2015 Legislative Session: Fourth 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)

Monday, April 13, 2015

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 22, Number 9

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

MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2015

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Madame Speaker: Hon. Members, it is my pleasure to welcome a visiting Table Officer. Assisting the House at the table as a sessional Law Clerk for the remainder of the spring sitting is Loredana Catalli-Sonier, QC. Lori served as the Chief Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick from 1993 to 2011, having been appointed Clerk Assistant in 1985.

Lori holds degrees in nursing and law and is a member of the Law Society of New Brunswick and the Canadian Bar Association. Please join me in welcoming Lori to British Columbia and the B.C. Table.

Hon. R. Coleman: Joining us in the members’ gallery this afternoon is the ambassador of Qatar, His Excellency Fahad Mohamed Yousuf Kafoud. His Excellency met with me as well as other members of this House today to discuss increasing bilateral trade, investment opportunities for the Qatari companies, wider participation for B.C. companies in large infrastructure projects in Qatar and how to encourage more interaction with Qatari institutes in the field of education, health and innovation.

We’re very pleased that the ambassador has chosen to visit us in B.C. at this time. Would the House please make him welcome.

M. Farnworth: From this side of the House, we would like to extend a very warm welcome to the member for Richmond-Steveston.

It’s great to see you here back here in the House and in good health. From this side of the House, congratulations and welcome back.

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R. Sultan: Let me add to that how great it is to see my old pal John Yap sitting in front of me. Thank you, John.

But I really stood to, in addition, acknowledge, as members on both sides of the House have already had the opportunity to meet, representatives of ACEC-BC. ACEC-BC, for the uninitiated, stands for the Association of Consulting Engineers of British Columbia.

Four members, in particular, are in the galleries today, beginning with Catherine Fritter, the chair, with the consulting firm of Moffatt and Nichol, which is a multidisciplinary team of marine engineers who will build your dock facilities for you anywhere you wish. Also, Ken Wiecke of Amec Foster Wheeler. Amec Foster Wheeler is one of only six consulting engineering companies in the world capable of designing and overseeing the construction of an LNG facility.

In addition, we have Cameron Gatey of Urban Systems Ltd. When the traffic plugs up at Marine Drive and Taylor Way, as it does quite frequently, you call on Urban Systems up in Kelowna, and hopefully, they’ll straighten it out with some fancy new system.

Finally, Keith Sashaw, is the president and CEO of ACEC-B.C., which represents 82 engineering firms, 10,000 employees, 3,500 professional engineers and annual billings of $3.8 billion — 30 percent offshore.

Would the House please make them welcome.

K. Corrigan: I have a few introductions to make today. First of all, I would like to also welcome the members of the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies of British Columbia. As the proud daughter of a father who was a consulting engineer, when I spent my summers going and looking at copper dams and turbines as my summer holidays, I’ve grown a great appreciation for the men and women who do the work of building this province. I appreciate that we were hosted today for a lunch and got a chance to talk to the many members.

I’m particularly pleased that one of those members was past president of the association, my longtime friend Doug Hinton. Doug has been a close friend of me and my husband, Derek Corrigan, for almost — need I say it? — 40 years.

If we could make both of those groups welcome. Then I have one more introduction as well.

Finally, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to welcome in the House today one of my constituency assistants, Cate Jones, who is not only a fabulous constituency assistant; she’s got a great sense of humour, and she’s a very good friend. Would you please make her welcome as well.

L. Throness: We all know what great work the Canadian Cancer Society does, through its network of volunteers, raising money for research and awareness and support. Some members of the society are here today. I’d like to introduce Brian LeFurgey, who is regional director for Vancouver Island; Lyz Gilgunn, who’s a health promotion coordinator; and Jenny Byford, who is also a health promotion coordinator. Would the House make them very welcome.

L. Krog: This constituent has been coming so often, I think she might as well just run for office, actually. I’d like the House to welcome Avery Valerio here again — this bright student from Nanaimo, who’s going to sit in this place some day, I’m sure.

J. Thornthwaite: In the legislative buildings today are some professors from New Brunswick, Dr. Bill Morrison and Dr. Patricia Peterson, who came to present the inte-
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grated service delivery model from New Brunswick for child and youth with mental health issues. They came to present to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth this morning, and they’re seeing other MLAs and ministers this afternoon. I just wanted the House to make sure that they have a warm welcome.

Thank you very much for travelling all the way from New Brunswick.

C. James: In the gallery today I have two guests from my constituency, two very important people in my life. The first guest really blazed the way as a long-serving nurse practitioner in our province, and made the way for many others to follow. She has since retired, much to the disappointment of my family and others who used her as our primary caregiver.

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She has not slowed down in her retirement — no surprise to anyone who knows her. She’s involved in the Victoria High School Alumni Association as a volunteer archivist, and she is also my amazing stepmom, Annie Boldt.

With Annie is one of the most important people in my life, my role model, one of the most generous, kind, caring people I know, my dad Lorne DeGirolomo.

Would the House please make them very welcome.

S. Hamilton: Visiting us in the Legislature today are a number of students, some 60 of them, from Burnsview Secondary School in my riding — the grade 11 social studies class and their teachers. Among them were seven specifically who I’d like to name, who attended my office last week to discuss issues of mutual concern — seven very bright, inspiring and articulate young people. First of all, Jeffrey Qi, Ruth-Ann Chau, Olivia Huang, Nicholas Kidd, Thea Copeman-Haynes, Ayesha Rehan and Hannah Smith.

Will the House please make them feel welcome.

S. Simpson: The member for Burnaby–Deer Lake earlier introduced her constituency assistant. I’m sure that she’s very good at that job, but she’s also very good at the job of being a partner. So let me introduce my wife, Cate Jones.

D. Routley: I’d like the House to help me welcome nine constituents from the lovely island of Gabriola. These folks are here to see a petition presented that they’ve collected, opposing any consideration of a bridge connecting Gabriola Island to Vancouver Island, Nanaimo.

They are Heather Nicholas. She’s the Gabriola trustee of the Islands Trust, which has as official policy a position against bridges connecting to the mainland or Vancouver Island. We have Howard Houle, the director of area B of the regional district of Nanaimo, which are also signatories with Gabriolans on an official community plan opposing bridges.

Sheila Malcolmson, the federal NDP candidate for Nanaimo-Ladysmith and the former, longtime Islands Trust rep and chair of the Islands Trust. Chris Bowers, the irrepressible former editor of the paper on Gabriola. Jacinthe Eastick, who can be found active in any worthy purpose or issue on Gabriola. There’s Veronica Hardman. And Steve O’Neil and Leaf Kotasek, who were instrumental in organizing the petition drive, as well as Penny Sidor.

Can the House help me make welcome these folks, who have made “Salish Sea” bumper stickers for their cause on Gabriola Island.

Tributes

PETER CULLEY

A. Dix: I rise today to note the passing of Peter Culley, one of British Columbia and Canada’s most remarkable poets, writers and visual artists. Peter passed away in Nanaimo — or more particularly, as he would say, in the former coal-mining town at South Wellington — last Friday at the age of 57.

Peter Culley’s work evoked the lives of working people and communities, both full of heart and social and political context. He was an innovator in form and unafraid to challenge conventional norms or be underappreciated in his time. He was always generous in his support of other writers in the community.

His Hammertown trilogy breathes life into a city resembling Nanaimo and a province resembling B.C. The best way to mark his passing is to pick up these three books — Hammertown, The Age of Briggs and Stratton and Parkway — and be challenged and inspired.

I know that members of the House will join me in sending our thoughts and best wishes to Daphne, Peter’s children and grandchildren.

Introductions by Members

G. Heyman: Joining us in the gallery today is one of my constituency assistants, Jarrett Hagglund. Jarrett loves to come and observe question period. Jarrett keeps the office running, and I’m often stopped by constituents who want to make a point of telling me just what a great job he did in helping them. If I’m ever in the office in a bad mood, Jarrett’s other talents as a stand-up comedian help to lift my spirits.

Joining Jarrett in the gallery, with us today, is his partner, Zach Sapers. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Zach because he’s volunteered on a number of occasions with some of the community forums that we’ve put on through my constituency office. Zach also puts many people to shame in the area of public service. He’s been active politically as a New Democrat since the age of 14.

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I’d also like to note that Jarrett and Zach will be get-
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ting married on June 20. It’s going to be a great celebration. Some people are invited, but everybody apparently is invited to the after-party at Heritage Hall sometime around 9 p.m. onwards.

Will the House please join me in making Zach and Jarrett very, very welcome and wishing them a very happy life together.

Statements

CAMPBELL RIVER STORM HOCKEY TEAM

C. Trevena: While many eyes in B.C. are going to be on the Stanley Cup playoffs that are starting this week, Campbell River hockey fans are looking to Alberta because the Campbell River Storm, Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League champions, hope to be the first Island team to win the Keystone Cup.

Their record is great, including a four-game sweep against the Victoria Cougars, followed by an undefeated run at the Cyclone Taylor Cup provincial championship in Mission. They’ve got five games in three days coming up at the end of the week. Campbell River, the Island and, I hope, all of B.C. will support the Campbell River Storm. Go, Storm, go!

HOCKEYVILLE

G. Holman: There’s only one town in all of Canada that can declare themselves as Hockeyville, Canada, and this year it’s the Saanich Peninsula Panorama Recreation Centre. Just quickly, I want to thank very much Jason Fletcher, who put in the original nomination — by the way, there were 1,000 communities who applied for Hockeyville in Canada — Wayne Ruffle, the chair of the Panorama Rec Centre; and the staff and countless volunteers who worked on the campaign.

The hockey game between the Canucks and the San Jose Sharks is September 15. If you’re nice, possibly we can get tickets for some of the colleagues here in the House.

I do want to thank all the colleagues in the House for putting the word out, for voting and, particularly, the member for Peace River South, who was so gracious in supporting the Panorama Rec Centre for this great honour. Congratulations to the community, to the volunteers, and thanks to all of my colleagues here.

Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

MESSAGE OF APPRECIATION
AND HEALTHY HEART PROGRAM

J. Yap: It’s great to be back. I want to thank you and all members of this House for the get-well wishes, kind thoughts, messages, fruit baskets and other tokens which no doubt had a role in my recovery.

What also helped was the Healthy Heart program at Richmond Hospital, where I learned about healthy eating, reducing risk factors and the importance of exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle. Healthy Heart is an evidence-informed program based on the Canadian guidelines for cardiac rehabilitation and cardiovascular prevention. It’s offered at various locations around the province.

Patients are referred by their physician and receive an individual cardiac assessment and monitoring throughout the program. Participants are adults at risk of developing heart disease or who have experienced a cardiac event such as heart attack, bypass surgery, angiogram, angioplasty or other cardiac conditions. The classes cover topics such as healthy nutrition, cholesterol, medication, managing stress, emotional wellness and meditation, which I found quite interesting.

For me, learning from the other participants was invaluable, with all of us bringing different perspectives, life experiences and knowledge, yet sharing the common bond of being cardiac patients. I’d like to thank the interdisciplinary program team of the Joan Prescesky, RN, the coordinator; Karen Tyldesley, registered dietitian; Rishma Dhalla, occupational therapist; Emily Chou, physiotherapist; Fiona Odum, tireless volunteer; and Dr. Andrew Jakubowski, cardiologist, and the program’s medical director.

I recommend that all members learn about the Healthy Heart program for themselves, for their families, to share with friends and constituents. It’s an avenue to a heart-healthy life, something I personally appreciate more so today than I ever did when I was last present in this House.

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CANCER AWARENESS AND DAFFODIL MONTH

J. Darcy: At this time of year we see daffodils blooming everywhere around us. They tell us that springtime has arrived. They’re a symbol of rebirth and hope. That’s why April is Daffodil Month, a time to support people living with cancer, a time to commit to preventing and finding cures for cancer.

We have all had family members or loved ones speak the words: “I have cancer.” In some cases we have heard the dreaded words, “You have cancer,” ourselves. They are words that no one ever wants to hear, but 24,000 British Columbians will hear those words this year, and 9,900 of them will die from cancer.

When families are facing cancer, they need the best cancer treatment available. But they also need somewhere to turn for help to cope with the disease, and that’s what Daffodil Month is all about. It’s about supporting the excellent work of the Canadian Cancer Society so that it can support individuals and families dealing with cancer. Whether it’s talking to a trained cancer information specialist or connecting with someone who’s had
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a similar experience or for kids with cancer attending Camp Good Times, where they get to just be normal kids, Daffodil Month is about supporting these and countless other services provided by the Canadian Cancer Society.

It’s also about funding world-class research in order to find cures for cancer, and very importantly, Daffodil Month is about contributing to research and programs to prevent cancer. Whether it’s about reducing smoking, access to healthy and nutritious food, reducing exposure to workplace toxic substances or toxic substances in the environment or tackling the social determinants of health, cancer prevention is a major focus of the Canadian Cancer Society and Daffodil Month.

When you see Canadian Cancer Society volunteers when you’re out and about in your community this month, stop and talk to them, donate, buy some daffodils and wear your bright yellow daffodil wherever you go.

CANCER AWARENESS AND
CANADIAN CANCER SOCIETY

L. Throness: I’d like to echo my colleague’s comments about the Canadian Cancer Society by talking about them for a moment. All British Columbians are touched in some way by the reality of cancer. Both of my own parents died of this disease, and many of us in this place have similar stories.

But there are strong allies in the fight against cancer too. Canada’s largest national health charity, the Canadian Cancer Society, is one of them. The Canadian Cancer Society is the largest charitable funder of cancer research in Canada, investing more than $1 billion in research in its 77-year history, $45 million poured into research just last year. This kind of investment has led to breakthroughs revolutionizing the way cancer is diagnosed, treated and prevented.

The society also empowers Canadians by providing free information and support services to people facing cancer and their families. For example, since 1996 their cancer information service has helped more than one million Canadians with their cancer-related questions — 85,000 in 2014 alone.

I met recently with Ann Marie Walsh of the Canadian Cancer Society to discuss ways to prevent cancer, such as our ban on e-cigarettes for children and restricting smoking on health institution property. I’m proud that our government can be part of the solution.

We’d like to thank the society and its hundreds of volunteers throughout our province, often motivated by their own personal experiences, who come alongside in practical ways to bring empathy, hope and healing to people suffering with cancer.

In recognition of the work of the society, the government has proclaimed April as Daffodil Month. This is not only a fundraising campaign. The daffodil is a bright symbol of joy and optimism, letting people know that they are not alone in their struggle and affirming our conviction that cancer can be beaten.

AUTISM AWARENESS

S. Fraser: World Autism Awareness Day was April 2. I will quote from the proclamation entitled Creating a Secure Future for Those With Autism:

“Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is a lifelong neurological disability that significantly affects communication, social skills and behaviour that compromises quality of life for individuals with autism spectrum and their families.

“This month 80 children will be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in British Columbia. That’s one in every 68 newborns. There is no known cause or cure for autism, but effective, science-based treatment known as applied behaviour analysis, or ABA, can significantly improve the outcomes for individuals living with autism.

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“ABA can be used to teach and support individuals with autism at home, at school and in the community. The Autism Support Network society serving British Columbia is a leading autism support organization committed to providing resources to families of those with ASD, including information, education and improved access to quality, scientifically proven autism treatment.

“As a community, we benefit when our citizens with autism succeed. We have an obligation to ensure that our health care, education and community support services work for them. For example, we want to support our first responders and law enforcement personnel in further understanding the wide variety of behaviours that individuals with ASD can exhibit in emergency situations.

“For World Autism Awareness Day, we offer them our support, respect and commitment to improving access to all aspects of our community. We encourage all of our citizens to learn more about autism and what they can do to create a secure future, for individuals on this spectrum and their families, where everyone has a chance to reach their full potential.”

Wise words for all of us.

OFFICE OF THE SERGEANT-AT-ARMS

E. Foster: April marks the 600th anniversary of the office of the Sergeant-at-Arms. I’m sure that our Sergeant has times, especially at the end of the season, when he probably feels that old.

This is a very historic parliamentary office steeped in the traditions of parliament itself. In 1279 the office consisted of men whose duty it was to protect the king and, at his instructions, to make arrests and hold those arrested for trial. The Sergeant-at-Arms’ signature weapon of the period was what we now refer to as the mace. As parliament evolved, the mace became known as the authority of the Crown, which we observe today as the sergeant, carrying the mace, leads the Speaker’s procession into the chamber at the beginning of each sitting.

Six hundred years ago, in 1415, King Henry V appointed one of his sergeants, Nicholas Maudit, to serve as the first Sergeant-at-Arms for the House of Commons at Westminster. Where originally the Sergeant-at-Arms protected the sovereign, the position emerged into one that was charged with safeguarding the institution of par-
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liament and those elected by the people to fulfil their roles.

Today in British Columbia the Sergeant-at-Arms, as an officer of the House, has expanded duties. The position is responsible for various ceremonial activities associated with the Legislature, caring for this beautiful building and for providing the security necessary to ensure that all occupants of the Legislature can perform their functions safely. It is an increasingly complex but vital role that sergeants throughout the Commonwealth perform today.

I would like to take this time to thank all sergeants in the Commonwealth, especially our Sergeant-at-Arms, Gary Lenz, for the outstanding work they do, sometimes in the face of extreme danger, as we observed late last year at the Canadian House of Commons. I ask all members to congratulate the office and its occupants on this historic occasion.

STADIUM AT VICTORIA HIGH SCHOOL

C. James: There is a new stadium coming to Victoria High School, and our community is very excited about it. The school’s alumni association and its partners have been doing an amazing job of fundraising for the anticipated $5.5 million cost. Bays United Football Club, which supports soccer for life here in Victoria, has raised $100,000. Victoria city council has committed $250,000 to the project, which has the support of the Greater Victoria school board.

The stadium dates from 1950 and is known as Memorial Stadium in honour of Vic High students that served in World War II. It has been a place of team work and recreation for 65 years, and now it is really in need of an upgrade. The demand is certainly there. A good stadium at Vic High will mean better access to field sports. Research shows that with better access comes greater participation, which will help improve health and build team and individual skills.

The alumni association has planned this project in phases. The first phase will add an artificial field that can be used year-round and will install field lights for evening games. Next will be a separate field house, and it will be built for use by all of the community. Then the association plans to install a metric track and replace the stadium seats.

It’s wonderful to see so much local enthusiasm for this project. Fernwood Coffee Company is donating $1 from every pound of coffee sold in the months of April and May. Many individual donors have already come forward, including amazing support from Lois Wallace and her daughters Marilyn and Wendy. Lois’s late husband, Lawrie Wallace, has contributed much to Victoria High School and to our community.

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The Vic High Alumni Association welcomes support from individuals, from businesses and from community organizations. You can find them on line at vichigh.com.

Thanks to all those who are working hard to make this project a reality. It’s going to make a big difference in Victoria and a better experience for our students and our entire community.

Oral Questions

OIL SPILL RESPONSE

J. Horgan: Last week a bunker oil spill in English Bay became a wake-up call for all British Columbians. We had a spill in calm weather, on enclosed waters in the heart of the most densely populated part of British Columbia. Despite all of those favourable conditions, we received chaos and confusion from senior levels of government, and the city of Vancouver and their officials were left in the dark.

My question is to the Minister of Environment. Why should British Columbians have any confidence in our ability to assess and address a significant oil spill on the coast of Vancouver Island, on the central coast or on the north coast, when we can’t even get our act together in the heart of Vancouver? Why should we have any confidence, why should British Columbians have any confidence, in British Columbia’s ability to respond appropriately in a real, real disaster?

Hon. M. Polak: The members opposite will receive no argument from me, no argument from this side of the House, that we need in British Columbia to have world-leading spill response, and we don’t yet have it. The fact of the matter is that we have made it clear — the Premier, myself, others — that the initial response to this incident was absolutely unacceptable.

We certainly look forward to the post-incident review — which, by the way, will be made public — when we can better assess all the gaps that exist and turn our attention to the plans that we will need to put in place with the federal government to ensure that something like this never happens again.

Madame Speaker: The Leader of the Official Opposition on a supplemental.

J. Horgan: One of the most obvious gaps here is in credibility for the government and the spokespeople for the government of British Columbia.

What British Columbians were exposed to, at a critical time last week, was an absence of leadership from the provincial government. There was finger-pointing from the province back to the feds, from the feds back to the province, and the city of Vancouver — who were right there on the ground — were not advised for almost 14 hours. That is beyond unacceptable.

I appreciate that the minister is as genuine in her concern as I am in my questioning. But the challenge we have
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as legislators — the challenge we have at a time when there are prospects of a massive increase in oil tanker traffic up and down my constituency and right along the coast — is that government has given away the tools to protect British Columbians. Rather than being responsible for the Trans Mountain Pipeline proposal, we have abdicated that responsibility and given it back to the federal government.

