2014 Legislative Session: Second Session, 40th Parliament
HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 10, Number 2

ISSN 0709-1281 (Print)
ISSN 1499-2175 (Online)

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2014

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

BILL M207 — THE BRITISH COLUMBIA
LOCAL FOOD ACT, 2014

A. Dix presented a bill intituled The British Columbia Local Food Act, 2014.

A. Dix: I move that The British Columbia Local Food Act, 2014, of which notice has been given in my name on the order paper, be introduced and read a first time now.

Motion approved.

Madame Speaker: Please proceed.

A. Dix: The purpose of The British Columbia Local Food Act is to improve and maximize food security, economic return and population health outcomes from our public land trust — the agricultural land reserve.

The legislation will accomplish these purposes through three core elements: (1) implementing a comprehensive strategy on government purchasing locally grown food; (2) reintroducing the successful Buy B.C. program; and (3) mandating a legislative committee on food and agriculture to prepare, in consultation with the Agriculture Minister, a plan to increase local food production, marketing and processing. The plan would set targets and implement policies to meet those targets, which would be reported annually to the Legislature.

Our province currently lacks a strategy that ensures we are fully capitalizing on our agricultural land base in a way that grows our economy, improves population health and food security.

[1335]

Instead, the government has a plan to undermine that, in the form of Bill 24. Other jurisdictions are ahead of B.C. in terms of encouraging farming and food processing to support, expand and sustain their agriculture sector. For example, Ontario, which has a greenbelt, has legislation that supports increasing local food production from its land base through establishing targets that the Minister of Agriculture needs to report on annually. Along with 33 other American states, Washington, one of our main competitors, uses government procurement policies to promote its agriculture sector.

I wish to acknowledge the outstanding work of my colleagues from Saanich South and Powell River–Sunshine Coast and my communications director, Jasmyn Singh, on this outstanding piece of legislation. I move it be placed on the orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill M207, The British Columbia Local Food Act, 2014, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Polak: In this chamber I call committee stage debate on Bill 11, and in the Douglas Fir Committee Room I call the estimates of the Ministry of Natural Gas Development.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 11 — PROTECTED AREAS OF
BRITISH COLUMBIA
AMENDMENT ACT, 2014

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 11; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 1:38 p.m.

On section 1.

S. Chandra Herbert: It's going to be a delightful day here in the Legislature. We've got the Protected Areas of British Columbia Amendment Act.

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: I understand the member for Surrey-Panorama believes it always is, and I am glad he feels that way.

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: Another member says he's new here. But he's still got a smile on, and I hope he continues to maintain that smile throughout the rest of the day.

I notice the Minister of Environment has a number of staff members with her. If she could introduce them to the House so people know who is providing her with assistance, that would be helpful.

My first question would be about section 1, the Tow Hill Ecological Reserve. I'm curious. What's the history behind this change? Why was this area included in the ecological reserve to begin with, if indeed it was meant to be part of the reserve?

[1340]

Hon. M. Polak: First, I will introduce staff who are accompanying me. I have to my right, Lori Halls, our assistant deputy minister in charge of B.C. Parks and the conservation officer service, and to my left, Ken Morrison, manager for planning and land administration in the Ministry of Environment. Indeed, it will be a wonderful time in committee today. I agree with the member.

When the residence was constructed — that was in the late '80s — the boundary signs for the ecological reserve are what they used as the boundary. It turned out that they were not accurately placed. This was discovered in 2007, when there was a survey conducted as part of a purchase. This goes to correct that. And, in fact, the overall size of the ecological reserve doesn't actually change because the amount of land is so small that it's probably negligible in terms of what it does to the ecological reserve.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you to the minister and her staff. I've enjoyed working with them very much on this bill.

I know we had discussed at one point, in future bills like this, hopefully being able to provide the public with a map on the website with clear delineations of what the park was and what the park will be, or what the ecological area will be, so people can get a real sense of what's going on. To look at a bill to say that we will strike out "Plan 4 Tube 1912" and substitute "Plan 14 Tube 2007" is not the most descriptive way that we could explain what a park is.

If the minister could let me know and let the House know if that commitment is the ministry's commitment — to make sure the public have full access to this information in future bills — that would be helpful.

Hon. M. Polak: Yeah, it's something that we want to do as well, because it's helpful for members, right? Otherwise, members — for the information of the House — have the option of going to the Clerk's office and viewing whatever maps are attached to particular bills. But this is 2014, and we'd like to get to a place where we can upload those maps, and people would be able to access them electronically.

In some ways, I think it actually would add to people's sense of security around this, perhaps, because as the member knows, most often these boundary amendments are for good reason. Well, they're always for good reason. We maybe most of the time agree on them. Sometimes we don't. But more information is better in terms of the public having confidence in the process, and so we'll continue to work toward that.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

C. Trevena: This section is quite clearly in to allow the access road for the reconstruction of the John Hart dam. It has been expected. I just wondered if the minister could clarify, in light of what has just been said…. You know, we're talking about just where it is. I think that the concern is that it does decrease the size of the park. I know it's by a slight amount, but it is ten hectares. I wondered if the minister could explain just why this is happening and where it is happening — the minimization.

[1345]

Hon. M. Polak: There are actually two things occurring here. There's the removal of the four hectares that is Brewster Lake Road. That's for the purpose of access for the remediation of the dam. Then you've got a strip of about six hectares that is being removed for the purposes of the city of Campbell River replacing its water system. Now, they're not complete with all of their design, so the entire six hectares likely won't be utilized. There is potentially land there that would come back into the park boundary, and ultimately, after all the projects are done, the land may come back into the park boundary.

In the meantime, those lands will be protected under the Environment and Land Use Act. Now, that's not as high a level of protection as a class A park, obviously. But as you can see from the description, this will be sort of a work in progress, and we will see what happens with the lands afterwards. In fact, we may be back here bringing the land back into the park boundary.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

S. Chandra Herbert: As I've had the benefit of hearing from the ministry staff around this proposed change, I would say that I'm fully supportive of it. However, the public has not had the benefit of that description. Would the minister be able to explain how Kleanza Creek Park is changing, why it's changing and what the history is of this proposed change?

Hon. M. Polak: The story behind this one is that, unfortunately, some time ago the drinking water supply for the Kitselas First Nation had essentially dried up. They were in search of a new fresh drinking water supply. They were dealing with having to truck in drinking water for their community. They then have subsequently located fresh drinking water. It requires the removal of two hectares of land. With the particular location of this removal, it will not have any impact on the recreational values of the park that we can see.

It is, again, a small deletion of two hectares, we think for a very essential purpose. Of course, these lands then will be transferred to the administration of the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

S. Chandra Herbert: Does this have any connection to potential treaty negotiations or land claims discussions?
[ Page 2779 ]

Hon. M. Polak: Not that we're aware of.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

S. Chandra Herbert: This section, as I understand it, section 4, changes the name of Indian Arm Park and increases the size of Paul Lake Park. I'm just curious what the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation's perspective is, as best the minister could describe it, on these changes.

Hon. M. Polak: The Tsleil-Waututh First Nation are fully supportive of the name change.

S. Chandra Herbert: I understand that they are also supportive of the planned changes for the recreational properties as well. Is that correct?

[1350]

Hon. M. Polak: That's section 5. I'll answer it, and then we can do our passing and ayeing and whatever.

Yeah, they are fully supportive of that.

S. Chandra Herbert: Can the minister share what the new name of Indian Arm Park is? Say Nuth Khaw Yum Park — what is the meaning?

Hon. M. Polak: Say Nuth Khaw Yum means serpent's land, and it is after the two-headed serpent that once lay across the inlet, according to Tsleil-Waututh oral history.

S. Chandra Herbert: Will there be changes to maps, directional signage, etc.? Is the park…? Does it have an ecological management plan, a park management plan, currently?

Hon. M. Polak: There is a park management plan. The park management plan actually already uses the First Nations name. There is also a collaborative management board, so whatever other changes need to be made in terms of signage or what have you will be done in cooperation with that board.

Sections 4 and 5 approved.

On section 6.

D. Donaldson: I have some questions around the Indian Lake–Hitchcock Creek addition to the conservancy, as in section 6(a). It appears there would be 17,835 hectares of land added to the Indian Lake–Hitchcock Creek Conservancy under this section. Can the minister advise what the reasons are for the addition?

Hon. M. Polak: This is to fulfil the Atlin-Taku land use plan, which was approved in July of 2011.

D. Donaldson: It's been three years since the implementation of the Atlin-Taku land use plan, as the minister described. Can the minister advise if there have been any activities that have taken place in the last three years before these 17,835 hectares were added — activities that might be contrary to the reason for the creation of the conservancy in the first place?

Hon. M. Polak: No, not that we're aware of. The delay was largely the result of some necessary consultations with an overlapping First Nation.

D. Donaldson: Thank you, to the minister, for that answer. I have been to the Indian River where it drains into Atlin Lake. There's a guide-outfitter who has his base camp and residence in that area. I believe his territory for guiding extends possibly into this area that's being discussed. Was that guide-outfitter consulted, and how was he consulted about the impact of this addition?

[1355]

Hon. M. Polak: As with other land use plans, the consultation with tenure holders and licensees takes place during the land use planning. If this amendment is to pass, then B.C. Parks would be in touch with any tenure holders or licensees. In the case of a guide-outfitter, the particular protection being placed on this land wouldn't be in conflict with the continuation of the guide-outfitting operations.

D. Donaldson: For some final clarity, then, the addition that's being considered under section 6 here will not impact the guide-outfitter's authorized activities in any way?

Hon. M. Polak: He would have to be making application for a park use permit because now, of course, in addition to the Wildlife Act tenure that the guide-outfitter would possess, there would also be a requirement for them to have a park use permit.

However, in this land use plan, one of the features of it is that existing activities like that would be allowed to continue. There would have to be consultation, obviously, and there would be some specific guidelines with respect to how the park use permit would be complied with.

Ultimately, it should not change what the guide-outfitter is currently doing in his or her operations. But that would be the legal framework of it, because now of course it would be placed under the Park Act, and so therefore it would require the appropriate permitting.

D. Donaldson: How much would the cost of this park use permit be in this instance, then, as an additional cost to this guide-outfitter?
[ Page 2780 ]

Hon. M. Polak: The base fees would be $500 a year. Now, not knowing the particular operation, I can't speak to if there are other structures, perhaps, or things like that that may add to those fees, but they would be minimal.

D. Donaldson: The minister said that the activities of the guide-outfitter would be able to continue with no change. Would this apply also to when, potentially, the guide-outfitting licence changes hands?

[1400]

Hon. M. Polak: This legislation doesn't change the current manner in which we manage transfers. If there was a change, there would be the usual processes through the Wildlife Act in terms of the tenure transfer. There is nothing here that would prevent an individual from then again applying for a park use permit.

D. Donaldson: I appreciate that answer. I just want to get a little bit more clarity, because I don't know if I posed it in the best way possible. The addition of these 17,835 hectares doesn't impose, in a grandfathering kind of way, any conditions on the guide-outfitting licence, should it be sold, in the future?

Hon. M. Polak: Park use permits can be transferred, but it would have to be adjudicated by a statutory decision-maker. It wouldn't be up to the individual whether or not the transfer takes place. We allow for it, but that has to be reviewed by the statutory decision-maker.

S. Chandra Herbert: I thank the member for questions around his neck of the woods and his constituency. It's a massive area. I enjoyed looking at the maps with the ministry staff to try and understand who might actually use that area, because it didn't look like there were a lot of roads, aside from maybe some abandoned logging roads or mine roads and so on. So to hear the member's questions around the guide-outfitters and others who get in there was very useful.

There are other sections in this section 6. "Mahpahkum-Ahkwuna/Deserters-Walker Conservancy" — I just wanted to ask around this section, as well as the "Qwiquallaaq/Boat Bay Conservancy." I will let the minister try this one — the "Ugʷiwa'/Cape Caution Conservancy." I don't have the benefit of knowing the local First Nation to have their support in saying the names.

Are there other user groups in these areas that may be impacted by this change in designation — forestry tenures, AACs, guide-outfitters? If so, have they been informed of these proposed changes, and what are their thoughts?

[1405]

Hon. M. Polak: This area does have a conservancy management plan. It is the result of a very extensive consultation process that was conducted collaboratively with the First Nations. The marine foreshore that's being added to the four conservancies should not have any impact on the current activities that take place.

D. Donaldson: We're still on section 6, so I'd like to go back to 6(a). I have been able to mull over some of the answers that the minister gave, and it caused me to have another question that I want some clarification on, if she can provide it.

The current authorized activities that the guide-outfitter has that take place over the proposed 17,835 hectares that will be added to the Indian Lake–Hitchcock Creek conservancy under this section are something that is well defined. If the guide-outfitter was to decide to sell his business, as it stands now, it seems as if there wouldn't be any encumbrances on those activities. Yet under this section, as the minister has said, it's going to add a level of Park Act permit.

As she said in her last answer, that could mean a review of the activities if the guide-outfitting licence was sold. It seems to me that that's an increased level of uncertainty, especially in regards to the current business and the current activities and the current state, if he was to sell that business now.

Is that, in fact, the case? Would the addition of this conservancy mean that there would be another level of oversight on the activities that wouldn't be a problem right now if that licence was sold?

Hon. M. Polak: We actually do have very many guide-outfitters in conservancies around the province. As a result, we have worked very hard to align our reporting requirements with those of FLNRO under the Wildlife Act.

Certainly, the conditions that might be placed through a park use permit are not there to frustrate the work of a guide-outfitter. Rather, what would be put in place would be those kinds of reasonable guidelines that you would expect a guide-outfitter to be already in compliance with.

[1410]

Again, we seek to be very well aligned with the expectations of the guide-outfitters' tenure, so it would operate similarly to the park use permits that are in place for guide-outfitters in other conservancies around the province right now.

Section 6 approved.

On section 7.

S. Chandra Herbert: Could the minister explain what is happening in section 7?

Hon. M. Polak: I have a sneaking suspicion the member is asking me this question just to dare me to pronounce this. It is Ugʷiwa'. There. There's my practised pronunciation,
[ Page 2781 ]
which I'm sure I have just not done nearly as well as I should have, with all due respect to the First Nation involved.

This is, I think, an important change. as we are doing in the number of areas. We are recognizing the legacy of the First Nations and changing the name from Cape Caution–Blunden Bay Conservancy to Ugʷiwa'. Not only that, we are adding 94 hectares of marine foreshore to the area.

S. Chandra Herbert: Ugʷiwa'/Cape Caution–Blunden Bay Conservancy, from the map, looks like an incredible place. Are there specific reasons why this area is being added to the conservancy in terms of ecological values, spiritual values, historic reasons? Is it actively used by the First Nations?

Hon. M. Polak: Some of the features. This area will protect intertidal and marine areas that have some pretty high ecological values. They include kelp beds, grey whale feeding grounds, foraging areas for marbled murrelet, a number of intertidal flats, high tide lagoons, very globally significant tidal rapids. The Gwa'sala-Nakwaxda'xw First Nation also considers the marine area surrounding the conservancy to be part of their sea gardens.

D. Donaldson: On section 7(c), the addition of 25,255 hectares to the Upper Gladys River Conservancy. This is to the east of Atlin Lake on Taku River Tlingit traditional territory in the constituency of Stikine. Could the minister advise on the reasons for this addition?

Hon. M. Polak: Again, this is fulfilling the Atlin Taku land use plan.

D. Donaldson: As the minister advised earlier, that plan was instituted in 2011, so it has been three years. Could she give us an idea of why this 25,255 hectares wasn't included when the plan was instituted in 2011?

Hon. M. Polak: Again, it was necessary for us to engage in some consultation with an overlapping First Nation.

[1415]

D. Donaldson: Thank you for that, to the minister. In those three years that have passed since the plan was instituted in 2011 and the addition of this 25,255 hectares that will occur once this bill is passed in 2014, have there been any activities, ongoing or new, in this area being considered that would go against the objectives of the conservancy?

Hon. M. Polak: None that we're aware of.

D. Donaldson: I just stood up to say thank you very much.

Sections 7 to 9 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. M. Polak: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 2:16 p.m.

The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 11 — PROTECTED AREAS OF
BRITISH COLUMBIA
AMENDMENT ACT, 2014

Bill 11, Protected Areas of British Columbia Amendment Act, 2014, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. M. Polak: I call committee stage debate on Bill 18, the Water Sustainability Act.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 18 — WATER SUSTAINABILITY ACT

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 18; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 2:20 p.m.

On section 1.

S. Chandra Herbert: The wonderful, fantastic day continues in the Legislature with Bill 18, the Water Sustainability Act. A cue to drink a glass of water, wonderful, tasty B.C. water — again, not from a bottle but from a glass and from a tap. Thank you, hon. Chair and Members, for humouring me.

This section, "Definitions," is where we are able to get an understanding of what the government means with a variety of use of terms. The bill, of course, is approximately 143 pages long, so I know the Member for Surrey-Panorama is going to enjoy every single moment of it. He's giving me the thumbs-up.

I know that the minister and her staff will be enjoying this, as well, because they've worked for many long years, the staff in particular, to get us to this stage for a historic bill to upgrade our Water Act. Of course, the people of B.C. have been waiting 100 years to update this act. They're quite elderly now and are quite excited that the act has finally come.

Anyways, the first question I had is in the definitions
[ Page 2782 ]
section. If the minister could explain the meaning of "aquatic ecosystem." It says it's "in relation to a stream" and "means the natural environment of the stream, including" the stream channel, fish, wildlife and other living organisms "insofar as their life processes (i) are carried out in the stream, and (ii) depend on the natural environment of the stream." Is there a reason that that is held just to stream, not creek or river or water body? Why just a stream?

Hon. M. Polak: Before I answer the question, I'll just introduce the staff I have with me. To my left is Ted White, manager of water strategies and conservation, water protection and sustainability branch, with the Ministry of Environment. To my right is Donna Forsyth, legislative adviser, strategic policy branch, with the Ministry of Environment, and behind me is Valerie Cameron, water stewardship manager with Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

The reason the word "stream" is used and not more words than that is because of the definition of stream later on in the "s" section of the definitions. The member will see that it is very all-encompassing and includes the watercourses that the member mentioned.

S. Chandra Herbert: Now, would it be correct to say that also includes water where maybe there's a big runoff in the spring session, as the snow melts, and you get a periodic stream that then disappears for the rest of the year, as the water is no longer there?

Hon. M. Polak: Yes. The test for whether or not this applies is not whether or not the water is there all the time. That isn't what we're concerned about. It's whether or not it exists in a stream channel when it's there. You will see "stream channel" defined just underneath "stream."

[1425]

S. Chandra Herbert: Would any of these…? Including aquifer, I guess, is the question, then. What would occur if an aquifer has not been identified? I know there are a number of cave systems, and there are a number of other systems throughout the province which have not been adequately mapped. Does this include things that have yet to be mapped?

Hon. M. Polak: In conjunction with the definition of "aquifer," then one also needs to look at the definition of "groundwater," which here is defined as meaning "water naturally occurring below the surface of the ground" — so whether or not it has been mapped.

S. Chandra Herbert: That would include deep saline aquifers?

Hon. M. Polak: Yes. For the purposes of the legislation, water is treated as water, be it a saline aquifer or not. The discussion that we have had in terms of exempting deep saline is one that will be reflected in the regulations but not in the act itself.

S. Chandra Herbert: There have been many questions around "beneficial use," around the idea of water being held as a public trust, of the idea that if you are granted the authority to use the province's water, you need to be using it in a way that is good for the public interest that reflects that water is an incredibly valuable resource.

I understand that with this change, there's been a move to say that we should be using water "as efficiently as practicable." Can the minister explain what she believes that means? Also, I understand, that there may be any applicable regulations. I understand they're not written yet, but is there a thought to what those regulations will require — what the broad focus of them will be?

[1430]

Hon. M. Polak: The purpose here — and the member has captured it, to a certain extent, as well — is to get to a place where there is no waste, be that somebody who is licensed to use water or a water use that is not captured in terms of licensing.

When it comes to beneficial use, the standard against which that will be measured is what we will be developing in the regulations, again guided by the idea that we want to achieve a circumstance where water is used for a specific purpose and that it is used with the idea of eliminating any waste of that water flow.

S. Chandra Herbert: When we talk about developing regulations to ensure that there is no waste of water, I think people would be very interested in those regulations.

In many municipalities and communities, especially where water use becomes very difficult as the water is scarce, neighbours will look at neighbours and, in some cases, will say, "Well, that person is washing their driveway with fresh water, as opposed to a broom," and would question: "Is that a waste of water?" In my view, I would think so. But that could lead to all sorts of questions around enforcement, in terms of education. Who knows exactly what the regulations state? Would it be a municipal use? Would it be through a bylaw? Would it be, if you lived in a rural district, a provincial law — or regulation, I guess?

Will there be consultation — an open consultation rather than just a preselected group who have to sign off on confidentiality agreements to not share what's being discussed in the development of these regulations?

Hon. M. Polak: In order to bring life to this legislation and achieve the objectives that we are setting before ourselves, we recognize that we are going to need the active participation and collaboration of other levels of government, including First Nations.

I personally have committed to the First Nations
[ Page 2783 ]
Leadership Council that we will be working closely with them as we develop the regulations. I know my staff will also be undertaking to consult and work with local governments, because of course, in terms of implementation…. The member used an example of washing a driveway, for example. Those types of regulatory pieces would be open to local governments, in terms of their bylaws, etc., and how they manage water locally.

We do need to be working collaboratively, and we intend to do that through the development of the regulations as well. It's important that this act and its attendant regulations be designed in a practical way if we want people to actually adhere to what is outlined.

S. Chandra Herbert: The example I used was probably a municipal example. Obviously, a lot of water gets used outside of municipalities, in industries and so on.

I think of agriculture. My grandparents were farmers, and there was a lot of water used in their farming needs. Sometimes the challenge, of course, is you are, let's say, irrigating a field, and you may not know that a hose used to get the water to the field has a major leak. Maybe it's underground. Maybe you haven't looked at it. Maybe it's in a distant section of the land that you don't get to a lot.

[1435]

What kinds of impacts could this have on an industry? What kinds of expectations are there going to be? Is it a waste of water if they have a leaky pipe that they're not aware of, and how will that be determined?

Hon. M. Polak: We believe it's quite necessary for us to be working together with sectors like the agriculture sector. The approach we will take is one of developing best practices and developing improved methods of educating and making aware those people who are involved.

We've already seen significant cooperation and much improvement in the agriculture sector, in particular, as we've worked through the development of the legislation. We have every reason to anticipate that the various sectors, including agriculture, will be quite interested in working with us to develop those best practices and to see that they are implemented.

S. Chandra Herbert: I think people in the water community, as they describe themselves…. I had no idea there was such a wide and vast network of individuals concerned about water in this province until really getting into the Water Act and looking at it. I'm sure the minister and her staff have been quite encouraged that there are so many people who care about our water.

One of the questions they often ask around beneficial use is: does it include things like stream health? Is it, in the understanding of the minister, that when you talk about wasting water, beneficial use is about efficient use of water, including that you wouldn't use water in such a way that you damaged a stream's ability to support aquatic life?

[1440]

Hon. M. Polak: I think I'm going to give the member an answer to his question. If I've interpreted his question incorrectly, then we can try it again.

The beneficial use section is all about the efficiency of use — no waste, all that. When we get into activities or use that may have a negative impact, then really, you want to take a look at the definition just a little further down. "Changes in and about a stream" gets to modifications that may have a potentially negative impact on a stream.

I hope that answers the member's question.

S. Chandra Herbert: I think it partially answers the question. I had hoped, and I think…. I would interpret "beneficial use," of course, to be about the public interest — that the beneficial use of water is making sure that it benefits not only the individual using it but the public in general, who the province holds the water in trust for.

What I wanted to know is…. While it talks about using it efficiently, I don't think that anybody would agree it would be an efficient use of water if we, for example, drained an aquifer while only using a small amount to wash our dishes and flush the toilet. We were very efficient, we had a low-flow toilet, but we drained an aquifer, and it was no longer there.

That wouldn't be a beneficial use — I would argue — under the term "beneficial use." It may benefit the person individually to flush their toilet, but the public interest would not be served because it could destroy an aquifer.

Is that in the thinking of the minister in terms of beneficial use, or is it just restricted to the idea of making sure you use it efficiently?

Hon. M. Polak: I'll have another go at this. There's a distinction here in terms of our use of the phrase "beneficial use" versus other jurisdictions — for example, in the United States — where the allocation and the eventual use of the water are combined, if you will.

[1445]

We've made a distinction. The issue of beneficial use is after the licence has been granted. It becomes the test which responds to the question: "All right, you have a licence. Are you using that licence for the purpose for which it was granted to you, and are you doing so in an efficient way?" The question with respect to, "Is there enough water for us to grant you a licence of a certain amount," is a separate piece, and that is where we consider environmental flows. It's where we consider the health of an aquifer, how much water is available, how many users there are, etc.

There is the licence-granting decision. It weighs all those things into account. The "beneficial use" definition is there as part of the test: once the person has a licence, are they fulfilling the obligations of that licence, in terms of specific purpose and the efficiency with which they are accomplishing that.
[ Page 2784 ]

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you to the minister for that answer. I have an amendment I'd like to make, in terms of the definition of "beneficial use." I think beneficial use is about much more than just the efficiency of how you use it but also includes…. I'll read it out.

[To amend Part 1 of the Act by repealing the definition of "beneficial use" in section 1 and adding the following section:

Definition of "beneficial use"

1.1 (1) Subject to sub-sections (2) to (4), "beneficial use" means a use of water that is reasonable, efficient and consistent with the public interest in the proper utilization of water resources, including the use of water for navigational, environmental, and recreational uses.

(2) Beneficial use carries with it a responsibility to protect stream health and use of water which compromises the ecological health of a stream shall not be considered beneficial use.

