your colleagues yesterday was that if you can't renovate them and you can't upgrade them, they deteriorate more.

The challenge we have is — because we're not doing the new rental stock, as the member knows — that at some point, the person who owns the building can't recapture the capital gain, because if they sell the building, or whatever the case, the taxes are too punitive on the capital gains. What they do is they say: "I'm actually better off to make this vacant land and build something else."

They can actually do that: tear it down and build new, usually, condos — not usually rental properties — where they can take their capital out and manage their capital gains differently. The whole business side of it starts to drive them away from the marketplace.

So it's sort of like a chicken-and-egg situation. We want our landlords to keep their buildings in good shape. We want them to keep them in such a shape that they will be attractive to their tenants, of course, but also for the health and safety issues. If a building is so old that it has to be completely renovated, there has to be some latitude that it has to be able to be proven through permits in time where somebody can go and actually renovate a building.

So those things are the reasons that…. That's how we focus on it in B.C. We are not going to get into debate about the legislation, obviously, but just so the member knows, there is no request for legislation with regards to residential tenancy right now. There is the legislation before the House that is the legislation before this session of the House. Anything that would be done would be done for another session. There is no ongoing work to amend this particular act at this time.

D. Thorne: I thank the minister, and I also note that he didn't absolutely say that no, he wouldn't consider looking at this in the future. So that gives me hope and heart, and it might get me, and also some of the renters who are going through this, through the next year.

I do note and I'm pleased to hear that the DROs are looking more carefully at this. I think it's become clear to everybody — obviously it would have become clear to them as well — that this is a loophole, as they say, which means that it can be manipulated to suit your purposes if people aren't paying close attention.

I just found where I got that word. Actually, I knew I'd read it somewhere. It was in one of the Supreme Court cases a couple of years ago — it was also a Hollyburn building, the same as the one that's being evicted right now downtown — Berry and Kloet, where Justice Williamson said that the purpose of 49(6) is "not to give landlords a means for evicting tenants; rather, to ensure they're able to carry out renovations." He went on to say that it could not have been the intent of the Legislature to provide such a loophole for landlords. So that's where that word came from in the first place.

So we've been aware of this for a while. So over the next year, then, before we see any more legislation, I guess we'll be monitoring how the DROs are doing with this — if we're getting increasing numbers of evictions coming in and if they seem weak and permits are not issued yet, etc. A lot of people are losing their homes over this for what the DROs feel is not sufficient evidence.

I'm assuming, then, that when we talk about this next, we may be talking about looking at the act the way Ontario ended up having to do. So I'm going to leave that area now, and I thank the director for being here.

I'm going to talk about actually moving…. I'm going to move on in this book I have here, looking at B.C. Housing, their service plan and the goals that are on page 5. I'm particularly interested right at this moment in No. 5: "Home-ownership is supported as an avenue to self-sufficiency." I don't know how long that's been in there, because I can't remember the goals from last year or the year before since I became Housing critic. But I'm really happy to see home-ownership in there, because I always think of B.C. Housing in a different way than as promoting home-ownership. I think that it's a worthy goal to have that as part of B.C. Housing. So I'm very happy to see that there, and I do have a few questions in that area.

I'm particularly wondering if…. I'm looking at some innovation, actually, around home-ownership. There are a number of conversations going on. I know that B.C. Housing is aware of them, because we've been at some of the same CHRA conferences and workshops and have listened to speakers from Vancity; the options program in Ontario; the people from Whistler, who do all the innovative stuff up there around home-ownership and equity housing, etc.

So I guess my question to the minister around this area is: how far down this road are we going to go at B.C. Housing as a Housing ministry? Are we going to get into programs where we get innovative — where we have no-interest loans for down payments; or we support workforce housing in ways, perhaps, with Crown land; or the equity housing, like the options program? Some of the things that Vancity is doing are really, really exciting — I mean, actually, very exciting. I just love talking to the people from Vancity. They're very optimistic and young and creative.