When the Kits Coast Guard base was shut down three years ago, this side of the House offered to join with the government in tandem, in unison, in a non-partisan way, to say to the federal government: “This is absolutely unacceptable. To save pennies, you’re putting our coast and everything that that involves at risk.” The government did a YouTube video — and not another thing since then.

My question to the Minister of Environment is quite simple. What tangible steps has the government taken since the closure of the Kits Coast Guard base to ensure that we are prepared for a modest spill, as we saw in English Bay, or a massive spill, as we may well have in my constituency and in constituencies up and down the coast?

Hon. M. Polak: There was no more vocal opponent to the closure of the Kits Coast Guard base than our Premier of British Columbia. She reiterated that view when we spoke with media as a result of the incident that took place in English Bay this week. She has certainly made that clear to the federal government on more than one occasion. That work continues.

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With respect to the work of British Columbia, I’m glad to hear that members are finally on board with British Columbia’s five conditions. At the beginning there was nothing but mocking coming from the other side. Instead, today we have Alberta on side with our five conditions. We finally have the federal government recognizing that they are essential to any kind of expansion of heavy oil in British Columbia.

If nothing else, this incident can serve as a proof point to the fact that we do not have that world-leading spill response yet.

Madame Speaker: The Leader of the Official Opposition on a further supplemental.

J. Horgan: In July of 2013 this minister stood in budget estimates and said: “During a marine spill, our ministry would be doing a number of things.” They’d be making sure that “there is equipment, expertise and trained personnel available” and advising the public of their concerns.

Now, I would expect that the public would include the city of Vancouver. I would expect that rather than saying: “We have five conditions that we use during an election campaign to avoid an issue….” That would be all well and good three years ago, but it’s 2015 now.

When the federal government closed the Vancouver Environment Canada station of environmental emergencies, what did the government say? When the federal government closed the marine mammal contaminants program at DFO, what did the minister say?

Lastly, will the minister give the assurances that the public needs that we’re not going to just rest on rhetoric now? Instead of going to back to Ottawa and asking for more temporary foreign worker permits, let’s go back to Ottawa and say: “Defend our coast as you defend the east coast.” British Columbians deserve our fair share. It’s not just about rhetoric. It should be about some reality.

Hon. M. Polak: The opposition leader is, as usual, a little late to the party, if he hasn’t been paying attention.

The opposition leader didn’t have to wait until the Premier’s media availability after the spill in English Bay to understand clearly her position with respect to what we require from the federal government. That position has been clear. We have continued to advocate for it vocally. We have continued to work at a staff level. We were the ones commissioning the Nuka research report. We were the ones who, in doing that, triggered the expert panel reports — two of them now — that have been produced by the federal government.

There is no reason on earth that we should be taking a back seat to folks who seem to have only come to the notion of the five conditions very recently.

S. Chandra Herbert: Well, the Liberals may think that the federal government agrees with the so-called five conditions. Clearly, it was not a world-class spill response. I don’t understand how they could even fathom that this is a world-class spill response, and the federal government even agrees with them.

She says they agree with them. She says it’s not spill response. It is spill response. There have been so many reports this government has put out, you can practically sop up the spill with just the paperwork and the words from that side.

My point is this government has said action is needed. We’ve said action is needed, but the government hasn’t done one thing aside from talk. My constituents have beaches that they can no longer use because of this spill.

When will there be action? When will this government actually do more than just talk and wag their finger?

Hon. M. Polak: For the member’s benefit, let me repeat. The response to the English Bay marine spill was not world class — not by any stretch of the imagination.

While we disagree with our federal counterparts as to the characterization of the quality of the response, we certainly agree with all the agencies that, in the case of a spill in English Bay, a spill in the marine environment, we are led in a unified command structure by the federal government through the Canadian Coast Guard. In
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this case, we have been quite clear in saying that the absence of their leadership in the beginning phases of the response was absolutely unacceptable.

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As a result of our repeated requests for an improvement in that situation, I can tell the members that the Coast Guard certainly stepped up their involvement, took back over the leadership of incident command as of Friday morning, and as of today, the actions are continuing in a well-coordinated manner. But the response to this spill was unacceptable. It was not world-class. I’m not sure what the member has not understood about that.

Madame Speaker: The member for Vancouver–West End on a supplemental.

S. Chandra Herbert: We agree that it was not world-class. We agree that it was a failure. My question to the minister is: why has she abdicated her responsibility to stand up for British Columbia in regards to Kinder Morgan?

The government has written off…. They’ve given the federal government the right to make a decision about the oil tanker pipeline, with tanker traffic going through the harbour. They have refused to take back our power so we can have our own environmental assessment within B.C. to make our own decisions.

She’s given away the power to a government who thinks that the pipeline project, who thinks that the spill response, has been a-okay. She’s given those folks, Stephen Harper, that power to make a decision about oil tankers. Why won’t she stand up for B.C. and have our own environmental assessment for Kinder Morgan?

Hon. M. Polak: I hope what the member is indicating is that their new-found concern for attention to marine spills off our coast is somehow only related to whether or not there will be new oil pipelines travelling through British Columbia.

The fact of the matter is we need world-class spill response not just for oil tankers but for freight ships, even without the prospect of increased shipments of oil tankers up and down our coast. This ship was a grain ship. There are 38,200 direct jobs that operate as a result of the shipments through our port of Metro Vancouver.

There are already needs for us to be able to respond as displayed by what happened with this grain ship. This isn’t just about new oil pipelines. This is about our coast right now.

OIL SPILL RESPONSE AND
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT B.C.

K. Corrigan: One of the ideas floated at the Premier’s press conference last Friday was for emergency management B.C. to take the lead in responding to oil spills. This is the B.C. agency that over a year ago the Auditor General said is woefully unprepared for major emergencies like a catastrophic earthquake. Even the government’s own Renteria report said: “sufficient resources and priority have not been devoted to this effort.”

After ignoring report after report, after ignoring warning after warning that emergency management B.C. doesn’t have the resources it needs to manage its current mandate, does the Minister of Justice seriously think that this agency is in any position whatsoever to take over responsibility for oil spills?

Hon. M. Polak: Once again, the opposition displays a fundamental lack of knowledge as to how these types of incidents are responded to.

They operate under a unified command structure under the leadership of the Canadian Coast Guard. To that are added a deputy provincial incident commander, an environmental unit leader, five Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Techniques team members, one waste management specialist, one oiled wildlife specialist, five emergency management B.C. staff providing liaison and other incident command post functions, four conservation officers, and the list goes on.

This is truly an interagency effort. I’m sure the members are well familiar with the very professional way in which those types of units operate, in particular at a provincial level, when we experience forest fires.

Madame Speaker: Burnaby–Deer Lake on a supplemental.

K. Corrigan: That was the idea not of the official opposition but of the Premier of the province. She said that perhaps emergency management B.C…

Interjections.

K. Corrigan: So perhaps a briefing of the Premier is in order.

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Again, the Renteria report says that when it comes to preparing for catastrophic earthquakes, what B.C. needs is “clear vision, sufficient resources and strong political will.” Instead of that, we have a Justice Minister who emphasized “individual responsibility” in response to Mr. Renteria’s recommendations for government action.

Again to the Justice Minister, this is the Premier’s suggestion. If emergency management B.C. was in charge of oil spill responses, would she be telling the citizens of B.C. that they should be cleaning up the oil spills in English Bay?

Hon. M. Polak: One only has to look at the tremendously effective response that we are consistently able to deliver through EMBC in the result of fire season in
[ Page 7092 ]
British Columbia to know that they are an extremely professional organization.

In this instance, I can tell you that they formed an integral part of the incident command post. Certainly, in the absence of the leadership from the Canadian Coast Guard that we needed at the beginning, EMBC, as well as representatives from other provincial agencies, were quite well able to step up and take the actions they needed to take, even outside of the protocols that required the Canadian Coast Guard.

Our emergency management B.C. team is one that performs at a very, very high level. All British Columbians can have confidence in them.

ST. PAUL’S HOSPITAL REDEVELOPMENT
AND EMERGENCY SERVICES IN WEST END

J. Darcy: We on this side of the House have been calling for investments in downtown Vancouver hospitals for a decade. Three years ago the Premier of British Columbia promised $500 million for the revitalized St. Paul’s Hospital. If the Premier had followed through on her pre-election promise, we might have had these upgrades already in place at St. Paul’s Hospital.

But there is no indication in today’s announcement that any emergency services will remain in the downtown and the West End, which include the most densely populated blocks in the province and some of the worst traffic-congested areas.

Will the minister tell the people who live and work in the downtown and West End that they will have life-saving emergency services where they need them and when they need them?

Hon. T. Lake: I think the member opposite may be excused for her lack of understanding of the timeline to build a hospital. The members of her party did not build a hospital in British Columbia in the 1990s, so I understand that.

St. Paul’s Hospital has served the people of British Columbia tremendously well. For over 150 years parts of that hospital have been serving patients in B.C. I, like many members in this House, have had family members who have had their lives prolonged, the quality of life increased, by the services of St. Paul’s, which serves all of British Columbia.

It is a testament to the men and women who work at St. Paul’s that they have been able to deliver that high standard of care in a facility that simply is not up to the state of the art that we expect here in B.C. We are going to rebuild St. Paul’s Hospital for the needs of today but, more importantly, for the needs of tomorrow. That includes making sure that all of the residents of downtown have the medical services that they need.

Madame Speaker: The member for New Westminster on a supplemental.

J. Darcy: I don’t think that the people of the downtown and the West End are going to be reassured, because the minister did not answer the question about whether there are going to be emergency services in the downtown and the West End for people when they need them, where they need them.

The Premier of this province promised that there would be a rebuild of St. Paul’s Hospital. She broke that promise.

[1420]

How can the people of the downtown and the West End trust that there will, in fact, be emergency services in the downtown and West End for the people who need them, where they need them and when they need them? That’s the question. Can the minister give an answer? How can we trust the government to keep that promise?

Hon. T. Lake: The reality is that when you look at the ambulance pickups and drop-offs at St. Paul’s, the West End and downtown Vancouver do have a good number of ambulance pickups — 17 percent and 20 percent respectively. In fact, 52 percent of the pickups that go to St. Paul’s Hospital via B.C. Ambulance are from the Downtown Eastside. This location makes sense for the residents of all of Vancouver, for the residents of British Columbia.

We will ensure through a year-long consultation process that the residents of the west end of Vancouver have the health care needs that they require and that their needs are being met today and into the future.

STATUS OF
MOUNT SAINT JOSEPH HOSPITAL

J. Kwan: Over the last ten years we have seen tremendous growth in the emergency department at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital. In 2005 Mount Saint Joseph saw 12,729 patients. This year they will be exceeding 28,000 patients. The hospital has been trying to cope by putting two to three patients in a room that was designed for one, resulting in overcrowding and unsafe conditions, yet the Ministry of Health recently turned down a proposal for a rebuilt facility presented by Providence Health and Vancouver Coastal. The community is left wondering why.

To the Health Minister: did the ministry turn down this proposal to rebuild the ER at Mount Saint Joseph because it is looking at closing Mount Saint Joseph?

Hon. T. Lake: This may be a first in British Columbia political history that a member whose constituency just found out they are getting a $1 billion hospital facility is complaining about the plan. I find that incredible. I think the people that the member who asked the question will be asking to support her in an upcoming shareholders meeting will want to know how she feels about a state-of-the-art hospital and campus of care in her riding.

Interjections.
[ Page 7093 ]

Madame Speaker: Members.

Hon. T. Lake: I’d like to invite the member to let us know what she thinks about this state-of-the-art facility. The reality is this opportunity is an opportunity to increase health care for all of Vancouver Coastal Health, including Mount St. Joe’s, with integration, with coordination and continued investment in what is an excellent facility at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital.

Madame Speaker: Vancouver–Mount Pleasant on a supplemental.

J. Kwan: I’d like to invite the Minister of Health to tour Mount Saint Joseph Hospital, and he will see the overcrowded situation that exists there in the ER. In fact, that hospital has the highest growth in emergency services in the entire region. When asked about the future of Mount Saint Joseph, while the minister didn’t answer the question and says he didn’t want to speculate, he told the media in the scrum that he will know more about what services are where and that there may be some realignment of services. That’s what the Minister of Health said.

I can tell the minister that Mount Saint Joseph is the first….

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members. Members will come to order.

Please continue.

J. Kwan: I can tell the minister that Mount Saint Joseph is the first hospital to serve the Asian community and is respected for its multicultural focus and community programs. In 1992 Mount Saint Joseph created the positions of director of multicultural services and coordinator of interpreter services and has become a leading voice in the development of public education sessions for ethnic communities. And 97 percent of the long-term care facility at Mount Saint Joseph serves the Chinese-Canadian community.

Can the Minister of Health confirm that Mount Saint Joseph will not be closed as a result of the announcement of the rebuilding of St. Paul’s? If not, what are the plans for Mount Saint Joseph, and when will the public have that information?

[1425]

Hon. T. Lake: The member for New Westminster can be excused for not knowing about the terrible record of investment of 1990s of the NDP, but the member opposite who just asked the question was there when not one hospital was built. In fact, one was closed — Shaughnessy Hospital. To be lectured on investments in health care by that member opposite is preposterous on a day when we invest $1.2 billion in her riding.

Interjections.

S. Simpson: I’ll wait till the Finance Minister has his moment.

We’ll try again to see if we can get the minister to answer the question. Mount Saint Joseph is a critical health care facility, particularly for the Chinese-Canadian community. It has focused on services that have been so well received by that community, and it meets a special and unique need.

The question for the minister is this. Will Mount Saint Joseph be closed as part of the redevelopment of St. Paul’s, or will the minister assure that community that in fact Mount Saint Joseph will continue and be upgraded itself?

Hon. T. Lake: Mount St. Joe’s is an invaluable health care asset, and we understand the historic role that it has played in the health care of people in that part of Vancouver.

Let me just tell you about recent investments that the ministry has made in capital and programs at Mount St. Joe’s, including $600,000 for repiping, $750,000 for elevator upgrades, $1.25 million for a rapid-access breast clinic, $1.75 million for a new intensive care unit, $4.9 million for consolidating St. Vincent’s Hospital to Mount St. Joe’s.

We understand there are challenges around the emergency department of Mount St. Joe’s. Providence Health Care and the ministry will be working hard to support Mount St. Joe’s and ensure that it continues to provide the amazing service that it does to the people of Vancouver.

CHILD DEATH CASE AND
ACCESS TO INFORMATION

D. Donaldson: Isabella Wiens was 21 months old when she died in foster care. It’s an horrific situation. The coroner’s report was inconclusive. It listed broken bones and multiple bruises. Two years later her mother, Sara-Jane Wiens, still does not have the answers from the ministry regarding the circumstances leading to her daughter’s death in care.

The ministry’s director of children protection conducted a review. The full report was not shared with the mother after two years. Why not?

Hon. S. Cadieux: First, let me say that the death of a child is a tragedy. Whether it happens when a child is in ministry care or whether it happens in a regular family environment, it is a tragedy, and a family will have to try and cope with that. I can’t even imagine the pain that that causes a family nor the difficulty in rebuilding a life from that. My heart goes out to the family in this case.

As the member will well know, as we have canvassed numerous times in this House, privacy laws in British
[ Page 7094 ]
Columbia and the CFCSA prevent me from speaking about specifics of any case in this House. The member knows there are avenues outside this House for him to, as the critic, request information specific to cases, and I suggest that he do that.

[1430]

Madame Speaker: Stikine on a supplemental.

D. Donaldson: The job of the minister is to divulge to the public, draw back curtains, be transparent and take accountability. For two years this case was not before the courts. During that time a review of Isabella’s death was conducted. We don’t know who conducted the review, what the terms of reference were, what recommendations were made following this review, and neither does Isabella’s mother. That’s wrong.

Will this minister do the right thing and make the review public to get some answers for the mother and do the short life of Isabella justice?

Hon. S. Cadieux: As I’ve stated before and will clarify again for the member opposite, because he seems to have difficulty understanding this, when a child dies in foster care a number of processes are triggered.

The police will conduct an investigation and determine whether or not there is need to either investigate further or press charges. The coroner’s office will investigate and determine cause of death and may order an inquest. Within the ministry the provincial director of child welfare will assess the information related to the case and determine whether or not there are policy or practice issues that require a formal review.

The independent Representative for Children and Youth, independent of the ministry, is informed of the circumstances immediately and is advised as to the decisions of the director whether or not to undertake a formal review, at which point the independent representative can determine whether or not she would like to do a review.

Unlike other provinces, we regularly report the critical injuries and deaths of children in the ministry’s care on our website, as a matter of transparency, as was set out after the Hughes report.

I think the member should take the opportunities and avenues available to him outside of this House to access information because, as I have stated before and will state again, I cannot and will not discuss cases in this House.

[End of question period.]

Tabling Documents

Madame Speaker: Hon. Members, I have the honour to present a report of the Auditor General, Integrated Case Management System.

Petitions

N. Simons: It gives me great pleasure to present to the House a petition from 180 high school students from Powell River who are concerned about plans to expand the export of U.S. thermal coal through British Columbia. I seek to table this petition.

D. Routley: I seek to present a petition. This is half of a petition. My colleague will present the other half. This is 1,116 names. It protests any consideration of a fixed link between Gabriola Island and Vancouver Island or the Mainland, relying on the Islands Trust policy that says: “no island in the Trust area should be connected to Vancouver Island, the Mainland or another island by a bridge or tunnel, notwithstanding the existing bridge between North and South Pender Islands.” This fragile and vulnerable environment is meant to be protected for all of B.C., all of Canada and all of the world by the Islands Trust.”

S. Hamilton: I rise to table a petition by students of Burnsview Secondary School in my riding, assembled by many of the seven members that I specifically named earlier, regarding the expansion of exports of thermal coal through British Columbia.

C. Trevena: Along with my colleague from Nanaimo–North Cowichan, I’d like to table the other half of the petition. There are 1,153 names, bringing it to a total of 2,269 people from Gabriola Island who are concerned that $200,000 of public money was spent on a feasibility study for a bridge that nobody wants on the island. They are also concerned that this feasibility study will not be released until the summer, although it is already complete.

With that, I’d like to table this petition.

[1435]

D. Bing: I’d like to present two petitions from my constituents in Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows. The first is a petition with 1,600 names on it protesting a proposed rock quarry on Sheridan Hill in Pitt Meadows. The community feels that this rock quarry is in an inappropriate location. It is next to a city park, close to residences and is bad for the environment, plus the First Nations have not been consulted.

I also wish to present a petition signed by 300 secondary students from my riding. These students are also protesting expansion of thermal coal exports through British Columbia.

J. Darcy: I’d like to present a petition on behalf of 244 students of the New Westminster Secondary School, gathered by the environment club of the high school, also protesting the proposal to increase exports of American thermal coal through Fraser Surrey Docks and raising concerns about the environmental and health impacts of such a project.
[ Page 7095 ]

A. Weaver: I, too, have a petition from the same group of students — 25 students from Oak Bay High School, part of a large group across the province who visited MLAs last week, as organized with the Defend Our Future group. This group also is seeking to “request that the hon. House oppose expanding exports of thermal coal through British Columbia.”

Tabling Documents

Hon. S. Anton: I have the honour to present the 2014 annual report of the Forest Appeals Commission.

I beg leave to present the 2013-2014 annual report of the Environmental Appeal Board.

As stipulated under the Justice Reform and Transparency Act, the province’s Justice and Public Safety Council is required to issue, by March 31, an annual three-year strategic plan for the justice and public safety sector. As minister I received the council’s second strategic plan at the end of March, which I’m tabling today in the House. The plan is the result of extensive work done by the council over the past year, including consultation at two justice summits held in 2014. I thank them for their continued efforts in setting a path for collaboration and innovation across the justice sector.

The plan sets out priorities and measures for the justice and public safety sector. The priorities are not binding on any of the participants in the sector. Rather, the strength of the plan is, and will be, the degree to which, over time, participants find the council’s plan to provide a useful overall roadmap for how we improve our justice and public safety system.

I encourage the members of the House to take the time to review this plan. We all know the importance of transformation in the justice and public safety sector, and I welcome public discussion around the progress made by the council and the sector thus far.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: In Committee A, Committee of Supply — for the information of members, the estimates of the Ministry of Education — and, in this chamber, second reading on Bill 15.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 15 — MOTOR VEHICLE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

(continued)

Hon. S. Anton: I move that Bill 15 now be read a second time.

M. Farnworth: We’re still on second reading debate, and we’ve been waiting for…. There is an order, and I know you have the order there.

I’m sorry the minister was in a little bit of a hurry to move debate along. But I know that there are….

[1440]

B. Ralston: She’s in the passing lane.

M. Farnworth: Unfortunately, no. She’s not in the passing lane on this particular piece of legislation. The signal was the wrong signal.