(3) Water use that compromises the sustainable use of an aquifer by depleting groundwater is not a beneficial use.

(4) The Lieutenant-Governor in Council may pass regulations further defining what is meant by beneficial use, and how that beneficial use is to be addressed in existing licences, allocation decisions or other decisions, including, but not limited to:

(a) defining environmental flows or other indicators of stream health in relation to (2) and the obligations of licensees to protect stream health,

(b) setting standards or requirements in relation to depletion or the obligations of licensees to protect the sustainable use of an aquifer under (3),

(c) setting standards of efficiency or reasonableness in relation to beneficial water use under water licences, and

(d) further defining beneficial use and the proper utilization of water resources.]

That's a proposed amendment. I'd like to move the amendment now.

On the amendment.

Hon. M. Polak: I appreciate the effort that the member has put into this. Clearly, a lot of the items reflected in the amendment are reminiscent of other aspects of the act.

I will not be recommending support of the amendment, simply because, as I explained earlier, our approach in the bill is to address "beneficial use" with respect to a licence that's already been granted. The decisions with respect to protection around environmental flows, health of an aquifer, we have decided to place into the act in such a manner that it is considered when the granting of the licence takes place — then "beneficial use," that definition being used as the test with respect to whether or not the licensee is appropriately operating that licence.

S. Chandra Herbert: I think it's important that we name that official use and be specific about it. I understand the minister's reticence to support the change, as it puts down very concretely what "beneficial use" can be. I would urge support of this. I understand that a lot of this will be decided in regulation. The opposition felt that it was important that we name concerns, that we name areas where beneficial use and the lack of beneficial use occur so that both the government and the wider community have more legal strength in protecting our water resources.

I'll be urging support of this amendment.

[1450]

A. Weaver: I just wish to speak in favour of the amendment.

I would like to raise, of course, that I have not had the privilege of studying the legal aspects of this. However, I did notice that the West Coast Environmental Law did submit that "beneficial use" include a public benefit component in order to ensure that social and environmental concerns can be addressed alongside private concerns.

While I only just got this amendment a few minutes ago, I do believe this is trying to move in that direction. I recognize, of course, that government will have a difficult time supporting the amendment in light of the fact that this has to go through their legal counsel prior to building it into the bill. But I think the intent of this amendment is correct, and that is the reason why I believe it is important to ensure that there is a public interest in the law, not only of subsequent regulation or in the granting of permits but in the actual law itself.

[1455]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

[1500]
[ Page 2785 ]

S. Fraser: I would note that in the definitions section of the act, Bill 18, there is no mention of the terms "cave," "cave resource," "karst," "karst land," "karst topography." Can the minister explain those omissions, please?

Hon. M. Polak: If there was water that existed in a cave or in a karst, that would be, then, an aquifer.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

With respect to the cave or the karst itself, those are land forms, the governing of which is taken care of through other legislation. That is within the purview of the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

S. Fraser: "Aquifer" is the term that would broadly cover subterranean systems in the province of British Columbia. It's interesting, though, that it's simply…. They're not cited as such.

Caves are essentially…. Usually we're referring to the limestone caves. They are developed over millennia through the dissolving of the limestone. Slightly carbonic acid–laden rainwater seeps through the grounds that have these karst features, the limestone features, and they create a unique ecosystem underground.

I know that the Minister of Environment must know that these are probably the most fragile ecosystems in the world. They are unique in many ways, and they contain unique species. But they are water delivery systems, in essence.

[1505]

Again, the term "aquifer" — I guess the closest we'll have is "(c) a part of one or more geological formations that is groundwater bearing and capable of storing, transmitting and yielding groundwater." That misses the significance of these systems. They are underground water delivery systems. The act appears to not even recognize them as such.

If you have a river on the surface, that's captured in the definitions and captured in the act. A river with the same volume of water flowing through an underground cave system is simply not even contemplated in the act or in the definition.

Again, why was that? It's a glaring omission. Most other jurisdictions in the world have actual specific cave protection laws on the books. Alaska, I would submit, is the closest one to us — very effective and very transferable to us. Why was it not even mentioned in this act?

Hon. M. Polak: As I said before, the governance of the protection of caves, karsts and other land formations is not governed under this act because it is governed by other acts. It's impossible to compare apple to apple with respect to other jurisdictions because, of course, their legislative framework would have developed independently of ours. In our case, the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations has responsibility through a number of different pieces of legislation, and would account for the protection and the appropriate treatment of caves, karsts and other land forms.

With respect to why it has not been included in this specific section of definitions in this act, the use of the term "aquifer…." The member read part of the definition already. We have used that in a similar manner to the way in which we have used the term "stream." The previous member, the critic, inquired with respect to why we had not mentioned other forms of surface water. In fact, within the definition of stream, that's captured. We have sought to do the same thing with the term "aquifer."

It is, therefore, we believe, adequately captured with respect to the definition of an aquifer. I understand the special significance of these land forms, but if there is groundwater existing in a cave or a karst, then that water, and the governance of it, is captured in this act. The land form itself is the responsibility of the legislative framework within FLNRO.

S. Fraser: Thanks to the minister for the answer. I am confused. I know a little bit about this. I introduced Bill M206, Cave Protection Act, 2010. The reason I entered the bill onto the order paper, which was never brought up subsequently for debate…. It was supported by every cave expert in the province and in the country — in the world, actually. The reason that I proposed the Cave Protection Act was because, actually, no ministry has adequate protection.

The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations — the closest they have to even mentioning caves and karsts is they have several karst protection orders on the coast. But it's only very specific to forestry use, if I'm not mistaken.

There's a multitude of influences and impacts that can happen on the surface in areas that have karst land. Therefore, the limestone cave systems are water transportation systems underground, with, again, unique species involved with them. Often — not always, but often — it does become part of a drinking water system or a system associated with aquatic life, fisheries and such.

Can the minister explain just how that protection has been brought in place by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations or any other ministry? I'm certainly not aware of it.

[1510]

Hon. M. Polak: In terms of discussing the Water Sustainability Act, aquifer — the definition of it here — would include a cave or a karst "that is groundwater bearing and capable of storing, transmitting and yielding groundwater."

With respect to the adequacy of the legislative framework and FLNRO, that wouldn't be a subject for our discussion here today.
[ Page 2786 ]

S. Fraser: Well, okay. I'll bring that up with the minister responsible again, I guess.

I'll go back to the term "aquifer," since that seems to be the one we're working with that's supposed to capture the underground water systems that are associated with caves.

It doesn't mention caves, so the average person — or the cave expert, too — would not know that this act even refers to the unique systems that caves are. Citing the minister, she referred to the definition of stream. It specifically lays out "a lake, pond, river, creek, spring, ravine, gulch, wetland or glacier." It's quite specific, yet the term that I'm being asked to accept — that covers caves and the water systems therein under the term aquifer with no actual mention of it.

Again, it seems like a glaring gap just in the definition portion if this is indeed supposed to capture water systems that are delivered through limestone cave systems in this province. And we have some of the major systems in the world.

I would like to refer to a system that I entered above Sproat Lake, near Port Alberni — a newly discovered cave system. Two hours into the cave system we were in a chamber similar to this size of chamber with a massive river at that point flowing through it. We still haven't determined where that water is coming from and going to.

To have no mention of this in an act that purports to be addressing the needs of water in the province — does the minister not agree that seems like a glaring omission?

Hon. M. Polak: The definition of aquifer in the proposed act reads as follows: "'aquifer' means (a) a geological formation, (b) a group of geological formations, or (c) a part of one or more geological formations that is groundwater bearing and capable of storing, transmitting and yielding groundwater." I understand the member's specific interest in and the value he places on caves and karsts. I certainly understand that. But surely the member is not arguing that a cave or a karst is not a geological formation.

S. Fraser: Not at all. However, I am arguing that failing to cite the term or terms that I have referred to, whether it's caves or karsts, is certainly, I believe, an omission that is problematic. I think it's important that the people of British Columbia know that you're capturing those systems in this act.

I would cite another problem that has occurred because of general ignorance of caves and their importance as water delivery systems. I'll refer to the Walkerton scenario that happened in Walkerton, Ontario. As the minister is probably aware, a number of years ago there were a great number of people affected. Some lost their lives. Many are still facing the health effects of fecal coliform contamination of their water system.

[1515]

Even through the investigation that followed…. I know a lot of the blame was placed on the town of Walkerton. The actual fact was that there was an assumption that the source of the contamination, which I believe was cattle, was quite a far distance from the water intake for the drinking water in Walkerton. It was assumed that by the time any water laden with those pathogens was to make it — seep through the ground over 40 days or whatever was anticipated by hydrologists — to the water source, it would largely be purified just through the natural processes that happen through seeping through the ground.

The water travelled within a matter of hours to the water intake system in Walkerton. The fecal coliform contamination was pretty much at full strength because it essentially travelled through an underground river, and no one recognized that. Again, omitting citing things like caves, specifically, as being protected — not protected, because I want a different act for that… But not citing them, specifically, as water transportation systems — in 2020 hindsight, knowing that the failure to recognize caves as water transportation systems in another jurisdiction in Canada contributed to a mass poisoning of a town….

Again, would the minister care to comment on that?

Hon. M. Polak: I've read into the record the definition of aquifer, which I believe reasonably describes what the member is describing. Caves, karsts would be captured within that. In addition to that, in terms of the member's concern that people reading this act understand what it is we are governing, there is also the definition of groundwater, and I will quote that.

The definition says: "'groundwater' means water naturally occurring below the surface of the ground." When you take the definition of aquifer and when you take the definition of groundwater, I don't think there is any potential for mistaking the fact that water that would be found in a cave or a karst would be governed by this act.

S. Fraser: I simply disagree, which is fair enough. We can agree to disagree. The fact that you cite a number of definitions — aquifer, groundwater…. Comparing them to the "stream" definition, which is very prescriptive, the omission of caves as part, specifically, of aquifer or groundwater makes it seem like you are purposely omitting those systems so that they would not be captured in this legislation. Again, when you get to the definition of a "surface stream", the definition is quite complete. It's glaringly incomplete by failing to cite caves in this act.

Your ministry certainly must be aware of the Cave Protection Act that I proposed a while ago. I didn't do that in a vacuum. I had experts in the province and in the country and in the world help me with that.

I won't be proposing an amendment, but I would ask the minister to consider clarifying caves and cave systems as being captured by this act specifically.
[ Page 2787 ]

Hon. M. Polak: I appreciate the member's special interest in this. However, there is a reason why the definition of stream has that specificity, and that's because this is the Water Sustainability Act. This act does not govern the land forms. This act governs the water that may be found in those land forms. Hence, as I've said before, I believe that the definition of aquifer adequately describes and captures the water that would be found or could be found in a cave or a karst.

D. Donaldson: The question I have regarding the "Definitions" section, section 1 of this bill, is in regards to "critical environmental flow threshold."

[1520]

Would the minister advise whether she believes that spiritual and cultural use by First Nations has been taken into account in the definition of critical environmental flow threshold?

Hon. M. Polak: Critical environmental flows deal with the ecosystem — aquatic life, etc. — to the extent that any impact of being below the environmental flow threshold that had a negative impact on the ecosystem such that, perhaps, fishing rights were impacted or other traditional uses of the aquatic life, etc., would be considered with respect to environmental flows.

However, when we're talking about other purposes…. For example, perhaps it's a First Nations traditional bathing area. That would not come under critical environmental flows. That would instead be something that is taken into account under the duty to consult when the licence is first granted. It would be part of the allocation decision already, as a result of the duty to consult.

The reason environmental flow thresholds are being added as a definition in the act and as a consideration in the act is because, as the member will know, under the Water Act, that was not a consideration for the statutory decision-maker. The duty to consult, however, with respect to First Nations, is one that goes well beyond the Water Sustainability Act and, of course, already is in place for the allocation of things like water licences.

[1525]

D. Donaldson: Thank you for that answer from the minister. The proposed Water Sustainability Act has the potential to impact First Nations rights and title interests. I want to address this in section 1 because it has implications throughout the bill. So we might as well get it in the definition section and address it.

The First Nations Fisheries Council has said: "There are the aboriginal title and rights impacts resulting from the assumed provincial jurisdiction over the waters of B.C., and there are impacts that may result from the contemplated policy and management directives."

The policy discussion paper on this bill was released October 18, in the fall, and public comment was asked for close to a month later, November 15. Can the minister describe, in relation to section 1, who was consulted in the First Nations sector in regards to the Water Sustainability Act and in regards to this definition section once the legislative proposal was released October 18?

Hon. M. Polak: The vast majority of the discussions took place with the First Nations Leadership Council. We also were in contact with treaty tables that were active. We distributed the discussion paper directly to all 203 First Nations for comment.

With respect to the reason that there wouldn't be specific mention of aboriginal rights to water in the act, firstly, the member will know that section 35 of the Canadian constitution already would supersede our act, and our obligations are clearly instituted through that section of the constitution.

With respect to establishing rights and title with respect to water, the member will know that that is something of an ongoing discussion — the nature of the relationship of First Nations, in law, to water — and is not something that I believe we could potentially solve within the Water Sustainability Act but becomes a much broader issue with respect to defining the breadth of rights and title of First Nations.

D. Donaldson: The minister mentioned, in relation to section 1, of course, the consultation that occurred with First Nations after October 18 and before the tabling of this legislation — to have an impact on how this definition section was arrived at by the government.

She mentioned the policy discussion paper — the draft act, I suppose, is another way of saying it — was distributed to 203 First Nations, so I have an idea it was mailed or delivered somehow. But she mentioned treaty table consultation and First Nations Leadership Council discussions.

Could she describe or advise how those took place? Were they face-to-face meetings? How many meetings after October 18? For the treaty table discussions on this document and on section 1, how did they take place?

[1530]

Hon. M. Polak: With the First Nations Leadership Council, of course, I was not involved from the beginning of this. Many people have been involved over the time of the consultation. The majority were face-to-face meetings. I was involved with a couple of those face-to-face meetings getting closer to the introduction of the act and the finalizing of the legislation.

As I said before, we have committed to involving the First Nations Leadership Council and others in the development of the regulations. With respect to the treaty tables, really, that was more about notice because, of course, anything that's happening in terms of legislation around resources of just about any kind can potentially
[ Page 2788 ]
have an impact on discussions that are taking place at treaty tables. So we felt it was important to keep them apprised.

D. Donaldson: Thank you for the answer from the minister. The actual draft legislation in a form that was near to what we see in front of us — in a form that First Nations could actually get their teeth into — was distributed, from what I understand, October 18. Then we had the legislation introduced to this chamber recently. Was it last week? I can't remember when it was that the actual legislation was introduced.

The minister described a couple of meetings with the First Nations Leadership Council and this notice being given at the treaty tables and the document being mailed to 203 First Nations. Does she feel that there was an adequate amount of time from October 18 until the actual introduction of the bill for First Nations to respond to a very complicated piece of legislation, in reference to section 1 that we're considering at the moment?

Hon. M. Polak: I should just clarify for the member that while the legislative proposal was very detailed, it was not a draft of the act. I just don't want to leave that impression.

Let's understand, firstly, as we've talked about in this House on numerous occasions, that the development of this act has taken place over many years. That has involved First Nations frequently.

It has been an ongoing discussion that has informed our staff as they have constructed the act. They are, of course, as they draft legislation such as this, considering our obligations with respect to section 35 of the constitution, our obligations with respect to treaty First Nations in British Columbia and — notwithstanding the fact that we were not able to provide them with a draft of the legislation itself — certainly the feedback from those First Nations, the input.

I attended the First Nations Summit, for example. There has been every attempt made to get as comprehensive an understanding of the needs and the desires of First Nations with respect to this act as we possibly could. And we'll reiterate the commitment that we have to be working closely with them in the development of the regulations.

D. Donaldson: I understand that the minister, especially…. She had a previous role as Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, so she expresses the understanding of how important the consultation is.

[1535]

In regard to, specifically, this legislative proposal that was released on October 18, 2013, what changes or additions to section 1 and — if she wants, so we can deal with this now — the rest of the bill were made as a result of consultation with First Nations?

Hon. M. Polak: Hopefully, the member will appreciate that I'm not meaning to sound flippant when I say this. I hope it doesn't come across that way. Of course, throughout the consultations and discussions with First Nations, at that time the legislation was not drafted. The definitions weren't drafted, so it wouldn't be correct for me to say, "Here's something that changed from what it began as," because of course, there was nothing there.

What I can say is that, certainly, the discussions that had taken place with First Nations throughout the staff development of the Water Sustainability Act were informed by First Nations. In addition to some of the consultations that I described, we also held, over the course of that development, three different workshops for First Nations to walk through elements that we anticipated including in the Water Sustainability Act.

There was every attempt made to gather as much input as we could and understand as completely as we could what First Nations wished to see reflected in the act and how we would appropriately address their requirements in terms of our section 35 obligations.

S. Chandra Herbert: The question is around critical environmental flow threshold. It's a part of the bill that I'm glad is there to discuss — to certainly protect aquatic species and aquatic ecosystems much more so than they are today. I'm just wondering what does "significant or irreversible harm to the aquatic ecosystem of the stream" mean? What would "significant" be? Is it that a few fish died? Is it that half of the fish died? What is the test?

Hon. M. Polak: I think, likely, the term "irreversible" is more easily grasped in terms of a definition than "significant." This would require some professional decision-making. Certainly, there are many professionals in the field who would be able to evaluate whether or not a particular impact was significant or, indeed, irreversible.

If I sound vague, it's because this would need to be determined on a case-by-case basis. It is very much dependent upon the particular site, the particular type of water flow, the particular type of ecosystem. A professional would then adjudicate whether or not that was significant in that specific location in that specific ecosystem.

S. Chandra Herbert: Curious, the significant — I understand we would argue there could be a case-by-case basis. Irreversible, I think, is obviously a lot easier to explain. The reason I ask is that one person may say it was a significant change to a species, where you might have had a whole lot of fish in the river — using fish as one example — and then a change in the river flow left it so that maybe instead of 100 fish, you only had 20 fish, and the 20 fish could live there forever, but you were never to get back to 100 fish.

I just think it's important that we try to be as clear as we can about what significant means because when the
[ Page 2789 ]
legal test comes, it's important to know whether significant is the majority of a species — maybe it's a newt; maybe it's something else that relies on the stream flow — and that it's clear that if a majority is gone, that is a significant action. I think not knowing what significant is leaves the legal test quite wide open.

[1540]

Maybe there are earlier legal tests the minister could refer to which explain what significant means, in terms of the legal landscape, but to say that it really depends on the case, and it's a case-by-case basis and it's hard to explain, doesn't give me quite enough comfort. If there's some way to be as specific as possible, with something in terms of what the legal test is, I'd appreciate it.

Hon. M. Polak: I'm going to argue the opposite, because it is very important, with respect to decisions that are made on the land base, that those decisions be made by qualified professionals. Anything we do to insert specificity into a term like "significant" then impacts on the discretion that that professional has to make their judgment based on the science.

I want to know, and I'm sure British Columbians would want to know, that the person deciding what is significant is not going to be the minister, in drafting legislation, but is going to be a fish habitat specialist on site or a biologist on site. So it's important that the term "significant" be left as it stands and that we allow those important professionals to make those decisions based on the science that they observe in the particular location.

S. Chandra Herbert: River systems, stream systems, karst systems, cave systems — whatever you want to call them — obviously are very different in many parts of the province. Critical environmental flow thresholds are important. But a question which has come up again and again is: are they proactive, or are they reactive?

Are we able to go out and do the stream analysis, the water analysis, in many parts of the province so that the users, so that the licensers, are very able in saying, "This is the only amount of water you can use. You cannot use more. In this month we have lower water than we expected this time of year, so actually you have to even use less" — so that it is a proactive rather than a reactive strategy?

Of course, nobody wants to see irreversible harm to the aquatic ecosystem, but using this threshold, unless it's a proactive approach, we may get to the case where we say: "Well, wait a second. You did not follow your critical environmental flow threshold." Now we don't have any more endangered newts in this stream because they've been irreversibly harmed, or the fish numbers have become so low that they're not able to ever get back to the strength that they should have.

How is critical environmental threshold going to be used in a proactive way rather than just a reactive way?

Hon. M. Polak: The proactive piece of this — in other words, what's examined and considered when the initial allocation is made — is the "environmental flow needs," a little further on in the definition section. The critical environmental flow threshold is the reactive part.

[1545]

Environmental flow needs are considered when the first decision is made, when the allocation is made. It's made based on consideration that the environmental flows be maintained at an appropriate level.

The critical environmental flow threshold would be if an unforeseen event took place. Maybe there's a drought. Maybe there's seismic activity that affects water flow. An unforeseen activity takes place, there is, therefore, a critical environmental flow threshold that is breached, and action then can be taken.

Those are the two pieces: environmental flow needs being the proactive piece, and critical environmental flow threshold being the reactive piece.

I wonder if I could ask the members' indulgence. Could we take a five-minute recess? Would that be acceptable?

The Chair: All right. The committee will take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 3:46 p.m. to 3:52 p.m.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

S. Chandra Herbert: "Date of first use" is a term that's in relation to the use of groundwater. According to the legislation, it means "the date from which the comptroller, a water manager or an engineer is satisfied in accordance with the regulations that groundwater from the aquifer has been used (a) regularly and beneficially on an ongoing basis, (b) for the water use purpose, and (c) on land, or for a mine or undertaking, to which, if the water use purpose were licensed, the licence would be appurtenant."

I'm curious…. I've said that a lot; I'm a curious kind of guy. When we think about the date of first use, First Nations people were here a lot longer than us, used the water in many a different ways in communities all across this province from time immemorial, as the phrase goes.

How does that understanding relate to this understanding of date of first use?

Hon. M. Polak: This, first of all, applies to groundwater, and it is here because of the transitioning from the existing groundwater users. First Nations would be treated as anyone else. If they established that there had been a well in use, even if it began thousands of years ago, then that would be considered in terms of order of precedence.

[1555]

S. Chandra Herbert: The definition of "mine" includes "a placer or mineral claim or land held or occupied for
[ Page 2790 ]
the purpose of winning a mineral from the claim or land, whether held in fee simple or by virtue of a record, registration, lease or licence." Would that include abandoned mines, mines from a long time ago?

Hon. M. Polak: The very short answer is that it wouldn't matter. Now, that's the very short answer. Let me explain why.

The reason we have the definition in here is that it relates — and we'll get to this at a later point — to section 9(a), where we describe someone who can get a licence. One of the potential qualifications is that they be an owner of land, or a mine, right?

As I say, the short answer is that it wouldn't matter whether or not it is abandoned. For the purposes of this, it's defined simply so that when we describe that person who can get a licence, we can say "mine," and it's understood what that would be, in that case.

S. Chandra Herbert: "'Wetland' means a swamp, marsh, fen or prescribed feature." What is the minister imagining would qualify under prescribed features? Does it need to be something that is always there, or could it be periodically there, depending on, say, a tide, high water months, those kinds of things?

Hon. M. Polak: In fact, the reality is that we are including the term "or prescribed feature" precisely because we want to be certain that should we come upon a situation that we don't believe is covered by the specifics of swamp, marsh or fen, we would be able then to add an additional description.

It is for the purpose of giving us that flexibility, we think. We have captured all the appropriate descriptions that would relate to a wetland. But understanding that governments and legislation writers are never perfect, it is conceivable to us that we may come upon maybe a grey area. As you can appreciate with a wetland, there is a certain amount of greyness between where the land feature begins and the water feature ends. This provided us with the flexibility, should we need it, to designate additional lands as wetlands.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

[1600]

D. Donaldson: Thank you, hon. Chair, for this opportunity to address section 2, "Water use purposes." Section 2 outlines a number of purposes that this bill considers under water use: "conservation purpose," "domestic purpose," "industrial purpose," "irrigation purpose," "land improvement purpose," "mineralized water purpose," "mining purpose," "oil and gas purpose," "power purpose," "storage purpose" and "waterworks purpose."

I think the feedback that First Nations provided to this proposed legislation was that they've been asking for a spiritual-cultural use to be included as a water use purpose. I would like the minister to advise why spiritual-cultural use by First Nations is not included in section 2 under "Water use purposes."

Hon. M. Polak: The purposes outlined are the purposes for which we would grant a licence. I can't imagine a circumstance where we would want to place First Nations and their spiritual and cultural purposes under a licence. That's why one would not include that in this section.

D. Donaldson: The preamble to section 2 says: "The following defined purposes are the purposes in respect of which water may be diverted from a stream or an aquifer." So then the minister is acknowledging that water can be diverted from a stream or aquifer by First Nations for spiritual and cultural purposes without need to be covered under the Water Sustainability Act?

Hon. M. Polak: The granting of a water licence creates a right for that licensee to use the amount of water allocated for the purposes that are specified, and you see some of them here. In the case of First Nations, who would be utilizing water for some spiritual or cultural purpose, the fact is they already have that right under section 35 of the constitution, right?

For a spiritual or cultural purpose, you would not create a water allocation licence. I cannot imagine a circumstance in which we would be asking a First Nation to apply for a water licence in order to engage in a spiritual or cultural purpose.

D. Donaldson: Thanks for that answer from the minister. It stimulates a lot of potential questions. I'll just ask them one by one, and this is just one.

[1605]

From what I gather from the minister, she's saying that her understanding, then, is that section 35 rights regarding the spiritual and cultural use of water by First Nations would be the highest priority and would trump all aspects of water use in this bill.

Hon. M. Polak: No, the statement wasn't one of priority. The statement was with respect to why you would not include that purpose in this section. This section defines purposes for which you would provide a licence, right?

Since First Nations have a section 35 right to conduct their spiritual and cultural activities — right? — then it would not generate a need for a licence. It does not speak to the issue of precedence. We, of course, will cover that a little further on in the act in terms of who has priority uses and for what purposes those might be.