So my question would be: are we going to jump into this as a government full force — actually do something more than talk — and participate in helping home-ownership in this rising land cost market?

Hon. R. Coleman: We aren't necessarily going to be the funder as much as the educator on options to do innovative housing in communities. We won't always be the funder. We actually do work with Vancity and other organizations on a regular basis, both from funding and other perspectives. There are a number of things that we do.

When you talk about home-ownership, just don't talk about the person that's actually going to buy today.

Think about the people that live there today as well. So, for instance, anybody over the age of 55 is now allowed to defer their property taxes, if they so choose, which is an affordability factor that allows them to stay in their home.

There are different ways we can approach this. In government now we have recently made the decision that if there are surplus lands or lands that are going to be disposed or lands that some other ministry has, we identify that the first right of refusal would come to Housing, to look at it for innovation or projects or whatever the case may be — partnerships with other non-profits, and stuff like that. We think that's going to be valuable to us as we move forward. At the same time, we do believe….

I'll give you a couple of examples that can work, and then this might get the municipalities thinking. Let's say that you're doing a project. You could give it a bit more density, and you say that in that density you'd like some affordable home-ownership. So how does that look? Does that look like the first person in the door gets it cheap, and then the next person pays the market price? Well, that's not exactly going to accomplish your goal.

A number of years ago there was a project done in a community in B.C. that I'm familiar with. The people developing the project went to the municipality and said this. They said, "You have a piece of land worth about $350,000," I think it was back then. "It could hold about 48 units of condos." The deal was that the municipality, instead of taking $350,000 for the land took $100,000 for the land, which they put into their park fund, I believe it was. The other $250,000 in time bought down, down payments on eight one-bedroom units in the building for affordable rental for seniors.

They were put into an agreement with one of the local non-profits, who managed them at an affordable rental rate, because obviously, you're not tying the same inflationary factors and the profit margins into a non-profit. The rest of the building, which was another 40 units, actually went to the market, but they went to the market in something called share equity.

So it wasn't a co-op. What it was is…. The person bought the unit, and when they resold, if the price went up — because sometimes the market would go the other way — they got to keep 85 percent of the profit, and 15 percent of the profit went back to the municipality into a housing fund for that particular city. They've continued to do a couple more of those projects and have had some success with them.

That's one example of how you could lever. You could do the same thing by saying: "We're going to have a density of 60 units on a piece of property, but what we'll do is we'll actually give you a density of 70 units, and the other ten units will go into that type of housing." Then you could start to create some options and some intriguing innovation in housing.

There's not a panacea where one level of government can stand up and say, "Interest-free loans do this," without the other partner saying, "Well, we'll actually do something with land," or "Here's the land, and here's the innovation we can bring to the table through some other funds that can actually create interesting opportunities."

On that part of our goals we're more interested in trying to find examples of innovation where somebody else has been successful that we can actually turn into best practices for municipalities and other jurisdictions to use in their communities. That's the approach we will take on that.

D. Thorne: The answer is very interesting. I'm very excited by all of this. I mean, there's no doubt that my heart lies in this area. I love the creativity and the innovation in getting more people into home-ownership. I think that there are some good examples. As a councillor, I became familiar with some of those examples. We've also, of course, seen some of the pitfalls of some of those projects. We had one in Maillardville, actually, an equity project that never really worked, and nobody could ever sort of figure out what happened. In any case, it stratified after a while.

I think that they're now structured a little differently. That was one of the very first ones. I know that Councillor Wake from Whistler talked at the CHRA about some problems they're having right now in Whistler, where people are refusing now to honour their agreements on houses that they bought for very low prices. They agreed that they would sell them back to the municipality or sell them at a certain price and the money would go into an affordable housing fund or whatever, and now they're refusing to do it. They're in court with the municipality. That's a horrible situation.

I look forward to that arm of B.C. Housing growing and becoming very, very busy. I think it's wonderful.