We are still on second reading debate, and we have a few more speakers, I know, on this particular piece of legislation, which is an important piece of legislation on highway safety in British Columbia.

Interjections.

Hon. S. Anton: The main focus of this bill is to enhance and safeguard the life-saving benefits of several road safety programs, including the immediate roadside prohibition program, the vehicle impoundment program and remedial programs.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: The Chair has been advised that second reading has been indeed moved and that debate was adjourned by the Minister of Transportation.

Hon. S. Anton: Yes, I appreciate the order. We’re further along than thought, so I do believe that this piece is already on the record.

M. Farnworth: Yes, the Minister of Transportation had not been blocking the traffic lanes on the debate on this bill. And I intend to pick up the pace of debate on this particular bill so we can speed it along to committee stage, observing, of course, all the required signs for the passage of legislation and making sure that we don’t speed through them too quickly.

Anyway, this particular piece of legislation deals with a number of issues. One of the most important ones — and one I know that the Minister of Transportation was keen to address during second reading debate — was the issue of left-hand-lane hogs, as this bill is known for amongst the general public.

Some might say: why is that important? Well, all of us know that road safety is something that, as legislators, we’re concerned about and the public is concerned about — wanting to make sure that not only do people observe the speed limits and the highway code of the province of British Columbia but that people also drive proactively, that people are aware of what they’re supposed to be doing when they’re driving.
[ Page 7096 ]

What this bill is going to do is a bit of a challenge, and there will be some questions at committee stage on legislation. This bill is going to attempt something called — well, in essence — legislating common sense. That’s no mean feat to legislate common sense. I know that all of us, as MLAs, get constituents into our office who have issues that they want to raise, and quite often, traffic is one of those issues, whether it is congestion or whether it is speed limits or whether it is, in fact, how people drive on the road.

I can tell you, it is one thing in city streets that are pretty straightforward. It is quite different once you get out onto the major arterial roadways within the Lower Mainland and, certainly, outside the Lower Mainland, in many parts of British Columbia. Then the question of people’s driving habits comes first and foremost.

When you go down to the States and you cross over the 49th parallel, one of the interesting things that you really notice is a difference in approach to driving between here in British Columbia and south of the border.

[1445]

When you go south of the border, you see people stick in the right-hand lane. They are driving. They use the left-hand lane to pass. That’s really the only time that they use it, and there’s an orderly flow of traffic. In fact, the police in the United States enforce that left-hand lane for passing. They enforce it on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, far too often, particularly when you talk to American traffic authorities and to the police in the United States, they will tell you that far and away the largest group of people that they ticket for not obeying the rules of the road in the States, which are to stay in the right-hand lane and use the left lane for passing, are Canadians — and, in particular, British Columbians. For some reason, there is a reluctance of many drivers to follow that rule down in the States. They get the consequences of that, which is a very expensive ticket, even more so now that it’s paid in U.S. dollars.

The challenge that we have here is the same thing. Too many people think that the left lane is their own personal lane to drive in the same way that you would drive in the right-hand lane. You talk to people, media talk to people, and they quite often will go: “Oh, but I’m doing the speed limit. The speed limit says 100 kilometres. I’m doing that. It’s people behind me backed up who should be observing the speed limit. I’m not breaking the law, and they are, so I’m going to stay in the left-hand lane. I’m going to do the speed limit, and I don’t care if I’m blocking traffic.”

Well, while technically correct that they are observing the speed limit, the reality is that they are creating dangerous and hazardous traffic conditions, the kind of traffic conditions that cause accidents — and in many cases very serious accidents. It’s not up to the individual to decide: “I’m going to regulate traffic.” We’ve all seen them. I don’t want to get into stereotypes about the kind of car or the kind of hat that may be worn. But they’re there, and they’re not moving.

Interjections.

M. Farnworth: He could tell you. Actually, if you ask your Finance Minister, he could tell you too.

The bottom line is this. There are people who seem to think that the left-hand lane is something that you drive in the same way that you would the right-hand lane. They will drive whatever way. You see them. They’re not moving. It doesn’t matter if they’re backing up traffic. It doesn’t matter if they’re causing problems on the road. It’s just not safe.

What this legislation is going to do is attempt to deal with that problem and to make people aware and to bring it home that — you know what? — there are rules of the road and a highway code that people need to follow. It’s not just some harmless thing of saying: “Oh, I’m going to drive in the left-hand lane the way that I feel like it, even if I am doing the speed limit.” Common sense says you drive in the right-hand lane, and you use the left-hand lane for passing.

The legislation recognizes that there are circumstances — for example, when you’re getting into the left lane to access a left turn lane. Perfectly normal. Speed limits on how and when this will apply are laid out. The bottom line is that it’s an important change.

The only question that I have…. I hope the minister is able to answer it. It’s one that no doubt will be answered during the committee stage on this particular piece of legislation. Are there going to be awareness campaigns around the legislation? Are there going to be awareness campaigns so that the people understand that government is serious about this particular piece of legislation, that it’s not a piece of legislation to just sort of say, “Oh, we’ve introduced a law,” and then it’s not enforced or not taken seriously?

That is going to be crucial to the success of this legislation. That’s going to be crucial to the success of what the government is trying to accomplish. We are supportive on this side of the House of the legislation, but we want to make sure that there’ll be the necessary support to make sure that it does work. Those questions will be addressed in committee stage.

As I said, my remarks are brief. I don’t want to be accused of hogging the left lane on the debate of the bill, so with that, I’m more than happy to take my seat and hear what other members have to say on the bill.

[1450]

N. Simons: I’m pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act and the various provisions within it that may or may not be of interest to British Columbians.

I think it’s quite interesting that there are, obviously, some things in this bill that raise some issues. Unlike my colleague, I am pulling into the left lane here to bypass all of you, hopefully, to take an exit soon.
[ Page 7097 ]

I believe this is going to be complicated. Yesterday I drove down from Comox along the Island Highway. I know that we’re not going to do an analysis of the effectiveness of any potential regulations around this. But I have to say, we’re on a 120-kilometre-an-hour highway, and there are people going 115 and other folks passing them. Some people are passing them at 118, and people behind them, lined up five or six, are going 120. So the left-lane hog could be going under the speed limit, going faster than the car on the right, but there might also be a lineup of cars on the right.

This was the end of a weekend, Sunday afternoon, and clearly, there are a lot of cars on the road, as my colleagues who live up Island know. It’s a good highway. I might say it was a highway built in the ’90s. It was built in order to encourage the economic development of the area and make sure that people had good transportation routes for goods and services.

Sometimes it’s frustrating when there are people who don’t know how to drive properly. Fundamentally, what interests me is why wouldn’t the government start with an education program to ensure that schools that are teaching people to drive know the rules of the road and know that it’s not appropriate to hang out in the left lane when there are cars going past you in the right. It’s not appropriate to stay in the left lane, in any case, unless you’re passing someone. Of course, there are many places in our constituencies, in my riding coming off the ferry…. I don’t suppose anybody would argue with two cars going off the ferry at once, if that’s how you’re so ordered.

My concern about this kind of rule is the ability to enforce it, the ability to enforce it in a way that doesn’t bring the administration of our traffic laws into disrepute. I think we’ve had a number of these rules that the government wants to bring in. I’m not sure if they’re distractions or if it’s just low-hanging fruit in the transportation regulation industry — you know, the no smoking when there’s someone under 16 in the car, the various rules around other aspects that don’t come to me right now.

I believe that this left-hand lane hog is one that everyone will agree with, but I don’t necessarily agree that this is the most efficient or effective way of getting rid of the left-lane hogs — unless there’s some high profile fine imposed on the driver in the left lane. Things that concern me more on our highways are people talking on the phone, people texting on the phone. We’ve seen no increase in the enforcement in our rural areas around those issues. I think maybe sometimes the focus needs to be on aspects of driving that are of more immediate concern to most people.

Yes, left-lane hogs are bad for driving. They cause accidents, just like speeders. I think the minister is lucky. The speed increases that he allowed for the Island Highway to 120 kilometres an hour — wet or dry, throughout the winter…. He’s lucky that we had a pretty dry season.

I think that the minister should probably have a look at rules like that, which could potentially increase the number of injuries and fatalities, which I know that the ministry is concerned about because of their constant emphasis on how their stricter laws around drinking and driving have reduced the number of fatalities. So using that kind of concern for the public, that ethical stance about protecting people’s lives, flies in the face of the government’s unilateral attempt to satisfy the fast drivers by increasing driving speeds.

I don’t have a problem with 120 on the Island Highway. I do when you’re hydroplaning. I do when it’s pouring rain and when it’s snow. People are supposed to drive according to the conditions of the road, but there are no signs on the highway saying: “Drive in accordance with the road conditions.” Is there a law? Yes, there is. Is it effective? No.

I think the minister should be thinking about the curriculum for driving schools. I think the minister should think about how drivers learn to drive on British Columbia roads and have the enforcement. We already have laws against left-lane hogs. Let’s face it. This is just sort of clarifying it, making it easier. You’re not allowed to…. You can be pulled over for it.

[1455]

I’m not sure how the police are going to wait by the side of the road, watching cars go by, because, as in the example I just used earlier, how do you know if the six cars behind the guy in the left lane are there because they’ve been waiting to pass him, or if they’re all going the same speed and they’re all going to go back into the right lane after?

I saw it yesterday. I drive a 120-kilometre highway to get here. I don’t make citizen’s arrests for people, but I do give dirty looks out my driver’s side, I have to say. Now, I’m not sure I can teach everybody how to drive properly. I learned to drive in Montreal, so everyone has a lot to learn.

I do think that the importance of education and public information…. Maybe the government’s going to wait until a couple of months before the next election before they start talking about all the great things that they’re doing in highways, but I hope I’m just being cynical. Okay. I got an assurance from a minister’s facial expression that, in fact, they won’t do that.

But why not take a proactive step and do some public information spots on television or on the radio about the importance of obeying the rules of the road? I think that might…. The reliance on a fine and the reliance on making it into a stand-alone section of the act — I don’t know if that’s necessarily the most effective thing to do.

If the government is actually interested in being effective, I think that they could approach this issue not just with legislation but with public announcements, with reinforcement of proper etiquette on our roads as well as in our driving school educational system. I’m not sure why we don’t have driver’s ed in all of our high schools any-
[ Page 7098 ]
way. I think that, obviously, when people are young they learn habits that are taught early, and they can stay with those habits if they’re the appropriate ones.

What we have, as my colleague from Port Coquitlam was referring to, is the stereotype of the left-lane hogs, but of course, really, I’m going to be one of those stereotypes, apparently, in my later years. That’s just one aspect of this piece of legislation before the House today. Others are of various approach.

The AirCare program, for example, will be cancelled. It was a successful program. It did a lot to raise awareness of the importance of protecting our environment. I think it got a lot of cars off the road or fixed. I think I was a victim of it at one point, and my car was a beneficiary of it. I think that maybe its time has come with the new cars and obviously far less-polluting vehicles.

I have no problem with allowing another aspect of this act to pass, which is allowing municipalities to decide where motorcycles can park. Who knew they couldn’t? You know, this is one of those things where you’re reading second reading of legislation and you go: “I didn’t know that was a problem.”

I’d like this ministry to focus on things that are issues that are actually of key concern to British Columbians. There are other ways of promoting safety. Why not consider legislation that would make it illegal to get into a car with someone who’s been drinking? What about protecting young people, giving them some ability to stand up to peer pressure, to make it illegal for them to drive with their friends if they know their friends aren’t able to drive?

Why not give kids an ability to say: “It’s illegal for me to get in the car with you”? Give them some reassurance. We all know what peer pressure can do for young people. I think I’ll follow this up with the minister at some point. I promise that at any meeting on issues around highway safety, I will not bring up the ferries issue. That’ll be my assurance to him.

There are rules that could be made around scooters and scooters on our road. Maybe those rules are already there, but maybe a piece of legislation will heighten awareness. Sometimes they’re a danger to us as drivers, and sometimes they’re a danger to themselves and folks who are driving scooters along our roads, possibly in the wrong direction or in the wrong place. Those are some of the things that I think this government could be focused on.

There’s another aspect of transportation safety that I think maybe the minister needs to consider as our population ages, and that is making sure that cars have visual displays on the dash that are large enough for people with vision issues.

[1500]

Many jurisdictions are contemplating improving the ability for seniors to drive with larger mirrors, larger displays, larger buttons and handles on their car, because we are going to have to face that as a society at some point. We need to make sure that people who drive are driving safely, and obviously, that’s the focus of this legislation.

I think there are other ways to promote safety on our roads. My hope is that we’ll get some public information campaign going along with the left-hand-lane hogs that will have clarification as to what happens when there are three lanes, what happens when there’s a left-turn exit, what happens when…. What about a red light in the middle of the Island Highway? You’ll have cars lined up, maybe 25 in both lanes. I worry that it’s going to be problematic for law enforcement to enforce.

I don’t anticipate that there’s going to be a huge change in the number of violations issued, similar to the “pull over if there’s an emergency vehicle stopped.” I don’t think that we’ve seen much change in enforcement, unless through a sting, which I’ve witnessed on Highway 1 going out of Vancouver. I don’t think that’s appropriate, by the way.

I think we need to make sure that our rules on the highway are designed to make everybody safe — education and ensuring that drivers, when they get their licence, are aware of the basic rules of the road. I think that might be more effective. My hope is that the government will, along with this sort of low-hanging-fruit bill, also consider public education, so that people will be able to avoid the penalty associated with driving in that left-hand lane. With that, I think I’ve covered most of the comments that I was hoping to.

L. Krog: I’m delighted to rise and say a few words about the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act today. Of course, it has been announced publicly and emphasized over and over again by the government that it’s to attack left-lane hogs. I suppose, as a member of the left, I’m surprised we don’t have a right-lane-hog bill before the House. Maybe it’s because everybody wants to get over to the left, I suppose, because we’re making progress.

My little cheeky remarks apart, the fact is that this is, relatively speaking, a fairly thin piece of legislation. One would be tempted, if it wasn’t such a hurtful topic to bring up, to say the government had run out of gas. Of course, we know that we don’t talk about liquefied natural gas in the chamber anymore, because that seems to be off the government’s agenda as well, and the last thing we’d want to do is remind them that we don’t see the plants bursting out of the geography of northern British Columbia nor investment pouring into the province to fulfil the Premier’s promise of a debt-free B.C.

That aside, there is another admission in what will be, I believe, the third formal attempt now by the government to actually make its immediate roadside prohibition program “legal”, to use the vernacular of the streets. How many times does one have to take a run at it before one realizes that perhaps there are some fundamental problems, notwithstanding the great desire to keep people who are impaired off our roads or, indeed, people who
[ Page 7099 ]
have been drinking any amount of alcohol at all off our roads and promoting public safety?

I think it’s rather surprising and somewhat disappointing that the Attorney General herself has commented, with respect to the possibility of constitutional challenges, and she says: “Yes, it may well be challenged. But we have great confidence in the program and in the good that the program does for safety on British Columbia highways.”

Obviously, there’s not a person in this chamber who would argue against anything that promotes public safety on the highways of British Columbia. However, as I said this morning in remarks to the motion made by the member for Vernon-Monashee, the government is expected, in a democratic society even more so, to meet a certain standard, not to use its power and authority in an abusive way, and to ensure that the laws that are passed by the Legislature or parliament, or municipal bylaws for that matter, all meet the Charter test, all pass the constitutional test and that regardless of how important the end is, the means have to be in accordance with the law.

[1505]

This time we see a minor variation that will give the superintendent the authority and, indeed, require him to do things now that he formerly was basically doing in practice.

Now, many lawyers who act in the area of impaired driving and prohibition cases have made it fairly clear that although it has not been mandatory…. I quote Mr. Doroshenko, who’s a prominent lawyer dealing with this area. He said: “It has not been mandatory…but they’ve applied it as if it was mandatory. This is the government trying to find a way to justify doing this.” And essentially that’s what we’re doing.

The opposition pointed out the problems with this legislation twice before, warned them that there would be challenges, warned them of the potential of court cases. As much as one can’t dispute the results, arguably, in terms of public safety, assuming that we can point directly to the reduction in deaths and accidents related to alcohol consumption on our roads…. Notwithstanding all of that, surely the government has a duty to be able to say, with somewhat more confidence than that expressed by the Attorney General, that this legislation will in fact pass constitutional muster.

Otherwise, it’s very hard to argue about why people don’t vote and why people apparently, according to polling and other surveys and studies, hold politicians in such disrepute when politicians themselves are literally running something up the flagpole in this place, using their majority to pass it and then, when it’s struck down by the courts or even when it’s anticipated to be struck down by the courts, just sort of stepping back and saying: “Oh well, you know, it’s a good end. We don’t really care about the means.”

Surely the government has to conduct itself to a higher standard. Surely the government has a duty to act with care when preparing legislation. This is one of those examples. It is like the civil forfeiture legislation. Everybody loves the concept that people who may not be actually convicted of a criminal offence but have secured assets — profits, moneys, whatever the case may be — from criminal activity should be deprived of those. No, it’s hard to argue with that proposition.

But at the same time, if it’s not accomplished by a process that is regarded as fair, not abusive and in the public interest, then arguably, frankly, the government, in the eyes of many folks, looks no better than the people who are doing the very wrong acts that we’re trying to prohibit or stop. The same disrespect that we give to those who practise criminal behaviour in our society sometimes gets associated with governments that behave in ways that are seen as dictatorial, arrogant and arbitrary — and done in such a way that brings the whole legal system into disrepute.

I think we have to remind ourselves that we have a particular duty in this chamber — particularly the government, which has access to such significant resources — to ensure that we do things that are in accordance with society’s best interests but that are in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice and that we do not let ourselves rush headlong into some solution simply because we see the end as justifying it.

It’s rather like the terrorism legislation at the federal level. There’s some quote or remark being bandied about. I can’t remember who said it. It’s a fairly famous quotation. I can only paraphrase it — something to the effect that those who don’t cherish their freedom or aren’t prepared to defend it or who are willing to sacrifice it for expediency essentially don’t deserve to have it.

Again, I have significant concerns, notwithstanding the desire to ensure safety on our roads, that this legislation is going to be struck down again. At a certain point surely the government has to look in the mirror — the political mirror, so to speak — and admit that it really doesn’t know what it’s doing and/or perhaps this is not the best course to achieve the end. Those are big questions, but they are questions that I think are somewhat fundamental to the legislative process.

[1510]

With respect to other aspects of the bill — and I don’t want to talk just about the immediate roadside prohibition changes, which are appropriate — we’re seeing the cancellation of the AirCare program.

We’re seeing the famous keep-to-the-right legislation. Now, I have to tell the House that in the last 9½ or nearly ten years since I came back to this place, I honestly can’t think of a public demonstration or a delegation or even a single constituent coming into my office and pounding on my desk and screaming for further legislation for left-lane road hogs.

Now, they may provide a certain level of frustration for members of the public, but I would suggest that when we
[ Page 7100 ]
see this as being part of a major government and public announcement….

Hon. J. Rustad: We know you like the left wing.

L. Krog: My friend the minister says we know that we like the left wing, and indeed we do. The minister’s quite right. We much prefer the left to the right. Maybe that’s because we want to speed down the path of progress as opposed to being stuck in the right lane, dribbling along, resisting every possible improvement in our prospects and any possible improvement in society.

That aside for a moment, you really have to ask yourself: is this all we’ve got to debate in this chamber? It’s pretty slim pickings. Whether it’s a left wing or a right wing, there’s not much to chew on — to follow on what the minister has suggested.

Candidly, I can’t imagine why so much fanfare has been given to something that is so sort of basic and obvious. If it’s such a significant problem, then I suggest that the government try some other method that might be much more effective.

Candidly, given this government’s general parsimony when it comes to all kinds of programs that actually have a really significant and direct impact on people’s lives in terms of improvement, such as increasing social assistance rates or providing appropriate care for children, are we going to suddenly find significant amounts of money to provide for further enforcement to ensure that the terror and the scourge of the left-lane road hogs are eliminated from the roads of British Columbia? Are we going to be in a position to safely get out in our automobiles on the highways and the byways of British Columbia, knowing we’ll be safe from the right-wing road hogs who insist on getting into the left lane and dragging things down to a slower speed?

I’m just not sure that we really require such a wonderful display of the work of the government’s propaganda bureau to try and move this up the public agenda. I suppose, in fairness, it’s easier to talk about this than it is to talk about liquid natural gas or, perhaps, the successful work of the municipal auditor general. That’s another wonderful bit of progress — $5.2 million of the government’s money apparently burned up in successfully completing one minor audit. But again, so be it.

Now, winter tires. Again, it allows the government to define those tires with mountain snowflake symbols or the mud and snow symbol by regulation. The Automotive Industries Association of Canada has said pretty bluntly that they want true winter tires to be mandatory, except in extreme winter conditions. That seems to me a more sensible approach to public safety than many of the others that have been taken. Getting people to actually use winter tires in extreme winter conditions seems to me to be a good thing.