S. Chandra Herbert: Could the minister discuss the
[ Page 2791 ]
section around domestic purpose? I understand that was one of the changes with the legislation, to ensure the protection of household use of water in the event of scarcity.

Hon. M. Polak: Here's where we're going to start to struggle with the sheer volume of sections in this act, and I will try to bring some clarity to this.

"Domestic purpose" in section 2 only relates to licensed surface water use, okay? Then when you are looking at essential household use and what would take precedence in the case of scarcity, that's actually covered in subsection 22(11). I'll just read it for the member.

It relates to very small uses of water. It says:

"For the purposes of this section, 'essential household use' means the use by the occupants of one private dwelling of not more than 250 litres of water per day for (a) drinking water, food preparation and sanitation, and (b) providing water to animals or poultry that are kept (i) for household use, or (ii) as pets."

Hopefully, that does the trick.

[1610]

S. Chandra Herbert: It does explain it. I think the question — and maybe it has to come up in a later section; we'll see, but I'll try now while it is being discussed — is, of course, the question around first-in-time, first-in-right and how that relates to domestic purpose.

If an industrial user was the first user or one of the first users of a water resource — particularly, let's say, a groundwater resource — the concern had been and has been that you could find a situation where the industrial user would have precedence over the domestic user, as the domestic user came later. Thus, they would not be able to drink water in their homes, have a shower, water their horse — if it's a domestic use horse rather than a farm horse, I suppose. I just want to see if that is dealt with adequately under "domestic purpose."

Hon. M. Polak: Now, this is where it starts to get nicely complicated. I'll do my best. It does, though, just to be clear, with respect to the definition of domestic purpose…. I think the member will see when I answer the question that, really, the definition of domestic purpose only goes so far in helping us answer this question, which is why maybe we want to get into this later. But I'll answer what the member has asked.

When granting licences, the day-to-day domestic user, the householder with a well, fits into first-in-time, first-in-right. They don't have a priority just because they are a household user. They are in line, with whatever point in time they started using their well.

I'll make a pitch to any person who, on a Thursday at 4:15, is sitting watching Hansard. If you have a well, we'd really like you to register it because that will help, as we manage this. We're not going to charge you for it.

That's when it's granted, right? Here you are. It's granted. Your place in the FITFIR priority is where it is based on the date. However, in a time of scarcity, essential household use would trump any industrial user or other kind of licence that had been granted. FITFIR is there for the purposes of day-to-day operations, if you will. The essential household use would trump FITFIR in a time of scarcity.

S. Chandra Herbert: That does explain it in a very good way. I think, when we talked about licensing — or choosing not to license domestic water well users because the administrative burden could be quite high and, instead, choosing to, I guess, request or require registration…. That then kicks FITFIR into gear, so to speak. I think that's my understanding of it.

[1615]

Maybe just now, while we're talking around this: what kind of campaign effort, or what have you, will be used to encourage all the very few people who are not watching Hansard at 4:15 on a Thursday to ensure that their domestic water wells are registered? I know everyone watches Hansard at 4:15 on a Thursday, but for those that aren't, what are we going to do to support their efforts to have their water wells registered?

Hon. M. Polak: Well, I'm shocked and appalled that the member doesn't think people are paying attention to Hansard at 4:15 on a Thursday. Nevertheless, we won't rely only on that.

I should make it clear that when we are speaking of voluntary registration, we are speaking of existing groundwater users who have their household wells. Assuming the Water Sustainability Act passes, once it's in force, new water wells would be required to be registered.

Certainly, as we go forward with implementation, we will want to build that awareness in cooperation with the various stakeholders with whom we will be working and therefore get the message out to communities. Of course, we'll be working with our local government partners, First Nations and different sectors of users as well. I don't think you're looking at a major prime-time television commercial campaign.

S. Chandra Herbert: So "'mineralized water purpose' means (a) the bottling and commercial distribution of water so impregnated with mineral salts, elements or gases as to potentially give the water therapeutic properties, or (b) the use in commercial bathing pools of water that is (i) impregnated with mineral salts, elements or gases, or (ii) naturally at a temperature suitable for that use."

Is this to get at things like…? I'm thinking of hot spring pools like the beautiful Ainsworth Hot Springs or smaller, much lesser-known hot springs up near Skatin on In-SHUCK-ch Road or other incredible hot springs we have across this province, in addition to, of course, mineral water bottling operations.

Hon. M. Polak: The member is right. Those are the
[ Page 2792 ]
types of things we're trying to get at.

The reason it's here is that the existing definition in the Water Act — and there are, in fact, licences for this purpose; it's actually interesting — is "'mineral trading purpose' means bottling, distributing, using and dealing in water so impregnated with foreign ingredient as to give it medicinal properties, or water of a temperature that gives it a commercial value."

This is our best effort at modernizing the definition. We will be transitioning existing licence holders into being in line with the new definition. There is also a provision within the transition section. We'll get to it later on, I guess, is what I'm saying.

S. Chandra Herbert: I have been to many hot spring pools. It's a favourite thing for my husband and me. What kind of licensing currently exists around hot spring pools?

[1620]

I know there are, certainly, the commercial hot springs. There are many hot spring pools that are out in the wilderness. It just would be helpful to know, because I was not aware of a great deal of regulation on that.

Hon. M. Polak: The trigger here is whether or not there is modification to, in this case, a hot spring. So if you and your husband want to enjoy a hot spring somewhere, you don't have to get a licence for it. If a hot spring spontaneously erupted on my tiny spot of land in front of my townhouse and I wanted to charge people money to come and enjoy it, again, unless I modified it in some way or diverted it or diverted it and stored it, there wouldn't be an issue around a licence. If it's left in its natural state, then there's no licence required.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

S. Chandra Herbert: Is section 3 just housekeeping to say that because we've introduced a new water sustainability act, nothing in this act can be seen to be contrary to the Water Protection Act? What kind of provisions in the Water Protection Act are we thinking about that this section is required in the legislation?

Hon. M. Polak: More or less this is housekeeping. I'll read you the old section from the previous Water Act. It said: "Except for a purpose defined in section 1 of this Act, a person who is not registered under the Water Protection Act must not divert, extract, use or store any water from a stream."

One of the changes that will result from this act coming into force is because under the old act there was no licensing of groundwater users, that meant that we maintained a list of unlicensed users, right? Of course, now they will all be licensed.

Again, it is housekeeping getting to what we believe is better wording and reflects the recognition of the Water Protection Act and its relationship to this act.

Sections 3 and 4 approved.

On section 5.

[1625]

S. Chandra Herbert: Section 5, under part 2, "Licensing, Diversion and Use of Water." Section 5 discusses vesting water in government.

"(1) The property in and the right to the use and flow of all the water at any time in a stream in British Columbia are for all purposes vested in the government, except insofar as private rights have been established under authorizations.

"(2) The property in and the right to the use, percolation and flow of groundwater, wherever groundwater is found in British Columbia, and for all purposes vested in the government and are conclusively deemed to have always been vested in the government except insofar as private rights have been (a) established under authorizations, or (b) deemed under section 22 (8) [precedent of rights].

"(3) No right to divert or use water may be acquired by prescription."

This section discusses what I think is something that is vital in terms of whether or not this legislation can have any force or not: who, in fact, has the right to control water? It suggests that the province of British Columbia does, to make decisions, to make modifications, to do all those kinds of things, to enforce rules, laws, to give permits, to allow a wide variety of things — industrial use, commercial use, personal use and so forth.

It doesn't, however, discuss what I think is important, which is that, in a sense, we are all mere mortals here doing our work. We come, we go, we make mistakes, and we make improvements.

We are holding provincial natural resources like water in a trust for the people. Just as B.C. parks are seen to be in trust for the people of B.C., a public trust, so, I believe, water is. This does not say that though. It suggests that water is held by the government, and maybe the argument could be that the government, just by its nature, is acting in a fiduciary role, in a responsible role for the people of British Columbia.

However, the people of British Columbia, at least some of them, have said to me that they think we should be clear that we do not, in this House…. We are not the only ones who have responsibilities to water, that in fact everybody does and that they should have the ability to be able to protect our water as well. They should have the ability to hold us accountable if we, as legislators, or if the government side does things that threaten our water, makes decisions which could permanently damage water resources in certain parts of the province.

I'd like to move an amendment. The amendment would amend section 5. It would add a new category or
[ Page 2793 ]
a new, I guess, subsection. It would read:

[To amend section 5 of the Act by deleting the text shown as struck out and adding the text shown as underlined:

5 (1) The property in and the right to the use and flow of all the water at any time in a stream in British Columbia are for all purposes vested in the government, except insofar as private rights have been established under authorizations.

(2) The government holds water as a public trust on behalf of all British Columbians, while also considering Aboriginal rights and title.

(2) (3) The property in and the right to the use, percolation and flow of groundwater, wherever groundwater is found in British Columbia, are for all purposes vested in the government and are conclusively deemed to have always been vested in the government except insofar as private rights have been

(a) established under authorizations, or

(b) deemed under section 22 (8) [precedence of rights].

(3) No right to divert or use water may be acquired by prescription.]

On the amendment.

S. Chandra Herbert: The argument I would make for this is, of course, we as government, we as legislators, have a greater responsibility to the people, that we do not, as MLAs or as cabinet members, own the water. The people of British Columbia do. We are certainly owners, collectively, with everybody else in the province, but we are all just one individual person.

I think what this would do is this would, as well, respect aboriginal rights and title. I think that is vital. Just because we are members of the Legislature or cabinet ministers doesn't mean, I think, that we have legislative override for the First Peoples of this province as well.

Just as we hold this in public trust for the people, we also need to recognize that First Nations in a government-to-government relationship also hold public trust and responsibilities to their own nations and to their own people. While we may try to govern in a collective way on their behalf, certainly the constitution would say that we must do that in partnership and respecting their rights and title as First Nations.

[1630]

I will move the amendment now.

The Chair: The amendment appears to be in order.

Does the member wish to speak further on the amendment?

Hon. M. Polak: I won't be recommending approval of the amendment for a few reasons. Firstly, I just want to reiterate that while I understand, in particular as a former Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, the very important considerations, questions and discussion that are taking place within our society and amongst various levels of government insofar as First Nations, their relationship to water and how that impacts rights and title, I don't believe that the Water Sustainability Act is the place where we're going to resolve that.

Having said that, let's remember the origin of the public trust policy or doctrine, if you will. It came about at a time in British common law where it was limited to the Crown's responsibility to hold water or submerged lands in the public trust, at a time when it was important to distinguish what was public and what was private in terms of a more hierarchical society, shall we say, back in the day.

When there was an expansion to consider things such as environmental considerations in and around the 1970s, we would then respond by saying that with respect to the environmental issues, we believe that in the very many sections of this bill we have accounted for those.

Lastly, I just want to acknowledge that in terms of vesting water with the province, it is true that the responsibility for the protection of water is quite broad. However, there's a difference between responsibility and authority, and this section provides us with authority. So I would not be recommending approval of the amendment.

D. Donaldson: I'm happy to take my place in speaking in favour of this amendment to Bill 18, the Water Sustainability Act. I'd like to direct my comments mainly to the positive suggestion that's in the amendment as it tries to address aboriginal rights and title.

I disagree with the minister that there's no place for addressing that issue within the proposed legislation. I think that that is a critical omission in the legislation, and if we can't begin to address the topic of the interests that First Nations have in water in a bill called the Water Sustainability Act, then we're heading down a road that I think is going to not lead to improved relationships and reconciliation with First Nations in B.C. I'll direct my comments around that and why I believe this is true.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

The First Nations did not have input into the existing Water Act over 100 years ago that this bill is meant to replace. But today there are constitutional and legal obligations that require that First Nations are meaningfully consulted with when potential impacts to their aboriginal and treaty rights may occur.

We have a body of legal decisions. Unfortunately, it's a large body. I say unfortunately because all First Nations have said, and at the direction of the Supreme Court, that the courts are not the most desirable place to try to resolve these kinds of things. But unfortunately, especially since 2004, since the Haida decision, the First Nations in B.C. have had repeatedly to go to the courts to try to get this government to understand what they're obligated to do as far as previous court decisions.

[1635]

The current Water Act from 1909 that this act is addressing does not consider First Nations interests. The Water Act regulates water use in B.C., and it's had many impacts on First Nations titles and rights interests, such
[ Page 2794 ]
as allocation of water licences, expropriation of First Nations groundwater resources and permitting discharge into ceremonial waters.

First Nations interests are currently under-represented in water and land use decisions that have the potential to impact First Nations water and water-related interests, and I'll give some examples of that in support of this amendment a little later in my comments.

While there may be acknowledgement from First Nations that the provincial Water Act should be modernized, and I think the minister has received those kinds of suggestions, it needs to be done in a way which recognizes First Nations aboriginal rights and title as premised on a resolution of jurisdiction regarding First Nations interests. These aboriginal and treaty rights issues are at the heart of the discussions that I think need to be conducted around the Water Sustainability Act, Bill 18, and around this very positive amendment that my colleague has put forward.

I think that some thoughts from Judith Sayers from the Hupacasath First Nation, a well-known First Nations leader and the national aboriginal economic development chair at the University of Victoria, are very appropriate to speak to this amendment because of some of the comments that the minister has made.

This was in response to this bill and the contents of the legislative proposal document that went out. I'm quoting from Ms. Sayers when she talks about regulations, for instance. The minister said: "Well, don't worry about First Nations concerns. They'll be dealt with when we get to the regulation stage of the bill." And as Judith Sayers has written:

"Much of the specifics of the act" — the act we're considering — "will be done either by regulations which are not drafted yet and which First Nations and the public will not have a say over or will be decisions made at the 'discretion' of the decision-maker. It leaves me with the distinct feeling that we are only seeing a part of what will be in the Water Sustainability Act and the effects of the Water Sustainability Act.

"While the document does say that the provincial government will continue to meaningfully engage with First Nations through development and implementation of the proposed Water Sustainability Act, their track record to date does not show this and so does not give much hope there will be more."

Again, it's an issue of trust, and that's why this amendment, by putting into Bill 18 the reference to aboriginal rights and title, will go beyond and develop the relationship, as the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation says is one of his goals. Well, here's a First Nations leader who's alluding to the trust factor not being there. What better way to develop the relationship in a more concrete way than to follow the amendment that I'm speaking to today and introduce at least some language around aboriginal rights and title into Bill 18.

As well as alluding to the trust factor and the fact that First Nations have been saying to this government that aboriginal rights and title need to be put into Bill 18 when consultation did occur since October 18, Judith Sayers writes:

"I would like to mention that for several years I sat on a technical advisory group for the Water Sustainability Act. We were never formally disbanned and were never told about this legislative proposal or asked for input before it went out to the public."

That's the document that went out October 18.

"In fact, I didn't find out about the tabling of this document until three days later, and I am pretty plugged into information sources."

Again, the government maintains that they conducted consultation and that they're serious about it. First Nations have said in that consultation that the kind of language that's in this amendment around aboriginal rights and title should be in the Water Sustainability Act. And then we're hearing that there's actually some skepticism about the consultation and communication that went on since October 18 in regards to this document.

[1640]

Finally, as far as the very appropriate and informative comments of Ms. Sayers, she goes on to write:

"Rights and title to water are not addressed in any way in the proposed Water Sustainability Act. Provincial ownership of water is assumed, but First Nations know it is subject to aboriginal rights and title to water. There is no recognition of First Nations rights and title to water, not even a water objective."

Again, this is a major shortcoming in the Bill 18 that's been introduced by the government, a shortcoming that would be addressed by the amendment that my colleague has introduced today, a very positive amendment.

I don't believe it's good enough to say, as the minister did in our previous discussions, that that aspect of First Nations interest in water is covered under section 35. I believe this government has a duty to ensure that legislation that might infringe upon First Nations interests in water is drafted and introduced with that understanding and recognition. Otherwise, I don't understand how we're going to expect First Nations to believe in the sincerity of what's been said by the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, that he wants to build relationships and pursue reconciliation.

You consult or you try to consult, you get some feedback and then you produce a piece of legislation that has significant connection to aboriginal rights and title when it comes to water, and then you don't mention that in the document, and you don't use that opportunity. Surely a fair-minded person could understand why First Nations have some skepticism when this government says it's interested in developing relationships and pursuing reconciliation.

The amendment that has been introduced is a good amendment in that it gets to the crux of the matter around First Nations concerns around aboriginal rights when it comes to their interest in water.

I'm going to finish off by providing an example about why this is so important and why it's important for all people in B.C. and the future activities that are attempted to be pursued on the land by proponents. It's of interest to proponents for projects as well.

That example has to do with the Kemess North mining
[ Page 2795 ]
project that was proposed in an area close to the constituency I represent. I believe it's in the constituency of the now Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. There was an existing mine, Kemess mine. There was a proposal by the company at that time to expand into an area called Kemess North.

The proposal underwent a rigorous joint review process by representatives of the federal and provincial governments. Testimony was provided by First Nations, TseK'hene and Gitxsan especially. In September of 2007 the joint review panel made a very important and precedent-setting decision where they concluded that the mine in its present form would not be in the public interest.

The panel said that any economic and social benefits from the project are outweighed by its long-term risks to the environment — and this is the important part in connection to this bill — and by its social and cultural impacts on aboriginal people.

The joint review panel specifically talked about water under the social and cultural impacts and the water at Amazay Lake, Duncan Lake, which was going to be used as a tailings pond for the proposed project. It wasn't necessarily simply the environmental impacts of destroying a lake for that use. It was the cultural significance of water to First Nations people, and it was well detailed in that joint review panel, that interest.

[1645]

When I asked earlier about ceremonial and cultural aspects of water usage by First Nations and why that wasn't included in the bill as First Nations had hoped, the minister said: "Well, that's something to do with section 35."

Yet if we are going to get to reconciliation, if we are going to get to a place where the people of B.C. and the First Nations of B.C. work together to try to develop projects, to try to ensure that the socioeconomic gap between First Nations and non–First Nations is reduced so that we all do better together, then the aspects of aboriginal rights need to be considered in legislation. This Bill 18 does nothing to consider that, even though First Nations have asked for it, and the amendment I'm speaking to does consider it.

That is why I think that it's a very positive suggestion. If the minister wants to continue down this road, then I'm certain we'll see…. If this act is passed in its current form without the kind of amendment that my colleague has provided, then I'm certain that when we get to the B.C. environmental assessment office and the B.C. environmental assessment processes, we are going to have some major disagreements with First Nations when it comes to their inherent use of water.

This government maintains that the B.C. environmental assessment process is the epitome of — I'll use their terminology — deep consultation. Well, if the Ministry of Environment has to consider Bill 18, the Water Sustainability Act, in a proposal under the environmental assessment process and that act does not include any reference to inherent rights for First Nations around the usage of water, which is well proven in legal cases such as the decision by the joint review panel I just cited, then we're headed for trouble.

I suggest that we avoid that trouble, that we endorse the amendment that my colleague has put forward. That way, the opportunity that we have in front of us to correct a critical omission in this legislation…. It can be corrected.

D. Routley: I rise to support the amendment to the act, and I rise with hope that the minister is open to positive and constructive offerings that would help to improve the act and help to improve its application.

I know that the minister has been in this House for a number of years now. I think back to my first term. Probably the best experience I had as an MLA in this House was working on the Select Standing Committee on Education, where the minister and I were both members and travelled the province examining adult literacy issues.

I found that to be a really enlightening experience. I think that we come here to this place with a certain stridency in our opinions and our views and the partisanship that is surely maintained but somewhat tempered by experiences where we work together on such committees and on issues that affect our communities in positive and negative ways. We search for ways to find resolution to problems for British Columbians.

I have some empathy for the minister, who must sit and listen to this debate and the justifications we're offering for an amendment that may not succeed. But I also have faith that she is of open mind and a willing nature to consider good ideas, and I believe that this amendment is a good idea.

I also note that the current Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation can hear this debate. I would hope that he would contribute to the debate, because it is an important potential amendment that affects his ministry and affects relations of this government with First Nations.

I rise, in fact, to bring a very specific issue to this debate and thereby extend the context of that specific situation to the broader context of aboriginal engagement.

[1650]

I represent Nanaimo–North Cowichan, as the minister knows, and that includes the area and the First Nation known as the Halalt. The Halalt people live in the Westholme area between Duncan and Chemainus. The Halalt are a fascinating small band who have been very assertive in applying their sense of identity and their sense of rights.

Whether it comes to the trucks that pass through their community headed for Catalyst pulp mill and a longstanding effort to control speed and safety on the road through their First Nation, or to water, they have always asserted their rights in a positive but certainly strong
[ Page 2796 ]
manner. I respect them so much for that.

They recently were engaged in a struggle over water rights. The municipality of North Cowichan had frequent boil-water advisories because their water source was always challenged during low-water periods. The water from taps in Chemainus would run sometimes quite cloudy or even brown. The municipality consistently had to order people to boil water before use or consumption.

This resulted, after a few years, in the Ministry of Health demanding a solution. The Ministry of Health imposed upon the municipality of North Cowichan an obligation to find another water source to supply safe drinking water to the people of North Cowichan. And they did. They found that water source in the Chemainus River aquifer.

Well, it just so happens that the Chemainus River aquifer extends underneath the entire Halalt Nation. It is their traditional source of water. It's not only their source of water, but also, the health of the river and the flows in the Chemainus River were very important to maintaining their traditional fisheries. So they took offence to the fact that North Cowichan had decided to drill wells into the Chemainus River aquifer without consultation with them, the Halalt First Nation.

This contentious issue wound up in a conflict where the Halalt eventually stopped the municipality of North Cowichan midway through their project by taking them to court and demanding that their rights be heard and respected and that their right to consultation — more than that, their right to engagement — be respected.

The courts ordered that that happen, so North Cowichan responsibly responded by inviting the Halalt to have a place at the table in a full partnership in the management of the water resources of the Chemainus River aquifer. I think that was a very positive result that, unfortunately, had to be derived by expensive court litigation. But in the end it was an assertion through the courts of First Nations' rights to a water resource.

This really underlined for a lot of people in my constituency, both First Nations and newcomers, that the most positive route to resolution is through negotiation, consultation and engagement, not through confrontation and litigation.

In fact, the Halalt are not a people without a treaty. The Douglas treaty extends over their territory. The Douglas treaty has never really been adequately respected by successive governments or even adequately enforced by successive First Nations governments until recently.

The Douglas treaty goes beyond the duty to consult. In fact, broadly, the Supreme Court has supported the fact that governments must consult with First Nations around inherent rights to the management of natural resources.

[1655]

The Douglas treaty does more than that. The Douglas treaty provides the mechanisms of engagement and full partnership. The Snuneymuxw people in Nanaimo have recently celebrated the anniversary of their reconciliation agreement, which celebrates this existing treaty and their existing rights through treaty to be full partners, not simply consulted but engaged in these decisions.

That took court decisions. That took travel by people who were challenged with resources to the Organization of American States, to the UN. It is quite a magnificent example of people asserting their rights in a peaceful and democratic but strident and strong manner.

Now we have this act, Water Sustainability Act, which is an opportunity for this government to recognize that relationship. This amendment provides the means, if the government were to support it, to say very directly to First Nations that they recognize, accept and will act upon these obligations that have been won and defined in courts but existed before those cases. They aren't simply an order from a court. They are inherent obligations.

If we fail to support a positive amendment like this that seeks to emphasize that obligation, then rather than the context of resolution of problems, we're setting up the certainty of continued conflict over these issues.

I think that this minister particularly understands that. She was, before her current post, the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, so I know that she's very well aware, very well versed and very sensitive to these obligations. I would appeal to her and to the government to support this amendment in the positive nature in which it's brought forward.

The previous member who spoke, the member for Stikine, spoke of Judith Sayers's comments. She has basically said that she didn't know about this. Despite having been engaged in the early consultations on the modernization of the Water Act, she says that she didn't know that this act was coming forward and wasn't consulted on its detail. To that I would ask a couple of questions, three questions.

The first one is: when will we learn? I mean, really, we've had so many opportunities to absorb these lessons, and to not just absorb them but to translate them into action.

The second question is: when will we truly recognize our obligations? We can say that we recognize our obligations to First Nations. We can put it on a bumper sticker, in a campaign brochure, we can say it in speeches, but what really matters are actions. When will we truly recognize our obligations and recognize them through action? Could it be today?

The third question is just that: when will our actions meet the test of our words?

I know the minister. I sincerely believe that she has a positive and honourable intention when it comes to this legislation and her previous post as Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. I truly believe that.

I would appeal to her and whatever powers she has within her cabinet and within the government to take this
[ Page 2797 ]
opportunity to make the words of not only her current government but the previous Premier, Gordon Campbell, when it comes to reconciliation — to make those words real. If not now, when? If we don't do it now, as the member for Stikine said earlier, we're headed for trouble.

[1700]

This amendment deserves support. This amendment deserves support as a sign that these lessons have been learned, absorbed and acted on. This amendment will, in fact, as offered, give the government a substantial boost in credibility with First Nations.

I would appeal to the minister and to the government to hear the amendment in its positive offering, support that and receive the slap on the back that this side of the House will give this government if they see that this is an optimistic, positive amendment that deserves support. We will be the first to congratulate the minister and the government if they do.

S. Fraser: I will only take a moment. I just wanted to add to my colleague's statement. The minister will know that this is a friendly amendment, and it is totally consistent with the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, which was signed by Canada. Maybe we were the last in the world to do so, but it is our obligation to try to use that as a lens, to look at, when we develop new legislation. It is the intent of the act that all jurisdictions should do that.

I would urge the minister to consider that also. It's a powerful statement. I realize the UN declaration is not a law, but it certainly is a guide for us to follow.