You know, the statistics from Metro Vancouver that we're going to need 12,000 units a year of new market housing and 3,600 units of rental housing a year over the next 15 years are really startling when you think of them. They're also saying, of course — they've studied it — that at least 100,000 of these new units will have to be affordable. In this case affordable means not paying more than 30 percent of the family's gross income for housing.

That's going to be a challenge for everybody in the province, particularly, in this case, for Metro Vancouver. Those kinds of numbers are really startling. I think, and maybe some of you do as well, that those numbers may be low, actually, as we look at them now. So it's good to know that we're getting involved more and more in this area.

Now, I want to ask a couple of questions about a model that I think would be, really, a good compromise between subsidized housing — B.C. housing of any kind, whether it's non-profit or B.C. Housing–run — and home-ownership, which is cooperatives. I know that the federal government is basically done with subsidizing

or with the co-op program in the next five or six or seven years, and nobody is quite sure what's going to happen.

I understand that the people from Co-op Housing of B.C. have been meeting with B.C. Housing staff. Heaven knows what they all talk about, but I hope they're talking about the province basically getting involved, taking over or starting — I don't know how you'd phrase that properly — a co-op program here in British Columbia.

Surely, this has to be a great way, when we're talking about home-ownership, to get young people in particular into the housing market. They buy into a cooperative, they have a sense of ownership and some equity, and they can move on from there, from co-ops. That's just one advantage or one benefit.

Of course, there's also the problem of what happens to all the co-ops we have now, and a number of people do get government subsidies in those co-ops. But that's a different area than what I'm talking about right now.

I know that the co-op housing association of British Columbia has approached B.C. Housing. They're very, very keen to use the equity that they have in their co-ops to, basically, not just repair co-ops but to expand them, build new models, etc.

It seems to me that that's a program very, very similar, if not the same, as what the minister has in mind for our subsidized housing units in British Columbia, of which Little Mountain would be a perfect example. You use the equity that you have in the land to redevelop co-op housing, the same way the minister is looking at redeveloping social housing or subsidized housing or non-market housing — whatever you want to call the buildings that, ultimately, B.C. Housing is responsible for.

My question to the minister is: is he considering, or will he consider, having co-op housing become involved with the government through B.C. Housing and helping them to use the model of using your equity to further the co-op model?

Hon. R. Coleman: There are two pieces to that question, and I want to be really clear on the first one. I have no intention whatsoever, under any circumstances, of taking over the management of the co-op program from the federal government. That is not something we are interested in, in any way whatsoever.

I know that my predecessors in this government and predecessors in previous governments all came to the same conclusion about how that program comes with significant challenges, liabilities and management issues that would just deflect the really good kind of management we have with our people on the issues we need to deal with, with housing in B.C. We're not interested in the federal co-op program. When we did the devolution of the federal stock, we didn't take the co-ops specifically for that reason.

Having said that, we do have, basically, an initiative, I guess you could call it, within the ministry that if a co-op or a non-profit…. It doesn't have to be a co-op. It could be an old Legion site, for instance, where they've got…. There's one, if I remember, on Austin Avenue in Coquitlam, where there's an old single-storey Legion site. If it was densified, it could actually produce a lot more seniors housing. We're happy to step in and help them with predevelopment costs and some consulting costs, to try and see if that can happen, and to work them through, oftentimes, even the financing or finding them a partner that can do the deal.

Co-ops are no different. We have some co-ops that have significantly underutilized land, or they have a situation where their management, in some cases, has been such that the building has deteriorated to the point where density — along with, frankly, the buildings that shouldn't actually be repaired — can be replaced because of the value that's been built up in the property.

So those we do work with. That's the type of thing we deal with B.C. Non-profit on and also with the co-op association on. That's the type of thing. They know that we'll sit down with them on specific projects and work with them in those particular regards.

D. Thorne: I thank the minister for being so clear with his answers on that. I was going to say: why is he beating around the bush? But I appreciate that. I'll continue to believe in co-ops and continue to say that. The minister and I will continue to disagree on that.