Again, I’m not sure the government is listening or who they’re really listening to. They are happy to talk about things that aren’t really a problem, and they have a solution in search of their problem, I suspect, with the left-lane road hogs.

We’ve also made a marvelous shift in finally solving the significant problem that I’m sure, again, every member has received delegation after delegation in their offices to raise, which is the incredible issue of allowing municipalities to regulate motorcycle parking. I faint at the very thought that this piece of legislation will pass, and we’ll solve the significant motorcycle-parking problem that exists all across British Columbia. I have no doubt that the Nanaimo city council, as soon as this legislation is passed, will be sending a congratulatory letter to the minister for the time and devotion he has given to this significant social problem.

[1515]

I’m always delighted to know that the government has the best interests of the motorcyclists of British Columbia at heart and that that parking issue is going to be solved. I suppose it might reflect the fact that many British Columbians can’t possibly afford to actually drive an automobile anymore, so they’re all reduced to driving motorcycles under the prosperity brought about by the B.C. Liberals. But that’s a question for another day.

I’m going to vote to support this legislation. And I say, with some sense of Schadenfreude — I think that’s the word the Germans use when you take some pleasure in the misfortunes of others — that when there’s another constitutional challenge and we see the roadside prohibition legislation perhaps struck down again, this government will actually pay attention to the rights of British Columbians and people to have some sort of process that they not only support because the end result and public policy are good but because they feel they’re being dealt with fairly.

They are subject to a process, the result of which they may not like, obviously, in terms of being prohibited from driving, but they at least know it’s fair and just, saves lives, saves property damage and saves ICBC claims and insurance rates all and the same. But if it’s not fair and it doesn’t have public support, it doesn’t engender the kind of respect for what we do in this chamber, which is so important.

On that note, I’m happy to step aside and let the member for Surrey-Whalley wax eloquent on the wonderful provisions of this bill and what an improvement it’s going to make to all British Columbians’ lives.

B. Ralston: I wish to address this bill briefly. I want to differ with my colleague from Nanaimo briefly, though, on motorcycle parking. I do recall — this is, perhaps, one of the legacies of Blair Lekstrom — when the B.C. Coalition of Motorcyclists used to come here and come here pretty well annually, one of the highest things on their list of things to get done was to have more effective recognition of motorcycle parking.
[ Page 7101 ]

Granted, the legislative agenda is relatively wide open. I remember, in years gone by, important bills, such as revisions to the Insurance Act, took almost seven years to get through this place between drafts, consultations, revisions, introductions and debate. Then the regulatory process, the process of drafting regulations, took, I think, at least seven years, if not longer, for that to come to conclusion.

Given that this is a relatively wide-open space in the legislative lineup here, it would seem that some of these issues that are significant to some groups but have not been given any attention in recent years are now able to occupy the open spaces of legislative time that’s available before the chamber.

The issue of left-lane road hogs is something that I think is, perhaps, a clever populist stroke on the part of the minister. It’s one of those things that people like to talk about. Although many younger people don’t learn to drive these days because they’re focused on public transit or other methods of getting around, most people drive, and most people have an opinion on this issue.

I’m not sure that the legislation was so defective that it required legislative intervention to correct that. Given that in my riding, certainly — and in Surrey generally — we’re traversed by freeways, this is an issue that does arise. It’s hard to disagree with it. I share with the member for Nanaimo the sense that, perhaps, in the list of priorities of the ills that face us and the remedies that face us in society, this is not necessarily the highest on the list, but I don’t oppose it for that reason.

[1520]

The final area that an amendment is being sought is to deal with the roadside prohibition regime, the immediate roadside prohibition. That’s a regime which most people support, in theory, until it happens to them. They regard it as harsh and draconian and, perhaps, lacking in legal protection from their point of view.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that as a legislative solution, it has had an immediate impact upon driving and criminology, although I hesitate to offer any criminological insight given that there are two criminologists as MLAs in this chamber.

Generally, one of the principles of effective deterrence is an immediate connection between the offence and a punishment, although in this case it’s not legally referred to as a punishment because it’s an administrative measure. But the deprivation of one’s driver’s licence really does bring home to people in a very sharp and immediate way that they might want to reconsider their driving habits or their consumption of alcohol and a propensity to drive. So that immediate connection is important.

What these provisions seem to do is to take what has been formerly the area of discretion of the superintendent of motor vehicles under the Motor Vehicle Act to require certain drivers to take certain courses or certain mandatory forms of instruction to improve their driving…. If they do not take that in accordance with those directions, their licence will be further suspended or they will not be able to reclaim the privilege to drive.

This appears to really codify in law the practice of the superintendent. To that extent, I don’t think it’s a big, dramatic change either. And I think it further clarifies that if a person does not complete a program, then by law the person will not have the opportunity to regain their licence.

The issue about the requirement of the superintendent to revoke a driving prohibition if a sworn or solemnly affirmed report is not forwarded by a certain time, I think, is a provision to clarify. There was, at least as I recall and as I understand, a mixed practice by some adjudicators, who deemed that if a report from a police officer that’s submitted to the process was not sworn, nonetheless, the prohibition could still be affirmed.

This makes it very clear, by enshrining it in legislation, that if that’s not done within a certain period of time, then the prohibition must be revoked — although probably, given the way in which the legislation will be structured, or the regulations supporting it, the police officer will get a reminder that the report has not been sworn and, therefore, has to be submitted again, sworn properly. I think this will really become almost moot, because that’s what will take place within a certain period of time.

This is not a grand idea or earthshaking, momentous legislation. This is fairly routine. I think that’s what was promised in this session, and certainly, this bill delivers that in spades. With those comments, I’ll take my place.

V. Huntington: I just want to briefly comment on the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, Bill 15. When I look at it in the context of a number of other bills that the government has been passing, I agree with the member for Nanaimo that there is a fundamental shift here in the way government is allowing access to justice and in taking people’s fundamental rights to justice away from the citizens of British Columbia.

They are sort of hidden within administrative regulations that are done in respect of what the government has seen as the public good, but in effect, they are also fundamentally hindering and changing what the public understand as their rights to the courts and access to justice. I’ll come back to those comments in a little bit.

[1525]

I do compliment the minister for trying to deal with the left lane issue. I think everybody in the province is looking forward to seeing that issue become much more readily understood and followed once the education programs are underway.

I just wish that the minister had also considered the issue of right lanes and trucks being required to proceed in the right lanes. In a municipality like my own or through areas of the Lower Mainland where so many of the trucks are moving containers in and out of the port, you’ll find that there is no discipline in this province with regard to trucks travelling in the right lane.
[ Page 7102 ]

All you have to do is go across the border. Almost anywhere in the United States there is extraordinary discipline among the truck drivers. They always use the righthand lanes. They only use the left for passing, and you can be absolutely certain that that’s the case. It creates a much more robust sense of confidence when on the road as a citizen or in a non-commercial vehicle.

I do wish this act did look at the very sad levels of enforcement. I’m not aware, actually, whether trucks are required to travel in the righthand lanes in this province, but if they are, then the levels of enforcement are very poor. I would like to have seen that issue dealt with in this bill as well.

I also would like to join my many middle-aged friends, on their hogs, who are going to be extremely delighted with the new parking regulations for their motorcycles. I’m not sure this was one of the biggest things that we needed to tackle right now, but there will be those out there who will be very happy.

Meanwhile, speaking to the immediate roadside prohibitions, my comments, as I mentioned a bit earlier, just tend to centre around the removal, from my perspective, of what we understand commonly as access to justice and the courts. That is being removed entirely from the system, and I know that there’s a lot of discomfort out there about this, primarily because people see this as yet another attempt to slip-slide around the constitutional protections that we feel we have a right to enjoy.

Certainly the bill, the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, and roadside prohibition have helped out there — I don’t think any of us will say that they haven’t — and that in general the problems with drunken driving are much better served as a result of many of the provisions of this bill. But the question is whether the costs to civil liberty, when coupled with this act and others…. Does the public truly understand that their access to justice is slowly being altered by this government?

I do not think that there has been a sufficient public discussion on this issue. People are stunned when they realize they have no access to the courts on some of these issues and do not understand that that was part and parcel of what’s been happening in the province.

There is a continued push by this piece of legislation to restrict and impede the review process. It is removing all discretion from the superintendent. It’s creating and instituting mandatory and very costly remediation penalties.

I just want to caution the government that I’m having difficulty supporting this act. When I supported the first Motor Vehicle Amendment Act that regarded roadside prohibition, I realized, much to my concern, what it actually meant on the ground.

I am very concerned that this is a continued push in all of the recent legislation, whether it’s administrative tribunals or whether it’s civil forfeiture. Numerous pieces of legislation over the last while have changed this fundamental understanding of access to the courts and to justice in this province.

[1530]

I just wanted to get on the record that I am concerned. The lack of discretion, the lack of access to the courts and, in particular, changing the onus of the burden of proof — which is specific to this particular act — is enormously concerning to me. The public do not understand these things are before us, and I wish there had been a much larger and broader public discussion about the way in which this province is moving.

A. Weaver: I, too, echo the sentiments as expressed by the member for Delta South, particularly with respect to the burden of proof, which in several places in this legislation is being moved. “The burden of proof in a review of a driving prohibition” is now on the individual. This is not really consistent with what most British Columbians believe and want to happen in our province — that is, innocent until proven guilty. The implication here, of course, is guilty until proven innocent, and I wonder to what extent that actually would be held up under a legal challenge.

In fact, our Justice Minister admits that the government’s contentious drunk-driving penalties may again be challenged as unconstitutional. In the Vancouver Sun she was quoted as saying, “Yes, it may very well be challenged, but we have great confidence in the program and in the good that the program does for safety on British Columbia’s highways.”

I would hope that during third reading we’ll be able to explore this and determine whether or not the Minister of Justice, via the Minister of Transportation, would be able to clarify some of the rationale behind their government getting legal opinion that would support this as actually standing up in courts.

Like the member for Nanaimo, I, too, had many, many groups of people not come to my office concerned about motorcycle parking six metres from the intersections. I gather that this is an issue in some jurisdictions. In Victoria, Oak Bay–Gordon Head, left-lane driving certainly is an issue, as every one of the members here will know, coming in from either the ferries or the airport. I think left-lane driving started in Victoria and, in fact, despite this legislation, will never change here in the capital regional district.

There are rules in place already that can deal with left-lane drivers if they’re holding up traffic. I’m not sure that this emphasis on fines and fees is either enforceable or, in fact, will ever be enforceable. Our police system’s services are taxed at the best of times, and pulling over people driving in the left lane is probably not number one on their priorities.

I recognize this populist approach to introducing policy that people will hang their hats on and be all very pleased with. I know everybody at one time has been frustrated — as I was just yesterday, coming back from the airport
[ Page 7103 ]
— when two people are driving side by side on the highway at 70 kilometres an hour when the speed limit is 90.

Does that mean we should be ticketing them? Does that mean we should be just maybe perhaps pulling them over and talking with them? There is legislation that would presently allow police to deal with such people if they do, in fact, believe that they are causing a hazard on the road.

One of the things that I was hoping to see in this legislation, which I recognize is minor tinkering with the Motor Vehicle Act, is some discussion about how repeat texters, repeat hand-held device users, are also dealt with. There’s a lot in here implied about drunk-driving legislation, but it really is not much different from repeat offenders of texting. There are those people out there who have been caught many times.

There are means and ways to actually have your phone linked into interlock programs, much like exist for drunk driving. I was wondering. I will explore further at third reading whether the government has actually explored this as perhaps also including interlock repeat texting offender programs. I do applaud the government in actually introducing text to ensure that the person requiring the ignition interlock program does, in fact, pay for it.

[1535]

In terms of the AirCare program, you might expect someone from the B.C. Green Party to stand up here and criticize government for removing an AirCare program, but the reality of it is that cars have changed in the last decade. Most cars today on the streets have air quality emission standards that are far beyond anything that existed ten years ago. As pointed out in discussions on this legislation, there still is an ability to require people to fix their tailpipe if they are deemed to be driving a car that is creating unsightly or unhealthy air quality emissions.

With that, I do look forward to third reading. I do have some concerns with the left-lane legislation, despite the fact that I agree that it is something that people may consider. I will be likely amending that these be struck from the bill, as I believe they are awfully punitive and are unenforceable, and in fact, legislation already exists on the books to allow police to deal with this.

I believe that these left-lane-hog rules are nothing more than populist politics catering to a demographic that is perhaps not likely to consider voting in the future. This is rather cynical of me, but really, we’ve got some critical issues in this province to deal with. Motorcycle parking six metres from an intersection, left-lane driving….

I recognize that the member for Nanaimo likes the left and the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation likes to drive in the right. You’re not addressing my problem here. My problem is that I like to drive right in the middle in between both lanes, and this legislation ignores people like me.

L. Krog: You know what happens to chickens in the middle of the road.

A. Weaver: The member for Nanaimo has asked me if I know what happens with chickens in the middle of the road. I think it’s important for me to address that. They don’t last very long, but legislation could be brought in place to ensure that they do.

Deputy Speaker: Certainly, the member digresses.

A. Weaver: I’m sorry, hon. Speaker. It was truly, though, a defining moment of my time here in the Legislature when the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation came over and sat beside my colleague here, the member for Nanaimo, and discussed left- versus right-lane driving just a matter of moments ago.

With that, I thank you for your time, and I look forward to third reading.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the minister closes debate.

Hon. S. Anton: I do appreciate the members’ comments on this important piece of legislation. I look forward to canvassing the issues during the committee stage. Although for the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to deal with the middle-lane piece. But I’m confident that the other pieces of the legislation will be dealt with in an appropriate manner when the time comes.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I move second reading of Bill 15.

Motion approved.

Hon. S. Anton: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 15, Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, 2015, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. T. Stone: I now call continued committee debate on Bill 18, intituled Administrative Tribunals Statutes Amendment Act, 2015.

[1540]

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 18 — ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNALS
STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

(continued)

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

The committee met at 3:42 p.m.
[ Page 7104 ]

On section 21 (continued).

Hon. S. Anton: Just to introduce the people with me here today. I have David Merner and Julie Williams from the Ministry of Justice, Cheryl May from the residential tenancy branch. Gavin Last from the Ministry of Agriculture and Michael Tanner from the Ministry of Labour are here. If needed, there may be others as well, but that’s who we have here at the moment.

When we left off the other day, we had the question about the number of Ontario tribunal clusters. The number is three: the Environment and Land Tribunals; Social Justice Tribunals; and Safety, Licensing Appeals and Standards Tribunals.

L. Krog: Thank you to the minister and her staff for securing the answer.

With respect to section 21 — it’s the definition section — that was being amended to strike out “part of costs” and substitute “all or part of the actual costs.” The minister said that consequentially speaking, it’s of no consequence because they could order up to almost all of the costs — “99.999 percent” to be precise, reading back her words from Hansard.

I guess the real question is — and I’m sure the staff can assist the minister in this — in practice is this an issue that required some solution or resolution through legislation? In other words, were tribunals in the position that they were, in fact, ordering substantially less costs or more? Or was it 99.999 percent, as the minister, I think with her great sense of humour, suggested might be a possibility?

I’m curious to know: is this addressing an issue that’s actually been raised with the ministry with respect to costs and the awarding of costs?

Hon. S. Anton: This is a drafting issue. It was not identified as a problem, but because the act was open, so to speak…. It is a drafting anomaly. It’s actually a mistake that it was drafted that way. This is a correction, while the act is open — to take the opportunity to fix it.

[1545]

L. Krog: With respect to the use of the term “actual costs,” can the minister advise, given the proposed change to the legislation, is it anticipated that actual costs will somehow be assessed in a new standard or in a different way than has been the practice?

If the minister can perhaps, for the benefit of those listening, outline what is the practice in terms of actual cost. Does it mean if I hire the most expensive law firm in Vancouver and I’m successful, I get the senior partners’ hourly rates, so to speak? Or if I hire some fresh-faced, first-year call, do I in fact get the fresh-faced, first-year call student lawyer’s rate?

In other words, how are these costs actually determined?

Hon. S. Anton: This is simply a correction again of the drafting. It’s no anticipated change in practice of the tribunal as a result of this change, because it’s not an actual change in the legislation. It’s simply a correction in the drafting.

The staff who are with me are actually not aware of an application of this particular section in practice. This section may very well have been utilized, but we don’t have actual examples of it here.

In each case that this section was invoked, it would, of course, be up to the tribunal to determine what the actual costs were.

L. Krog: The minister has indirectly pointed out what I see as part of the problem with this bill that I’ve raised in previous questions, when we were here Thursday before the Easter week. That is, that so much of what is anticipated to be the practice and the implementation with respect to this legislation is indeed something that’s coming down the road. We haven’t given it either form or life or legs or anything else.

I suppose the concern, obviously, is that we’re being asked — and I don’t want to beat the cliché “a blank cheque” to death — to give a blank cheque. In practice, I think the public and those who are interested in this area of the law, those interested in the debate, need to have some idea of what the government is contemplating because, again, there is significant regulatory power that comes into play with respect to how this is implemented.

[1550]

Are we anticipating, then, that these tribunals will set a whole variety of levels of costs? Will there be a maximum and a minimum tariff? For instance, with respect to the rules of court, it’s not that it’s particularly simple, but there’s what we used to refer to as the tariff of costs that people can rely on. People can advise their clients, the people they represent, what might be the results if, in fact, they lose or if they win — some range, some concept.

I’m just wondering: does the minister have, in contemplation, what this is going to look like in practice? In other words, do we have any guidelines? Do we have any potential comments that the minister could make about potential practice that might be set out in regulation? I’m curious to understand what the future is going to look like, so that the people listening to the debate…. I suspect that this bill will pass. What’s the law in British Columbia going to look like once this is passed, with respect to the issue of the awarding of what is now all or part of the actual costs in these kinds of proceedings?

Hon. S. Anton: If the question was “what is the impact of the tribunals?” the answer is none, because the change, as I said, is simply a correction of a drafting oversight. It’s not a change in practice or direction to any of the tribunals.
[ Page 7105 ]

L. Krog: I suppose one of the questions is around certainty, then. Is it anticipated, notwithstanding this legislation, which is potentially going to allow for clustering…? Are we anticipating setting some kind of standard practice, or how are costs awarded in the varying tribunals that might be involved — or proceedings?

I guess I’m looking for some comment from the minister around the issue of some sort of consistency. If we are going to cluster, one would presume that there might be clustering to ensure that the same practice applies across the board. Or is this kind of a…? I forget the numbers — unfortunately, I don’t have them in front of me — of bodies involved. I mean, are they going to be setting some individual practices as they’ve done historically, or is the move towards some kind of comprehensive level, when it comes to the issue of costs?

[1555]

Hon. S. Anton: It is the case that costs are always considered on a case-by-case basis. The issue of clustering relating to this section, the power to award costs — we haven’t linked those two. This section has been there independently of clustering and remains there independently of clustering.

L. Krog: I appreciate the Attorney General’s response that costs are awarded on the basis of each individual case, as it is in the court system. Nevertheless, certain things come into practice. Practitioners in this area can generally advise clients or the people they represent that it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. “However, this is likely to happen, and this is likely to be the result if you are successful or not successful, as the case may be.”

If this is as loose as the Attorney General suggests — in other words, it’s not going to change the practice as a result of clustering — it obviously leads to this question. Given the move towards clustering, was there not some thought given — and if not, why not? — to the concept that we would enter into some more comprehensive and legible, accessible program relating to costs? That’s so that people can advise their clients, if they are legal representatives or advocates, or alternatively, if they’re individuals taking a matter before an administrative tribunal, so that they’re in a position to assess for themselves what the potential risks are and what the benefits might be if they are successful or the downside if they’re not.

Hon. S. Anton: As I’ve said before today, the clustering is to look more at back-office operations. The individual mandates of the individual tribunals will remain with those tribunals and their legislation behind them. Again, as I said a few moments ago, this is simply a drafting clarification.

L. Krog: I’m just wondering. Given the proliferation of administrative tribunals and administrative law generally in the last few decades, would it not be good public policy to try and ensure some uniformity in terms of practice? Would that not make it easier for people to seek justice and obtain justice from administrative tribunals if, in fact, there was some sort of commonality of practice, awarding of costs, instead of making it, if you will, such a highly almost individualistic process whereby the costs that you might be awarded in one tribunal are not going to bear any great relation, necessarily, to the cost that could be awarded as a result of the decision of a different tribunal?

[1600]

In other words, is there not some public value in trying to ensure that there’s a certain level of practice — in other words, that there is some certainty and common knowledge of how these processes work so that they are, quite candidly, not just friendly to those who choose to practise in the area, as lawyers or advocates, but are friendly to the general public?