A. Weaver: I rise to speak in support of the amendment. I will state again that it's unfortunate, with the timing, that I only saw it a few minutes ago. I recognize the impossible task that the government has now got before it, in terms of not being able to have the time to check the legal ramifications of this.

However, I do believe that this is a very positive amendment, that if it cannot pass today might at some point in the very near future be brought back for passing. It does recognize the generational human right that many believe water is, and it recognizes that the government's role here is really to hold water in the public trust. So again, I do support this amendment.

It's very unfortunate, speaking as a relatively new MLA here, to see amendments be put forward without having the time to reflect upon their consequences, without allowing government the time to reflect upon their consequences, even when I truly believe this is something that inherently should be within this bill.

We have a situation before us where, unfortunately, this amendment will fail, and it will fail likely not because of the government not recognizing its role, that water is in the public trust, not because the government doesn't recognize the role of aboriginal rights, but because, fundamentally, there's not enough time to consider the ramifications of this.

Again, I will be supporting this amendment. I would encourage government, if it cannot support the amendment now, to think about bringing us back a revised piece of legislation some time in the near future that will recognize the generational human rights that water is for all British Columbians.

[1705-1710]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

Sections 5 to 9 inclusive approved.

On section 10.

S. Chandra Herbert: Can the minister share the reasoning behind this section? Why are we allowing, from what my understanding is, short-term water permit approvals to be potentially given indefinitely?

[1715-1720]

Hon. M. Polak: We think this is appropriate, given there are uses that while they may need to extend beyond the limits of the initial granting, nevertheless, they may not be appropriate for a licence that would then last for 30 years.
[ Page 2798 ]

I also need to point out that there are transient operations, such as road dusting and other things, where the operators don't own an interest in the land and, therefore, wouldn't be able to apply for a licence.

I should also advise the member that with respect to a large number of permits across government that have time limits on them, it would not be uncommon for the applicant to ask for another permit right after one has expired. Again, it goes back to consideration of it. Any of these decisions…. Under the Water Sustainability Act, there are provisions governing objections to these and also the right to appeal the decisions on these applications.

S. Chandra Herbert: The short-term water use approval process — is that an equal standard in terms of the amount of information that's provided to the public, the application process? Is that an equal standard to a longer-term permit approval, or is one relatively easier to get than a longer-term approval?

Hon. M. Polak: For a short-term approval like this, there wouldn't be as extensive a process as there would be for a licence that's going to be granted for 30 years, simply because the relative length of time represents a relative difference in impact as well.

S. Chandra Herbert: I understand that in some cases, longer-term water approval permits have been issued, let's say in the gas sector. People understand how much water they need to use or have a rough idea. They apply for a longer-term permit, which is not 30 years.

Can the minister tell us…? This involves, I believe, shorter-term approvals, but what would be a minimum length for a longer-term permit? Surely they're not all 30 years.

[1725]

Hon. M. Polak: There is no minimum. They're generally much longer. In fact, probably the majority of them have no term, but they do have a review after 30 years.

S. Chandra Herbert: What would be the shortest long-term approval currently?

Hon. M. Polak: The shortest term we're aware of being granted is five years.

S. Chandra Herbert: Does this change normalize a practice the ministry has been doing for years? Why is this change necessary?

Hon. M. Polak: It doesn't change what is allowed under the current Water Act. It modernizes the language, but it won't change how those approvals are dealt with.

S. Chandra Herbert: What consultation was done on this? I ask this as West Coast Environmental Law has argued that this is a very disturbing change in the Water Sustainability Act about which there was no consultation at earlier stages. Was there any consultation around this specific section?

Hon. M. Polak: With all due respect to the individual that the member is referencing, this does not represent a change. It is consistent with the existing Water Act. It uses more modern language, but it is not a change. We did not conduct consultations with respect to specific sections.

S. Chandra Herbert: When a short-term water approval use is given — I understand they used to be for 12 months and then that has been extended to 24 months — what information is made public?

[1730]

Hon. M. Polak: With respect to the short-term-use approvals, once the approval has been made, that is public information; albeit, I will not pretend that it's easily accessible. It's not.

This goes back to some of the other conversations that we've had. It wouldn't be a simple thing to just go on a website and see a list. Part of that is the nature of them — that they are short term. You can imagine the volume of them and the administrative task that it would be for staff. Nevertheless, we're always attempting to create better opportunities for people to access information like that.

G. Holman: Just to follow up on my colleague's question, can the minister describe, concisely, the difference in the process between the short-term approval and the longer-term licence?

You've indicated, for example, that it doesn't appear that the application — if that's the right term — is really subject to any kind of public input. It's put on the website after a decision has been made. What are the key differences between short-term approvals and a licence application process?

[1735]

Hon. M. Polak: I won't go through this exhaustively because we're going to get there in section 12, where it outlines the procedures. But perhaps I can give you the sketch of it.

The comparison would be this. Obviously, a licence being long term, by its very nature, has a greater impact. You are more regularly going to…. Well, first of all, one of the more significant differences is that for those who would be impacted by the licence — those who are other licensees in the area, perhaps those who are landowners in the area — there would be notice provided.

In addition to that, any application that's made for a long-term licence is accessible by looking at the Internet.
[ Page 2799 ]
You can actually evaluate…. You can see the applications there.

With respect to a short-term-use approval, you're much more likely to see a breadth of discretion used by the statutory decision-maker because of the very nature of those approvals.

An example. You certainly wouldn't see as much impact from road dusting as you would from a short-term use that draws a whole lot of water and maybe impacts some surrounding areas. If it's a matter of a truck with its little sprayer and they're going to take the water and go down the road, you wouldn't elevate that to the level of scrutiny of many other uses.

So it's at the discretion of the statutory decision-maker. They would look at the significance of the impact, but we'll get more into that detail in section 12.

S. Chandra Herbert: The minister earlier said that it was difficult to find short-term water approvals on a website. You'd have to really know where to go, and they might be there or, I understand, might not be. I'm curious why that's the case.

Certainly, a short-term water approval of two years could draw quite a lot of water, could be a considerable impact — more so than road dusting or something like that, as the minister was mentioning. There are degrees here.

Why would we make it difficult to at least see, I guess, the larger projects, even in a short-term approval, as opposed to a smaller project — you know, a small amount of water to use in road dusting? Are there degrees in that, as the minister was saying there are degrees in her discretion?

[1740]

Hon. M. Polak: I confess that when I described our relative lack of technological capacity to display what we approve, the Oil and Gas Commission, which I'm sure the member would recognize grants the bulk of these, do have their database up, and you can actually see all of those.

For us, in terms of why, this is simply a matter of us still needing to evolve in terms of ease of access. While information may certainly be public, over time our idea of what public is has changed in 2014, and we're not quite there yet. We certainly don't have the kind of comprehensive database that the OGC has.

S. Chandra Herbert: I understand that there are some members who are very animated, including the member for Surrey-Panorama, in this discussion, really excited by what we have been discussing here. I must admit it has been difficult to hear the minister sometimes, because they are so excited about this legislation.

Just in terms of this question of a short-term approval, I understand there may be information provided on the Oil and Gas Commission's website, but there are other implications of a short-term approval, particularly if there is a lot of water being drawn.

I've heard from some who are concerned that landowner notification is not something that occurs and that if you are drawing a lot of water — whether it be from a river, a pond, a creek, a stream, wherever — that can have an impact. I've heard from a tourism business who, really, sold the business on the idea of being out in the wilderness, nobody around, and you would be able to get back to nature.

They were quite upset because they found, in their words anyways, that a short-term approval for water use right nearby them had been approved and they didn't know about it. Their guests were upset that you could hear the sound of the water removal, the trucking, etc., and it didn't do their business any good. In fact, in the end, they ended up selling the business. Whether that was the reason or not, I don't know.

Why would we not give notice to people around a short-term approval, particularly if it involved the removal of quite a bunch of water in a consistent way over 48 months? Just to clarify, I should say 24 months because, of course, it wouldn't be 48 months unless they'd been given more than one approval.

Hon. M. Polak: Not wanting to avoid answering the question but thinking of the 209 sections we still have to go through, this discussion fits better in sections 12 and 13, because it goes through the requirements for notice and things like that. What I will say, though, is that while there needs to be notification, nevertheless that does come down to the discretion of the statutory decision-maker.

[1745]

I wouldn't want to say that they are always perfect. None of us are. But what they try to do is gauge, again, the significance of the impact and make a judgment around who is likely to be impacted, whether they're licensees, surrounding landowners. They use their best judgment with respect to who is to be notified and what form that notification takes, etc.

S. Chandra Herbert: Just on the short-term approvals. I understand that the question of long term or short term and what the notification process is, is in, I guess, 10, 11, 12, 13 and may indeed crop up further down through the legislation. There are so many pages. What I'm trying to understand, really, is…. There's the possibility, of course, that you could apply for a short-term approval for quite a lot of water, then ask, "Well, actually, I want it again for another 24 months" and again for another 24 months, at which point, you get to six years of approval, which is longer than a long-term approval of five years, as we discussed earlier, as some people have applied for.

We wouldn't want somebody to go for a short-term
[ Page 2800 ]
approval as a backdoor way to get a long-term approval without the required notification, without the required due diligence with the community, etc. What stops a short-term approval from becoming just approval forever without the due diligence required in a longer-term permit?

Hon. M. Polak: Let me be clear, though, that when we receive an application, not only do we encourage the proponent to apply for a longer-term licence, if we think that's actually more appropriate, but — as we get to subsection 14(6) — we also provide the authority to, in fact, refuse a short-term-use approval if we believe that an authority under a licence would be a more appropriate place for the application to go.

In the bill there are new regulation-making powers that provide the authority for us to limit short-term-use approvals by water volume or by water purpose or by limiting the types of works.

S. Chandra Herbert: What kind of consultation is required for a short-term approval? Would the local First Nations in that area be consulted on this approval, as landowners might not be?

Hon. M. Polak: As with determining the extent of consultation in any government decision, it is directly related to the significance of the impact. Back to the road-dusting example: not only would we not likely consult, with respect to that, but anybody who's been in and around the northeast for any length of time understands the volume of consultation that would occur if you were to consult with respect to every application for road dusting. I would imagine even Treaty 8 wouldn't want us to do that. It really does depend on the significance of the impact, again, adjudicated by the statutory decision-maker. That's how that decision would be made.

S. Chandra Herbert: Just so the minister knows, I don't plan on asking this many questions on every section, so we're not going to be here for another 100 years until we finish this water act, as it's taken 100 years to get us here.

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: I hear: "No rush." The minister enjoys this.

[1750]

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: That's true. We have more future dates together.

I guess, in terms of the question of water use, of short-term use approvals, this of course has had the most controversy in the northeast. I know Treaty 8 has been very concerned. There have been a number of legal cases. In fact, I think there's a legal case right now. I'm not going to ask about the legal cases, as those are before the courts.

I understand the minister has said there may be regulations which help determine who gets a short-term approval further on in the act and that that is her duty or the statutory decision-maker's duty. The question would really be — how to put it? — when we look at approval of a short-term licence. How many current short-term water use licences have been renewed for more than the 24-month period — let's just say, to make it easier; I don't know if it will — in the gas sector?

Hon. M. Polak: We don't have that information here with us. You could find that out looking at the OGC website, for example. But I will put a caution there because there are some caveats with respect to the information.

In some cases…. Because you see the same proponent operating in one area, then next operating in another area, it is common that something looks like a renewal, a repeat approval, when actually it's the same company but they're operating in a different area. It just so happens that they are consecutive.

That information is not what we have here. We certainly could try and track it down for you, but given that it is on the OGC website, I'd encourage the member to take a look at that there.

S. Chandra Herbert: What kind of thinking would go into refusing a short-term water licence? What would the statutory decision-maker have to consider in saying, "We do not approve a short-term water approval," but instead saying: "You need a long-term licence."

I'm thinking that in the case of a company that is working in a number of areas, they may ask, as the minister suggested, for short-term approvals to do work in a variety of areas. Some would suggest that it would be better to do a long-term approval and that they then just use that water in a couple of different areas.

I'm just trying to understand: what would make one have to have a long-term approval permit versus a short-term approval?

[1755]

Hon. M. Polak: The statutory decision-maker has fairly broad discretion in terms of what to consider and in terms of the authority to refuse an application, including…. We covered this earlier, but I'll reference it again in section 14. The decision-maker can even refuse an application without consideration — that's the wording in the act — in a case where they think that the proposed use or the change would be more appropriately managed under a licence. But we will get into more detail on that in section 14.

With that, noting the hour, I would move that the committee rise, report progress and seek leave to sit again.
[ Page 2801 ]

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:56 p.m.

The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.

Committee of the Whole (Section B), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

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

Hon. M. Polak moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Madame Speaker: This House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 10 a.m. Monday morning.

The House adjourned at 5:57 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
NATURAL GAS DEVELOPMENT

The House in Committee of Supply (Section A); D. Plecas in the chair.

The committee met at 1:39 p.m.

On Vote 38: ministry operations, $20,249,000.

S. Simpson: I've got to believe somewhere in my books here there's something more than $20 million that's going to be passing hands here. I don't know. I could ask about the budget cut, but I can't believe it's that big.

[1340]

I'll start with a couple of questions here. I'm pleased to have a chance to do the Housing estimates. I want to go to the mandate letter that the minister received from the Premier. In that letter there are a couple of very specific objectives that are identified as we move forward. I want to ask the minister about those.

The first one is to "work with the B.C. Building Inspectors Association to determine and implement a new home inspector accreditation to ensure consumers buying a home can be assured that their inspector is qualified and trained to help them purchase the largest investment in their lives."

Could the minister tell us what the status of that objective is?

Hon. R. Coleman: I sure can. We've been working on this for a while. We basically have gone through a technical look at it, how we think it should be structured, sat down with the Consumer Protection Authority, looked at the Homeowners Protection Office as an option. We think we're settling in our options. We do expect to have the entire thing done before the end of this fiscal.

S. Simpson: Could the minister tell us a little bit about what this is going to encompass? What's the thinking about the change, about accreditation? Are people going to have to take some kind of certification, pass some kind of test in order to be certified properly? Maybe just flesh it out a little bit more as to what it is we're actually talking about here.

Hon. R. Coleman: We're looking at the education piece now. We expect that there will be ongoing accreditation required for the home inspectors. There will be some who will have qualifications that will be grandfathered as we come through this.

We basically have four organizations that actually have membership of home inspectors in their organizations. It's a pretty small sample for each one, because there are only about 500 or 600 of these in the entire province. We have sat down with Consumer Protection to look at how they would handle training, look for recommendations from them, look at recommendations from industry, and we have looked at recommendations as we've come through on discussions with the Homeowner Protection Office — where we would house this.

We feel very strongly that we'll get to an accreditation place where there will be some sorts of standards put in place, and then, as we grow, there will be additional training in the future as different things and inspections come up as we learn more about what else they need to inspect or learn.

It's looking more and more like we're going to have to make a decision on where to house it very soon, and then the other pieces will fall into place. But we think we've got the work in such a place that we can get it done in pretty short order.

S. Simpson: Is the expectation…? Somebody will come through. They'll take whatever training is required. They will be accredited by some body. I'm not sure who that would be. Maybe the minister will elaborate.

Then is there some process if somebody has a complaint against a home inspector? They don't believe that they got accurate information, or the job wasn't done well. Is there going to be some kind of process there for that person, potentially, if it's an extreme case, to have their accreditation lifted so that they can't do this work?

Hon. R. Coleman: The fundamentals put against us when we started this discussion, when I got this man-
[ Page 2802 ]
date letter were, first of all, that there had to be a level of acceptable training and qualifications for people to be home inspectors in British Columbia in the future.

[1345]

We identified about 15 elements — things like complaint structures, education, how you would deal with the licensing, and all of that sort of thing — as pieces that we have to have in place in order to do that. All of that would come as a recommendation through committee to cabinet at some point in time. That work is ongoing.

I also come from the fundamental position that whatever it is, it also has to have errors and omissions insurance to it. The professional qualification has to match up with somebody who's actually prepared to insure against errors and omissions.

When I was the Minister Responsible for Public Safety, we did the Consumer Protection Act. It really was designed to be able to assume something like this, where you could have a body of people that want to come into professional compliance, licensing and education — to be able to go to a consumer protection authority. The size and the scope is always a challenge here — how you would deal with the licensing and memberships and if you're going to have membership organizations or whatever.

So we're at the stage of saying: "Okay, is it memberships? Is it licensing? Which authority would it be at, and how would we combine all that to make it work?" I'm pretty satisfied we've come a long ways on this in a very short period of time. It really comes down to the elements of a functioning system, which we will have, the elements that would make sure that the consumer is protected.

The Consumer Protection Authority and the Homeowner Protection Office both have experience in licensing, with insurance in those types of facilities. We'll make that final decision of which place we would put it after having further discussions with both of those, now that we're at the point where we're saying: "Okay, we need to get to where we have the professional compliance."

There will be some element to determining people's qualifications that are already in the business so they don't get, frankly, disenfranchised because we just happen to be coming in with a new licensing system. Basically, the four organizations that are involved here have certain qualifications.

The challenge on top of that is to determine that our own testing would be the only measure of qualifications. I would think that from the perspective of being able to inspect a house, if you're already a construction engineer or an architect and you have certain qualifications, those equivalencies would have to be recognized in this as you came through it. Otherwise, you would just be duplicating training that wasn't necessary for some folks.

We'll get to that model, and I'm very comfortable we'll have it done this year.

S. Simpson: The other clear objective that was put in the mandate letter is to "successfully implement the 14 project partnerships with the city of Vancouver to build 1,500 new apartments of supportive housing." Maybe we'll just start with the minister giving us an overview of where that's at.

Hon. R. Coleman: There are 14 buildings on the 14 sites. Nine are completed. Four more are going to be completed this year. The Burrard project will actually be completed this month, and the 14th one, which is on Expo Boulevard, is still tied up and mired in processes at the city. We've actually had to do a lot of design stuff because of the city's processes, and that one is probably going to take another 18 months to two years.

S. Simpson: Just to confirm, nine are completed, and you've got people housed in them and living in them. That's the situation. Four this year, and you're expecting to have the doors open by…. Is it the end of the calendar year or the fiscal year?

Hon. R. Coleman: We anticipate those four will be open before the end of the calendar year.

[1350]

S. Simpson: I'm going to now move to some B.C. Housing questions. I'm going to get a little way through there, and then I know my colleague from Delta South had a couple of questions specific to her concerns. We'll go and allow her to do that and then get on with other business that she has in the precinct.

Could the minister tell us what the staffing complement is right now at B.C. Housing?

Hon. R. Coleman: It's about 650 full-time and part-time. Numbers would be down a little lower today than they will be in, let's say, another 30 days because we're starting to bring back our grounds crews progressively as the weather changes and the landscaping and maintenance has to be ramped up to a higher level.

S. Simpson: That staff complement — can the minister tell me, kind of, what of that is line workers, like building managers and folks doing all of that work on the crews, and then those people who are in senior administration?

Hon. R. Coleman: Basically, they're all front-line staff in one way or the other. About 300-plus people actually manage the 7,800 units we have under self-management at B.C. Housing. The member knows that there are 80,000 units of housing in B.C. that are affected by B.C. Housing. Only 7,800 are actually managed by B.C. Housing. The rest of them are through the non-profit sector where we have relationships on housing.

In addition to that, then we have development staff,
[ Page 2803 ]
asset management staff. Those are the people who would work regionally across the province with non-profits, who are basically managing profits under operating agreements and those sorts of things.

There is obviously a small IT department asset about the rest of it. Then our administration side runs at about 9 percent. It's pretty lean, basically, to operate that size of an operation.

S. Simpson: We'll leave that for the moment. I think I'm going to head into the service plan for '14-15 to '16-17. I'll just flag that. I think what I'm going to do at this point, if it's okay, is turn it over to the member for Delta South to allow her to get her questions in before she has other duties in the precinct.

V. Huntington: I'd like to thank the critic for that courtesy. It's much appreciated.

For some time now I've been working with the Floating Home Association, Pacific. I understand that most members, or all members, received a letter from that association this week.

The association, for some time, has been calling on the government to provide basic rental protections in B.C. to float home owners, specifically by including them in the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act. Currently there are no rental protections for float home owners who are not involved in a strata development. Most of the float home owners on the river are renting from private marina owners.

That lack of protection is in spite of the fact that they pay taxes the same way as other manufactured homes. The float home owners can often and have often experienced rent increases on the order of thousands of dollars a year, and they have absolutely no recourse in that regard.

[1355]

The association considers it a human rights issue and feels that what is needed is legal protection. I know I've briefly chatted with the minister in the past, and his advice has then been "Buyer beware." But I'd like to have a better understanding of why the minister seems to be averse to including floating home owners in the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act.

Hon. R. Coleman: I've been doing estimates on Housing since 2005. I was a critic for Housing from 1996 — I've been here a long time, eh? — to 2001, and I've never had this question. We received a letter yesterday from the member, and we will look into it. I don't have any answers for you today, but we will look into it.

I guess the interesting piece is whether it's a moorage or whether they're renting the water above a water lot. Just in my own sort of speculation on having the question and what's going through my mind, who owns the water and who owns the foreshore and what the structure of the deal is will all probably have to come into hand when it's a float home.

Like I say, I've never had the question before. And I've never have asked the question before. We will look into it for the member.

V. Huntington: I know there are going to be many of us very pleased with that answer — at least, the opportunity to examine the issue. For the minister and his staff's potential benefit, floating home owners who are renting the moorage are not the ones who are renting the water lot or leasing the water lot. It's the strata corporations, and there are a few of those along the river, or even in harbours. It's the strata corporations that rent the water lots.

In the case of marinas, it's the marina owner that's renting the water lot and renting the moorage to the float home owner. So it's quite a bit different than if you were in fact leasing the water lot. Then, there's no issue. Your issue is with the cost of the lease. We've certainly gone through that problem with the Port of Vancouver. Now that the water lot leases will be taken over by the province as of January 1, 2015, it should be a simple matter to get all of that issue straightened between the two ministries.

I look forward to seeing that answer and would like, then, to follow up with one other question that involves the extreme weather shelter in Ladner. I don't know if you need to change staff or not or whether I can proceed.

Hon. R. Coleman: I almost bought one of these water leases one time. But they were a strata lot. A strata lot lease, I'll have to find out whether it's actually under Residential Tenancy or Strata Property Act.

The strata lot that I was looking at, at one time was a strata lot where you actually owned the title to the strata lot under the float home. I'm familiar with ones where the strata lot actually extends to the water from land and they built garages on the land and some other facilities which they also use. So it was like a combined operation.

Leases are not rentals. They usually have leases and terms, so they wouldn't fall under the Residential Tendency unless they're a month-to-month rental. That's why I made the comment about whether they were moorage or whatever the case may be, because that can affect it as well.

It is an interesting question, and I will look into it. I'll get back to you in a second here with the extreme weather thing in Delta.

V. Huntington: Do you want me to ask the brief question about the extreme weather, or do you need…?

Hon. R. Coleman: Sure, you can ask.

V. Huntington: Okay. Thank you very much.

The minister may or may not know that the extreme
[ Page 2804 ]
weather shelter in Delta is managed out of the United Church in Ladner. In its infancy it was being supported, to some degree, by B.C. Housing. In its, I think, second year B.C. Housing advised that it would no longer be supporting this shelter, that it would require individuals using that shelter to use the one in Surrey and that they would pay for the taxi.

I can assure the minister and his officials that the homeless in Ladner are not really interested in taking that long taxi drive up to Surrey. Any support that the ministry could give — even in part, to the United Church extreme weather shelter — would be deeply appreciated.

[1400]

They have decided that it is part of their mission and that they will be carrying on the shelter in spite of the lack of provincial support. That doesn't mean it's easy for them. It doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

I think the issue was that there weren't enough people to make it an efficient use of provincial money. That may be the case, but surely there must be a way of making a bit of an exception.

Hon. R. Coleman: Since the extreme weather shelter program was shut down as of the end of March for this year, we'll go back to the Delta United Church and see what their numbers were for this year. It's strictly a case of you can't open a shelter for one or two people. If you do that for one or two people, the costs are just extraordinary. What we try to do with our shelter program is not create a situation that continues on an issue within a community. Our issue is to try — if there is a small number of people — to get an outreach worker to meet with them, sit down and see if we can find them some more permanent place to live.

Some of the challenges, of course, on the Lower Mainland are that there are people we've offered not just shelter but permanent residence to. Because there is a very small amount of social housing in the Ladner area, the offers would more than likely be in Surrey for where they could get permanent housing. If they turn that down, we're left in a bit of a challenge. We'll touch base with the Delta United Church and just see what their numbers were and see if there's anything there that's worthwhile looking at.

V. Huntington: Thank you to the minister. It is a numbers issue, and that's clear. If the same principles are applied now as they were previously, there won't be any assistance. Perhaps the ministry could wrack its brains to see if there was some another program that might just give them a bit of a lift as they proceed on their own mission.

Hon. R. Coleman: Basically, what we had was a nine-bed at the church in Ladner. It was actually only occupied at a rate of less than 2 percent. I mean, it really comes down to: why would you open nine beds when you have really low numbers like that? That's probably why they would have looked at that. It was occupied less than 2 percent, and that's probably why the decision was made going into the last winter with regards to the beds. We'll have a visit with them and see what it's like.

S. Simpson: We're going to move now, as I said, to the service plan for B.C. Housing. I'm going to start on page 6 of the service plan, the government letter of expectations to the commission. There's a series of them, and I'm going to go through them based on what looks like the strategic priorities — how they were registered.

The first of those priorities was to support a strong non-profit housing sector by taking steps to strengthen relationships and build capacity. Then there's a series of four key initiatives or actions that are related to that. I'd like to walk through those a bit.