Hon. R. Coleman: I didn't say I didn't believe in co-ops. I said we have no interest in taking over the federal stock, because it's really not the forte that we're in. We're happy to work with any co-op to help them redevelop or densify or anything else, but we're just not in the business of taking over the management structure of the federal co-op program.

D. Thorne: I guess I didn't see it as being so different from taking over all the CMHC subsidized programs — all those hundreds of different types, as we all know, section this and that and the other — from the CMHC. I'd rather hoped that we could have been involved in that way, but I'm going to leave that now because I'm running out of time, and I still have several files that I haven't mentioned.

I just wanted to move into some seniors housing issues. Actually, this is a seniors question, but it's not to do with the other questions that I have. I'm just wondering if the minister can give me any idea of when the amendments to cover assisted living and supportive housing into the RTA might be proclaimed. I know that I printed this off, something from the ministry. In April 2006 these amendments were introduced, and I know that the consulting has been going on now for over two years. It does seem a day too long, so I'm wondering about dates, progress.

Hon. R. Coleman: To the member: not any time soon. We ran into issues, after we did the legislation, with regards to how we separate the living and the supports and the health components. There is a lot of disagreement within different sectors with regards to that, so we are actually starting another consultation

process in the first week of June that will take us through to see if we can solve a number of these outstanding issues.

They will just become a problem that would be…. We want to actually figure out the problems before we proclaim, frankly, so we are looking at all the options again. At the same time, this consultation process is trying to focus itself on how we separate it, how we manage it, how we do it. The residential tenancy side doesn't have the ability to say, "Did you get your meal yesterday, and was it of quality?" and "If that becomes a dispute, how are you going to handle that?" and those sorts of things.

Frankly, it's a tough piece of work. One would think it would be simpler, but it's not. We've got the meetings already scheduled, and they're going to start taking place in the first week of June.

D. Thorne: I'm also wondering why the government wouldn't be considering, or if the government is considering, a separate act, the way you separated out the manufactured homes into their own act other than just a part of the RTA. They have their own act. Would you be considering supported assisted living as being quite so different as to have its own act as well?

One can envision a big residential tenancy office or act with many small acts underneath which would cover different areas like manufactured homes and perhaps even stratas. We certainly know that strata councils are…. Almost 25 percent of the population now is living in condominiums. They're having lots of problems around dispute resolution, and they end up having to go to court. Lots of them are seniors who cannot afford to be going to court with a lawyer. So one could envision an act for strata councils dispute resolution alongside of manufactured homes and perhaps this as well.

I'm wondering if the minister has considered at all, or if these consultations are considering at all, having some smaller acts under a big Residential Tenancy Act. It might make it cleaner and easier for all the residents of B.C.

Hon. R. Coleman: No. The assisted-living side…. That was the original direction people tried to go. They couldn't seem to figure out an act, so they sent it over to us to try to do it in residential tenancy. If that comes out of this form of consultation, we may consider it.

Members should know that there's been one complaint to us per month for the last nine months in the entire assisted-living side of government, so it's not something we're getting a whole lot of complaints about.

With regards to the Strata Property Act, it's not in this ministry, so I can't really…. I don't know if the member is intending to ask questions about…. I'm very familiar with the act, but it's not the purview of this ministry. The Strata Property Act actually sits with Finance.

D. Thorne: Now I'm looking at the seniors housing program in general. There doesn't appear to be one provincially run seniors program. I certainly have heard from a few seniors, and I know that all of our offices and our CAs do. A lot of seniors who have lived in buildings for a long time are noticing that when people leave seniors' buildings for whatever reason, they're often replaced with, for instance, young disabled people.

I have a specific question here from the member for Cariboo South, MLA Wyse. He has a constituent who is physically disabled, a young adult, and the only place where she can…. This is the other side of the coin. She has been placed in a seniors care or a seniors facility because there isn't any place for her. On the other side of the coin, we have seniors that are not liking that situation any more than that.