After all, one of the concepts behind administrative law is that you’re trying to get people out of the court system, out of a process that is seen as slow and expensive, to give them a process that is more open and accessible. In fact, if you’re providing three dozen doors to go through, as opposed to one, which the court system provides in a sense, is that better accessibility, or is that just more complex?

I mean: is there a public benefit here? I hope…. I’m trying to get across to the minister what I’m driving at here in terms of all our actual costs and what the philosophy was, given that this is an amendment act for a bill that has been around for a long time now. It hasn’t been fully implemented, and we are giving it a second kick at the cat to try and make it workable.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Was there some thought given to trying to make this whole process more publicly friendly, as opposed to what it appears to me to be, which is allowing for some administrative efficiencies and perhaps some financial savings only but not necessarily making a more publicly friendly and accessible process?

Hon. S. Anton: One of the things that it’s important not to do is tie the hands of tribunals. Our tribunals have quite different mandates and operate in many different areas of the law. It may be that in some clustered tribunals the executive chairs would like to direct that some of these issues, such as costs, be treated in a similar manner, but it may be that it’s not necessary or not even appropriate to do that.

I think it would be wrong at this point to say one way or the other whether costs were going to be changed as a result of this. Each tribunal remains independent in its mandate and will continue to be so. As I have said several times, the change in this section is simply a drafting change. It’s not a practice change.
[ Page 7106 ]

Section 21 approved.

On section 22.

L. Krog: Section 22 includes a number of new provisions: 47.1 and 47.2 The first deals with the section. It says: “The tribunal may require an applicant or intervener to deposit with it an amount of money it considers sufficient to cover all or part of either or both of the following: (a) the anticipated costs of the other parties or interveners; (b) the anticipated actual costs and expenses of the tribunal in connection with the application.”

[1605]

In sub (2) it goes on to say: “An order under section 47 [power to award costs] may include directions respecting the disposition of money deposited under subsection (1).”

One of the concerns that has been raised, of course, is…. In terms of the depositing of an amount of money to cover all costs, is the minister not concerned that the risk is indeed that you will deter people from seeking access to justice in an administrative tribunal?

In other words, when you’re having to come up with what could be a significant amount of money…. We don’t know that, and questions will follow on that issue. Surely there is a prospect that we’ll be, in fact, denying justice to people who are scared away, if you will, by the prospect that the risks associated with those — an adverse cost award — are just too significant.

[1610]

Hon. S. Anton: We have included this in the Administrative Tribunals Act so that it is a section which can become available to tribunals should that be appropriate.

The only act that incorporates a security for costs at the moment now is the Environmental Management Act. There is a consequential amendment to that act, which will amend it so that it refers to this new section rather than including it in its own enabling statute.

The only other statute which this section is proposed to apply to at the moment will be the oil and gas tribunal act, which will also be amended to apply these sections. Just recall that these sections will not apply to any tribunal unless their enabling statutes specifically authorize it.

V. Huntington: Just on 47.1(1)(a) especially, this seems to give the perception that a tribunal can prejudge the outcome of the hearing if they are looking at the potential for anticipated costs that they might charge against other parties and the interveners.

Does the minister feel that this does give that perception, that the tribunal can prejudge? Why is this specifically here and not just the opportunity to charge costs at the end of a hearing if it was so desired?

Hon. S. Anton: We are only aware of one time where this provision has actually been used by the environmental appeal tribunal. That was where an appellant had repeatedly failed to show up. The tribunal didn’t want to reschedule without knowing that the next hearing would actually proceed, and the tribunal required costs to be paid in advance of the hearing. As I said, this is the only time we know that that provision has been used.

In terms of whether or not a tribunal would prejudge, I would like to point out that these are expert tribunals. They are led by people who take their work extremely seriously and their position extremely seriously. They are peopled by tribunal members who take their work extremely seriously. They make fair decisions. It’s their goal to make fair and independent decisions. It is not their goal to be unfair to applicants or persons in front of them.

[1615]

By the way, Chair, I think I said “appellant,” but the correct term would have been “applicant” in that case.

V. Huntington: But the fact is that we’re looking at a piece of legislation that gives that perception. I’ve been a member of an appeal tribunal. I know people work with the best interests of their job at hand. The fact is, though, that this legislation says that they may and gives the perception of prejudging.

If it is because it is an attempt to avoid vexatious applications, then why doesn’t the legislation state that? Why does it leave it wide open in this instance? And that is not meant to be any insult to any member of any tribunal in the province of British Columbia.

Hon. S. Anton: I think the question is: why would we not limit in legislation the times that this can be used? I do think it’s preferable to leave it open because it would be impossible to delineate all the possible circumstances.

Again, I should reiterate that it is not a provision that’s been used very often. The Environmental Appeal Board has had it since 1997, and they’ve only used it once. The member, as a former member, I believe, of that tribunal, will know how seriously tribunal members, when they’re hearing such issues, take their task and how concerned they are with fairness for the persons appearing in front of them.

L. Krog: I just wonder, then: can the minister confirm that there are only two administrative tribunals, then, in the province that even have authority under existing legislation to require a deposit of security for costs?

[1620]

Hon. S. Anton: Just a reminder to the member opposite that courts, of course, have this authority. There may be other bodies in government which have this authority, but I would not have any kind of comprehensive list.

In terms of tribunals, the ones who have this kind of authority
[ Page 7107 ]
or are proposed to have this kind of authority are these. The Environmental Appeal Board has this authority now. Through this legislation, if it is to be passed, the Oil and Gas Appeal Tribunal will also be given the authority under the Administrative Tribunals Act amendments. The surface rights board has its own legislation, and it, too, has this ability. Those are the tribunals who are proposed to have this authority.

L. Krog: Not being a brilliant expert on oil and gas and surface rights, I’m going to assume that these tribunals — the minister will correct me if I’m wrong — would, generally speaking, potentially involve parties who felt aggrieved and were raising environmental concerns, presumably, particularly those in the environmental community. In other words, it might be the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, for instance, or perhaps the Sierra Club or organizations of that type that would be involved in these kinds of appeals — perhaps a local protective association that has an interest in conserving land.

Do these tribunals that the minister has mentioned and which either have the right or will have…? Is that what those tribunals deal with?

[1625]

Hon. S. Anton: I think the question was who might appeal in front of the Environmental Appeal Board. Given that the Environmental Appeal Board deals with appeals from decisions of statutory decision-makers — including those around water licences, contaminated site remediation, pesticide use, hunting licences and various other kinds of decisions which are made — I think that we can only imagine the different variety of groups of people or individuals who may appear in front of the Environmental Appeal Board.

L. Krog: I thought that might be the response from the minister, or something along those lines. The question then becomes…. The kinds of people who might be involved in appealing that kind of decision may be, for instance, a local group concerned about industrial activity in what they see as an environmentally sensitive local area or perhaps drilling for oil and gas in an area that may be very sensitive to destruction of an aquifer that provides water — drinking water, water for agriculture use, etc.

I’m curious to know, then, why we have this particular change when the tribunals we’ve talked about appear to be those tribunals that are most likely to be involved with groups, individuals, organizations that may well, probably, have as their primary focus protection of the environment, protection of habitat, protection of people’s health.

Why are we creating a provision that allows for security for costs which may indeed have the very impact which was the start of my line of questions around deterring people from seeking access to administrative justice? In other words, is the minister not concerned that the very existence of this section, if passed, will deter those well-meaning, decent, good British Columbians and the groups they belong to from, in fact, opposing developments that may have, in their view, an extremely detrimental or damaging effect on the environment or species or the health of the local population?

[1630]

Hon. S. Anton: Just to be really clear, the only proposed change here is that this section, through a later provision of this Administrative Tribunals Statutes Amendment Act, is to add the Oil and Gas Appeal Tribunal. In other words, the Environmental Appeal Board already has this provision as does the surface rights board. So the only proposed change, as I said, is the Oil and Gas Appeal Tribunal.

As to whether or not this kind of provision will deter applicants, it certainly has not deterred applicants so far in the two tribunals to which it applies, and we would not anticipate that it would deter applicants in the future.

V. Huntington: Well, I think the concern here is that it’s…. Again, it’s like the previous section, where there is a perception possible that these words create the opportunity for government to set itself up and create a sectoral opportunity to make it very, very difficult for applicants, if they so chose.

It is a sectoral difficulty here. It relates specifically to issues that are generally thought environmental. It’s almost as if the perception can exist that the government is creating its own avenue for its own SLAPP suits. That, we know, in the private sector has become deadly for environmental organizations or persons interested in pursuing a line of appeal or an application — not to the court, in this instance, but to a legitimate tribunal that they ought to have access to.

I think whilst the minister is saying that there is no intention and that it’s only delivering this now to the oil and gas appeal board — the other two having their own legislation that permits it now — it still is creating that perception that a sectoral defence is available to the government.

I would just suggest that that, again, is inappropriate in a piece of legislation of this importance.

[1635]

Hon. S. Anton: The member began with the premise that this was an opportunity for government. I would like to emphasize that these tribunals are independent. They are not government.

I simply reject the proposition that the goal of this is to make it difficult for applicants or for participants in the tribunal process. It simply does not play out that way. The member herself has been a member of a tribunal and, I think, will know that.

L. Krog: I still have significant concerns around what this is going to look like in terms of practice. Again, I
[ Page 7108 ]
use a perhaps poorly funded environmental group. Interestingly enough, of course, we’ll be debating the Society Act later, where we’ll be talking about the two different types of societies now, essentially — those that are member-funded and those that are publicly funded. I forget the exact wording in the legislation.

Let’s assume for a moment that as a member-funded, local organization that has very little resources up against a major oil company like Petronas…. We’re dealing with an application. This little group of well-meaning citizens, the good folks of some particular geographic area — how are they possibly going to meet a requirement to deposit an amount of money it considers “sufficient to cover all or part of either or both of the following: (a) the anticipated costs of the other parties or interveners…”?

[1640]

Is the minister not concerned that this will indeed have an extremely chilling effect on citizens fighting, quite bluntly — and I use this with all the rhetoric intended — some powerful multi-billion-dollar international corporation that seeks to exploit an area or a part of the province that is sacred and/or important to the local citizenry, or people who have a particular concern around environmental issues or a type of species or all of the array of things that people in our society wish to see protected, enhanced or secured?

Is the minister not concerned that this section and the extension of it — and this is going to the surface rights board, I believe — is indeed going to have that kind of chilling effect and is going to, in fact, result in justice for those that can afford it as opposed to those who can’t afford it?

Hon. S. Anton: I think I just have to point to.… The only past decision that we know of in this regard is the Environmental Appeal Board, where an applicant had failed to show up a couple of times, and rather than setting it down a third time and incurring costs that way, the board said at that point that it required security for costs.

As to the member’s question, though, I think we have to remember that tribunal members take their roles seriously. Tribunal chairs take their roles seriously. They are a part of our justice system in British Columbia. We have a good justice system in British Columbia. It is fair. Members of the court take their roles seriously, tribunal members take their roles seriously, and I simply reject the proposition that they would do anything but that.

L. Krog: I appreciate the minister’s high level of trust in the system, but given her experience and training as a lawyer, that’s the reason we do have a Court of Appeal and a Supreme Court of Canada — because sometimes even the best-intentioned and most well-funded and argued applicants and litigants before any court get decisions that turn out to be wrong.

I want to specifically ask…. The minister said it applies to the Environmental Appeal Board. It applies to the Oil and Gas Tribunal. It now applies to the surface rights board. That will be extended by this legislation.

I’m just curious to know why, of all the potential tribunals that could have been covered by this additional section, we are extending it to the surface rights board. What kind of matters come before the surface rights board? I’m looking for a little assistance here because I’m ignorant in this case.

Hon. S. Anton: Just to be clear, the surface rights board has its own legislation. They have a provision similar to this in their legislation, so their legislation will not actually be referring to this new 47.1 and 47.2. It’s encompassed in their own legislation.

The two tribunals who will refer to these two sections are the Environmental Appeal Board and the Oil and Gas Appeal Tribunal.

L. Krog: Again, I’m just looking because I don’t have time to run out and do the research. The surface rights board deals with what kinds of matters?

[1645]

Hon. S. Anton: The surface rights board resolves disputes between landowners and companies that require access to private land to explore or to develop or to produce Crown-owned subsurface resources such as oil or gas or minerals or geothermal.

Chair, if I might, I would like to suggest a ten-minute recess.

The Chair: The committee will be recessed for ten minutes.

The committee recessed from 4:46 p.m. to 5 p.m.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

L. Krog: It’s fairly clear to me from the last answer of the minister that we’re going to be talking about the possibility of requiring a deposit to cover the cost of interveners in a fairly typical situation, where Rancher Ralph, we’ll call him, up in Williams Lake, is the subject of a decision that allows an oil company to come onto his land and drill, I presume, and explore for oil and gas. If he wishes to appeal the decision, then he could be forced, under the terms of this proposed section, to deposit all the costs of the tribunal itself — I don’t know where these hearings are held, but if they decide to send everyone up to Williams Lake, I suppose that’s a cost of the tribunal — and the cost of counsel involved and other interveners who may have a significant interest in this.

Just so I’m clear, that’s what this section could mean in practice. And that’s not an untypical example — a rancher with some land facing exploration.
[ Page 7109 ]

Hon. S. Anton: The question assumes two things — first of all, that this is a new provision for the surface rights board. That would not be correct. The provision is already there. The only board to which this is proposed to be added is the Oil and Gas Appeal Tribunal. The second proposition in the question is that the tribunal would act unfairly, and I categorically reject that proposition.

L. Krog: The question isn’t whether the tribunal would act unfairly or not. The question is whether or not the tribunal might require the deposit of costs. My reading of this section is that that’s what it says. Am I correct, or am I not correct?

Hon. S. Anton: The question is relating to the surface rights tribunal, and that act is not legislation before the House today.

Sections 22 to 24 inclusive approved.

On section 25.

L. Krog: My understanding is that this section requires that a tribunal member or person acting under the direction of a tribunal cannot give evidence about records obtained while doing their job. I’m just wondering if the minister can explain to the House how this is actually going to work under this new model.

[1705]

Hon. S. Anton: The purpose of this section is to take out the reference to “the tribunal’s enabling Act.” We did go through this last time we were here. I think I can give an example from a piece that we went through a few moments ago about the Environmental Appeal Board. For example, it hears appeals of water licences, contaminated site remedies, pesticides, hunting licences and many more.

In other words, the Environmental Appeal Board actually gets its mandate from quite a number of acts, so it was incorrect to call it the tribunal’s enabling act. It could be any number of enabling acts.

Section 25 approved.

On section 26.

L. Krog: I’m wondering if the minister can just confirm section 26, as obvious as it looks, and why we’d be giving immunity. Is that, in fact, any change?

Hon. S. Anton: The answer to this is the same as the answer to the last question.

Sections 26 and 27 approved.

On section 28.

L. Krog: Again, if the minister can simply clarify and confirm the impact of section 28, what it means, just so I’m clear as to my understanding.

Hon. S. Anton: Same answer as the previous question.

Section 28 approved.

On section 29.

L. Krog: This section adds a couple of parts. “For the purposes of evaluating and improving its services, the tribunal may conduct surveys in the course of or after providing those services.” That seems to be relatively clear.

But, “At the times, and in the form and manner, prescribed by regulation, the tribunal must submit the following to the minister” — a review, performance indicators, etc…. How is this going to work with a cluster? And is there going to be a similar process for evaluating the functioning of a cluster?

[1710]

Hon. S. Anton: The authority is to conduct surveys and evaluate either the tribunal or the cluster of tribunals, depending on the wishes of the executive chair.

Sections 29 and 30 approved.

On section 31.

L. Krog: This authorizes cabinet to make regulations in relation to security for costs against government and agents, etc. It talks about tariffs and fees. I’m just wondering: what sorts of tariffs and fees does the minister have in mind? I assume we’re not anticipating a decrease, necessarily, so what sort of increase, potentially, are we looking at in terms of the cost in the new system as compared to the old one?

Hon. S. Anton: The regulation-making authority under this proposed legislation is proposed to be broader than what is currently there. Currently in 60(c), as it now is, it says: “prescribing tariffs of fees to be paid with respect to the filing of different types of applications….” The proposal now is that it be “services provided, or anything done, by the tribunal, employees of the tribunal or other persons.” In other words, fees might now be charged for more than was in the act earlier, a broadening of the fee structure. There are no immediate changes to the fees, and any proposed changes would need to go through Treasury Board.

L. Krog: With respect to those fees, that would apply across the board to every type of tribunal covered by this act. Is that fair and correct?
[ Page 7110 ]

[1715]

Hon. S. Anton: The authority would apply to all the tribunals which incorporate this session, but it is the case that fees themselves may vary from tribunal to tribunal.

L. Krog: Just so I’m clear. I mean, is the reason for this section essentially to allow the tribunals to charge for things for which they formerly didn’t charge and/or add new tariffs and fees that didn’t exist before?

Hon. S. Anton: The answer to the question is yes. For example, on-line services — fees for that. It wasn’t necessarily crystal clear whether they were provided for in the previous legislation. Hence, the broader legislation to allow for different kinds of fees where appropriate.

L. Krog: If I was the representative of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation here today, I’d probably use the term “this was a tax grab.” Would the minister consider that fair comment?

Hon. S. Anton: My head is spinning with the possibility of this member representing the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

V. Huntington: Given that subsection (c) is adding the following paragraphs, could I ask, then, on sub (i) what information the government is contemplating or thinks might not be made public?

Hon. S. Anton: Tribunals commonly deal in sensitive personal information. For example, the Human Rights Tribunal deals in sensitive issues and cases and people, and some of those details should not be made public.

V. Huntington: Well, does this subsection not appear anywhere, or is it specific to different acts? Is it something that has just been understood to this point but which the government feels that it has to enumerate in the legislation?

[1720]

Hon. S. Anton: The goal of this is to set out a framework for the transparency of operations of the tribunals, but it does need to include the recognition that there’s some information that tribunals may handle which should not be made public.

Sections 31 to 34 inclusive approved.

On section 35.

L. Krog: I’m just curious if the minister can answer why these certain provisions of the Administrative Tribunals Act are being applied to the Agricultural Land Commission, generally. What’s the point of doing this? What’s the efficiency? What’s the public policy? What’s the reason?

[1725]

Hon. S. Anton: We are now moving into the portion of the Administrative Tribunals Statutes Amendment Act that outlines which sections of the Administrative Tribunals Act apply to various tribunals. The first one that we’re starting with right here is the Agricultural Land Commission Act and the tribunal.

In terms of how the proposed Administrative Tribunals Act affects the commission, there is actually very little change except to add the new parts of the Administrative Tribunals Act to the Agricultural Land Commission. For example, that’s the survey authority, the enabling parts of the act which enable clustering.

L. Krog: If the Attorney General thought her head was spinning with the prospect of me defending the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, I can assure her that my head spins with the impact of these sections and the legislative drafting nightmare that this represents for practical purposes. This is the kind of thing that would put you in mind of that fellow who was eating the flies in some obscure Dickens novel, as I recall.

For practical purposes, if you’re working with the Agricultural Land Commission Act, you’re going to have to have reference over to this statute now, as amended, in order to determine what appear to be a number of procedural possibilities.

I guess if the minister can simply say, in response to questions around sections 35 through to 38, that this is simply necessary and consequential and has no significant effect on the powers or abilities of the Agricultural Land Commission…. I would love to hear just a simple, if possible, comment on that. Then we can move on to the other chunks as we’re going through.

In fairness to the minister, subject to a few specific questions, I gather and understand that most of the rest of the bill itself consists of trying to apply this drafting…. I won’t say nightmare, because I know it represents the hard and intelligent work of many staff. But from the public’s perspective, it’s what appears to be the drafting nightmare that is trying to accomplish the ends of the government.

If perhaps the minister could offer her comment on sections 35 to 38, then we can move on.

[1730]

[D. Horne in the chair.]

Hon. S. Anton: I will acknowledge indeed the comments of the member opposite around drafting it. It has been a rather complicated drafting exercise. The goal is for these individual statutes that relate to individual tribunals….
[ Page 7111 ]

For the Administrative Tribunals Act to apply, the statutes have to refer back to the Administrative Tribunals Act. That’s why the proposed amendments to the Agricultural Land Commission Act are referring back to the Administrative Tribunals Act.

I think I would rather answer these one by one.

Section 35 applies the Administrative Tribunals Act to the Agricultural Land Commission. In particular, most of it is not new. It’s simply set out in a new order. The pieces which are new are the parts that will enable clustering, that will enable reporting and surveys and also some of the regulation-making power.

Apart from those things, the other pieces of the Administrative Tribunals Act which apply to the Agricultural Land Commission Act are ones that have already been there.