[1405]

The first is to transfer selected public housing stock to the non-profit housing sector where appropriate. I know I've seen that elsewhere in some of the literature and reports. Could the minister tell us what the expectation is for that transfer and how that would work in terms of: is it title? Is it management responsibility? What are we talking about here?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I want to say this. In spite of the recent media around the Portland Hotel Society and stuff in British Columbia, we actually have a very good non-profit sector that's involved in managing and operating housing in B.C. Some of them are very mature operators. They have told us for a long time that they felt long term they would like to be in a position not just to be in a long-term lease but to actually control their titles. Future redevelopments and changes of needs of their clients could be met because they would have the flexibility to do stuff like that. We agree with them.

What we've done is we've gone to some of our really strong, very successful non-profits who have properties and who have said to us they would have an interest in doing that. We said: "Why don't we try something different with the non-profit sector and see if they want to do this?" The interest is extremely high, on these particular properties, from the non-profits. The organizations that run them are very financially solid, and they believe that the leveraging ability would be able to make them expand their properties over time and add even more services to their clients.

We feel that it's a good move. They basically have earned their stripes, for lack of a better description, as non-profit managers. Part of the housing strategy, which we came out with back in 2006, also talked about the strengthening of the non-profit sector, opportunities for ownership and those sorts of things. This is just an extension of that.
[ Page 2805 ]

S. Simpson: I appreciate that. I'm kind of handling this file for the moment, but I know that in previous years when I've had the opportunity to have this file and have discussions with the minister and when I talked to those organizations, there was a time there when it seemed that the approach of government, of the commission at that time was to hold the properties and do management agreements with the organizations that would come in and manage those.

I know at that time the conversations that they had with me were similar to what the minister is expressing now. They saw better opportunities, obviously, if they held title — working with the Non-Profit Housing Association and others, the potential to be able to do some things with those assets that would allow them to improve or enhance services, much in the way that the minister has talked about.

I'm pretty supportive of this idea of that. Just to be clear, what is the sense or the plan here moving out? Is there an objective to transfer X amount of units over — again, after the minister has satisfied himself and B.C. Housing have satisfied themselves that the operators are ready to take on ownership and the responsibilities of title and all that that might mean? Is there a sense of what we're talking about in terms of transfer of projects or units, and over what period of time?

[1410]

Hon. R. Coleman: I can't tell the member the sites today, because we just started the sensitive discussions in and around them with regards to the particular non-profits. They wouldn't want the rest of people to know that we might be negotiating with them. Right now we're finalizing the sites and the timelines at the same time as we're looking at the capacity of any organization we would want to do this with. Obviously, this is a significant change for them.

It isn't about selling. There are a lot of properties that we hold leases on. So we're into long…. Most of our properties since about 1990 — probably as way back as 1989 or '88 — are 60-year lease relationships with operating agreements with non-profits. The titles would be held, but then the mortgages would be in the names of the societies because the mortgages are tied to the 60-year lease.

The change here is that they would actually be able to mortgage them themselves, do their own planning and what have you. But we do believe they have to also mature to such a level management-wise that they could do this.

We've identified some specific organizations that we think could do this on some good properties where they would have the ability to grow, and we're going to sit down with those organizations over the next number of months. We think this will probably take anywhere between two and four years to complete those groups, to get them through, finance them, make sure their capacity is there as we make this transition on those sites.

At the same time as we're doing that, obviously, we're doing a number of other things — renovating a bunch of SROs, building some other new stuff somewhere else in the province, still looking at our real estate portfolio and that sort of thing. We think it's a really smart thing to do and so do most of the organizations that we've talked to. But it's not a case of, for instance, saying that we're going to sell the Marble Arch, which is in Vancouver and which we're just renovating. It's really not a site that lends itself to future opportunities as much as…. And the clientele is different.

It's where we have the stability of the whole package that we will look at this. It's been welcomed, from the non-profit sector, that we're doing it, from the feedback I've got. I think it's just part of making sure we have a diverse portfolio, frankly.

S. Simpson: It seems to me that there are a couple of steps to this. And the minister can correct me if he has a different view. The first one, of course, is to develop the framework for how this is going to happen and how it's going be done and then to identify the individual operators who may be potential. The minister said the people that the ministry has had a good experience with and has confidence in might be the people to take those first projects on or to be where you start to actually implement a new policy.

The first step, though, I guess, is to develop a framework for how this is going to work that everybody can sign on to. Can the minister tell me: is that process going on? Who's in those discussions with the commission? I'm presuming that B.C. Housing is leading the discussion on behalf of the ministry on this. Who is the partner on the community or the non-profit side who's helping to develop and frame this? Is it the Non-Profit Housing Association?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, it will be a public process when we decide what the sites are. We know that there's only a limited number of groups who actually have the sophistication, the professionalism and the ability to take on proposals on these sites. They're large, complicated properties.

[1415]

Yes, we have had some discussions and consultation with the Non-Profit Housing Association.

S. Simpson: I should have asked this question earlier just to clarify what properties we're talking about. We know there are about 70,000-odd units out there handled by non-profits today — some of them in management agreements and I guess a whole array of different kinds of agreements. Then there are 7,800 units that are directly managed and administered by B.C. Housing.

Are we talking about how those 70,000 units or the projects that would be a part of that, which might then
[ Page 2806 ]
be put up to be moved from government ownership to title to somebody else…? Are those the projects we're talking about? Or are we talking the 7,800 units and the potential transfer of those projects?

Hon. R. Coleman: There are two pieces to this. There are 7,800 units that are managed by B.C. Housing. We think there are some sites that would be well managed by the non-profit sector.

On the flip side, the member mentioned leased sites. We have a lot of leased sites, as well, as you know. We're also going through that portfolio to look at what could be transferred to those societies that are in long-term leases with us.

Again, it will be measured on their ability to perform and an analysis of their history and management and that sort of thing so that if we do transfer them, they will then have that ability. They're pretty excited about the opportunity, but it takes a lot more work than I think people would think it does. It's not just a matter of putting up a for-sale sign, because we're really identifying the best outcomes for a whole bunch of properties. When you have as many as 60,000 or 70,000 units, you sort of have to take a lot of analysis time.

We're trying to pick off some that we think can be done early in the next two to three years as well as some of the sites that have natural relationships with societies in similar neighbourhoods where we might have them, where the balance would be better for the outcome of the client. Those are also being looked at now.

There hasn't been a final decision made on any of the sites. It's just that this is part of the direction within the service plan that we're going to try and pursue. Like I say, it's going to take us two to three or in some cases maybe even four years.

S. Simpson: Then what I think I heard the minister say…. My sense is you've got these 70,000-odd units out there, which are currently being managed in some fashion by non-profits. In those cases where you have a non-profit operator who has the capacity and the maturity and maybe has a few hundred units or a thousand units that they're operating out there — leased units…. I can see where it might be a discussion with them about whether they are interested in taking on a different kind of responsibility with title and everything that comes with that and doing that deal with somebody who's already got a track record on a project or a number of developments.

Then there's the case of, I guess, those other developments where you might be looking at pulling developments away because you're not sure about that operator, but you want to talk about whether that development goes up in some bid process. Maybe somebody else wants to bid on it.

Then the 7,800 units, which I'm assuming are housing projects or deemed to be housing projects in our communities across the province, some of the specialized housing that may be directly administered by B.C. Housing….

[1420]

Those projects — is the thinking there that at some point there's some public process around a notion of tendering out? I'm going to pick one off the top of my head that's in my constituency, Skeena Terrace. I don't know whether it would be on the list or not, but I'll just pick it for the purposes of discussion. Putting that project on the market for a non-profit operator — not a commercial market, but for a non-profit operator…. Is that the thinking? I understand it's not well refined, but this is a very dramatic move, particularly around those units, the 7,800. Is that what the thinking is at this point?

Hon. R. Coleman: The lease sites basically operate today like they own, right? They have a 60-year lease. They feel they own the property, own the site. The land title is vested with the Provincial Rental Housing Corporation, which is how we hold our land. Those guys, some of them, will be at a level where they might be interested in having the transfer of the title and want to have control of their future destiny.

That's one over here. That one doesn't require a public process, because we know the operator. We've had a long relationship with them. They're already in an operating agreement. So if they wanted the title, it would change virtually nothing on an operational side. We would still be funding the subsidy for the tenant, or whatever the case may be, on those projects.

On anything that might come out of our 7,800 units — those would have to go to a public process. It wouldn't be a case where we'll go pick XYZ society for a particular project like what the member mentioned in his riding, which frankly, I don't have on a list. We're still working that piece.

That would be where you'd say okay, if there are four or five very good non-profits that have an interest in that particular site and taking over the management and ownership of it, we would consider proposals from them in a public process. That will take some time to develop, to put together with regards to any of those sites, but we felt that it's important to look at the portfolio from that perspective.

Then there will be a lot of properties, because they're difficult properties with difficult clients and are tough to manage, that will always have to stay in the hands of government or in a lease arrangement with the government, simply because the non-profit would not be interested in having that relationship.

Basically what it is, is you're taking your portfolio and saying: "Let's talk to all our partners. Let's diversify our portfolio for long-term stability, like we should be doing on a regular basis; make some decisions around a few specific properties to see if this model can work; go out
[ Page 2807 ]
and try the model; analyze the model; and determine whether we'd want to do any more of it."

S. Simpson: I'm going to reference, to kind of get a sense of what the thinking of government is around this initiative now, the Little Mountain project. We'll get into some of that discussion about the specifics. Little Mountain was a first of its kind in some ways. It was the first time that the government made the decision it was going to take what was an older public housing project, put it on the market, sell it into the private market in return for some capital and some social housing units back. We'll get into a discussion later about how well that is going, or not.

That was the approach. I recall the minister in previous estimates, when we had the chance to speak, saying that this one was being done and that there may be a look at some other public housing developments out there, housing developments that would be appropriate for a similar approach. And now this approach, which is somewhat different.

Could the minister comment a little bit about this? Is a matter of saying we're adding this one to the toolbox, and the Little Mountain model is still a model that might be used elsewhere; or saying that we're going to tweak that model a little bit, that we're looking at this as another approach to get at that which is somewhat different, where you're going to non-profit operators versus commercial purchasers or developers that purchase the properties? Just a sense of whether this is a change of thinking.

Hon. R. Coleman: It's just another tool in the toolbox. We will still look at properties that we think have upside for redevelopment that could leverage dollars back into B.C. Housing like Little Mountain did. Little Mountain basically has provided, out of the money that came out of Little Mountain, effectively about 2,000 units across British Columbia.

[1425]

The only way we would have done the first 12 sites in Vancouver is if we had the ability to go to Treasury Board and leverage that property back against doing more. So we replaced 224 units, added a few extras for First Nations on that site. That's being built now. Then we also were able to take what would be the money out of that particular site and reinvest it, so diversified across Vancouver now.

There are 14 sites that we did with the city of Vancouver that would not be done today if it wasn't for Little Mountain. There would not have been a way to go in and finance and leverage something, to be able to do that within government. We have some sites….

I don't think any site is as big as Little Mountain, or probably as strategically located at a value for real estate at this stage. But we look at the portfolio. Little Mountain wasn't the first site to be redeveloped and, actually, in the middle of the mix of the market and what have you. It's just that it was in a higher-profile location, I think, for some people. That's why, particularly in the member's area of British Columbia, being from Vancouver, you'd be more highly aware of it, but you might not be aware of one where we did something else in the rest of the province.

We just think that we should have as many options as possible. We do believe we have some properties that in the medium and long term might bring some benefit to the portfolio — or to the individuals who live there — for a redevelopment or upgrade. We think that those could easily be put into the sophisticated non-profit's hands, that they could do them if they're operating them today and look at their opportunities.

At the same time, we'll still look at our portfolio from our other units to make sure that we have done some things to make sure that we use and leverage our portfolio to the maximum benefit for what we started this strategy out on. The housing strategy was started out, as the member will remember, to pursue housing for people with mental illness, addiction and at risk of homelessness.

We've actually redeveloped some other public housing sites — Humboldt in Victoria, Linden Tree Place in Vancouver, Harbour View in Prince Rupert. We've have done that successfully as well. You need to have the tools to be able to look at your portfolio, and when you have a portfolio as diverse as this, you need the tools and the thinking around it to be visionary enough that you can actually apply tools to each and every property as you see an opportunity or if you're trying to look at a different clientele.

We will see, in our housing portfolio, the demographics change over the next number of years. In the 1980s we were building seniors housing. In late 1980s into the '90s and through we were building some family housing.

Now, because of rent assistance and other programs that we've developed as far as trying to be, I guess you could say, innovative and because we wanted to focus some money on homelessness, mental illness and addictions, which are the buildings we built in Vancouver and the buildings we bought across British Columbia, the portfolio has to be able to be flexible to adjust to what the demands are for the people we're trying to help the most.

S. Simpson: We'll get into a little bit more discussion about some of the specific details of Little Mountain a little bit down the road.

Getting back to the letter of expectations in that area, one of the other areas that's identified under that support for a strong non-profit sector is to "support non-profit housing providers to carry out portfolio/capital planning and energy management." Could the minister speak a little bit about what that support looks like and what kind of support is being provided by government to those providers?
[ Page 2808 ]

Hon. R. Coleman: We have a partnership with B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association on this. We actually have funded an energy manager for B.C. Non-Profit to work with non-profit organizations. We have arrangements and deals with Fortis and Hydro with regards to energy upgrades — how we can go in and look at our portfolio and improve their energy management, and what have you.

[1430]

We also have an asset manager that we brought on board to basically be the person that has the experience and the ability to look at a building — look at its needs for the long-term sustainability of the building, which is always pretty critical; look at its windows, its doors, its roof, its structure; look at whether it would be the best thing for five years, ten years or 15 years from now, when you're planning to make sure that that building is sustainable and healthy. We do all of that with the non-profits.

S. Simpson: With that, does that mean…? I run a non-profit housing society, and I've got a development that's 20 years old or so. We're trying to figure out how to deal with those challenges. Then can I contact B.C. Housing or the appropriate officials and say: "I need some help here. Can you send your guys in that know how to do this stuff and do some assessment or audit of my building so that I can plan forward as to what I need to do to get this right?" Is that the kind of service, or does it get provided in some different fashion?

Hon. R. Coleman: It's a bit more than what the member describes. If it was a 20-year-old building in British Columbia today, under its operating agreement, it would have been funded with a capital reserve in its annual budget. It builds funds into it for things like roof, replacement of fridges and what have you.

The reason we have an asset manager who works for B.C. Non-Profit and is paid for by B.C. Housing to work with the non-profits is to look at those buildings and say: "All right. We know where we're at today. What's the long-term plan for the building? Let's develop it with you." They work with the non-profits to make sure we're doing a refresh on our buildings on a regular basis.

One of the challenges is to make sure the societies can know where to access and get the information. We'll go out and work with them. We also have staff that actually meet with our non-profits on a regular basis, on a regional basis, that work for us, who actually look at their budgets, look at their buildings with them, identify concerns and bring it back in as far as what we can do or approve with regards to some dollars that need to be spent with regards to any particular building or asset.

It's a pretty fluid and very successful model, I think. When I was in the non-profit sector myself, I found it to be pretty workable. We didn't have an asset manager back then, but we certainly had a B.C. Housing representative that would come by on a regular basis, meet with the board, go over the issues in and around the complex, look at the budgets with us, review audited financial statements and those sorts of things so that we'd have the stability in the operation we had.

It's all part of that ongoing relationship to keep things focused, but at the same time, to manage the asset, which is of interest to both us and the non-profit. Because if the asset is run down, it's not great for our tenants and residents. There are personal outcomes. It's not great for the non-profits with regards to their reputation in the community, nor is it great for the reputation of our form of housing in the community if we ever want to do more.

It really is a case of B.C. Non-Profit, with people we pay for to be with them, to work with non-profits, plus our… I'm going to tell you, we have phenomenal staff in the regions around the province that do this work for us and watch the management of non-profits.

I've sat in federal-provincial meetings on a regular basis where ministers from across the country just keep saying: "How do you guys do this so well?" I mean, we really are the leading-edge organization in housing in this country with regards to non-profit, homelessness, mental health and addictions. That's because our guys are very focused on all of these things coming together to make sure they run properly.

S. Simpson: Would part of that support be …? I know the non-profit housing sector, much like the co-ops…. I know co-ops are separate from the provincial government, and they have their issues, some of which the province is going to have to pay attention to, whether they like it or not.

The non-profits. Part of the discussion has been…. I know that I've had these discussions with people in the sector, when they talk about the portfolio and all the projects, particularly with the initiatives that the minister is outlining here around moving some title over.

They've talked about innovative ways that they may be able to pool assets in some ways and be able to lever that to be supportive of both provincial and federal dollars, which have some limit, and be able to bring other assets to the table to lever to potentially produce new housing, maybe, through new models. If they use asset-pooling of their assets they might be able to do some of that.

[1435]

The question I have is: is there support here in this to help B.C. Non-Profit and some of those folks in working through the detail and the financials of what that kind of thing might look like, to give them options or to help them develop the options as they consider that possibility?

Hon. R. Coleman: Maybe this will help the member. There are so many diversified pieces to a portfolio. There are so many things we do innovatively, but I'll just give
[ Page 2809 ]
you one example — the Richmond Lions. We worked with the municipality and the Lions and Polygon, who is the private sector partner. We had a 150-unit run-down building. We came in with what we call project development funding.

If we have a society that wants to do something — sometimes it's even from scratch — we'll give initial project development funding to sort of suss out the viability of a project. As they do that in relationship with us, we provide them with our asset manager and those staff as well.

What we'll end up with in Richmond now…. In exchange for the 150 run-down units, we end up with 300 brand-new social housing units, plus some market condos which also will go into the mix to help pay the bill on some of the pieces of it. We get that because we're able to make that partnership work, because a non-profit came to us and said: "We think we need to do something here."

We have projects like that all over B.C., where we have buildings that are at their life span. A society comes to us and says: "We'd like to do something different." Oftentimes they come to us — we're not even involved in their sites because they have been long paid off, old CMHC sites — and say: "We really don't want to just sell the property, but our board is getting old, and we really need to do something with this thing."

We'll sit down and work out a plan. Then they can go out, do a proposal, see if they can attract partners, and we will work with them on it. The other benefit we have at B.C. Housing is we're also in a position to do construction financing, so we can actually save them a lot of money on things like CMHC fees and stuff. We're not as expensive to deal with when we do the construction financing because we have skin in the game, where we're positioned on the financing to protect their asset because we would be in, probably, first position on the social housing units. So we would be able to protect the asset, and that allows us to leverage differently and bring real value to the table for our partners.

We do a lot of innovative things like that. That's one example. What we've been talking about for the last 45 minutes or so is about the tools in that tool chest that allow us to take a look at a project and not be stuck in one narrow box that says: "This is the only way you can deliver a form of supportive or social housing as something for people at risk in B.C." You need to be able to build partnerships.

If we hadn't built partnerships starting in 2005-2006, there would still be 6,500 to 7,000 homeless people in B.C. But because we built partnerships, we said to municipalities: "Give us the land, forgive taxes and make a deal with us. We'll bring capital. We'll finance the projects. We will get them done. We'll find the societies that can run them" — all of those things. That's the only way you ever make an innovative housing strategy work.

What happened decades ago, particularly, was we really got into narrow focus. We said, "One form of client in one space in large projects only," rather than saying that we should have a diversified project with people from different walks of life so we diversify the community and have better outcomes for everybody.

We've learned those lessons over the years, and certainly, in the last decade or so we've all learned and come through how we have delivered housing and how we can be partners in different ways to actually get the same outcomes or better outcomes. That's what this is. This is really the ability to recognize we've got some people who are ready to take the next step to provide services to their clients, and we need to be partners with them and help them get there.

[1440]

S. Simpson: One of the other pieces it lays out in the priorities…. We've discussed this before, and I know it's something that the minister has been keenly involved in. It's to work with sector partners to carry out the research and develop strategies to respond to the expiry of operating agreements.

I believe I read some of the transcript from the July estimates. I think at that point the minister identified about 943 units or so that have kind of come through that process to date — or in this last year or so.

Can the minister give a bit of an update on where that conversation's going and what we're looking at in the next year or two in terms of numbers of units that are going to be affected by these expiring operating agreements?

Hon. R. Coleman: He's correct. We did have this discussion last year. I talked about the number of non-profit agreements that would expire over a period of time. There are approximately 700 non-profit housing societies in B.C. operating roughly 60,000 units and 2,000 buildings across B.C. About two-thirds of the societies — so about 66 percent of them — only operate one building. They actually have one project only. The other third actually operates some multiple buildings.

Over the next four years we estimate that about 3,000 to 4,000 housing units will have their operating agreements expire. By 2030 about 71 percent of agreements will have expired. The period where the most agreements will be expired will be between 2024-25 and '29-30, when agreements for 11,000 units of housing will expire.

That's why we're being proactive with creative opportunities with these projects. In some cases when they expire, the societies will actually be in a position where the rents will cover and they will just continue on without an operating agreement. We identify those strengths and weaknesses there.

We also have committed that when each agreement expires, we will continue to fund the provincial portion of any operating agreement. So we would renew the agreement and continue to fund with the operating agreement.

The federal government has not made a long-term
[ Page 2810 ]
commitment to the operating agreements as they expire. They have, however, extended some of the funding for a few more years that we were concerned about last year. The reality is that over the next 22 years about $136 million per year in federal subsidies will expire in agreements throughout the province of B.C.

Should the federal government not provide funding for those, that's where we have to be innovative and make sure we're leveraging the properties to be able to handle that as we come through, so we can continue to provide the housing and capitalize this in such a way that we can keep the cost down and keep them sustainable with our subsidy.

It's a significantly big job to do. Most operating agreements actually expire when the mortgages are paid off. They're now debt-free properties, which gives them the ability to leverage and do things to be able to still maintain their stock or redo their stock in a way that makes sense. That's why the work we're doing with the development consultants we've brought in to B.C. Housing and over to the B.C. non-profits….

[1445]

In some situations some societies may actually report the revenues are not covering the operating costs. So when the mortgage is paid off…. This is a situation where building maintenance has been deferred and they'll need significant investment to cover repairs, and that's when we get into the analysis of the property. Do we do the windows? Do we do this, or do we actually redevelop the site and get a better long-term plan for this particular site and building?

Each one of these is…. I had a former boss who used to say: "One size doesn't fit all across British Columbia." One size doesn't fit all in housing. That's why we're trying to be as innovative as possible and look at all the options possible to find solutions for each property as they come through this particular exercise that we're going to go through. The work that's being done now is what will put us in a really good position when the majority start to expire in about ten years from now.

S. Simpson: I know the minister has been working on this particular file for quite a while — since it became evident that this was a real issue and a significant one that was not easy to solve, particularly if the federal government chooses not to come to the table in some way to be engaged in some extension of these agreements or some participation in a new operating agreement formula.

Obviously, the biggest concern in the sector is…. It's a combination of concern about those agreements expiring, the subsidies that expire with them and what an aging stock is. I know that there's a lot of attention being paid to that. There's a lot of the stock that's affected by this, and that's getting pretty old now. It's been around for a while — not all of it, but a lot of it is.

And the cost that it's going to take…. It's going to increase costs for upkeep and maintenance and upgrades and paying for new roofs and new elevators, if you need new elevators, and all of those things that are involved — where that money comes from after these agreements expire.

Is it the objective of the government, long term, to protect those subsidized units that exist there today that are providing, often for people who are particularly low income and vulnerable…? Is it the objective to try to protect those units for the residents or residents of a similar circumstance into the future?

Hon. R. Coleman: Of course, it's our goal to protect the units or the numbers of units, but my experience in this housing portfolio — and having been in the industry for many years before that — is that you can't narrowly just say, "I'm protecting this type of unit," because the demographics are going to change.

So today in British Columbia we have less families, basically, that…. We will see the numbers go down on the family side and increase on the seniors side. We will see a change in the type of services that are required for people that need to age in place as we deal with more dementia and those sorts of things as part of the people that are at risk.

Our goal is to protect the units, but one of the interesting discussions that came out of our experience of Little Mountain is that people said: "Protect the units, or make them all social housing." We ended up taking 224 units and putting them right back where they were in a different form of a building and then taking enough money out to do 2,000 more units elsewhere and drive an agenda to actually take care of people with mental illness and addictions.

As you look at this portfolio, as agreements come to pressure and expiry, that's how you're going to have to look at the portfolio. Some will be sustainable. Some will be able to be sustainable on our subsidies. Others will be in need of…. As the member says, some of them are getting pretty old, so it might be the best thing for that particular site to say: "Let's relocate and build new and see how we can do a mix on the site to make that work." And you can do that because we have the experience with that.

[1450]

Let's not forget: the major job, on top of everything else, for me as minister is to continue to remind the federal government that I want them to continue their funding. Obviously, when you started to hit the wall in the last era, ten years from now that's a significant pressure that we put on governments in the future with regards to that. The fortunate thing is that we have time to do the type of planning, redevelopment thinking and those sorts of things in advance of that today so that we're on top of it, versus saying: "Let's just sit back and hope all the subsidies are extended." If they're not and we don't do our work today, we'll have failed that housing stock completely.
[ Page 2811 ]

It's really important that we build this diversified approach to this thing and do it in such a way that we protect the people who need the units, protect the most vulnerable and continue to build programs, as well, that are actually going to help other people — like the rent assistance program, where we have almost 10,000 families on that, and SAFER, which is good for seniors within the marketplace.

Frankly, we've got to continue to build some of the social understanding by communities that really don't get the fact that they have people who are vulnerable in their communities and don't support projects that can help them fix homelessness and deal with mental health and addictions. They're afraid, quite frankly, to do that and yet will complain daily about the fact that there are folks there that they have problems with. I think it's important that we recognize that as we go forward.

[The bells were rung.]

Hon. R. Coleman: I assume we're going to vote.