I may be way off track here, but I'm asking the minister if this is the kind of program — for instance, homes for young disabled people — that would be something that would be considered under the housing endowment fund. This would be a creative, innovative thing, I would think.

I know that my colleague for Vancouver-Kensington brought up the endowment fund when he was here yesterday. I'm not really opening that up again, but I'm just wondering if we can tell groups that this is something they can apply for, for this kind of a program. Or does the minister have other plans for this group of people?

Hon. R. Coleman: First, I don't know if the member for Cariboo South's constituent is developmentally disabled or physically disabled. The answer would be somewhat different either way. So I'm going to try it both ways.

It's not unusual for us, if we have a unit that is available for someone that is physically disabled — i.e., in a wheelchair or quadriplegic or paraplegic — if we have a unit within our seniors stock that is wheelchair-accessible, for us to allow somebody to live there versus a senior in the building, because we have a unit and we actually believe in integrated communities. We don't think everybody has to be stuck in a pigeonhole — all the seniors go here, and all the disabled go here and all the developmentally disabled go here, etc. It's not unusual for that to happen, and it's actually a good thing.

In the housing stock that we have for seniors this year, we're going to take 750 units additional to what we have each year, and we're upgrading them to be better accessible for people that have disabilities, because seniors start to develop disabilities as they grow older. So lever-handled taps, lever-handled doors, roll-in showers — those types of things will be going into these units so these people can age in place, or can accommodate people that may have physical disabilities.

On the developmentally disabled side, that is Community Living B.C., which is with the Ministry of Children and Families. They have funding from government, and they do group homes, and they're actually moving away from group homes to smaller things. I have some personal disagreements with some of the methodology they're applying, but I don't get to tell CLBC what to do.

But to give you an example, when you talk about developmentally disabled — let's just use that as an

example. In the housing endowment fund…. The member is right that this is where that fund can play…. I'll give you an example.

They're still working through their details, but we had a group come to us and say: "We have…." This is a group of older parents who have adult developmentally disabled children. They want to know that those adult children of theirs will have stable housing after they go, because they're aging, themselves. They're very concerned about this.

What they're looking at is trying to figure out whether they could go buy four or five or six units, depending how many children there are from each family. Each would buy, for instance, a condo in a building that would be owned and put in title for the individual in a trust, and have us look at buying a unit on the same floor, where we would house a care worker, who would then make sure that the bathing, the meals, the daily things to whatever level their own abilities were, were able to be accommodated.

Those folks would then have a secure environment for them to live after their parents are no longer able to take care of them. We think that's innovative.

So we've said: "Go see if you can work it out, and come back to us, because we have an interest with the endowment fund." So that type of thing, I think, in any community…. If they have an innovative idea, we are interested in those ideas, because that's what it's about. Sometimes it can be as little as a quarter of a million dollars or even $100,000 in some cases, where you can come in with a little bit of capital that puts a group with some innovation over the top to do something really neat in a community.

The reason the endowment fund is the way it is, is so that it doesn't get clouded by programs. It doesn't get clouded by the CLBC program or the children and youth that may be over in Children and Families or even the seniors stuff that we may have in housing or the stuff for homelessness.

It's actually: do you have a unique or interesting situation in your community that you'd like to address with housing, and do you have some community buy-in and partnerships? If you do, come and sit down with us. We'll look at it and see if we can build something innovative together.

D. Thorne: I did have some other questions about seniors, but noting the time, I think I'd better move along. I did have the printout the province just put out about the 300 seniors housing units. I am interested in that, but I'll ask those questions at another time.

I'm just going to move quickly along to manufactured and floating homes. Now, floating homes are of particular interest — this also is an HPO question — because I have a number of documents here about floating homes. I think the minister is probably aware that this is an area where…. It's a very odd area, because these are people who, in the main, pay taxes and have all of the responsibilities of a house. They come under the Manufactured Home Tax Act. They have all those responsibilities, and it does say, of course, if there are a few float homes that don't pay taxes — if they're live-aboard boats, for instance….