L. Krog: First, I just want to say that I realize now it wasn’t a Dickens novel. It was in fact Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I know the minister was interested in that comment about the flies, and it would drive one to insanity.

Just so we’re clear, then, it would be of assistance in dealing with the rest of the bill, if we come to sections that I will be asking the minister a similar kind of question on, as we’re doing chunks, because we are in the miscellaneous part of the bill and the numerous tribunals and acts that this applies to.

We can pass 35 to 38, and then if perhaps the minister could simply comment on sections 39 to 42.

Sections 35 to 38 inclusive approved.

On section 39.

L. Krog: If the minister could just comment briefly on these sections, 39 through to 42, please.

Hon. S. Anton: I’ll start with 39. So 39 is a housekeeping error. The section referred to a section 15(3), and I guess, somewhat to the chagrin of the drafters, it turned out there was no such section. In fact, now the section, rather than referring to a nonexistent subsection, actually refers to the items that a court must consider — namely, those enumerated in (a) to (e).

Sections 39 to 42 inclusive approved.

On section 43.

[1735]

L. Krog: I just want to confirm. This appears to be an amendment of an act that’s only recently gone through third reading. I assume, again, this simply has to revolve around clustering, and I’m making reference to sections 43 through to 45.

Hon. S. Anton: The Building Code Appeal Board, those sections of that act are not yet in force. This particular section also will not be brought into force until it is ready to be brought into force. Again, the provisions which are new here are the ones that were new a few sections ago — the provisions allowing clustering, surveys, reporting and some of the regulation-making power.

Sections 43 to 46 inclusive approved.

On section 47.

L. Krog: Just to confirm with respect to 47, 48 and 49, again, this is just the obscure point that was discussed prior to Easter around the defect discovered afterwards in the appointment of a chair or member — the same discussion as we had previously. If that’s the case, and the minister’s nodding, then let’s pass 47 through to 51, if we might.

Sections 47 to 51 inclusive approved.

On section 52.

L. Krog: I’m wondering if the minister can explain this section. It makes consequential amendments to the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act and involves community safety. I’m curious to know what the impact of this is. Why is it necessary, particularly given that the Community Safety Act, I gather, was intended to be an enabling act only?

Hon. S. Anton: This is an amendment for consistency of language so that when the Community Safety Act is brought into force, it will be consistent with the language in the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act.

Sections 52 to 61 inclusive approved.

On section 62.

[1740]

L. Krog: My understanding is that the impact of this section, potentially, will remove the ability for a person or body to be represented by counsel, present evidence, ask questions or make submissions.

I’m wondering if we can confirm that, in fact, that is the effect of that section.

Hon. S. Anton: The provisions which are being repealed in the Environmental Management Act are being replaced by provisions in the Administrative Tribunals Act. Generally, they are the same in intent, although there is one change, and I’m just going to get that for the member opposite.

[1745]

There was one exception to the generally no-change provision, and that exception is setting a time limit for judicial review. This is actually referring back to section 61. If the member would like to go back to section 61, I can point him to the place where this occurs. It’s in sub (1)(h), which refers to section 57. That section, 57, sets a time limit for judicial review, and that did not apply in the past to the Environmental Appeal Board. It sets the time limit at 60 days, which is the common time limit for such provisions.

L. Krog: Just to be clear, notwithstanding the repealing of these sections contemplated by section 62, there is in fact no significant reduction in the ability of persons to appeal, practise, etc., before the board.

Hon. S. Anton: That’s correct, apart from the time limit which I just described.

Sections 62 and 63 approved.

On section 64.

L. Krog: I think I may ask some general questions about the next group of sections, some of which appear not to be clusterable. I’m thinking, in particular, the Farm Practices Protection (Right To Farm) Act, Financial Institutions Act. Taking us through sections 63 to 73, if the minister could just offer comment on why that’s the case, that would be fine.

[1750]

Hon. S. Anton: I should add that I am joined here by Jim Collins from the Farm Industry Review Board. The Farm Industry Review Board is constituted, in part at least, by the Natural Products Marketing Act. The Natural Products Marketing Act — when we get to that, we will find that under the Natural Products Marketing Act, part 3 of the Administrative Tribunals Act applies to the Natural Products Marketing Act and hence to the Farm Industry Review Board.

The Chair: For the record, section 63 has already passed.

Sections 64 to 73 inclusive approved.

On section 74.

L. Krog: Again, if I can assist. With respect to sections 74 through to 88, if my understanding is correct in referencing particularly section 88, security deposits, as added under the previous sections sometime back — sections 47.1 and 47.2 — are not included under the Forest and Range Practices Act. If that’s correct, then the question is that I just want to know why.

Hon. S. Anton: The question was whether or not the security for costs provision would apply to the Forest Appeals Commission, and the answer is: it will not. As described earlier, the security for costs provision only applies in rather limited cases — namely, the ones we talked about earlier this afternoon.

Sections 74 to 118 inclusive approved.

On section 119.

L. Krog: This appears to be a somewhat significant section in terms of its impact, particularly with respect to tenants. I’m just wondering if the minister can explain the effect of it. My understanding is that it will take away the need that there be a scheduled hearing for the director to grant the landlord an order of possession of a manufactured home site. Is that the case? If so, what’s the public policy reason behind this?

[1755]

Hon. S. Anton: While the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act is open, it was proposed that this change be made. It is not related to the more general set of changes that we’re making around the Administrative Tribunals Act. The purpose of it is to provide more certainty of process for landlords and tenants.

L. Krog: Can the Attorney General confirm that it takes away the need for a hearing for the director to grant a landlord an order of possession and how that would actually work in practice? Is, in fact, the result of this that a tenant is denied the opportunity for a hearing that exists now under the legislation and if so, why?

Hon. S. Anton: This does not take away the right to a hearing. What it is…. There is a provision currently, and it’s proposed to be changed. The current provision is that the landlord, during the course of the hearing, had to make an oral request for an order of possession. If the landlord forgot or didn’t know to make that request, he or she would not get their order of possession, which meant that a second hearing had to be held.

The goal here is to clarify that it is only one hearing and that the director must grant the landlord an order of possession if the case is made out. If the appropriate findings have been made, then the order of possession needs to be granted.

Sections 119 to 145 inclusive approved.

On section 146.

[1800]

L. Krog: If the minister can just confirm, with respect to section 146, that, again, security for costs — sections
[ Page 7113 ]
47.1 and 47.2 — are not required because that’s already allowed for under the existing act. Or if I’m unclear on that and I’m wrong, what was the reasoning behind including a security deposit under the Oil and Gas Activities Act?

Hon. S. Anton: I should introduce Marg Shamlock, from the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

The question was about security of costs for the Oil and Gas Commission. The reason to include it here as one of the few that is including the security of cost provisions is to have it consistent with the surface rights board, as they deal with similar land-based issues.

Sections 146 to 163 inclusive approved.

On section 164.

L. Krog: This section seems somewhat out of place — sort of dropped in the middle of this bill, so to speak. I’m wondering: are we just taking advantage of the fact that we’ve got this massive piece of legislation before the House, or is there some particular reason that it’s being introduced at this particular time? And again, what’s the public policy behind it? What exactly is the minister contemplating in terms of the repayment using the method…? Why is it necessary?

Hon. S. Anton: I’m joined by Janet Donald, from the residential tenancy branch.

[1805]

The purpose of…. I think the answer to the philosophical question is that we are using this opportunity of some of these acts being open to make some changes in the acts which are viewed as being useful to make, including this one, where the landlord may now, through this new provision, make an e-transfer to return a deposit to a tenant.

Section 164 approved.

On section 165.

L. Krog: On the face of it, this section would give more power to landlords in terms of ending tenancy agreements. I’m just wondering: is that, in fact, the impact? And, if so, why is this change being brought in now? Is there some particular evil it’s designed to remedy? Has there been any consultation with tenants rights associations or others with respect to this section?

Hon. S. Anton: The first part of this subsection (1) is a repeat of what was done in section 119, which is to obviate the need for a second hearing. The issue has been discussed with tenants rights groups. The actual section and proposed amendment itself may not have been, but they are aware that the issue has been out there.

And in subsection (4) the language there is simply to change it to “dispute resolution process.”

[1810]

Sections 165 to 168 inclusive approved.

On section 169.

L. Krog: This section provides, in particular, that “the person who made the application fails to pursue the application diligently or does not follow an order made in the course of the dispute resolution proceeding.” In other words, the director can dismiss all of part of an application if you’re not pursuing it diligently.

Is that going to be defined by regulation? Is there a court case that determines that? Is this something that will be entirely in the director’s discretion? Is there some precedent for this? In other words, where does the concept of pursuing it diligently occur?

I don’t mean to be cheeky when I say this, but if I’m a person with disabilities, maybe it takes me a long time to do things that a person with we’ll call them normal abilities might be able to accomplish.

Are we talking days, hours, weeks, months, years? In other words, what’s contemplated by this? What particular evil needs to be remedied? And again, what sort of discussion, if any, took place with tenants rights groups or the disabilities community in general?

Hon. S. Anton: The residential tendency branch at the moment has no ability to close a case if the application is not pursued. In fact, sometimes, I’m told, files will stay open for ten years. This simply gives the authority if the applicant fails to pursue the application. It gives the branch the authority to dismiss all or part of the application.

L. Krog: I appreciate the minister’s answer, but the other part of the question that hasn’t been answered is: what does “pursued diligently” mean? Is that going to be defined by regulation? Is there case law from other provinces? Do other statutes and jurisdictions use that language?

Again, I come back. It’s a very subjective standard or objective standard, depending on how you want to look at it, I suppose. I mean, “pursued diligently” by someone who’s slow might not represent the same diligence of some other parties. Again, are we talking hours, days, weeks, months, years?

The ten-year example, I think it’s safe to say, is on the outer extreme — I would consider it appropriate to dismiss it — but maybe a ten-day “not pursued diligently” falls outside of that range of reasonableness.

[1815]

Hon. S. Anton: This would be applied on a case-by-
[ Page 7114 ]
case basis using the principles of natural justice, which the branch applies in its hearings and dispute resolution proceedings.

L. Krog: Just to be clear, I take it that…. Given this is a change in the Residential Tenancy Act, would in fact this change, once made, be something that can and would or is likely to be determined by regulation in terms of specifying what “pursued diligently” actually means?

Hon. S. Anton: That’s not the plan at the moment.

L. Krog: If the minister could repeat her answer.

Hon. S. Anton: I believe the question was whether the section about pursuing the application diligently was proposed to be a matter for regulation. The plan at the moment is that it will not be for regulation.

V. Huntington: Before we do wrap up, I just wanted to take an opportunity to thank the ministerial staff for their many hours of briefing my office and working with us. I’ve really appreciated it. They’ve been incredibly helpful. So thank you.

L. Krog: In light of comments that have been made, I want to ask again. Does that language, “pursued diligently,” exist in any other statute? In other words, what’s the source of the language, and has it been defined by any other statute?

Hon. S. Anton: I’m not aware of other legislation which uses that particular language. There may be, but I don’t have an example here today.

L. Krog: One of the great principles of the law is that it should be as certain as is reasonably possible. Given that the Residential Tenancy Act and other pieces of legislation have established time limits — and, occasionally, time limits that can be expanded, you know, by leave or application or whatever the case may be — I’m just wondering why we’re using this language, “pursued diligently,” as opposed to setting some sort of time period that requires some finality.

[1820]

In other words, if you haven’t taken a step in the proceeding in, say, 60 or 90 days…. I mean, even the old rules provided that if you hadn’t taken a step for I think it was a couple of years in a legal proceeding, then you could apply to dismiss, and courts would look at the facts at that time. But at least there was some time period specified in which you knew and understood that, in fact, if it wasn’t being pursued, you could bring an application to have it dismissed.

I’m just wondering why we’re leaving this “pursue diligently,” because it just seems to me…. To come back to my point around the certainty of the law and people understanding what their rights are, particularly in the residential tenancy branch, which deals with such an enormous volume of disputes, what’s the public policy argument that says you want to leave this at the discretion of the director as opposed to setting out some fairly firm and fast guidelines?

I mean, with great respect, if I’m not the most literate and educated person and I read that if I don’t pursue my application diligently and someone brings…. What does that exactly mean to me as opposed, again, as I suggest, to setting a very specific time limit in the circumstances?

Hon. S. Anton: The purpose is to allow flexibility, and the circumstances, of course, of each case are different. The residential tenancy branch, as I said, applies the principles of natural justice. It considers the individual case before it, and this does allow it to make the appropriate order.

Sections 169 to 204 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. S. Anton: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:22 p.m.

The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 18 — ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNALS
STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

Bill 18, Administrative Tribunals Statutes Amendment Act, 2015, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

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

Hon. M. de Jong moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:24 p.m.
[ Page 7115 ]

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

The House in Committee of Supply (Section A); S. Hamilton in the chair.

The committee met at 2:44 p.m.

On Vote 19: ministry operations, $5,460,832,000.

The Chair: Minister, would you have an opening statement?

[1445]

Hon. P. Fassbender: I do indeed. Thank you, Chair.

I would like to, first of all, recognize the members of the ministry staff that are going to be supporting me as we go through the estimates. To my right is our deputy minister, Dave Byng. To my left is Deb Fayad, who is the ADM for resource management and finance and other things.

I have behind me also members of the ministry staff who I will be introducing as we move along. We have Rod Allen, who is the ADM for learning in the ministry. We have Ian Rongve, who is responsible for knowledge management. Also with us is Shanna Mason, who is the ADM for the capital management division. And we have other members of the ministry staff.

I do want to say that these estimates are a lot of hard work for all of the staff. As we start, I want to recognize the ministry staff, who worked very hard to ensure that we can provide the members opposite the best information possible, and of course, we’re going to do that.

As we all know, education is one of the critical planks in the future of the province of British Columbia. The work that we do day in and day out celebrates the hard work of not only the ministry staff but the teachers and administrators throughout the province, the work of the BCTF in working with us on things like curriculum redesign and reform.

I know that the members opposite will have questions. I don’t want to take much more time in my opening remarks other than to say that I look forward to the questions and the answers we’re going to be able to provide.

R. Fleming: Thank you to the minister for his brief opening statement. I suppose I should reciprocate in kind by being brief as well. I look forward to these estimates and the time of ministry staff over the next two days in answering questions that both myself as the critic and other members will have about education services in their communities.

It has been a tumultuous year, to say the least, in this ministry. There is a considerable amount of discourse, unfortunately, in districts right across British Columbia again. It comes to the heart of what these budget estimates are about. It comes into play that it is about resources that are not adequate for the services that those communities need to educate our children.

It is very lean times in the education sector. That’s not my opinion. Those are opinions I will share from education leaders around British Columbia. Parents and all the major stakeholders over the last year, 550,000 school children, have had a feeling of anxiety. They’ve been put through the ringer, if I could put it that way, with two disrupted school years coming on top of each other, back to back.

It’s unprecedented, the longest in B.C.’s history. The scale of disruption was something that was not pleasant for anyone to live through. I think after that dispute ended, the commitment from the Premier that we would be turning a new page, that we would be bringing a sense of calm that was desperately needed into the education sector has proven to be completely untrue.

I think there is a huge price to pay for that, both economic and social. It is one that cannot be just looked upon as the bottom line and the sum total of the line items in this budget. It has to be looked at in terms of its impact on our kids and upon all the people who work hard day in and day out in our education system.

With that, I would like to ask the minister…. I think the most overused phrase, thanks to his government, in recent weeks that is in everybody’s vocabulary now is the idea that there is low-hanging fruit, that there is money lying around in 60 different school districts across B.C.

[1450]

The Premier has said that there’s low-hanging fruit that is easy to cut, that there will be no resources taken out of the classrooms. She has misquoted figures on what administrative savings might look like. She’s miscalculated what the administration costs are, both on the aggregate in the province and in various districts.

I wanted to ask the minister if he could just briefly explain what low-hanging fruit he sees in maybe a sampling of districts — if he could pick a rural, a suburban or a large urban district — to give the public an idea of what his government means when they suggest that there is surplus cash piled up, that there is low-hanging fruit that is easy to cut for districts who have, frankly, been in a mode for the last decade where they have had to make administrative cuts and lay off teachers and teacher-librarians and special education assistants.

Where is the low-hanging fruit for the trustees and the administrators whose responsibility it is to balance the budget but to protect the quality of public education?

Hon. P. Fassbender: I appreciate the question from the member opposite. There are a couple of things I’m
[ Page 7116 ]
going to address in his opening comments before I get into some more specific answers.

First of all, fully recognize that the disruption that existed in the school system this year was the result of a vote taken to have a strike not by the government but by the BCTF, and that is the democratic process.

The government was very clear from the get-go that we were going to do everything we could to get a negotiated settlement. It’s very obvious we achieved that goal. It was not easy. No one on either side of the House wanted to see children out of school. We did not want to see teachers on the picket lines. But we also knew that unless we found stability in the system, it was not going to benefit any of those parties and especially the students. But the negotiated settlement now gives us the calm, gives us the opportunity to work to develop a new relationship, and that work is also not easy.

[1455]

There has been a history of discord between the teachers union and the province. We are going to do everything we can as a government to work on resolving those kinds of disputes. But I will say this. Without a negotiated settlement, the framework for doing that would not be there. We now have it. It’s going to take us some time and some effort, but government is committed to working with the BCTF. I believe the BCTF is desirous of working with us. They’ve proven that in some of the work we’ve been doing on curriculum review and a number of other initiatives that are in the best interests of education in this province. That’s the heart of us staying the course and getting a negotiated settlement.

It was not the government that decided to close schools in the last few days of the school year. That was unfortunate. I had asked for that not to happen. However, in a democracy and in a union relationship, it is the union that decides whether they’re going to withdraw services. However, at the end of the day, we have the longest negotiated settlement in the history of the province. I think that speaks volumes of where we can go in the future, and we are committed to getting there.

The other thing that I wanted to address is that the issue of funding of education gets characterized as being underfunded. Yet it is very obvious that this government has continued to invest in education in significant ways. Since 2001, $1.2 billion of additional funding for education is going directly into the classrooms, going directly into providing the quality education services that are spoken to by our results and recognized around the world as being some of the best in the world.

While we have heard a lot of talk about how bad the education system is in this province, the facts do not speak to that. Having recently attended, along with Mr. Iker, a conference in Banff of leading jurisdictions around the world…. The ministers from those countries and their union heads were there. British Columbia is seen as a leader by the world community, and not just because we say it. Our results prove it day in and day out.

I find it difficult, at times, to accept the premise that we’re underfunding. In the most recent budget we have indicated an investment of an additional $421 million into the Education budget, going directly into classrooms. Now, one of the arguments that I’ve heard is that that money came as a result of the settlement. Well, indeed it did. A negotiated settlement, stability in the school system, an increase for teachers and their salaries, a 33 percent increase in the learning improvement fund directly invested in classrooms to deal with class composition, is absolutely at the heart of what we’ve done.

In terms of the issue of savings, I will say this. Any organization should always be looking for efficiencies. Doesn’t matter how big or small it is. Government has been committed to savings. Our core review process, everything that we do in every ministry — including the Ministry of Education — has been focused on ensuring that we find every efficiency we can in the best interests of the system, first and foremost. But more important, also, is to ensure that the tax dollars that are invested by the people of British Columbia go where they should be going, and that is into the classroom. We want to protect the classroom, we’re committed to protecting the classroom, and we are asking school districts to continue to work with us. The key there is working with us.

Our ministry team, led by our deputy, and all of the people that you see in front of you are dedicated to working with school districts to find the kinds of efficiencies that ensure that everything we can do to protect the classroom is done.

Now, what are the examples? There is a list of examples, and I’ll be happy to provide copies of those examples to the member.

[1500]

I’m just going to pick out a couple, if I can. We have seen, clearly, school districts be able to find efficiencies by working hard. Let’s pick one: southeast Kootenay, school district 5. The district, with the city of Cranbrook, partnered with their local community to complete mechanical and lighting upgrades over the past two years. They expect to save $35,000 in one of the smaller school districts in this province.

When I look at Rocky Mountain, school district 6, the district has realized approximately, as well, $32,000 in telecom savings by participating in the telecommunications services master agreement that exists. There are a number of other opportunities.

I will say this to the member opposite. I clearly understand that it is never easy to make changes and to look at changing the way operations are done. While it’s not easy, it is necessary, because we are committed to having balanced budgets. We expect that of school districts. We’re committed to protecting our credit rating, which we have just had upgraded. That saves hundreds of millions of dollars for the taxpayers of this province so that we can
[ Page 7117 ]
keep our economic house in order and so that we can find paths in the future to investing in things like education, health care and the other critical services that we have.

R. Fleming: Well, that’s quite a revision on the history of the dispute. I certainly don’t want to use up too much time this afternoon. But clearly, the minister has forgotten that his government moved, applied for and received from the Labour Relations Board an order for a partial lockout, which escalated further.