The Chair: This House will stand recessed for ten minutes.

The committee recessed from 2:51 p.m. to 3:07 p.m.

[D. Plecas in the chair.]

S. Simpson: I'm going to move to one of the other key items in the letter of expectation.

The expectation was to "work with the Ministry Responsible for Housing to make strategic shifts in the way services are delivered to low- and moderate-income households that build on successes, assess gaps in the current system and address where communities and citizens need further support." Just in a couple of those areas, one of the first bullets there, under that area, is to "implement refreshed Housing Matters B.C. policy directions through new and enhanced initiatives."

Could the minister tell us a little bit about what those refreshed, new and enhanced initiatives under the Housing Matters B.C. policy are?

Hon. R. Coleman: We've released the updated strategy, as the member knows, and we're doing some improvements there. We are enhancing what we're doing and then trying to do some other things that are innovative. Some of the innovative things we've been talking about for the last hour or so, as part of the enhanced strategy with regard to things.

[1510]

Basically, it contains three shifts. A greater emphasis on partnerships — we're already very good at this but more emphasis. More efficient services for renters, landlords and strata owners — we actually passed a piece of legislation yesterday that's part of that. More flexible and balanced construction regulation — I don't know if we're going to get into that today or not.

The updated strategy also included enhancing a rental assistance housing program that would allow people to choose where they live, continuing our focus on the most vulnerable, building new social housing where applicable, transferring some of the social housing stock to the non-profit sectors as part of one of the shifts that we've been talking about, the uniform building code to increase consistency, and streamlining processes for landlords and tenants in development of a cost-effective dispute resolution for strata owners. All of those things are underway.

We're also working on improvements to RAP, which is the rental assistance program, and SAFER. We take a look on a regular basis relative to income and their outcomes. Obviously, the asset transfer piece that I mentioned…. We're about to become the first jurisdiction in Canada to do something extremely innovative and, I think, quite gutsy, because we've been able to find how we could do it financially. We've identified three of the major things that affect people that are entering the cycle of homelessness, or three particular groups of people.

One is children leaving care who have nowhere to go and end up on the streets; also, people who are in hospitals and leaving hospital and have nowhere to go and end up on our streets; and people leaving jails after incarceration. We are going to do a homelessness prevention rent supplement program where we will actually target those folks before they leave, wherever their care is and their relationship, to try and provide them with assistance so that they can be housed without having to go into the cycle of homelessness.

S. Simpson: Many of those things, as the minister said, we've talked about, and a number of the other ones we'll talk about as we move along.

One of the other key areas here is an enhanced rental assistance program. I know the minister is an enthusiastic supporter of that as an approach to be used to support families and others who need some help. I'm assuming that a portion of the IAH agreement dollars are going to support enhancing that as well. Could the minister talk a little bit about what his expectations are in enhancing that over and above the 9,000 or 10,000 families that I think he said earlier are receiving services now — as to what that might be?

Hon. R. Coleman: The member is right about one thing: I am an enthusiastic believer in the rent assistance program. Mind you, considering I was the minister that brought it in, I suppose I should be an enthusiastic supporter of it. But I do believe it's one of the very important things we've done. We could never have built 26,000 units of housing in the period of time of the last five years to help people who needed it the most — where we could do it in the marketplace.
[ Page 2812 ]

You take, for instance…. What will we do next? Well, the rental assistance program is for families earning less than $35,000 a year, with cash assistance to help with their monthly rental payments in the private market. We're going out now. We do a regular assessment. One of the things is to look at, more than anything else, whether there are appropriate rent levels being established with regard to different regions of the province, because some of the marketplaces are changing.

Beginning in 2014-15, we're going to look at the maximum rent levels, as a result of that research, for the rental assistance program to be expanded so that we can make sure we're staying with the market and moving the ability to have the rent levels for RAP to be expanded. We will also, as we go through that, look at whether our income levels are appropriate, which we always do. The same thing will be done for SAFER.

In December 2013 the rent assistance breakdown by region was Fraser region, which had 4,286 people on rent assistance; the Interior region, 13,058; the northern region, 282; Vancouver coastal region, 2,329; and Vancouver Island region, 1,785.

[1515]

Given some of the pressures we see coming in some housing areas in the north, one of the things we've identified is that we'll also want to increase our awareness of the program in the north because of the numbers that are there. I think that's important to do on a regular basis. It's amazing that even after a program has been in place since 2006, you have people — even in some constituency offices — who don't actually advise people when they come through and they're having difficulty with rent versus income that they can apply for RAP and help them do it. It's always an ongoing education process for that.

Those are a couple of them. In addition to that, we have the $300 million federal-provincial contributions under the investment in affordable housing that we've done recently, which will continue. All of these things are in the bundle of innovation.

S. Simpson: Could the minister tell us: what's the budget for rental assistance at this time? Is the minister anticipating that going up as we get into the IAH program and resources there?

Hon. R. Coleman: This year we're budgeted, in 2013, to expend approximately $53 million in rent assistance programs. As we come through the year, we'll assess what the next fiscal year will look like. But we basically have to project that out ahead of time.

When the program started, the first few years we anticipated trying to get it to $40 million a year just on rent assistance, and it took a while to ramp up. The $53 million is in excess of what the program was originally thought to be. But that's also because it's larger now, and it's grown over the last number of years.

I'll just give the member some numbers on our projections outward. In 2013-14 our preliminary actual for both SAFER and rental assistance, which are both rental assistance, and our rental assistance programs for homelessness was $91 million. The budget in 2014-15 is $117.797 million, and it's $117.822 million the following year after that.

S. Simpson: I've got one more question in this area, and then I have a colleague or two here who I think want to ask a couple of questions. We'll let them get their questions done.

One of the other areas in the letter of expectations is to promote strategic partnerships and alliances that work to further the availability of affordable market housing. I would probably agree with the minister that if we're going to deal with housing for those families and others who are in that $30,000-to-$50,000-a-year income bracket, in the high-rent areas and high housing cost areas like the Lower Mainland, they're going to need some support.

The action that's identified is to increase rental housing supply through partnerships with local governments, non-profits and private developers and use of financial tools such as construction and long-term financing. The minister spoke a little bit about this earlier. I'm wondering if the minister could maybe elaborate a little bit more on that discussion.

Is it a discussion with the UDI? Is it a discussion with people in the development community? I'm thinking about those private players who've got to come to the table along with lenders, local governments, the government and B.C. Housing to make this thing work. A little bit of elaboration, because I do think it's is a pretty key area if we're going to deal with these housing issues.

[1520]

Hon. R. Coleman: There are a number of ways you can attack this thing. The one thing we should always recognize is…. It's amazing to me still today how few municipalities understand that density and making partnerships in a building can actually bring affordability to the marketplace. They have a tendency to think, "If we add a unit, let's just take a higher DCC, or higher development cost charge, of some form or another against the unit, and let's line our pockets today," forgetting about what the long-term future of affordability of housing in their community is.

That's why some of these things I hear communities doing sometimes baffle me, because they're about to lose their opportunity to do something creative and affordable. I'll give you an example.

The Pantages on the Downtown Eastside. It's a project on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. There are 78 units of affordable ownership in the building. There are 19 social housing units. The province comes in and finances the entire project, because we have that leverage
[ Page 2813 ]
to do it through B.C. Housing. We save the money on the financing that actually goes into the saving of the housing. What happens is you end up getting a cross-subsidized relationship because the dollars that come out of the one help with the long-term viability of the 19 units of social housing.

If you don't allow that type of creativity in your marketplace, you're not solving the affordability or the rental issues within your community. A lot of communities come up and say: "Well, let's take an area of our city and just say it's all rental and social housing." Now there's no ability to do anything creative there. You take all the options off the table that could do something like the Pantages, which will have much more social benefit and outcome and get long-term social housing as well as affordable ownership out of a building that's developed.

This is where the lack of vision for some of these people exists. It can be frustrating. I think that communities have to recognize there are a number of ways that you can actually bring affordability or the ability of housing to deliver in your community.

I'll give you one other example, and that is that without any government subsidy whatsoever, in one area of Surrey over the last few years they've managed to reduce the rent for a two-bedroom basement suite from $1,200 a month to $875 a month. Imagine that. No government subsidy; no changes done by government. Nobody in Surrey had to….

What they did was this. They allowed for legal basement suites in houses going in the marketplace, which made it affordable for people of a much lower income to actually buy a home, because that income is taken into consideration from the rental suite for them to get their mortgage.

Then they said: "Oh, there's a double garage in the backyard. Let's put a coach home over top of the double garage." There's a one-bedroom coach home that brings in revenue; there's a basement suite that brings in revenue. You do it in an entire area where the rents were up around $1,200 a month per unit. The marketplace took over and said, "There's lots of space here," so now the rates are down to $875. You've got affordable rental, you've got additional people who could now afford a home that couldn't afford it before because of the affordability factor, and you did it because you used a little bit of innovation and thought.

The trouble is that some guys go into this thing and say: "We just want to put all of our problems" — whether it be social issues, low income, whatever — "in one place." Then what they create for themselves in the end is a social nightmare — a mistake which they will pay for, for the next five decades.

You can either innovate and mix and get better outcomes for people by doing things like the Pantages or the things like in Surrey, or you can not recognize that that is where the outcomes in housing have come from, and you will never get to affordability.

We, from the B.C. Housing perspective, are only interested in participating in partnerships like I described — the reason being that we know…. The other thing is that there is a whole bunch of people in that area of Surrey who are on rent assistance, and nobody knows which ones are and which ones aren't. They're integrated into a neighbourhood, their kids go to the schools, and the social outcomes are very, very good.

From that perspective, that's why we were prepared to go out and take the step to help make this stuff more affordable. At the same time, even on the seniors care side, where we went into something like the Langley Lodge, which needed to redevelop an old project — new beds, new operation…. Our financing alone saved the construction of that building $5 million, because they didn't have the fees, they didn't have the other things and they got an interest rate that made sense for the construction take place. That's where the innovation has got to come from.

[1525]

At the same time, at the local government level, instead of complaining — and I've had this conversation with lots of municipalities at UBCM about your affordability matrix: take look at yourself. Look at how you're doing your business and whether you can actually be creative in your own housing market to allow for these type of things, like I described, to take place in your community. You're going to solve the problem in partnership with us, in partnership with the private sector, in partnership with social housing agencies, in partnerships with your community, and you're going to have better success.

R. Fleming: I just had a few questions for the minister, mostly on Blanshard Court, which is now, of course, Evergreen Terrace. Just to start, I know that the minister is aware of the high housing costs in greater Victoria, which are really just second to the most expensive parts of the Lower Mainland. I know he's aware of the mayor's action plan on homelessness, some of the goals that it's set and some of the initiatives that his ministry has worked with partners on in previous years.

Just looking at this budget and the future years in the service plan, I wanted to ask him if he could give a dollar amount of how much money will be invested and committed this year and the next two years in the service plan for supportive housing — new supportive housing — in the capital region.

If I could just put two questions into one, the second part of that question would be: are there any local projects that have been identified by the province for consideration of funding? They haven't been approved yet — but for consideration of funding. If so, could he itemize or reference those potential projects?

Hon. R. Coleman: We've done a number of projects
[ Page 2814 ]
and additions in Victoria in the last few years. There is no present project that I have in my queue that's before us with regards to Victoria.

We're just to announce the Hope centre in Sooke, with the M'akola First Nation. That's a project we just announced. We've done a project on Humboldt and Rock Bay, Swift House and Carey. Carey was a legacy project. All of those projects have come through our initiatives with regards to homelessness, mental health and addictions.

[1530]

The president and the CEO of B.C. Housing sits on the greater Victoria task force on homelessness, so we're very aware of that. We haven't had any other sites offered that I know of, from the city of Victoria recently, that we would be looking at.

What we do, just so the member knows…. We don't pick a city and say we're going to a particular spot. We let the communities see if they want to step up and offer us something that we might want to work on together. If they don't want to, then we make sure the money is properly put in places where we are welcome to go do projects.

The one thing we found and had some frustration with over the years and why we changed the policy in 2005-2006 about where we would go for homelessness, mental illness and addictions…. We found ourselves spending money on projects where cities would say they would support them and then they would turn them down at third reading, and we would be out of pocket.

We started to say: "You know what? Maybe you guys should find some land, offer it up to us, come into partnerships on long-term taxation and development cost charges so that we can actually be successful together."

To Victoria's credit…. It didn't start with this present administration but with the previous administration, where that mayor actually sat on the Premier's Task Force on Mental Illness and Addictions back in 2004, when it was formed. I was in Housing at the time. Cities like Victoria actually did step up. They've been a pretty good partner on stepping up with properties and offering them up for us to be able to go do things that deal with stuff in the community, and we'll continue to do that with it.

But we don't put a blanket over B.C. and say that it's Victoria this week or this one, that one, next week. It's what comes in, how we look at it, how we look at our budget. We also do the analysis around need and value for dollar and whether it's a project that makes sense for the particular group of people who need the help.

We work with groups in addition to that in the capital region. For example, Rosalie's village in Saanich — and St. Vincent de Paul — has provided substantial project development funding for us to get a project ready to proceed for them. We've given them money to get their project development together. We gave them funding for that.

It's always an ongoing thing as to what's going on in any given community. It's not a case of saying what you will do this year and next year and the next year in Victoria. It's a case of where the priorities are, what's the capital available and where we are investing the dollars to deal with a specific problem.

In some cases it can something as simple as a community that comes to us and says: "Look, we have a serious problem." Let's take Quesnel, for instance. We have a serious problem in downtown Quesnel. It was there a few years ago. We went up to Quesnel. We didn't — I didn't — but B.C. Housing did. They bought the Wheel Inn. The Wheel Inn was an old motel. They renovated it for people with mental illness and addictions and solved the problem quickly, as quickly as they possibly could in that particular case for that community. That project has turned out pretty well.

As I was saying to the critic earlier when we were talking about some of these things, before the member joined us, each project is different. No size fits all. Each one comes on its own merit, and we don't do it based on a particular city or region. We do it based on where we think the need is and, obviously, the quality of the proposal or the opportunity.

R. Fleming: Okay. Well, what I think I heard in all of that, which is disappointing, is that there are no present projects on the books for B.C. Housing in this region. The Quesnel examples are interesting, but I'm talking about this region.

What I also took away from that answer, which is potentially hopeful, is that the minister has said basically that B.C. Housing and his ministry are opportunity-driven and that he's waiting for the city and other stakeholders to step up. I know it's the case that in greater Victoria the city and other municipalities — because we have 13 of them here in the capital regional district — are willing to step up with property. They are opportunity-driven. We've got the Canadian Home Builders Association. We've got the real estate board, which is very active, and a number of partners.

Maybe just a short answer, if I could beg it of the minister. Is it the case, then, if projects are brought to your ministry's attention where the kinds of ingredients that you mentioned are necessary for approval…? If that happens, do they have a chance of success, or is it the case that the cupboard is actually bare and no projects are being contemplated at this time?

[S. Sullivan in the chair.]

Hon. R. Coleman: I guess the member can bring the marmy attitude to this debate that's been pretty good for the last two hours, if he wishes. That's entirely up to him.

[1535]

I told him about a new project in Sooke. I guess he doesn't consider Sooke part of the capital region. I guess he doesn't consider wing two and Rosalie's Village and Cottage Grove, because they're not specifically Victoria,
[ Page 2815 ]
part of the region. He doesn't consider the fact that we've made significant investment in the city of Victoria in the last number of years with the lands that the city has put up. That was by the leadership starting with Mayor Lowe through to the present mayor you have today.

What I said is that I don't have a piece of property offered to me in Victoria at the moment. We don't go out and buy real estate just on a whim. If somebody has a project, they bring it to us. If it has merit….

We look at a mix like I was talking about before the member came in here — about the Pantages — where somebody comes in and they want a mix of social housing and a low market, and the city is prepared to put it forward. We look at all of that. We're prepared to come in with construction financing and all of those things. I would put our record in the city of Victoria up against anybody with regards to what's happened in the last number of years with regards to housing.

You can be as disappointed as you want, hon. Member, but I'm not going to sit here today and say I'm going to give you $50 million for a project somewhere in the blue sky that you think you want have somewhere in the city of Victoria.

When we get a proposal and it has merit, there's capital and financing available. But that money is for the whole province of British Columbia, not just for a specific region. Right now I have a pressure where the city of Surrey needs a supportive housing project and shelter. They're working with us on a site, The reason we're working…. They put up the site. They zoned the site. They got it ready. Now we know there is some certainty around it. We don't just go where it's uncertain.

The Chair of this committee now was actually one of the leaders in that whole Premier's Task Force back in 2004, where we went in with Mayor Lowe from this city at the time, and the member for Vancouver–False Creek, who was the mayor of the City of Vancouver at the time, sat down and said: "Let's break the back of this thing. Let's do something innovative. Let's go out and challenge communities."

They were prepared to step up, along with the mayor of Nanaimo at the time, who actually lost his seat as the mayor because he stood up for homeless people and mental health people in his community — because of big public hearings where people were opposed. That kind of leadership leads us to today, where we do have communities like Victoria.

When they have a property that they own, they bring it to us. Or if they have something in the community and they want to be innovative through their task force, which I said my CEO sits on, we go to work, find the solutions and get it done. But it's not about saying: "I'm disappointed you didn't tell me about a project today." It's about the fact that as they come in, we work on it, we build the merit around it, we finance it and we build it.

R. Fleming: I wanted to ask the minister about an existing set of units in the B.C. Housing portfolio, which he'll know well — Evergreen Terrace. He'll know it. I don't know if he's been on site, but it's the kind of family housing that perhaps would not be built in this day and age because it has such a huge concentration of low-income families all in one place, and it's probably an example of a planning error that has gone by. Nonetheless, it's a very successful community and a vital part of the housing stock in Victoria, and it's actually quite well maintained by B.C. Housing.

What makes it work, I think — we've seen a big reduction in police call-outs and other sorts of incidents that have been associated in previous years with this site — is that it has a number of ancillary community supports right there. One of them is the former Blanshard Elementary site. I'll get to that in a moment, but I think a critical partner there to help kids and teens who are at risk do well and for families to stay together is the Blanshard Community Centre, which has been renamed the Quadra Village Community Centre.

B.C. Housing partly recognizes the value of Quadra Villa Community Centre to help give kids who are disadvantaged a better shot in life by giving a small grant — by small, I mean $400 a month — for after-school programs. But that only allows them to have an after-school program, for example, that is open on Fridays. There's a lot more that could be done there. I think the tenant council of the B.C. Housing complex at Evergreen Terrace has requested additional resources in partnership with Quadra Village Community Centre.

[1540]

I'm here, really, asking on behalf of some of my constituents who live in this housing whether there are any funds or grants or pilot projects, for example, that they could sit down and talk to somebody in the B.C. Housing organization about and try and work with that level of government — or, in this case, their landlord — to realize additional benefits.

We talk about government being in silos — you know, education benefits in terms of raising graduation rates, health care benefits to that system, mental health benefits for youth that are at risk. Given that there is an existing partnership with B.C. Housing, I'm wondering if that relationship can be developed and furthered and we can talk about additional unmet needs currently and whether B.C. Housing is an appropriate agency to do that.

Hon. R. Coleman: In fact, it's probably not the agency you should be talking to. B.C. Housing will sometimes…. Where an organization comes and fashions a program to support our tenants, we'll look at it. If this particular community centre had something they wanted to fashion to support our tenants that we thought was worthwhile, we would consider part funding or all funding, depending on what the program is and what its costs are.
[ Page 2816 ]

Our mandate, though…. In housing, you support…. It's housing for mental health and addictions and what our housing manager, housing strategy, does. We do do some of this. Of course, the member mentioned some. But if they wish to come with a proposal to B.C. Housing for things like after-school programs, homework programs — things like that would support our tenants — we would look at it. I couldn't guarantee — because I don't what the program might be — whether we would fund it or not.

At the same time, I would assume this community centre is a society and that they should be applying for things like gaming grants and other grants that are available. I don't know whether they are or not, but they certainly should be. That's not in this ministry, of course.

We do do this with our tenants on site and off site across the province where the program matches up to something that supports tenants. But we’d have to see the proposal to see if it made sense.

R. Fleming: Staying on the same area but a different question. I'd mentioned Blanshard Elementary School, which is adjacent to Evergreen Terrace. That school closed a number of years ago. It then became a failed private university. It has recently been bought back by the school district — the remainder of a 99-year lease. That has now been bought by the capital regional health district to relocate replacement beds — the Oak Bay Lodge facility.

Right now the capital regional health authority is doing community consultations, and that includes Evergreen Terrace, B.C. Housing residents. Some of the public comments have been quite interesting. People are looking at it as an opportunity. It's going to be change in the neighbourhood, but they're looking at it as a positive opportunity. They welcome the demographic mix. There's not a high concentration of seniors in this particular part of town, but people think that's a positive.

One of the comments that stuck with me is they want to "tear down chain-link fences." They have these ugly fences that separate properties that are directly adjacent to one another. The community is also focused on losing playing fields and play equipment that B.C. Housing doesn't provide on its own property but that have been available to families at Blanshard Elementary.

That consultation is going on. But I think my question really is: is B.C. Housing willing to work with local government, in this case on the amenities package, which could include being able to share some resources and look at redeveloping green space?

[1545]

There's going to be a big footprint for this building, so they're going to lose the playing fields. That's understood. But with the remaining space, I think there are some ideas about how to maximize it and provide things that benefit not only the residents of the facility but, in particular, B.C. Housing rousing rHousing esidents of Evergreen Terrace, who are not looking at the loss of the playing fields as purely a negative but looking at opportunities to retain some of the things that kids and teens and others can enjoy on these unique sites that are directly adjoined.

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, the project is about a 300-unit project that they're doing. It should be able to afford its own landscaping, I would think. If it can't, I don't know who's doing the pro forma for Island Health, and I'd be curious as to why it couldn't.

The fence is there not because we wanted it there. The fence is there because at the time that it was a school, it was a requirement to have the fence there. We're happy to work with Island Health when they do the redevelopment of the site, or whenever they want to, with regard to the fence for the people from Evergreen Terrace. We have people that will meet with Island Health and the Evergreen Terrace community or the community centre the member talked about. And we'll follow that up.

I'm certainly not interested, from a Housing perspective on a separate site of property, in going and spending money on a property to maintain or build something that they should be able to do within their plan, where they're going to build 300 units. It should certainly be able to afford the finishing of the green space and what have you on its site. But we'll work with them. If they want to do something with the fence, we're happy to talk to them.

The community centre piece that the member has mentioned — we're going to talk to them on that. You know, we could very well end up in some relationship on financing or something on that project, because obviously, we've done a number of these around the province where we step in. Our financing saves, sometimes, millions of dollars for the health authorities to be able to do it because we can do the construction financing sometimes.

The integrated relationship between us and Health is pretty good on the Island and elsewhere throughout the province. Unless they want us to, we don't come in and do anything else with regard to the sites. Usually, if it's not Housing — that is, relative to our portfolio — and it's Health, like a care facility, they take that care facility through an entire capital project review, which they have to bring through from their budget. If it's at a certain level, they have to bring it through provincial Treasury Board with regards to that and have to make the case for their facility that they want to build.

I think we're somewhat ambivalent on whether there's a fence there or not. If the community wants it gone and they can do it through the development and they're okay with it, then, I don't think it's a big deal. And I do know the site.

My understanding is that Island Health is working with a non-profit with regards to the site for the health care facility that they want to put there, which could engage some relationship with us — or not. I know that
[ Page 2817 ]
we've done it before in places like Nanaimo and stuff like that with regards to those types of projects.

A. Weaver: I have a couple of questions. First off, I'd like to apologize to the minister and the critic. I had not planned to ask Housing questions just because so much is going on at the same time, but I did want to ask just a couple of questions on a topic that I think needs to be addressed. These are pertaining to the Portland Hotel Society.

I'd like to acknowledge, first off, that it has clearly been noted that a vast majority of the projects supported by B.C. Housing do excellent work and are highly accountable. I also know that everybody is trying to ensure that we learn from the mistakes that happened and is trying to remedy these mistakes at the Portland Hotel Society.

Nevertheless, I have a couple of quick questions. First, if the minister is able to let me know, what is the allocated budget for the Portland Hotel Society in this fiscal year?

[1550]

Hon. R. Coleman: The budget that we would be providing to that particular society this year would be approximately $9 million from Housing and about $9 million from Health.

A. Weaver: I'm wondering what steps the minister is taking to ensure that the mismanagement of public expenses at the Portland Hotel Society — not only the hotel society, but potentially other housing societies…? What account, what steps are being taken to ensure that mismanagement will not occur in the future?

Hon. R. Coleman: I don't want this discussion to leave any question that all of a sudden every non-profit society in British Columbia isn't operating properly in Housing. We have about 500 societies we do business with. They operate, in some cases, one building and sometimes multiple buildings. Sometimes they have other relationships in government with regards to social services or Health.

Basically, the first thing I want to do is give the typical review process for the member, because this is what drives where we get to. I will say this. In this case, this is the most egregious anomaly that I have ever seen in housing in British Columbia — what went on at the Portland Hotel Society with regards to not the services to the client, but the poor management, the arm's-length decisions that actually were interrelated with people, family, relatives and friends on social enterprises that weren't profitable and ended up having to be subsidized, and the egregious spending with regards to some luxurious trips where people are actually donating to an organization where this should never happen.

I can tell you that they are an anomaly on that file, but here is the typical review process. B.C. Housing, a non-profit housing provider — I can give this to members; you don't have to write it down — prepares and agrees on a budget for the upcoming fiscal year on an annual basis. Our staff sit down with every society, go over their budget from the previous year and set up a budget. Once the fiscal year is over the auditor would require the non-profit providers to submit an audited financial statement. They can have a bookkeeper, somebody doing their books all year long. Their books then have to go to a separate auditor, a chartered accountant, to do an audited financial statement. We review the financial statements and budgets to the budget versus actual on an annual basis for each one of these organizations.