I'm talking about float homes in proper float home marinas. They are not covered by any of the acts. So for instance, tomorrow they could be slapped with a tripling of their rent, and there would be nobody that they could go to, to have a dispute resolution process. There's a whole group of people that are paying taxes but are not covered.

I have a letter here from the minister to a constituent from Nanaimo. The Nanaimo MLA happens to be sitting in the room, so that's good. He's talking about…. Manufactured homes were not included in the original scheme of consumer protection established by the Homeowner Protection Act either. So manufactured homes, period, are not covered under the homeowner protection. Neither are floating homes. Manufactured homes do at least have a dispute resolution process that they have to follow, but floating homes do not.

Now, there's a bit of correspondence here between some float home owners and the minister where it's absolutely clear that they're not covered with any protection. I have brought this up with the director of the RTB, and I'm wondering if any progress has been made. It's really a yes-or-no question. If the minister could…. I really do have a bunch of other questions.

Hon. R. Coleman: No, the residential tenancy does not have specific jurisdiction over waterways. There may be the odd case with regards to rent where they may be captured within the act. We just instruct people to call us, and we tell them whether we have jurisdiction or not, but it's still possible to apply for some form of dispute resolution. An officer can make a determination on the jurisdiction.

It would be prudent, though, if anybody…. This is a bit like, I guess, an RV park. You're pulling up; you're renting the spot. In some cases, you're doing permanent. If I was buying a float home and getting a permanent moorage like a water strata, I would want to make sure all the legal documents were correct. I'd say to the individual: "Caveat emptor — buyer beware. Make sure you do your legal…." Quite frankly, "Hire a lawyer and get legal advice," is what I'm saying. "Make sure all your documents are protecting your rights as an individual."

It's not covered, and it's not anticipated at this time that it would be added to any of the acts.

D. Thorne: Well, that will certainly be disappointing to…. I mean, thousands of people live in these marinas, and it's another area that's growing because of affordability issues. I was hoping to get a different answer.

I do have a letter from the director of the RTB, written in 2006, where she's very clear. She says that it's not a tenancy as defined by B.C. law. It falls into a category of a licence to occupy. There are no plans to upgrade or include float homes or boats in either the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act or the Residential Tenancy Act.

I have to put on record that I just don't think that this is good enough. We have all of these people that

have no protection in terms of…. It's taxation without anything, really. That's what it is. How can we tax these people in the same way as we would any other home, yet they have absolutely no control over their rental situation? In some ways, they're as badly off as the people in manufactured home parks are these days with the horrific loss of affordable homes there with the redevelopments.

These people are even worse off because they have absolutely nobody to go to. If they get a landlord who is not one of the good guys…. We all know that the good landlords don't end up at the RTB, so they're really not even part of this equation today. I'm talking about the not-good landlords. You know, these people can't even go…. They're not covered. There's no point in them phoning to see if they're covered. They're not covered.

I believe that the government should be looking at making them part of some dispute resolution process. It doesn't matter if they're on federal water. We're talking about the landlord-tenant relationship only. It's not a land issue; it's a dispute resolution issue.

I've had my answer. I guess I'll just move on, but I did want that on the record, because I just don't think it's good enough.

I'm going to move on to manufactured home parks very quickly. One wonders what's going to happen with manufactured home parks in British Columbia with the rising cost of land and the natural desire by the landowner…. If I owned a piece of land that was very, very valuable and I was offered money by a developer for that land, of course I would be considering it if I was thinking about retirement or another kind of investment.

There are all kinds of things in the Manufactured Home Act, more than…. Probably, I couldn't have discussed them all in the full two hours that I had today. There's all the talk about affordable housing….

I know that I have seen information from the ministry for housing and the government saying that we should develop more of these manufactured home parks because affordable housing needs should be encouraged, etc. Really, what is affordable about a housing investment that can be lost with the snap of a finger?

There's no protection in the provincial laws at all. We rely totally on municipalities to bring in policies around these issues.