At the very least, you would expect him to concede that there are two sides in the dispute. I would actually hope that he would be able to, in hindsight and having the benefit of being the minister now for a couple years, admit that at key points the dispute escalated far beyond where it should have. What happened over these past two school years — the scale of disruption — should never have been allowed to have occurred.

I don’t expect the minister will take that opportunity this afternoon, so I don’t want to waste a lot of time on this matter and going through that dispute. I want to talk about the opportunity he had, after such a scale of disruption, to smooth things over — to do as the Premier had suggested, which was to turn a new leaf and to develop new relationships both with the school boards, who were put under considerable difficulty, but most importantly, perhaps given who was most directly involved with the dispute, the teaching profession in British Columbia.

That hasn’t happened. This budget was an opportunity to do that. Instead, what we’re seeing is considerable strife once again and layoff notices that will likely be attached to so-called administrative savings that will necessitate cuts on the ground, in real communities, happening to real people in British Columbia. That’s the reality, and that’s what I think I would like to engage the minister on this afternoon.

Just a question, though, for the minister before we get into that. The Select Standing Committee on Finance — which performs a vital function for the Legislative Assembly and, I think, for the government — travels far and wide in British Columbia, hears submissions, is able to cross-examine presenters and spends a number of months gathering information and getting a sense of what the priorities are of British Columbians to then submit and feed into the budget-making process both for this minister and his cabinet colleagues.

Once again, the Finance Committee this year made a number of key recommendations to the minister around stable, secure multi-year funding — recognition that was explicit around districts having made years and years of cuts. The evidence presented to the committee was that there was, in fact, no room for further cuts without having negative impacts on students and, perhaps, learning outcomes. That standing committee presented those findings to the House and to the government.

[1505]

I just want to ask the minister, for the record: does the work that the Finance Committee has…? I think all members of the committee — it’s a bipartisan committee, and they work well together — feel it has value. They feel that, perhaps more than any other standing committee of this Legislature…. They engage the public annually.

Does the work of that committee have any bearing at all, in fact, on the real budget-making process of his ministry and the government of which he is a part?

Hon. P. Fassbender: I do appreciate the question. I will answer it with a couple of facts that I’m sure the member probably has, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat.

Number one. This government, since 2001, has continued to increase the funding to public education. I said it earlier. I’ll say it again: $1.2 billion. I find it hard to understand the suggestion that we are cutting when we’re investing that kind of increase in education, when enrolment has gone down by 75,000 students over that same period of time. So to suggest that the government has been cutting back on funding is ludicrous at best. In addition, this budget — this budget just tabled recently, a balanced budget — is increasing funding to public education by $421 million.

I’ll remind the member opposite, because I recall being asked a question by him in the House: prior to the negotiated settlement that we were able to achieve — that was never achieved by the government of the member opposite when they were in power — we said that we would fully fund this agreement. There was concern expressed by school boards around the province as to whether or not the government would fully fund the agreement, which we have done.

You know, when you look at things like the learning improvement fund…. One of the arguments during the negotiations was the issue of class composition. A 33 percent increase in the learning improvement fund was part of the negotiated settlement — a fund administered through the local union and the superintendents of school districts to deal with the hiring of additional teachers, additional specialists, as the districts determined.

That has been the policy of this government. That continues to be our direction. We continue to be at record levels even when enrolments across the province are still going down. But we are challenging the system to look at issues, as I’ve outlined — some of the potential savings. We are also working, through the ministry staff, with school districts for a long-term vision in terms of Shared Services, where we can work together to find additional efficiencies that will benefit the classroom.

[1510]

The characterization that we are cutting funding to education is indeed wrong.

R. Fleming: The minister has repeated something here that he has repeated in the media — this idea the public
[ Page 7118 ]
will believe him when he says he’s increased funding by $1.2 billion to education. He never bothers to say we’re talking about a 16-year time period. He never bothers to compare it to the average rate of inflation.

I’ve never heard him acknowledge that venerable left-wing institution the Conference Board of Canada’s figure. It recently reported that British Columbia has the weakest funding-growth record of any education system in Confederation and is two to three times slower in terms of funding enhancements over the last 12 years than any other province in western Canada.

At the very least, if I will concede he’s technically correct that funding has increased for education, the point is that funding has increased generally below the rate of inflation. Where there is an anomaly year, it is related to full-day kindergarten and nothing else. British Columbia is far behind every other province and significantly further behind other western Canadian provinces with similar demographic challenges.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been losing student enrolment as well. That, I think, is at the basis of an honest discussion that school trustees want to have. They want to be a partner in education. They are a partner. Obviously, they deliver the services which form the education system.

But when the minister and the Premier make it sound so easy to squeeze funding back once again for another year — after year after year after year…. When there are unfunded cost pressures that this minister knows about, whether it’s MSP or B.C. Hydro increases or pension fund adjustments, which he admitted in estimates last year was a $31 million cost pressure that his government didn’t define…. That was last year.

There are a number of unfunded cost pressures, and I want to get his input on this later as we go along here. I want to get his opinion. He said in the media just the other day that there is a myth of underfunding in B.C. I want to ask him to comment on the perpetrators of this myth. Presumably they are school trustees, above all, who are quite rightly asking the minister where the low-hanging fruit is that he and the Premier keep talking about.

I want to ask him if he thinks that they’re all wrong. The reviews have come in. If this were a film, Rotten Tomatoes would have a lot to say about this. The reviews are all bad about this budget, from elected school officials. I just want to ask him if he just denies the claims of some of these chairs and board members. A district chair in Revelstoke says: “The low-hanging fruit has been gone for years. We’re trying to get the message out that cuts will affect our students.”

We’ve got Mark Wilson, from school district 20, saying: “Unfortunately, it is in the fine print in the budget” — this budget — “that has left school trustees and administrators feeling like they have been played for chumps. It was a ministry order for the province’s 60 districts to find $29 million in administrative efficiencies, also known as budget cuts.”

That’s what they’re calling it: budget cuts. And they’re telling the minister that he has ignored the Standing Committee on Finance — which made a clear recommendation about funding — and has characterized their job as being oh so easy to find low-hanging fruit. They’re telling him that that’s simply not the case. They have decisions that are distressing to make and not in every instance can they be made in the best interests of protecting the quality of education that British Columbia enjoys.

Is he 100 percent right and all the trustees in British Columbia who are speaking out 100 percent wrong?

[1515]

[D. Plecas in the chair.]

Hon. P. Fassbender: The issue of funding of education across the country has many, many issues attached to it. A number of the measures that are often quoted by the members opposite are our ranking against other jurisdictions. Statistics Canada comments are used.

I want to say this. What I have learned in the time that I’ve been minister, in speaking with my colleagues from different jurisdictions, is that every province calculates its funding and its contribution to education in a number of different ways. So when numbers are quoted or averages are quoted, they do not reflect the reality of how it is actually funded.

Even Statistics Canada, when they put out their latest report, said that care should be taken with cross-jurisdictional comparisons, because they clearly know that every province deals with it differently. But that being said, I think it’s really important to look at some of the facts again in British Columbia and what we deal with in this province.

At the same time as we hear the comment about underfunding and cutting and so on, the reality is that we’ve seen a year-after-year-after-year growth in accumulated surpluses by school districts throughout this province because they’ve worked very hard.

[1520]

That’s not a criticism. That is actually a compliment to them on how they’ve worked hard. They put those funds aside for other opportunities that they believe are important in their districts. I applaud that. But I also recognize that it is important for school districts — as it is for this government as we review our fiscal framework and look at where the priorities need to be — to sometimes, as we do in our own personal lives, make adjustments in a budget to meet the realities of the current environment. That is all we’ve been asking the school districts to do: work with us as we look at what our current budgetary limitations are, what the needs are.

All of the money — that is all from the taxpayers. Whether it’s accumulated surpluses or anything else, it only comes from one source, and that’s the one taxpayer, who gives the money to us in trust and to the school dis-
[ Page 7119 ]
tricts as a result of the funding that the province gives. They ask us to make sure that we use that as efficiently and wisely as possible.

I have never said in any of my comments that it’s oh so easy. As a matter of fact, I have clearly said: “I know it’s difficult.” I can tell you that the efficiencies that our ministry has had to find were not easy. It would have been easy to try and keep the levels as we had it in the past, but the reality of our economic situation said we need to work hard to be efficient. We’re asking the school districts to work with us.

I need to say that even though I have received the letters and the comments that I’ve heard — and I appreciate what the Standing Committee on Finance did — if I went out and said to the public, “What do you think we should do?” on one hand, the public will say: “Well, you should invest more.” On the other hand, if you ask the question, “Where is that money going to come from?” and the fact that it comes out of their pocket, they will also say, clearly, that we need to be wise, we need to be disciplined and we need to use those dollars as efficiently and as effectively as we can.

While I appreciate — and I have never said it’s easy — change is never easy, in a time when we have an expectation to improve our education system, we have a responsibility to the taxpayers on one hand, but then let’s look at the other side of the ledger.

At the conference I was just at, I met with countries — some countries which, from statistics, have poured more money into education than perhaps we’re accused of having done. And I look at the results of the system. The same Conference Board of Canada that the member opposite spoke of ranks British Columbia, in terms of outcomes in education, No. 3, not in Canada, in the world. Against Finland and Japan, we are No. 3, and they are all very close in terms of outcomes.

I would suggest this. Maybe what we have is a well-funded and very efficient education system that is delivering the results to students that their parents expect.

R. Fleming: I think we just heard the minister say that Statistics Canada cannot be trusted to have an intelligent methodology that compares provinces equally. I don’t think very many people would follow along with that.

The reality is that since 2006, when British Columbia was above the Canadian average in per-pupil funding, we have now fallen almost $1,000 per kid, per pupil, below the national average. The only province that is lower than British Columbia in per-pupil funding is Prince Edward Island. My friend the member from Nanaimo is not here, but it’s smaller than his community. That’s where we are in the national standings. That’s a statistic that is of interest to every parent and every kid in British Columbia. I don’t expect him to come back on that, but he’s obviously welcome to do so.

[1525]

What I want to ask him about is the administrative savings that he has asked school districts to achieve this year. What is causing confusion and great difficulty is that it’s really easy to pass a budget here in Victoria and say: “You go and figure it out. Order cuts to happen.” That’s what we’re dealing with.

The ministry has not had a plan to work with school districts on achieving administrative savings. They said, “It’s across the board. You’re all the same” — whether you’re seen as highly efficient or something less than that — and school districts are left to scramble. That’s what’s going on.

There are trustees meeting right now, talking about forgoing technology improvements and investments that they were going to make, cutting back bus service. There are some school districts that I’m aware of that are talking about getting rid of all cafeteria services. There are some that are looking at cancelling all of the hirings that they were planning to do — in order to achieve ministry goals. There are some that are talking about increasing class sizes to the maximum allowable, where they have an advantage to offer slightly less than that today. These are the kinds of things that school districts are considering.

I want to ask him this question — and maybe direct it to his home district, because I know he’s very familiar with Surrey. The Premier took to the airwaves and I think in fact tweeted out that school districts are administratively fat, that they average 7 percent overhead in B.C., and characterized it as: “All our government is asking them to do is to get back to 6 percent administrative savings.”

Well, I have the ministry’s own “Annual Budgeted Operating Expenditures by Function,” which analyzes and reports every year the district administration funds, and the Premier isn’t even close in terms of how she characterized administration costs in our 60 districts around B.C. The average is 3.4 percent in British Columbia. In the constituency the minister represents as an MLA, in Surrey, it’s 2 percent.

Which is it? Is it 2 percent? Is it 7 percent? Is it 3.4 percent, which your ministry says is the average annual provincial rate of administrative costs? Misinformation doesn’t help anyone. It’s designed to be political, to characterize school districts as having significant room to cut and that it can all be harmlessly done in administration, when, in fact, that is not the case.

I would like to ask the minister this. It’s a 2 percent rate of administrative overhead in his home district of Surrey. What is it going to be? What’s the magic number — 1.8, 1.7? How efficient is efficient in terms of administration? Where’s the money going to be found?

[1530]

Hon. P. Fassbender: One of the things that we have been doing, where the member opposite is again incorrect, is that we have clearly been talking to and work-
[ Page 7120 ]
ing with school districts for the last two years with a clear goal of finding efficiencies and savings. To suggest that we sprung these on them….

The only thing that came out of the budget was a clear number. Prior to that, our staff had met with superintendents, secretary-treasurers, the BCSTA. We have talked about the need to find efficiencies within the system, and we have talked to them repeatedly about that.

I’ve been at meetings myself. Every speech I’ve made to the BCSTA…. The member opposite, the critic, was in some of those presentations where I stood and clearly said to school districts that what will not be an option for any of us…. I didn’t point at them and say just for them. For any of us who have the responsibility for tax dollars on behalf of the people of British Columbia, and ensuring that the greatest investment possible is made in the classroom on educational outcomes, we are going to work together to find those savings.

We have been doing that work. We continue to do that work. There have been committees that have met that looked at opportunities. One that I’m aware of is on the entire side of technology, where we know that the 52 districts in this province who participated in the technology contracts that we had in the province have found $1.8 million in savings. Now, was that easy? Would it have been easier not to work to get that? No, not at all. It took the effort of a lot of dedicated people in the ministry and in school districts, but we found $1.8 million.

To suggest that we have no plan is again incorrect. That plan is being jointly developed between the ministry and school districts. I appreciate school trustees who ultimately have to pass budgets. There are a lot of new school trustees who have not had the benefit of the experience of sitting around the table and understanding the complexity of budgeting and are now complaining because they have to find additional savings. But even in my own district of Surrey, where I am an MLA, I am very proud of the work that the Surrey school district has done over the years to find efficiencies.

When the member takes one line item out of a report and doesn’t look at how all of the other administrative savings that aren’t calculated in there…. The average across the province is indeed 6.8 percent when you put them all into the total budget environment.

[1535]

Now, there are variances, for sure. Some districts, because of their local agreements and the work that they’ve done, have different costs that go into administrative and those which go into classrooms.

One of the challenges that our team has been working very hard with school districts on is to find the consistency in reporting moving forward. That is part of our plan so that there aren’t those vagrancies and variations to it and so that we can really see what the numbers are across the province and by district. We’re going to continue to do that.

I know that the districts will have difficulty. I’ve never said it’s been easy, but I know that we can get there. We’ve proven that when we work together and when we look at the opportunities that we have for efficiencies. We have dedicated workers within the ranks of CUPE who have given, through our contract negotiations and with those in the individual school districts, the opportunity to find efficiencies. Those have been directly, then, given back to the districts and to the students in those districts in the way of efficiencies that ensure we protect the classroom. That is still and will always be the ultimate goal.

R. Fleming: Well, let me just give the context in British Columbia and what trustees have been dealing with for a long time.

I referenced the Conference Board of Canada report earlier, because I think it’s something I would hope the minister would concede is neutral and comparative between provinces. Their report shows that public school expenditure, board operating expenditures on public schools across Canada, increased by 13.8 percent in Canada between 2008 and 2012. In British Columbia it was 3.4 percent. That’s the reality. We are underfunded relative to other provinces by a three- or fourfold magnitude.

Now we come to the year 2015, after all the turmoil and all of the administrative savings that have been asked of school boards — and achieved — in recent years, going back to the same well over and over and over again. This is a tiresome re-run for school trustees to have to endure every year.

These aren’t new trustees, by the way. We’re talking about people like Laurae McNally, who has been long-serving in Surrey and who quite rightly said that the so-called low-hanging fruit may have grown on trees that were cut down years ago. It’s people like Sean Wilson who have served schools in Surrey for years, if not decades, and who are experienced people around the table.

Surrey, just to stick with the minister’s home community, is, I think, an interesting one to look at. They’re going to be asked to make across-the-board administrative cuts even though they’re number one in the province in terms of efficiency, out of all 60 districts. They’re going to be asked to carry the same load as everybody else. Essentially, if they feel they’ve become more efficient than other districts, they’re being punished for being more efficient by being asked to do comparatively more.

Surrey is doing everybody in British Columbia a favour. They have a tough job at that district. I mean, you have 10,000 newcomers coming into Surrey every year. One in three of those newcomers is a school-aged child. Enrolment growth in Surrey is significant. It is the fastest-growing community in British Columbia.

The number of portables in that district has grown by 41 percent since 2003, and here we are dealing with a capital budget that’s been cut by more than $100 million a year. This doesn’t help Surrey.
[ Page 7121 ]

Capital funds have been cut. They’re asked to make more administrative savings. They’ve got a record number of portables. Portables are expensive to operate, so their overhead is actually going up because they have insufficient building stock and all the bills that come with that.

It cost them, even just this year, an extra $4 million because they’re so reliant on portables and waiting for new buildings to be approved — $4 million of additional overhead that no other district will experience because they don’t have the fast-growing uniqueness that Surrey does. And they’re now being asked for additional administrative cuts.

When I say the ministry doesn’t have any plan, they don’t have any precision. They haven’t done any analysis. They haven’t worked with boards.

[1540]

The minister says he’s about working with boards to find ways forward to achieve these things. They haven’t done the work with boards to say: “You should shoulder this much, and you should shoulder that much.”

There is no granular detail to this plan. It is a $55 million across-the-board cut for two years. It should be seen in the context of the minister saying repeatedly over the last year — and the most recent quote I can see is September 16: “We will fully fund the cost of implementing the teacher settlement.”

Well, he says on the one hand that they’re putting the money there that is related to the cost of funding the teacher settlement and then taking 30 percent of it back in so-called administrative savings cuts. That’s not fully funding the cost of the settlement by anybody’s definition that actually has to work in the public education system. It’ll probably result in fewer teaching positions, and it will result in cuts that we’re only just learning about, unfortunately, because of the timing of these estimates while budget-making happens district by district.

Again, to the minister, does he think it’s fair that his home district, which has publicly said that they’re proud of their efficiencies — that they have the lowest overhead administratively in the province but have significant unique aspects to deal with — is being asked to shoulder more essentially administrative cuts than any other district, even though they have, by their own argument, done more to become efficient than they feel other districts have?

[1545]

Hon. P. Fassbender: Again, the issue of funding and how those are calculated — I think it is really important for the member opposite to clearly understand.

We have been working with districts consistently. It was as a result of the recommendations that came from the committees that we formed with the districts that when the administrative savings targets were established, it was the recommendation of those committees that it be done on a proportionate basis against the formula for this year.

However, even within that, we have said there is flexibility by district to deal with those savings and to look at opportunities. So we’re not suggesting that it’s going to be the same throughout the province.

Surrey is a very good example of a district that, on one hand, has been very efficient. But on the other hand — I clearly recognize it, because I do represent the communities in one of the ridings — the growth has been a challenge to manage because growth has been significant and continues to be and will be projected as such.

But to suggest we’ve not invested in Surrey…. Again, I don’t know where the member gets his figures, but I can tell you that over the last number of years since 2001 we have invested $335 million in Surrey in capital projects. And as recently as this last year we have added another $45.6 million in expansion, in new capital projects and upgrading of existing facilities.

Indeed, the challenge in managing growth is: where do you put the growth while you are dealing with the expansion and freeing up the capital dollars that are necessary? I know that the Surrey school board is working closely — I’ve been in a couple meetings — with the city of Surrey and with the private sector to look at other new opportunities where we can deal with growth in a much more creative way.

That doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and effort. That time and effort is being put in by the ministry. The investment has been there in Surrey and will continue to be there and in other fast-growing districts, while at the same time the provincial average in terms of student growth is going down.

We do continue to invest in capital in communities where there is growth, while at the same time dealing with and looking for efficiencies and getting that input from school districts. It is very obvious to me that the ministry team and the superintendents and secretary-treasurers from around the province continue to work to find where we can indeed have some consistency of reporting.

The way the reporting is done right now, every district has different ways of reporting their numbers and their investment in administration. We need to find some semblance of consistency in that so that we’re not faced with this suggestion that some districts are more efficient than others.

We need the facts, and we’re working to get those facts. We do know there is hard work going on. We’re going to continue to work with them.

R. Fleming: I’ll just pick up on what the minister concluded with. Wouldn’t it be better to get the facts before the budget-making process?

Basically, this is the downloading of responsibility. The minister has put a number on it. He said that it’s
[ Page 7122 ]
been proportionately asked — the same burden of every school district. He didn’t bite on the question that I was asking him earlier, which is Surrey’s claim to be the most efficient district in the province.

They are, by the ministry’s own reporting numbers. They have the lowest administration rate of any district. So is Laurae McNally wrong when she says: “Our district is the most efficient”? Yet, they are being asked to find, by year two of this plan, $6.6 million in administrative savings, whatever those are, by fiat under this budget.