Based on that review, we will make adjustments to the budget if it's required, or we can sit down and talk about a range of some minor changes or further discussions, specific financial or operational costs we think could be improved. It's an ongoing working relationship to make sure we're all doing a good job.

The housing providers implement the changes that we recommend to them, and B.C. Housing follows up to ensure that changes are made. That's what we do. This is how we operate this.

If changes are not made and the concerns continue to escalate, then we will escalate action based on the issues of the breaches that are noted. If we think that somebody is, for instance, not managing their maintenance account very well, or their capital reserve has been misspent, and if they continue to do that, there could be a number of things. We could come in and sit down with the board and say: "You're not doing your fiduciary duty. You need to improve this." We can sit down with the management and help them improve their management practices and accounting, but we work with these guys, recognizing that in many cases all of these boards are volunteers, and so we recognize the personal commitment they have made to their communities.

When it really goes outside of that relationship not working, that's the only time escalation would include a B.C. Housing internal audit team or a third-party auditor going in and taking a look at the books, which was the case of…. Every one of those steps actually happened on Portland. The Portland Hotel Society was audited in 2002. We initiated a third-party audit of the society then after the regular oversight process identified some operation and financial issues. One of the things that was taking place at the time is that their accountant had passed away. There were some concerns because there were issues with their books. A third-party firm at that time went in, was brought in, to conduct an audit. Upon completion of that audit, B.C. Housing and the Portland Hotel Society took the required actions to implement the recommendation, so they actually did what they were told to do back in 2002. They went through and basically did their thing.

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We've asked the new board, even with accounting for privacy rules, if they could please release that audit, but
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at the time, when we looked at releasing it back then, we weren't allowed to under protection of privacy issues.

Those recommendations in that audit were implemented immediately. For the next number of years, the audited financial statements every year was matched up to the budget. There were no issues with the spending or concerns that were flagged until about 2010, when we started to see a small deficit.

That brought us through a number of processes and audits in a period of time up to the date that we actually had to do the unfortunate thing that we had to do with the Portland Hotel Society and basically change its management and its board. It was either do that or take it into receivership and take it over financially.

A. Weaver: Thank you, Minister, for that answer. My concern for this is the services that the society provided. My final question is: what steps in this budget is the minister taking to ensure that the essential services such as Insite, the safe injection site, are actually sustainable for the community that the Portland Hotel Society served?

Hon. R. Coleman: That's a very fair question, hon. Member. You go through this unfortunate process, but you do have people that work for this society and units they manage. They have the services and programs they deliver for both Health and Housing that work and, quite frankly, are doing valuable work with the some of the hardest-to-house and hardest people in the community.

The arrogance of the people that were their bosses doesn't mean…. It should not reflect on their concern and love for the people that they actually deal with every day. What we did to make sure that this is stable and controlled is….

We had three options in front of us. One was to have the executive, the management team, resign, replace the management team, have the board resign, and replace the board.

Two was to say: "In cooperation, because we're not going to fund you anymore if you don't agree with these changes, you're in receivership. You have two issues in and around receivership. You can accept it, or you can challenge it in court. If you wish to do either one of those, we will pursue it either way." They chose to leave, which is better for the society, because it does have members that are members of the society and who, I think, were a part of a valuable thing that was happening for the people that were the clients of the organization.

Today, what we've done is we've gone in and put in a new board. We have a chair, Faye Wightman, who used to be the head of the Vancouver Foundation, on the board. We have Ida Goodreau, who used to be the CEO of Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, on the board.

We brought in Jim O'Day. I've known Jim for decades. He was actually at one time the chair of B.C. Housing a number of years ago. He has quite a good reputation on working with societies for developments and stuff like that, in that field.

Then there is Andy Broderick from Vancity and four other people. We brought in very good, high-performing people to be volunteers on this board.

Then we went in and said, "Well, now the management's gone," so we took a senior management from B.C. Housing and the senior manager from Health, who now run the Portland Hotel Society operation.

In addition to that, we brought in Deloitte to basically be the accountant within the society, to take a look at all the documentation and all the receipts that led up to this thing so that we'll have any concerns there but also, obviously, build a long-term financial plan for the sustainability of the society.

We will look at all of these social enterprises that basically were put in place by Portland, arm's-length to any funding we gave, but they were cross-subsidizing, and it led to some of the deficit problems because they weren't well run or they had interrelationships that should not have existed in an organization like this.

We will analyze all of that and determine which ones are sustainable, which are not, which ones make sense, which…. You know, if it's a painting contract to a friendly company, owned by somebody that's friendly, then we're going to let that contract go out for bid, and they can all bid on it. That sort of thing, right? There will be competition brought in and some accountability to those expenses.

We're in the process right now of selecting an executive director and a director of finance for the organization so that…. We obviously don't want our senior managers having to run Portland in the long term. We will go through with a restructuring of the management. Then, in addition to that, as we go along we will eventually transition the board back to some community members as well, who will be part of the long-term board.

[1600]

That's basically the structure we put in place to protect it. Obviously there will be some changes on the fiscal side at Portland Hotel Society. There won't be any trips down the Danube or limousine cruises to concerts or trips to Disneyland. You know, those types of things really raised the ire, quite frankly, of the public and unfortunately damaged the great reputation of so many good societies that do work in British Columbia, including in the Downtown Eastside.

You could go through these other organizations who do the same accountability process, as I described, every year — they're audited financial statements — who work with us. You can improve the management. You can always get a situation with a society where there's some little management glitch that needs to be improved. We work with them to solve those problems and to improve their ability to manage, because that's part of the education management process when we're the funder and the
[ Page 2819 ]
holder of the operating agreement with them.

I think that we've done…. I shouldn't say "we." The folks at B.C. Housing and the folks at Health have done an exceptional job dealing with a very difficult problem. At the end of the day, we did so in such a way that we had the compassion and concern for the very difficult clients that the Portland Hotel Society serves. While we're doing that, we're protecting the integrity of the non-profit sector and moving on to get to where this society will have a long-term viability as well.

G. Holman: Just a couple of questions. Does B.C. Housing ever partner with First Nations on reserves? I realize that's primarily a federal responsibility. I know that you do work on projects off reserves. Either through financing or even expertise, do you work with First Nations on reserve? You mentioned the M'akola Society. You've just done a project there in Sooke that's off reserve.

Hon. R. Coleman: I think first of all I should tell the member opposite that over the years we've actually offered to help with some of the issues with on-reserve housing. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada sees that as their territory, frankly, for their business. I think that some of the value for dollars on housing on some of the First Nations reserves is back in the 1970 value versus today.

Having said that, that's their portion of the portfolio. We have three pilot projects going on reserve right now within British Columbia. One is with the Stó:lō, one is with the Cowichan, and one is with the Kwikwetlem, which is the Coquitlam First Nation. We also have seconded a staff person to the Musqueam to help them with asset management and maintenance because they have a portfolio that they wanted some help and some assistance and advice on. We will do it, but only, obviously, when we're allowed to do it. It's certainly never been part of the Housing portfolio to go do it.

When I've tried in the past on some other projects where I thought we could bring some benefit to a project, we were basically told by the federal government that we couldn't. We do try and work with First Nations, because we do recognize that if we can do things…. For instance, some of their elders or what have you, on reserve, would have a better outcome than if they were actually put in a project away from the reserve where they wouldn't have their loved ones as close. We do some of that stuff when we can.

We're also the jurisdiction, though, that has an exceptional record with First Nations with regards to off-reserve housing. We started a few years ago with the Aboriginal Housing Management Association.

[1605]

We decided to start with a few units for management that they would actually manage. It was about 200 to 300 units. We built their capacity and their understanding of the management, like I explained, for other societies.

Today they manage 4,000 units of off-reserve housing as an organization with an asset value of about $85 million. We transferred $85 million in assets to them just last year, as we built their capacity; then we actually transferred the asset to them. They now control their destiny on a lot of reserve housing, so you have things like First Nations friendship centres where there's housing involved and that sort of thing. We've actually been innovators to be able to go, do and build that capacity with First Nations.

G. Holman: Well, thanks for that response. That's interesting. My interpretation of that is that you're willing to help if the federal government agrees and, obviously, if First Nations are asking for help. My constituency has four bands on the Saanich Peninsula. You know better than anyone that the needs on those reserves are among the most severe in British Columbia. But my understanding of your response is that you're open to help if circumstances allow, and that's good news. You and your staff may be hearing from me in the future on that particular issue.

A second question I have is this. The Saanich Peninsula, the three municipalities there…. You're aware of the CRD housing trust fund. Although all three municipalities have contributed for years to that housing trust fund, there hasn't been one application to the CRD housing trust fund from the peninsula ever since they started making that contribution. I'd like to change that.

The first step, I think, in moving affordable housing projects forward on the peninsula is to do a needs assessment. The minister talked earlier about the importance of understanding the changing demands, the changing demographics that are going to change the needs, and so the first step is to do a housing assessment. We're having a workshop later this month, on the 16th. We've invited your staffer Mr. Butcher to come to that meeting.

What I would like to ask you now is if B.C. Housing would be willing to make…. Well, I guess, your response to whether that's a good approach — to do a needs assessment first. It seems to me that because of the proximity of the three communities, the three municipalities, it would make sense to do a peninsula-wide assessment. So I guess basically my question is: does that make sense to you as an approach? Secondly, would you consider a modest contribution to doing such an assessment? We're of course looking for other partners, including CMHC.

Hon. R. Coleman: I think we try and build based on opportunities brought forward, with community support the number one. We learned, especially when you're dealing with people that are hard to house…. We were frustrated back in probably the mid-2000s where projects would be getting predevelopment funding. Then we would go to rezone a property because the community
[ Page 2820 ]
said they wanted this project. We would spend architectural and design money on a building. We would spend the dollars, we'd get to third reading, and they'd turn it down because there was a bunch of opposition locally to it from the local community.

We changed our approach in 2006. We said to communities: "If you want to identify the need in your community, particularly…." Our focus, by the way, was homelessness, mental health and addictions. Those were our primary focus with regards to housing that we were going to be involved in constructing with non-profit societies for the management of the need that we identified was the most significant need in British Columbia.

[1610]

While we did that, we put in place the rental assistance program to help lower-income families get assistance with their rent wherever they lived in the community so they could be integrated. We did the same thing with seniors, so they could have shelter aid wherever they are in the community and get rent assistance. So we didn't have to go build for them. We could actually help them within the community right now.

Then we said to communities: "All of you have different attitudes with regards to the issues you face in your region of the province." We had a community in the Fraser Valley that for a long time just said: "We don't have a homelessness problem." It grew, and they kept saying they don't have a homelessness problem. They said: "It's not our problem. We don't have anything to do with it, and we don't have a problem."

All of a sudden it became an issue. Then they came us and said: "We have three pieces of land." That's when we built two buildings for them for their mental health and addictions and homelessness — with them in cooperation with a local society, because they got those done. Unfortunately, they turned down the third building after we had redesigned it twice to try to make it work for them.

What happens then at that point is somebody comes to us, usually about six months later, and says: "Would you come and solve this problem that you were supposed to solve for us when we turned you down?" I say: "Well, unfortunately, that $20 million is now in another community. There's only so much capital per year, and it's fluid, and we're not going to have it sitting there waiting for you to make up your mind whether you want something or not."

My first advice to the peninsula would be that your three communities get together and say: "Do we have a need? What is it?" Identify it. Work with the open houses you're talking to — you're going to get your best information from there — and then talk about: do you want to solve it or not.

If you want to solve it, then you should remember that the government likes partnerships. So do you have a piece of land that you can identify, that there's an existing facility that's not using all of its property? It could be a church or a non-profit. It could be land owned by a municipality in their inventory, where they could come and say: "Here's a piece of land, and we're prepared to zone it for this use."

At that point the question is: "Well, are you going to give us the land, or how much do you want for it?" Obviously, if they want too much for it, we say: "you know, Surrey just gave us a piece of property for a shelter and a supportive housing project. The numbers are better there on this particular capital year." See if you can get some capital to offset your costs.

We also encourage municipalities to decide that if they really want a fixed need, they could look at the development cost charges to forgive them and whatever other costs, to make it streamlined or whatever.

That model has successfully brought us about 3,000 units of housing for homelessness, mental health and addictions. It's actually probably more than that, because there are another 2,000 or 3,000 units that were bought — actual buildings we bought to go in and solve a particular issue in a community when we had homelessness or an issue like that.

If you're going to go and work with the community, I'd suggest you keep in mind that when we're trying to do something, we like to have a little more certainty than we've had in the past. It's tough to justify going all the way through a third reading with a community and then losing your project when you've had to spend the money to get it to third reading, which is architectural and building and all the rest of it.

They have to come to a realization that they want to be part of the partnership. Then within your community, you're going to find one or two, maybe three or more, very good non-profit societies that have the capacity to make the sale within the community that they could run a facility and the community would accept that.

The municipality and us, in a relationship, could find land, finance, design and say: "This is how we can fix the problem." When we're done and we deliver the building, the building needs a heart inside it. It needs people inside it, who actually care about the people we're trying to help the most, to be there every day and pick them up when they fall down and when they have their difficulties, because they will. People who suffer from mental illness and addictions will stumble. That's when you need really good non-profits that care and can actually manage and operate.

It really is a three-way partnership. We treat it like…. In Housing, we've probably been doing 3Ps for decades with non-profits, us and communities, and we've been doing them successfully because of that relationship.

I'd suggest that if you want to approach it, start with the community meeting. If you find a really good non-profit that has an idea, they could come to us for project development funding, because we do project development funding where we go in and we do this feasibility
[ Page 2821 ]
for them. We wouldn't do it for, let's say, the city of X. It would be a non-profit that's working with that city, saying: "We're prepared to step up and see if we can do something with B.C. Housing."

[1615]

G. Holman: I think, for the most part, the minister is way ahead of me. I do appreciate the explanation. I know you're proud of the work you're doing, and in my view, you are accomplishing things. But what I'm asking specifically about is just to first identify what the need is and whether B.C. Housing has or would be willing to make a modest contribution to a needs assessment just to understand what the demand is before we get further down the road into larger capital or land commitments.

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, I guess I gave you a rather long explanation, then, didn't I? Really, what would drive it for us is if a municipality or the municipalities were prepared to put something on the table to do a needs assessment and came to us and wanted to partner with it, we would consider it. But we're not going to be the sole payer of that study, and I can tell you that these particular assessments are not extremely expensive.

S. Simpson: I'm going to move a little bit to a different area. I want to talk a little bit about the IAH agreements and the extension agreement. My understanding is that we have a five-year, $300 million agreement for the coming five years, and this now is an extension on what had initially been a three-year, $180 million agreement. Could the minister first just talk a little bit about the initial three-year phase of the agreement and where that $180 million investment went in the overall Housing portfolio?

Hon. R. Coleman: The $180 million from the previous three years went to four areas — the largest amount for the first two, which were new developments which are on the ground today, acquisitions; some repair and maintenance to older some older stock; and the balance for a program for home adaptations for independence for seniors.

S. Simpson: Maybe at some point the minister could give me a little bit of a breakdown on the dollars around those four areas. I don't need it right this minute, but it'd be good.

With the renewal for five years, could the minister tell me…? We've got $60 million a year, $30 million from both partners, for five years.

[1620]

What are the objectives that are in play here for the next five years? Where does the minister envision — and what's the state of the agreement envisioned — the expenditure of that money over the next five years?

Hon. R. Coleman: I don't look at it like I've got $60 million, because I had to come up with $30 million of the $60 million. So $30 million from the feds and $30 million from us to match the funds to get the $30 million from the feds.

We're basically putting it in two places: $30 million of it goes to support and enhance existing programs, and $30 million will go to new construction and renovations.

S. Simpson: The $30 million to support and enhance existing programs is…. I'm assuming some of that is rent supplement money. Could the minister identify other areas over and above rent supplement where that money will go into existing programs?

Hon. R. Coleman: I think the first thing I should clarify the member on, on the support and enhance existing programs, is that this is new money. We're not cutting any of the programs that are existing. This is on top of what we're doing already.

Basically, it goes to about four areas: the rent assistance program; SAFER; HAFI, which is the adaptation thing for seniors; and the homelessness-prevention rent supplement program, which I talked about earlier, for people that are highest at risk — coming out of hospitals and youth coming out of care.

S. Simpson: I believe in the first phase of this…. The report I saw said about 2,200 households were supported by the $180 million over time. Has there been any projection for the second phase, the five years, of how many households will be supported by this money?

Hon. R. Coleman: This is one where you can't compare apples and oranges. Last time it was pretty much in capital and in purchase, so that's where the 2,000 came from.

For instance, under the one-half of it, we would expect, just under the homelessness prevention rent supplement, to do at least 2,000 households of people on that. Those are the people coming out of hospital, out of jail, youth coming out of care. That's the rent supplement program for them. Obviously, rent assistance and SAFER will both go up much higher than the 2,000, when we know what we can get for the money.

On the other piece, we always give a little proviso when we talk about new construction, because it depends on the partnerships we get. For instance, we can get a partnership in some areas where we have a foundation that will come in and say: "We'll give X number of dollars if somebody else puts up the land, the municipality puts up DCCs." Then we don't have to use as much capital to deliver those units as we would if we had to pay for everything, which is not the way we like to do business these days anyway. We like to make partnerships.

[1625]

It's how much we would lever with regards to the other $30 million that would actually drive the numbers through that. So we can't give you a…. But we think maybe as high as 1,000 or 1,400 units with regards to those dollars, if we get the right leverage and partnerships.

S. Simpson: Just moving a little bit to another topic here. Could the minister talk about the core review, the impacts of the core review on the commission and on the ministry, as it relates to the housing part of the portfolio?

Hon. R. Coleman: For B.C. Housing, we were proactive and were working on proactive things with the change to the housing strategy and, basically, the new innovations we were bringing forward that we talked about earlier. As a result of that, the core review felt that we had already done innovation that they would have been looking for, and we weren't required to go any further.

S. Simpson: Just to confirm there. At this point there are no new initiatives related to core review expected to occur, moving forward. Just confirming that that's what the minister is saying. The core review, as far as B.C. Housing is concerned, is done.

Hon. R. Coleman: Yeah, that would be correct. But it didn't have to have a big process, because we were already moving down the new strategy and what have you, and that was accepted within government through the appropriate committees. The strategy was moving all along, so core review felt it was one that they didn't have to spend a lot of time on.

S. Simpson: I have not seen the entire list, so I'm not sure what they all are, but we know that a number of assets — property and assets — were sold. Through the Minister of Finance and the balancing of the budget, a number of properties were sold, and other assets sold. Were any assets related to B.C. Housing or the housing component of the ministry part of an asset sale?

[G. Kyllo in the chair.]

Hon. R. Coleman: There's one site on 18th in Burnaby. It was surplus. There was a supported-housing project built on the balance of the site, and this was deemed to be surplus because the city of Vancouver didn't want to zone it for a social housing purpose and wanted it in market housing. So it was put into the asset disposal.

[1630]

There is one other property under consideration that's been looked at, but no final decision has been made on it. I'm not in a position to disclose it, because it has an impact on another property.

S. Simpson: The member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head asked questions about the Portland. I want to kind of take that to a bit of a different place in terms of the discussion. I am interested in the audit initiative around non-profits — and not audits looking for bad things happening but audits just because it's a part of a practical process to make sure that everything is functioning as it should.

Can the minister tell us, having gone through the experience of the Portland to date and having had to take the actions that he took in order to deal with the situation…? Does the minister have a different insight about how government oversight of the non-profit sector is functioning and operating? I'm curious about what the thinking is about that and how that's working.

You may say that it all works fine. It worked itself out, and it came to a conclusion that nobody is happy with, but it was one that was discovered through the oversight process. I'm trying to get my head around this. I agree with the minister that the vast of the majority of these organizations out there work hard and do it right and try their best to do what they can do and do it properly. Just in protecting their integrity, among other things, the oversight process is important.

If the minister could talk a little about whether there were aspects of that oversight process he outlined for the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head where he thinks there may be ways to do better.

Hon. R. Coleman: I've been the Minister Responsible for Housing since 2005. That would be — heaven forbid — coming up to nine years. We've only ever had to do this three times. Once was with the Portland Hotel Society, the most recent, which I would say is probably the most egregious one because of the use of money and the wages paid and the benefits those people were taking on the backs of, in some cases, donated money.

The only other two times we ever did it…. We had to it with the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, which got into significant financial trouble because of management and some other attitudes as well. We had to go in and do an audit. That one we did take to receivership to take control of the properties and move the properties to other organizations. The only other time it was done was the Prince George Métis Society. Those were the only times…. That was actually a small-number one, but it was one where we had to step in.

Obviously, our processes are working, because at this point there are no third-party audits required on any non-profit society in British Columbia by our keeping of the records and watching the audit statements of societies. They are all in pretty darn good compliance.

Having said that, we do know that sometimes societies, either through no fault of their own or because of unfortunate circumstances, will need things that they will have help. Or in some cases they could have a person leave that was a significant employee and fall behind on
[ Page 2823 ]
something that needs the help, and we'll go in and help with the management and sort it out. But we pick that up on the regular reviews by our staff and the review of their monthly financials and, of course, the review of the audited financial statements. We have these people out there helping with operations.

I am really comfortable knowing that there is no other third-party significant audit that's required in B.C. at this point in time, because I would know if there was. It would be because something was untoward that was of concern taking place. So I'm quite comfortable that the system is working.

You will get times, you know…. Obviously, two of these examples I just gave were people who decided, I guess, that they were bigger than the financial accountability that was required by them, for them, under their operating agreement. We had to deal with it in a way that was much more invasive than it would be than just working with somebody that needed to improve their management or whatever.

We do, from time to time, put societies in unfortunate circumstances. We have a couple where…. I wouldn't call them unfortunate circumstances, but we'll get a society that might take on, let's say, a single-room-occupancy hotel.

[1635]

Through the year, while we're trying to get around to arrange the maintenance and what have you, their operating costs can be higher because of maintenance or things breaking down and what have you. So we will come in at the end of the year and adjust that budget for them so that they do that. That's not through any fault of anybody other than in relationship to, in some cases, some very old buildings that need upgrades or maintenance.

We are always there, in that particular case, to make sure that's the case. It's not the intent of our operating agreement to ever put them into circumstances where we put them in a financial challenge. At this time there are none. I'm comfortable with that.

We have talked in very much detail, since the Portland Hotel Society, about all our societies, looked at our processes. I felt that they were strong. I still feel that they were strong in knowing the status of any third-party audits at this point in time. I think we should congratulate the other 500 non-profits in British Columbia that are doing good work and meeting our financial reporting at a level that we find acceptable. Let's forget about the one that didn't care.

S. Simpson: I would agree that when some organizations face challenges, it's not about them being malicious or consciously negligent or those things. Sometimes people get into spots because of circumstances around them.

Can the minister tell us a little bit about — and this is driven somewhat, certainly, by the Portland situation, I'm sure — the recent reports related to Atira and the financial challenges that potentially are there? Could the minister just tell me — in broad terms, not in detail — those circumstances and how that's being addressed?

Hon. R. Coleman: Yeah, very much so. First of all, that particular organization had a clean audit done a couple of years ago. It's posted on line. They are one that we put into unfortunate circumstances because of the age of the buildings that we asked them to take over for us.

We bought some SROs, as the member knows. Some of them are as old as 100 years old. In the first year or two of operation it was causing…. The cost of the operation of the building was outside what we thought the projected budget would be, simply because they were so expensive to operate and we hadn't renovated them yet. In that particular case, we sat down with the organization and readjusted the budget to meet the true operating expenses of what those buildings would cost to operate.

All the programs that were in those buildings were funded, and all of those were delivered in exactly the manner they should be. But it was one of the situations where we've had to sit down with a society. They had a building that we gave them that had some challenges.

We find, when we get into the older buildings, that we can have plumbing issues, furnaces, boilers. We can have issues with doors, hinges, rot, whatever, before we get in to actually renovate them. Those actually bring with them additional operating expenses. We've always felt it's our responsibility, when we do that with a non-profit, that should that occur, then we need to fix it — which we did.

That was fixed by sitting down with the society, walking through the issues, confirming what they were and dealing with it. Those buildings are now sustainable.

S. Simpson: Just to be clear here, the minister is confident now that the challenges that Atira was faced with, because of the situation the minister has talked about, have been addressed? In terms of the solvency of the organization and its ability to move forward and do what it does, the minister is confident that those issues have now been addressed and it will move forward, hopefully, successfully?

Hon. R. Coleman: Yeah, I am, because they've sat down and worked with us on a long-term financial plan. They're doing that with us also, recognizing some of the pressures we'd put on because of the buildings. I'm very comfortable with the status of this particular society.

S. Simpson: I want to ask a couple of questions related to what has been the finalization of the sale of Little Mountain. My understanding is it was on July 4 of last year, I believe, that the government announced the completion of the sale. The property was sold to Holborn Properties for $300 million.
[ Page 2824 ]

Now those funds — I think the minister made reference to this earlier — provide for a combination of things. Could the minister tell us how much of that $300 million was in cash or revenue and how much of it went into the redevelopment of social housing on the site?

[1640]

Hon. R. Coleman: Actually, the first thing to say…. I think it is one of the proudest deals I have ever made in this government in all the years I've been a cabinet minister, simply because I don't think people expected that we could take an asset, replace 224 units and add additional money into the project to give ten units to the Musqueam for First Nations housing. So we have 234 units being built on the site today.

Take the balance, which is substantially way over $200 million…. I don't have the exact number. Take that money, on the confidence of government, to the deal and allow B.C. Housing to have and leverage that dollar to build 2,000 units of additional housing for people with mental illness and addictions and at risk of homelessness, within the marketplace, the largest portion of which are in Vancouver.