I guess I'd like to ask the minister if he feels that this act, the Manufactured Home Act, is in the right place. Isn't it more like a strata? Shouldn't it come under the Minister of Finance? Is it really in the right place? Shouldn't it be more than just consumer protection?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I'll put on the record that B.C.'s actual notice of compensation provisions for manufactured homes displaced by park redevelopment are the most generous of any Canadian jurisdiction today.

The Residential Tenancy Branch website contains information for manufactured park owners outlining their rights and responsibilities. There's information outlining the circumstance under which a manufactured home owner may be evicted by the park owner and that goes to the residential tenancy side.

The member identifies a challenge that does exist. The challenge is that you have this odd relationship that's been devolved over the last 30 or 40 years on a piece of land, where somebody rents the land but owns the home. When these things were developed….

One thing has happened over a number of years. The first thing is that most municipalities have not allowed new manufactured home parks in their jurisdictions for a long time. So the ability for somebody to have options has been restricted by them.

Some municipalities have allowed for rezoning of manufactured home parks to a larger commercial development — i.e., in the case of one community, a Canadian Superstore — whatever the case may be. Obviously the land is more valuable as a commercial property for that particular individual owner and that community, and they do have rights because they own the title to their land.

Municipalities also have the ability to say no to a rezoning. They have the ability to say: "No, we're going to leave it in residential." They have that ability. Oftentimes they say, "You should stop this through some other level of government," when they actually have the rezoning rights right at their fingertips and can do something about it.

We've challenged some municipalities, and we're working on a couple of pilot projects now to see if we can break the back of some of the formulary with regards to this. Two things we're working on are…. Can we take a park and figure out a way to do, in one case, a co-op on the land, for lack of a better description, where the tenants can actually decide to buy the property and put it into one co-op? Now, that brings with it its own co-op challenges: ownership and who has equity in individual things.

The other preference would be to say to a municipality that has this concern…. I did sit down with some municipalities back last year at UBCM. We said that we're interested in finding a pilot in this regard, whereby we say to someone, because there are some costs associated with what I'm about to say: "Would you allow a manufactured home park to do a bare land strata in your community?" In other words, each lot has its own strata line.

When you ask the first question, it leads to the next questions, and this is where the rub comes for the municipality. Most planning departments, when they see a bare land strata come in, if it was a 100-unit manufactured home park, the first thing they see is the opportunity to get $20,000 or $30,000 of development cost charges per lot. So they look at it and say there's some revenue for us. So the question is: "Would you forgo development cost charges on a bare land strata for a manufactured home park to retain this affordable housing stock in your community?"

The next challenge you have with them is: "Will you also not put unreasonable additional servicing costs on this park? Because it's been functioning in your

community for, let's say, 20 or 30 years. So are you going to come in tomorrow and say you have to upgrade the sewer, that you want sidewalks and curbs, that you want stuff around the perimeter as far as landscaping and all that stuff that can add cost?"

So the objective is to say: "Can you have something happen where the residents can sit down with the owner and say: 'We want to do a bare land strata, because this municipality will allow it, and we can afford to pay you this?'" Then we can look at how the individual owner can be financed to be able to buy their lot through B.C. Housing or financial strength where we can come in and actually borrow cheaper than anybody else and facilitate that.

Also, we're looking at a couple of municipalities now that may actually consider — on some lands that they wouldn't consider on it before — going in and trying to develop a relationship to build a new park, to show people that these things can actually be pretty nice-looking, affordable housing in communities. I think there's significant prejudice, frankly, with regards to manufactured homes. But we're working through each of those with these communities.

UBCM might challenge some of these guys that were saying: "You have to do something." I said: "Well, okay, if we work with you, what are you prepared to do?"

Now, in your own home community of Coquitlam I thought they took some pretty good leadership on this file. I think some communities are actually looking at what they did in Coquitlam as models that they can also take to their communities. This is a challenge.

I would like to see the day, though, where more people could actually own, on a strata lot, their own lot under them and, instead of paying a monthly park rental fee, pay a small monthly mortgage fee, where eventually they would own it and it would become their asset.