Do all of that, because you took one piece of property and still replaced more than the units that you had there, and take the other capital and actually use it.

The value for money of Little Mountain, even though the sale price is $300 million, is probably closer to $400 million or $500 million — probably at least $400 million — simply because we got into the marketplace and we built the product. Costs go up every year with inflation with regards to construction.

We have gone out and constructed all of these units. We've got people in them to change their lives, because Treasury Board and the government of British Columbia had the faith that this deal would go through, which it did. As it comes through, it will pay back the treasury.

We have been able to leverage that money and actually address a problem because we were able to go before Finance and say: "We think we can help solve a problem here, but we need you to give us, basically, a line of credit, because we have an asset that will pay you back. We need the money now because we want to help the people that are homeless, have mental illness and addictions, on some sites in Vancouver and now places in the rest of the province."

It has worked out very well. We're already on site. There are 53 one- and two-bedroom homes that are actually in place, which is the first replacement social housing. That's expected to be completed early in 2015.

As we have always said, the former Little Mountain residents will have the first opportunity to move back into their new homes if they wish to do that. We are finding, though, that a lot of them are adapted to new neighbourhoods with rent assistance and other social housing projects and are quite happy where they are living today.

S. Simpson: I recall when this project was first announced and the announcement was made that the replacement social housing would be produced. The plan at that time was to replace the units more or less in the same kind of components they were, i.e., three-bedroom units, two-bedroom, one-bedroom — looking much like what was removed when Little Mountain was demolished.

Is it still the intention that that will be the plan as we move forward, that those units — three-bedroom, four-bedroom, whatever was there — are going to be built in those same kinds of numbers?

Hon. R. Coleman: Yes. All the housing will be replaced basically bedroom for bedroom. To say that it will be in the form and look that it was wouldn't be correct. It's going to be integrated into a comprehensive development that will have a different architectural look, obviously. But yes, the commitment was bedroom for bedroom, and the bedroom-for-bedroom commitment is being met.

S. Simpson: The first building, I think the minister said, looks to be opened next year. What's the expectation in terms of the rent formula that we're going to be looking at?

[1645]

Is it going to be the 30 percent formula or a formula similar to the formula that would be used in public housing developments today? Is there thinking about what that rent formula or calculation will look like?

Hon. R. Coleman: It's 30 percent rent geared to income.

S. Simpson: The last question in relation to this matter. It's probably a little more of a city question, but it obviously affects the ability on some of this development. I suspect it may affect the development of the rest of the social housing units now.

Does the minister know: has all of the rezoning been completed for the rest of that property, so that we're now moving ahead? Or do we still have challenges here, in terms of the city processes, to complete the rest of the development?

It seems to me that the site got broken up a little bit in order to get some approvals to allow what's going on now to start. But the whole site, obviously for Holborn…. They're going to have to know they're developing the whole site with their plan before they're going to get the rest of this thing going. I know the social housing got kick-started a little bit with a small portion, a percentage of what's planned to go forward.

What's the state of affairs? Does the minister know now? Obviously, as the minister knows, some of the critique of this has been the time, and the time was a whole lot of different factors between the developer and the
[ Page 2825 ]
city and a whole bunch of factors that have delayed this project.

Are we looking at more delays, or does the minister have confidence we're actually going to get a rezoning application and go forward?

Hon. R. Coleman: I don't think I want to get into the glacial pace. I think this has gone on for a variety of reasons, including possibly some of the proponent's and some on the side of the city and what have you.

I can tell the member that the zoning application is in. The community advisory meeting is scheduled for April 29. The open houses are on May 8 and 10. My expectation is there shouldn't be any other hurdles in the way, other than to get through the zoning process and get on with the project.

S. Simpson: I'm going to bounce around just a little bit here. I'll get back to some questions actually about capital procurement in a second.

In the budget…. I'm looking again at — so you know what document I'm at — the service plan for B.C. Housing on page 33. When I look down at the numbers for other income, it lists here that this includes tenant rent and revenues from other sources, including builder licensing fees.

We're seeing that those numbers have climbed, and we're seeing in 2013-14 over $64 million booked in "Other." Then that number drops off by the 2016-17 number by about $10 million. Actually, it drops pretty quickly the next year, by $12 million in the '14-15 budget, and drops off.

Could the minister just tell us where the $10 million that is realized in 2013-14 is and then seems to disappear in the coming year?

[1650]

Hon. R. Coleman: So a combination of tenant rents…. Also, we're very conservative on any sort of investment money that we may have placed as we're moving through to do projects that we haven't used the money for. We usually do better than budget, but we always are very conservative in the budget number that we put in versus the actual we get. We're very conservative about that. We don’t want to identify a revenue source that we know has a higher risk.

That would be why. Also, because of the rationalization of some properties and movement to different types of programs, the revenue things shift. When we shift more to rent assistance, it's us subsidizing versus having a relationship of income on a property at 30 percent of income and us subsidizing the difference. Those things would adjust over time, and that's why that number changes.

S. Simpson: Staying on the same page, if we go down here into the expense category, it shows interest expenses coming down pretty significantly over the years — the 2012-13 at $843 million, the '13-14 preliminary actuals at $676 million. And then the government has booked $600 million for the next three years.

Could the minister explain a little bit about what it is that we're paying off — and doing probably a reasonably good job at it, considering how we're paying down interest expenses?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, for the member opposite, it's $600,000, not $600 million. I know he said million, but that would be more than almost the entire operating budget of the entire housing commission.

Basically, it's pretty straightforward. As we go forward and we have matching dollars with federal, we will borrow less on our projects because we'll have matching dollars on our capital on those.

The other is just very simple. Each year we see mortgages being paid down because they've been with us for a long time. As they get paid down, our cost of interest is dropping. And because we can leverage deals with municipalities and with the federal government, we're not increasing our interest expense.

S. Simpson: One other question here around total liabilities. We are talking in the millions here, I'm sure.

It's interesting here. Maybe just these fluctuations are interesting. In 2011-12, $141 million. It drops in '12-13 to $82 million, bounces back up in '13-14 to $131 million more or less, and then $143 million is booked for each of the coming years.

Could the minister explain sort of where this $60 million or $70 million bump happened around the year of '12-13 and where we're back to now?

Hon. R. Coleman: Certainly. That's pretty simple. Because we were building and buying, particularly on renovation and construction, those were construction loans, which obviously are taken out of this particular category when they're formalized into an operating mortgage for the property. That's why those liabilities change on the income side.

[1655]

S. Simpson: I want to ask a couple of questions about capital procurement and go to an issue that I know received some public attention. It was around the SRO renewal project and the bundling of the SROs.

The numbers there…. It showed that the capital cost for the renewal project, I think, was booked at about $143 million. That included combinations of provincial money, federal money. For that, about 900 units were being renovated over a three-year period.

That comes out, if you just do the math, the simple math, at about $160,000 a room or $1,100 a square foot, which is a pretty big number. As was reported in the
[ Page 2826 ]
Vancouver Sun, they announced that the per-square-foot value was also well beyond the industry standard for new home construction in B.C., and the story went on. I think it was reported in some other jurisdictions or papers as well.

Can the minister explain the rationale for the $1,100 per square foot versus the cost of new construction?

Hon. R. Coleman: I'm pleased to answer the member's question. But I will tell him that it's not $1,100 per square foot. That calculation was based on the rooms and taking in a global size for all the rooms, which are somewhat different at every place. It did not take into account the common area of the buildings, the hallways, the rest of the square footage that's being renovated.

The total amount also has the 15-year maintenance of the buildings included in the dollars, so you have to extract that. I don't have the numbers here. We'll try and get them for the member. I'll get them to him, because I don't know if we'll have them in time before the estimates are done here.

The reality is this. We bought a number of buildings. Everybody was concerned, including the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, who actually wrote me a number of letters wanting me to protect or buy some buildings in the Downtown Eastside. There was one in particular, which was the Carl Rooms.

We were in the marketplace and bought ten of these. We've actually bought about 25 buildings, not including some others that we've bought. We've actually bought over 50 buildings provincewide where we've gone in to do renovations and stuff.

The reality is this. You could have let this housing stock totally deteriorate and have a couple of thousand people homeless, have to find other housing for them, have all the social costs that go with them or have them on the streets or in shelters. Or you could go in and try and acquire the stock at a price you could and then renovate them, which is expensive to do, and deal with them in a manner that the opposition was continuously calling for us to do.

[1700]

Even when I did it, I said that this will not be cheap. Even though we're going to protect the stock, we need to go in now and get a significantly longer lifespan out of them, which means we're going to have to do some significant renovations. These costs don't just include the rooms. They can include the common areas, the hallways, the social areas.

Then the other one is basically that the rooms average about 120 square feet, which would be 108,000 square feet, and the total renovated space is 440,000 square feet. If you take the 440,000 square feet, and you do the division into the $143 million…. If you don't want to take out the 15-year savings that's coming with that piece, you're at substantially less than what that particular article quoted. That's why, frankly, I didn't get into the discussion in the article: because somebody just wanted to write something and not hear the reality of what we were facing.

We have given these buildings a new life, a life span. While we've done it, we've done the rooms, the common area, the other common space. We've had to do seismic upgrades, had hazmat issues. We had issues with things like lead paint and asbestos. That all had to be dealt with because, if we were going to own them, they had to be brought up to a totally different standard for people.

At the end of the day, there are a few thousand people who actually have a roof over their head that we can have for the long term in Vancouver, provincially, in these 13 buildings, in actual fact, which is a pretty…. Well, I thought it was a very smart thing to do at the time. I knew it might cost some money in the long term, but if we were going to actually get in front of homelessness, mental illness and addiction, we needed to go acquire some of the stock.

Some of it was vacant in order to protect it, in order to have it for the long term, knowing full well that as soon as we took possession, we would have to take responsibility — like I described with some of the buildings earlier, with the member — for the cost of operations. By going and doing this, we reduce our operational costs over the long term, we get a deal on the maintenance of the building over the long term, and we actually protect the stock and keep it strong for a long period of time.

It's interesting. You get criticism from different sectors or different corners on this particular piece of the file, but nobody has ever told me that we shouldn't have done it. I think it was an important move to actually try and turn the whole thing around homelessness and mental illness and addiction around back when the first ten buildings were bought in Vancouver in 2007. I think we've continued to make the right strategic investments to take care of this very vulnerable population.

S. Simpson: Everybody, I think, would agree and wants to do our best to take care of that population. I guess the question comes when it's 900 units, it's $143 million, and people do the math — and the $1,100 a square foot.

It's interesting. In another publication there was a reference made to one of the…. Many of these are older, some of them are heritage buildings, and they're not cheap to renew, as the minister said, but back three years previously they were being done at about $600 a square foot, so that's kind of an interesting number.

I'd be interested if the minister could tell me that at some point. The information I had suggested that the 15-year maintenance agreement was a cost over and above the $143 million. I'd be happy to be corrected on that, but that was the advice I was given and the information I was given. If it's incorrect, I'll be happy to know that.
[ Page 2827 ]

One of the questions that gets raised — and this is a question that I think the minister would probably know that the B.C. Construction Association has raised — around this is this question of….

[The bells were rung.]

We're voting. We'll get to this at another time.

The Chair: The committee will recess on account of division.

The committee recessed from 5:04 p.m. to 5:17 p.m.

[G. Kyllo in the chair.]

S. Simpson: A couple of questions relating to aboriginal housing. I know the minister responded to one of our colleagues who asked some questions about that and laid out a little bit about that. Primarily, those questions related to on reserve.

My question to the minister is that…. I know and I think it's a positive that the Aboriginal Housing Association now is playing a much more substantive and significant role in the administration of aboriginal housing. Could the minister tell us whether there are plans — federal-provincial plans or other plans — to enhance aboriginal housing, particularly in some of our urban areas?

I look at my community in Vancouver, and there are significant challenges. When I speak to the friendship centre and to other of those organizations, they identify — it will be no surprise — housing as being a key factor. We certainly have a share of aboriginal housing in my constituency and in Vancouver, but the demand, as in many areas, is great.

I'm wondering whether the minister could tell us if he's working with federal authorities — I would assume and hope that they would play a role in terms of resources — and our First Nations, our friendship centres and aboriginal housing advocates to look at how we improve or enhance or deal with some of those challenges that housing will help to correct.

[1720]

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I just want to correct one earlier statement for the member. That was my response earlier on the number of societies in the province. I said 500 when I was talking. It's actually over 700. Still, none of them have a third-party audit underway. So that just means the percentage of success is even better than I said earlier.

S. Simpson: I knew that number but wasn't going to give it back.

Hon. R. Coleman: Sometimes these numbers roll off your tongue, right?

The other thing I wanted to clear up for the member is on the capital upgrades to the SROs. Just the initial capital upgrades, which are the upgrades to the building and all the things I talked about — the seismic and everything else — were actually $90 million. It was across 440,000 square feet, which equates to just over $200 per square foot.

Basically, we have a significant relationship in non-profit and social housing with First Nations in our stock to begin with. I think our percentage of First Nations is really disproportionate to the number of other people that are in our social housing stock in Vancouver. I think it may be as high as 40 percent, of First Nations.

We really work with a self-guided, self-determination philosophy with First Nations who really want to step up if they want to do something. We've done a number of projects with the friendship centre societies and what have you across B.C.

Like I said earlier to the member for Saanich North and the Islands — I guess it was — we did transfer over 4,000 units to the Aboriginal Housing Management Association, which we actually pursued starting way back in 2005-2006 to build the capacity so they could take over the management of a lot of units on behalf of their own cultural-specific relationships. We transferred probably $85 million in assets in that package. We had the partnerships on reserve that I talked to the member from Saanich North about earlier.

The other thing we did — well, one of a couple of other things we did…. First of all, a few years ago the federal government put up some money for some First Nations off-reserve housing. Our guys did such a good job that, if I don't miss my guess, we had built the $50 million worth of housing before any other jurisdiction across the country had actually got a stick of housing completed. We moved very quickly, and they were very happy with that relationship and how we performed on that. I think that's why, when they make arrangements with us, they understand we will deliver.

There's a project at Broadway and Fraser, which is one of the 14 sites which is going to open. It has 99 units with the Vancouver native friendship centre, as I believe it is. We also allocate other funding to aboriginal-specific housing, if it's available. But it's usually when we build a relationship and they have a specific cultural need that they wanted identified, and we can work with them off reserve.

On reserve, as I said to the member for Saanich North and the Islands earlier, it's been pretty minimal. We've had some pilot projects, but it really…. We've not been allowed to be in that jurisdiction. At the same time, I suppose if we went into the jurisdiction, they probably wouldn't give us the money they want to invest in housing and expect us to spend it all. I guess they'd have to
[ Page 2828 ]
send us the money, as well, if we're going to do some things for First Nations on-reserve housing, because they're the ones that handle the money in that relationship at a federal level.

S. Simpson: We've got a few minutes. We'll head through a few areas as we bring the Housing portion of this estimate to a close.

One of the areas that I know the minister will know…. I know the minister has had a big focus on homelessness and mental health and addiction issues, and that's been a primary focus for the minister over the last number of years as the Housing minister.

[1725]

We also know that one of the really critical areas, an area that's pretty fundamental to this and leads to trying to address those same challenges, is support for youth and youth housing. We have groups like Covenant House and a few others who do some very, very good work there.

Could the minister talk a little bit about where youth housing — particularly for youth that are disaffected, are on the street or whatever…? They've fled homes or situations that they found untenable or unacceptable. What is the thinking of the minister, and what is the priority for that? How many initiatives will be resourced and supported there?

Hon. R. Coleman: I'll give the member some projects we've done for youth in the last year or so. The Broadway project that I mentioned earlier has 30 units for youth, with a resource centre in the facility. The Burrard project, which has just opened, has a youth hub in there and medicated units for youth.

The Remand Centre, which has 96 units, is the old Remand Centre we just converted into housing, and 35 units are in there for BladeRunners, which are youth in trades jobs. As a matter of fact, some of the BladeRunner youth that worked on this project are actually going to also live in the project after it's completed, as they got the experience in construction and now have a home.

St. Helen's SRO is a single-occupancy inner-city mental health project. There are dedicated units in there for youth with mental illnesses, and that's in a cooperation relationship with Health.

When we do youth housing, it's usually in a relationship, in a partnership with Health and Ministry of Children and Families and us, to address a need or an opportunity that we see for youth in whatever projects we're doing.

S. Simpson: Moving a little bit to the other end of the spectrum, to SAFER and to seniors. Since 2005 or so we've seen that the potential rent increases, allowable increases, for a senior are probably 35 or 36 percent that they could face — in increases in terms of their rent — just by having landlords increase their rents by allowable amounts.

[1730]

For SAFER, we haven't seen increases, obviously, comparable to that. There is concern that we're hearing in the community that SAFER, an excellent program, is falling behind in terms of that and is putting increased pressure on seniors to use funds that they would normally use for other essential parts of their lives to pay for rents.

I'm wondering whether the minister is contemplating any increase around SAFER and maybe using some of the IAH money to improve SAFER and allow for some increase.

Hon. R. Coleman: We are actually actively pursuing some changes to the rent levels and how we will be expanded as we go through the next little while. They require some work — order-in-council type of work and that sort of thing — in order to get to where we would need to, to have the power to do it. We're working on that right now. I would expect it won't be too long before you'll see some enhancements to the SAFER program.

S. Simpson: I'm sure that seniors and people who are concerned about seniors issues will be happy to hear that. We'll look forward to hearing the announcements when the minister has finalized his work.

One area that relates to residential tenancy a little bit…. What we've been told is that some landlords who are trying to skirt some of the regulatory requirements around rent increases and limits on rent increases have been starting to use the fixed-term housing model as a way to do that. Somebody moves in, and they say: "You're here for a year. It's a fixed term, and at the end of the year we will expect you to vacate." And that really isn't the intention at all.

At the end of the year they essentially then say, "You either now vacate, or we put in a brand-new rent," and it's significantly above an allowable charge. It's using this fixed-term model.

They've created a bit of a loophole here, and I'm wondering whether the minister could comment as to whether he's been apprised of this bit of a glitch and whether there was any thinking about how to close that loophole so that things that were never intended don't occur, in terms of residential tenancy agreements.

[1735]

Hon. R. Coleman: The Residential Tenancy Act really anticipates a couple of things. First is the month-to-month relationship into a rental agreement where once a year the rent can go up by 2 percent plus CPI under the act. The fixed term is a contractual arrangement that's entered into by both parties by agreement. When it's over with, if a person continues on, then it moves over to month-to-month rent. It is possible, because the agreement is up, under the act they could actually increase the rate different than the 2 percent plus CPI if they want to
[ Page 2829 ]
enter into another one-year arrangement.

It hasn't come to me, frankly, how many of them are out there and how many would be abused. It hasn't really been a big issue with the RTA. We'll probably, now that you have brought it to our attention, do a little bit of work to see just how big the issue is out there, how much of it is going on and whether we need to address it or not.

S. Simpson: I think that it's a situation — my sense from people I've been talking to — where it's a potential loophole that has been discovered and is being used now. I don't know how much. Obviously, your analysis and research will provide a much better sense of that.

It seems to be something that some people who are wanting to be less than scrupulous about this might be doing, so I appreciate the fact that the RTA and that will take a look and see whether this may be either a problem that is pending or is real and requires any attention, in terms of regulations and how we move forward.

I want to move to just a couple of questions in our last few minutes here around some issues related to built environment. I look at the Housing Matters B.C. strategy and strategy 6, "Built environment." I'm looking at page 21 of the document. It talks about the regulatory system that encourages or discourages a whole range of things. It talks about the desire to build compact communities and transit-oriented communities and that whole array of things.

I think we'd all know that as everybody moves to want to deal with issues related to climate change and the environment and that, that we have a great capacity, if we do it right, in our urban and our populated areas to reduce emissions using transit, using building design, using planning. We can probably deal with some significant emission reductions there through a combination of those things. Clearly, the regulatory regime is a big part of that.

I wonder if the minister could talk a little bit about what the thinking around this strategy is and how the government plans to use the regulatory regime around the built environment to accomplish, presumably, a number of objectives. Can you tell us what objectives they're looking at and how this is going to move forward?

Hon. R. Coleman: There are a couple of conversations going on around this and some work. I'll just talk about the work that's actually going on, where our focus is at the moment, and then I'll talk a bit about the built environment.

The first thing is that the greening of the building code has been going on for some time — increasing in R factors and different things we've been doing to actually have in the construction thing some things.

The work we're doing right now is to basically support the building construction industry to introduce a uniform building code. There's a lot of confusion out there, from one jurisdiction to another, what you can build in communities. A lot of them go at other things of the building codes and one community versus the other. Those standards actually drive additional costs and confusion into the construction industry.

The uniform building code is going to ensure consistent building standards across B.C. Having consistent building standards across B.C. will increase certainty for industry, increase productivity and job creation, and reduce construction costs, which should improve housing affordability.

We've consulted extensively with the industry and local government to actually develop the proposal. The work's ongoing, and it's been a big body of work for our guys to do.

[1740]

As far as the built environment is concerned, the member will know, because he's from the city of Vancouver…. If you look around the region it's mind-boggling how few communities actually get a built-environment thinking into their mind. If I was in the business or I was a municipality, I would have significant density around every SkyTrain station that came through my community so that people would never have to get in their car to go somewhere. Just walk out and get onto the SkyTrain.

In the future, if we do the built environment and we start talking about transit and the greening side, communities are going to have to understand that you don't build a transit route if nobody lives there. As we do the Evergreen line, I understand there'll be some density. There's some density that is going in around Lougheed Mall and Brentwood Mall in Burnaby, some around Oakridge in Vancouver. That's the future as far as that part of the greening of a built environment.

I mean, even something as simple as Little Mountain — the density could've been higher. That built environment would have just meant that more people would've been able to walk to transit and not have to take a car on the road, because they lived in an area where the density drove down price but at the same time brought you closer to services. Those particular services of transit should be….

For instance, when they designed the park-and-ride in Langley, which is the route that people get onto a rapid bus to connect to SkyTrain…. It works very well over the Port Mann Bridge. The municipality — I asked them to sort of set aside some zoning there so that in the future somebody could actually build housing right at the park-and-ride. They could put density there and be able to just walk out the door, get on the rapid bus, connect to the transit in 15 to 18 minutes across the Port Mann Bridge and go anywhere in the Lower Mainland.

Communities have to start to realize that. That's just a discussion point. Really, I also believe in local planning and autonomy in a lot of these things. I think that communities will have to mature. People that live in com-
[ Page 2830 ]
munities will have to mature. Usually what happens is somebody builds a home or gets a home in an area, and the next thing is that they don't want other townhouses in the area, or three-storey or four-storey, because they don't want any more density. Yet, they don't understand it's the driving of density that brings the services. It brings the built environment and the affordability of living.

It really will be a challenge in the next, probably, decade or two as we deal with discussions in and around the built environment where, first of all, people understand the importance of using the density near where the services are, like SkyTrain, to the advantage of everybody.

H. Bains: I know the time is almost there. I'd like to ask a few questions about manufactured home parks and manufactured homes.

As the minister knows, the act was changed — I think the area of when the home park is developed for a different use than the manufactured homes. Then the compensation part of the act is a 12-month equivalent of the rent. I think that doesn't even go close to what it costs to move a home, but there are also other issues.

There are no other parks that would accept them nearby or even in the Lower Mainland. Then you have many homes that are too old, and they're not roadworthy. When they are in that situation that a park has given a notice that it'll be developed for other use than a manufactured home park, then they are left with a situation that even if their home is moveable, the moving cost is not even close to what it really costs to unhook the services, put it on a truck, take it to a new park — that is provided there is a new park available — and then rehook all the services. It's not even close to what 12 months' equivalent of rent will pay them, number one.

Number two: what do they do to the homes that are too old and cannot be moved? They end up leaving the home there, and they have no place to go to. I think there is a serious problem. These are homes that can be considered as affordable homes. I think there's been a good discussion going on here. I would like to draw it to the minister and get the minister's response to this.

[1745]

What's the minister's intention to fix this problem? This problem continues to exist, and we don't see very much change coming from the ministry to provide protection that manufactured home owners need.

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, across B.C. about 15 municipalities have imposed additional requirements with regards to manufactured homes. We've worked with them on those issues so that they would be able to deal with that. At ongoing UBCM conventions I've explained to municipalities that are concerned about protecting their stock exactly how they could do it. Very few have taken up the thing, but I will explain it to the member very quickly.

If there's a manufactured home park in Surrey, for instance, where the member is from, the municipality could say to the owner of that park: "Do you know what? We'll approve your ability to go in and do a bare land strata of all the lots in that park, and you can sell those to your tenants. We won't charge you DCCs because it's actually no new development, and you'd be able to sell the lots back to the tenants who could probably, at the price they're paying for their rent today, amortize that out, because we've done that research, and you'd be able to protect the housing stock."

They make the choice to actually let it be, either by not putting other conditions in place or by deciding they want something that's going to be a higher-tax-paying entity on a particular park site. They have some responsibility to that.

The act itself is about a landlord-tenant relationship. It's not about the future of the management of the land below it. It's really a local zoning position, in my opinion. I know that some communities have actually allowed this to happen, where, successfully, people were able to buy their lots, which gives them long-term stability.

To the member's point, when they get old — and some of them do — the old CSA standards are there, and you wouldn't be allowed to have that home anywhere else in B.C. because of CSA standards. But if you owned the dirt underneath it, you'd certainly be able to get a new one and mortgage it.

There are ways to fix this problem. There are ways that municipalities can take the innovation. Very few take up the innovation. I think that there are ways they should look at it.

Certainly, hon. Chair, noting the hour, I move that the committee rise, report progress and seek leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:47 p.m.

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