D. Thorne: I was going to ask about the co-op thing next, because that's a really interesting path to explore, for sure. This whole area of manufactured homes is very interesting.

I know that a study was done for B.C. Housing just last year, in February. It is, I think, a very good study and pretty much sums up the problems that are existing. I am sure the minister is aware of this, but the number of manufactured homes in the province surprised me. I wasn't aware that there were so many people living in manufactured home parks. It's over 200,000. The study identifies…. The appendix is particularly interesting. I'm hoping that the province will take even more of a leadership role in the future in this area.

There's absolutely nothing that can be done to stop somebody from selling their private land, nor should there be. The minister says that the municipalities, of course, can refuse to rezone. As an ex-councillor, that's just not as easy to do as it sounds. You really have to have extraordinary reasons to refuse rezoning. When you're face to face with the developer and the community, it gets very, very messy.

The DCC thing is an issue with all affordable housing issues across the province with municipalities and the charges in municipalities. Supportive housing is the same. I know that the government brought in, just recently, an act to override the municipalities around zoning issues and taxation charges for supportive housing.

Maybe we're going to have to talk more about that in the future in terms of manufactured home parks as well. I think we know, in good conscience, that we just can't allow this wholesale redevelopment to continue. I know of two cases — two only that I can speak of today — where two people who lived in two different parks are homeless today because there was nowhere else for them to go. They lost everything when the park was redeveloped, and they just never got back on their feet again.

I'm also wondering — and this is a specific question from an association — when the dispute resolution decisions around manufactured homes will be published. Apparently this has been promised.

Just very quickly, I'm going to give a number of questions now because I'm also wondering if we can go right until 12 or if we stop, Mr. Chair.

D. Thorne: It looks like right now, Mr. Speaker. I'm pretty much running out of time, and Mr. Cameron is still sitting over there wondering when I'm going to get to his question.

I do have several things, and I think that what I will do is put them in writing and just send them off to the department and get the answers.

We're also wondering about why dispute resolution officers don't tend to use precedents the way judges do in courts, because, in fact, they are a semi-judicial hearing.

I'm going to leave that now and hope that we'll soon be able to put rights of first refusal into manufactured home parks and turn them all into co-ops — my favourite kind of housing.

I'm just going to quickly ask one question to the minister about the HPO office. It has to do with the full disclosure in the original insurance policy. I have been getting a lot of mail from one particular person around the fact that, under the present act's regulations, insurance companies, brokers and builders licensed by the HPO are not required to disclose what work was done by other than the registered builder.

In other words, if I buy a house and there's insurance on the house, I am not told — it's not disclosed — at that time that there was other work done by other than the registered builder who had the insurance. I don't believe that that was covered when the minister made the amendments last year to the HPO act.

I have a file full of correspondence between the HPO and the minister with this gentleman and insurance companies and concerns expressed also by the Insurance Council of B.C. There are insurance changes going

So I'm putting two or three questions in one there for the minister because of time.

Hon. R. Coleman: Of course, other than the registered builder, there would be work done on a home. I mean, the plumber, the electrician, the drywaller, the roofer, the window guy, the siding guy, the floorlayer — all of those things. The builder has to take the responsibility, because he's bought the warranty, and he has to follow up the warranty with his trades. The builder is the licensed builder, but he doesn't actually hand-build the entire house himself. He has other trades and stuff, as the member knows.

Given the time, we're not going to be able to sort of suss out the concerns. Obviously, the member will be in contact with the Homeowner Protection Office, and they can have this conversation, and then I will be brought back into it.

Having said that, I still prefer bare land stratas to co-ops. I like individuals to have ownership of their piece of the pie so that they aren't tied into the politics that sometimes take place and some of the frustrations that can take place in co-ops. That's just personal experience on both sides of the coin as a minister watching how these things manage and run.

Hon. R. Coleman: I move the committee rise, report resolution of the Ministry of Forests and Range and the Minister Responsible for Housing.

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