[1550]

Are they number one? Are they the most efficient district? And is it right, then, to have, instead of a plan, a proportionate sharing of districts being given the most vague instructions to go out and just hack and slash and find the money that’s being ordered by the ministry and send it back to Victoria?

[1555]

Hon. P. Fassbender: What is very obvious to me, coming from Surrey, is we have one of the largest, fastest-growing districts. They also receive the largest funding of any district in this province, as they should. We’re asking all districts to find 0.05 percent — one-half of 1 percent — in efficiencies. And I can tell the member opposite that Surrey is one of the leaders in working with us to do that.

They have been working with the ministry team and with the committees that I mentioned on finding opportunities. They’re taking a leadership role when it comes to procurement practices and showing the way. Surrey is, indeed, showing the way by what they’re doing. And I believe, without any hesitation, that with the work the Surrey management team is doing with our management team, they will find the one-half of 1 percent, as we’re asking every district to do. It stands to reason that if you’re getting the largest amount of funding, that percentage will equate in real dollars to one of the higher amounts.

Is it achievable? We believe it is. And I believe that Surrey will find the way to find that, as I believe every other district in the province can do.

R. Fleming: I just want to make sure I understand the ministry’s published numbers — the tables that they publish around funding from March of this year — correctly.

The labour settlement funding, which refers to the teacher settlement for district 36, Surrey, was $16.7 million. And the administrative savings ordered to be cut by the government is $3.6 million for this year, rising to $6.6 million next year. I just want to make sure I understand which hand is giving which and which hand is taking back and if the minister can confirm those numbers.

Hon. P. Fassbender: Yes, those numbers are correct.

R. Fleming: I just want to ask the minister: was there any discussion, within the budget-making process in his ministry, of linking so-called administrative savings with the ability to achieve them, essentially? Ultimately, they landed on a formula, which he has confirmed, which is just to make it proportionate across the board.

But there doesn’t seem to be taking into account of boards’ reasonable ability to do this — not that it’s a reasonable exercise by any stretch. I’m not making that argument. But there are rural districts that have inherently high administration costs because they do not have economies of scale. There are large, fast-growing districts that are not optimal for a whole host of different reasons.

[1600]

And yet we have this sort of blunt instrument here of proportionate across-the-board cuts, treating every district the same, not taking into account recent activity in those different boards, not looking at whether there are achievable means to have these savings. It’s just been ordered.

I’m wondering if there was at least a discussion that there might be different ways of asking for this, perhaps even a dialogue with school leaders themselves instead of a big surprise. It was a surprise in the budget lockup for school trustees. I’ve got a quote, if the minister wants me to read it being characterized as a surprise, from the president of the B.C. School Trustees Association.

Was there any other discussion about a different, perhaps more reasonable and rational, way to ask school districts for this? I want to stress, too, that what’s interesting about this, what fuels the sense of betrayal from school districts, is the Deloitte report — we’ll talk about that later in these estimates — from 2012.

It was premised on an exciting partnership between the ministry and school districts to achieve administrative savings and put them back into the classroom — not take them out and send the money to Victoria — to make new investments. It was to incentivize districts to be efficient because they could keep the money. Now it’s completely different. You don’t keep the money. You send it to Victoria. You don’t get a fully funded cost of settlement for the teachers’ contract. It’s clawed back.

Surely, even in this ill-advised way to proceed that the minister has chosen, which is what this budget is about, there must have been some background discussion that said there are several ways or different ways to go about asking this unreasonable request of school district leaders.

Hon. P. Fassbender: Yes, there have been discussions. There are ongoing discussions. There were no surprises. The only surprise was a number that was lower than what was even recommended by a third-party consultant who provided a report to the ministry that everyone in the system was aware of, who had a much higher target.

We actually pulled that back to something that we believed was fair and achievable, and there have been discussions. There will continue to be discussions. To suggest
[ Page 7123 ]
that it was a surprise…. I spoke with the president of the BCSTA. The only thing that wasn’t known, and the member opposite knows this, is what the actual target would be, which, as I said, was less than was even suggested was achievable, because we felt we had much more work to do through the committees that we have on Shared Services moving forward. We wanted to make sure that it was fair and achievable, and I believe we’ve accomplished that.

R. Fleming: I would like to ask a question just about the idea of shared services. I won’t get into speaking about a bill before the House at this point, because that wouldn’t be permissible.

As it relates to the budget, the government has asked school districts to make these across-the-board cuts under the guise of administrative savings. They’ve suggested they can be accommodated or accomplished through shared-service agreements. I would suggest — and the minister, I think, has even acknowledged so far this afternoon — that school districts are quite far along in setting up all kinds of regionally based consortiums and entering into what you would call shared-service agreements with other partners. Sometimes they’re a municipal governments. Sometimes they’re other entities.

They know what they’re talking about. They’re done. This is not new. I agree with him on that. But the point is that they have made significant shared-services savings already. You can’t save twice. They’ve already been achieved. That’s how they’ve balanced budgets, under great duress, over previous years. It gets harder and harder the more times this government goes back to the same well and asks school districts to make more cuts. They can call them administrative savings or whatever they want. That’s what they are.

[1605]

There are some diminishing returns here even though the demand is the same every year from this government, of elected school trustees.

I want to ask him about the Deloitte report. Also, I have another report in front of me which I will refer to, which is the service delivery project report of 2014 — not that old, a year old — where the higher tier of administrative savings, Shared Services savings, have costs attached to them. They actually have start-up costs attached to them. There needs to be seed funding and cooperation and a plan in place. Instead, what we have here is across-the-board cuts.

My question, I guess, is sort of twofold for the minister. It’s about the idea that there are diminishing returns on the cuts and the efficiencies that have been asked of these school districts. They’ve been asked year after year after year. They’re not even, according to the documents that have reviewed and made recommendations, around how higher-level efficiencies can be achieved. I would ask him to comment on that.

Hon. P. Fassbender: I want to make it very clear there is a clear difference between Shared Services initiatives and admin savings. Even within admin savings there is a suggestion that that means cutting people, which I don’t believe is at the heart of what we’ve talked about.

What is important here are a couple of factors. The experience we’ve seen in government with other ministries, such as Health and Advanced Education, is that there have been ways to find those kinds of savings and efficiencies that will ensure the integrity of the system — one. Two is that shared services is a long-term goal. In developing that plan, there are going to be many components to it.

One of the things we’re doing is working with school districts, with their senior leadership team and our leadership team, to say: “What does that look like to the long term?” The goals that we have for the long term are going to be quite different than what we may be facing today.

That is why it is so important that we haven’t put targets against that at this stage. We’re working with them so that we can jointly achieve those targets and speak about what is possible. And the collaboration between our ministry team and the district’s is with the intent to ensure that any goals that we do, we’ll ensure that every dollar goes back into the classroom — where it is possible and where we can manage what our investments are.

[1610]

Again, I want the member opposite to know that we have continued to invest. To suggest that we’re taking from one and sending it back to Victoria…. The budget for the Ministry of Education is a budget that is given by the people of British Columbia to school districts to manage their affairs.

We have changed the way we’ve given that in the past. We are now doing block funding, and we have provided districts with the maximum flexibility that we can to work within those budget targets and to find savings where they can. The total number is 0.5 percent — one-half of 1 percent — across the board for every district.

Again, I’ll say: I know it may not be easy, but I believe that it is achievable and that goal is one that we can meet as we develop the long-term strategy on shared services and look at how we can achieve those goals. There’s a lot of work that will be done in collaboration with the school districts to get there.

R. Fleming: Well, half of 1 percent is incredibly hard to do when you’re the worst-funded province in Canada, when you have the lowest growth rate of funding in the country, well below the rate of inflation, when you have mounting unfunded cost pressures.

These are calculated annually by the B.C. association of school board officers. They’re ones that I don’t think the minister disputes, because they feature in his deputy minister’s briefing binders, which we have FOI’d along with
[ Page 7124 ]
other stakeholders, so they’re taken as legitimate statistics. This is not a myth, even though it was characterized as that in the media last week by the minister.

However, I want to just change direction for a minute and ask the minister something entirely different which, hopefully, you can help me locate for estimates debate tomorrow. That is around the class-size and composition numbers that government typically releases by the end of January annually. We’ve been looking for them on the website in the usual place and unable to find it.

I’m just wondering if that report is set for imminent publication and whether we will be able to have it for debate here at estimates. I know a number of other education stakeholders are looking for it too. The reporting has been done to the ministry. I’m just wondering if that is something that’s going to be published soon, because it is getting on about three months late from when it’s normally published annually. I trust he knows the report I’m speaking of.

Hon. P. Fassbender: For the member opposite, I’m sure he’s aware that while there was a withdrawal of services, a lot of the administrative functions within school districts and classes stopped for a period of time. That has resulted in the data being slower in coming in than it would have traditionally in a year.

[1615]

Otherwise, our team is working on it. I’ll have an answer for the member tomorrow, when we think that’ll all be tabulated. The information has now been received. It’s being tabulated. The districts have their own numbers. We don’t have the provincial number yet, but we should have it shortly. I’ll try and provide that information tomorrow.

R. Fleming: It sounds like there’s a significant draft underway. I just wanted to ask the minister, if anybody can help him answer this, if the report format and the data sets that are included in there — the types of statistics that outline what class size and composition look like in B.C. schools — have been changed in any way for this year and whether categories that show reporting around classes that have four or more special needs learners in the classroom will still be included in the report. Or perhaps there have been no changes at all. I’d be curious to get his answer.

Hon. P. Fassbender: I can advise that the data sets are consistent with how they’ve always been. We’re just in the process of finalizing, and as I said, by tomorrow I think we’ll have a clearer understanding of the timing of the release of that information.

R. Fleming: I think one of the things that I would like to try and establish out of estimates and maybe spend some time on tomorrow as well, though, is around the education fund.

The government’s commitment…. I think even the Premier said at one time that her number one priority was class size and composition or something like that. Of course, the crux of the disputes that dragged on for so long was eventually settled by the establishment of an education fund that was available to, and purposed to, hire extra teachers to deal with some of those workload issues and some of those exacerbations around class size and composition that the public had become well aware of.

Really, there’s an early opportunity now, although not a complete year to analyze it. But there’s an interest in looking at whether this education fund has made a difference and will make a difference. I want to understand, using the 2014-15 data, that the extra teaching positions that were funded by the teacher education fund would have been afforded by, I think, about $35 million — it was a partial year; hopefully, I’ve got my numbers right — which would hire approximately 377 FTE teachers. That’s what was anticipated.

However, the Ministry of Education revenue and expenditure data show that, in the same year, over the same partial year of the education fund coming into being in this way, there would be a reduction in teacher salary expenditure of $28.3 million that could result in a loss of 386 FTE teachers.

Is it the case that, after the education fund was all said and done in this partial year, there are actually fewer FTE teachers in 2014-15 — that in a sense, it was one step forward, two steps back in this regard?

[1620]

Hon. P. Fassbender: Because of the number of factors that go into the calculations that he has referred to — and that includes the impact of the labour disruption and so on — our staff will provide that analysis to the member. Probably not before the end of estimates, because it takes a fair amount of analysis, but I do commit that the ministry will provide that to the member in due course.

R. Fleming: I wonder if I could ask the minister a little bit about enrolment projections through the service plan. I’ll just ask him for a minute here to find my numbers.

Maybe, just to begin, to ask the minister the inputs that the ministry is using to forecast enrolment trends. I know that they haven’t been bang on in terms of what has been estimated recently. There was sort of a sense over the last couple of years that the enrolment decline had bottomed out and was on the upswing. That has been put off by a couple of years. It looks to me like we are looking at a different phase where enrolment will grow again, and I’m just wondering if the minister can describe what data the ministry is using for its forecasts.

[1625]

Hon. P. Fassbender: The baseline for our projections. We start with B.C. Stats, who do look at a rolling average
[ Page 7125 ]
over the next five years and give us some information on that. The other factor, of course, is there are a number of other things that can happen.

Because of our successful financial environment in British Columbia, we anticipate we’re going to have people coming back to British Columbia to work. With them come their families. So we work with districts. We work with other information that we have.

Our B.C. jobs and skills plan clearly looks at where the growth is going to be, so we work with districts in areas where there might be anticipated economic growth. There’s a number of factors, but B.C. Stats is the baseline that we use.

Immigration is another one of the figures that we look at. So we do. I know the districts work with their local communities to determine what economic growth they anticipate which will result in additional people wanting to live in those communities.

At the moment, based on what we see, we see declines in enrolment tending to flatten out. Kindergarten, for example, is up, which is going to have an impact in future years. We factor in all of those things.

Again, all of our projections are based on all of those inputs. As we found in the past, sometimes they’re right. Sometimes the forecasts even in communities are not correct because of changing circumstances, but we do the best job to take all of those things into account.

R. Fleming: Well, I have some anecdotes about what I think the minister was just speaking about, although they would have been said a little differently.

I did meet some folks who have returned to British Columbia from Alberta, not because B.C.’s economy offers significant opportunities for them at this time but because Alberta’s no longer does. So they’re coming back to British Columbia, and hopefully, they will have children that fill our schools.

It’s about time too. Because the out-migration from this province in 2013-14, and 2012 before it, showed that British Columbia’s population — not just school-age population — was being reduced.

[1630]

So it’s time for British Columbia to have some good news in that way demographically because it will help out the school stabilization situation that we’re talking about this afternoon.

I wanted to ask the minister, in light of what he said and the inputs and B.C. Stats information, whether the previous estimate that enrolment in our schools will begin to increase by 2016 still holds as an assumption in the budget.

[J. Martin in the chair.]

Hon. P. Fassbender: The answer is that the projections we have are extremely modest for 2016: 0.04 percent. That’s based on all of the factors that we have. We don’t see a significant change to the projections that we used for our budget. Those figures are the ones that we’ve based it on.

R. Fleming: I’m just wondering. The number of districts that are currently in decline — the last time we looked at these numbers it was 43 districts. I don’t know if that has changed, based on enrolment data that the minister has received on a delayed basis, I presume, because of the strike. But 43 out of 60 districts in decline is a lot better than 57 or 58, as was once the case.

So there are more districts that are growing than previously, but I’m not aware exactly what that shift is looking like. If he has a number about which districts and how many are now growing, versus those that are declining, and perhaps even a report that has the newest numbers, I would appreciate that for the estimates process.

Hon. P. Fassbender: My commitment on behalf of the ministry team is we’ll provide the member with a briefing on what we do know now. Again, we’re looking at all of the inputs that are coming in. I don’t have those figures available today, but we will provide that briefing subsequent to the estimates.

[1635]

R. Fleming: I wanted to ask about the funding protection that’s available for districts that are in decline, and whether that formula has changed. I’m not overly familiar with it. I know of its existence, and I know that there are different categories of schools — those that are in quite steep decline, of 4 percent or more of their student population, and those that are in lower states of decline.

How is the supplement for enrolment decline calculated? Are there any details the minister could provide in the interim, before a briefing can be available, about the data? What formula is used?

Hon. P. Fassbender: Again, as part of that briefing that we will do for the member opposite, we will give him more clarity in terms of how that actually is calculated. But there are a couple of things. The formula has not changed. There is no intention to change it at this stage.

Funding protection. I’ll just read one from the ministry Operating Grants Manual: “Funding protection is an additional amount provided to eligible school districts to ensure that districts are protected against any funding decline larger than 1.5 percent when compared to the previous autumn.” That is of course based on declining enrolments, but there is more detail to that, which the ministry team will provide to the member after the estimates.

R. Fleming: I wanted to just go to the service plan and maybe start with a couple questions around capital spending for public schools.
[ Page 7126 ]

I think there is some curiosity as to why, at a time when the Bank of Canada has lowered rates yet again — to the lowest, I think, since the Second World War — and it’s never been cheaper to borrow, capital spending in this budget for public schools decreases significantly. It’s on a trend downward. Beginning in 2013-14, when capital spending was $469 million annually in B.C., it decreased to $438 million. If I’m reading these budget estimates correctly, it will decline further to $392 million, at a time when — we’ve talked about Surrey already this afternoon — the capital needs continue to grow.

In districts like my own, here in 61, we have a lot of deferred maintenance. We have old building stock. The case is the same in places like New Westminster, Burnaby and Vancouver. We can think of a number of places where engineering analysis of school capital has shown that there’s a growing unfunded and deferred maintenance problem.

Just to ask the minister. What was the rationale in the budget for reducing capital spending when needs appear to be growing and the cost of borrowing for these projects that will then be serviced as debt has never been cheaper?

[1640]

Hon. P. Fassbender: The first thing is that, of course, capital within government as a whole is subject to the budgeting and the process. One of the things that was clear to us in maintaining our AAA credit rating was that we were being looked at as to how much borrowing we were doing and how that related to our overall fiscal plan.

Government made some choices not to accelerate projects, not to cancel them but not to move them ahead and not to borrow at a time where we needed to ensure that we maintained our AAA credit rating. That had significant fiscal impact in terms of the savings that we had by getting the preferred rates that we do. That being said, there have been changes. Some of the factors are, in terms of capital spending, clearly identifying the priority projects with the districts and getting the priorities from the school districts as well.

We are at record levels of investment in capital. Again, it is available. If the member doesn’t have this information…. While in 2015-16 we’re looking at $392 million, in fiscal plan 2016-17 that is growing to $469 million, and in fiscal 2017-18 the plan is for $552 million, which is a record level of investment in education and capital spending.

R. Fleming: The minister can expect some individual or local level capital questions tomorrow, when I’ve offered some time to local MLAs who are interested in asking about those things.

Within the same service plan, I wanted to ask about a couple of changes to performance measures there. One of which got my attention was around…. The measurement around transition rates of high school students to post-secondary education has been amended.

[1645]

Formerly, the measurement was transition rate of high school students to public post-secondary education. Now it’s the percentage of students who are prepared for a job in the future or for a post-secondary education.

I know that the minister was complaining earlier about Statistics Canada and other agencies that don’t quite do apples-to-apples comparisons, in his view. This clearly looks like the goalposts are moving a little bit. I’m trying to understand why this key performance measurement may have changed, which really does not measure post-secondary participation and transition rates at all because it has preparation for a job in the same category.

Hon. P. Fassbender: The member opposite is right that we have changed the targets and the measurements, but we’ve actually broadened them. The reason we’ve done that is the reality in the marketplace. What we’ve learned through our skills-and-jobs blueprint is that what we’re wanting to do is prepare young people for their futures. What is clear is that post-secondary is not the only target. Readiness for a career, whatever that might look like, is the key.

What we have learned in the work that we’ve done — working with industry, working with union groups, working with other factors — is that we wanted to broaden those so that we could really start to measure how ready young people are when they leave the K-to-12 system to go into the marketplace, whether that is into post-secondary or whether that is into apprenticeship programs and working with the ITA, and so on, and making that transition as smooth and as successful for them as we possibly can.

We know that the world is changing and moving very quickly when we look at sectors like the high-tech sector, where there are significant opportunities for young people. We’re working closely with that sector as one example — not the only one — to ensure that we have young people prepared to move into that, whatever that looks like — whether it’s post-secondary; whether it’s apprenticeship; whether, even while they’re in K to 12, it’s dual-credit programs that can accelerate their ability to get meaningful employment sooner rather than later.

We’re looking at all of those. That’s why we have broadened those categories. We’re going to continue to monitor that and work with industry, with the post-secondary institutions and the Minister of Advanced Education. We meet regularly, as we do with the Ministry of Jobs and as we do with the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, where we are looking for the greatest opportunity to see those young people be successful.

R. Fleming: I have a little bit of concern about that change, because there’s a potential that it obscures things that I think are important to be measured. That’s also a very longstanding performance measure that has con-
[ Page 7127 ]
cerned policymakers for a long time, about the transition rate to post-secondary education — which, in most instances, includes apprenticeship, where they are delivered. But I don’t know if we have time to get into those concerns now.

[1650]

I wanted to maybe move down to some other performance measurements that disappear altogether, what in the previous iteration of the service plan was known as objective 3.1, or high standards for individual learners.

Some of things that were measured are no longer included in the service plan. I’m trying to understand if they’re simply not highlighted or if they’re not measured at all anymore. What looks to have disappeared are measurements around school readiness, so the children that are deemed school-ready, that arrive for kindergarten annually is no longer in this plan. Reading levels at grades 4 and 7 are no longer in this objective. Again, there were measurements that compared reading and writing at grades 10 and 12.

I’m wondering if the minister can give an explanation of why these measurements at various points — at the beginning of elementary school, in middle school and at the end of high school — are no longer part of this plan.

Hon. P. Fassbender: The ministry has been working, as part of a government initiative, with other ministries to focus in on areas where it isn’t a direct ministry responsibility but where we’re the recipient of students when they come into this system. As an example, we now have a superintendent of early learning that we share with the Ministry of Children and Families.

The whole objective in all of that is to do exactly what the member referred to, to get better information on how prepared young people are when they come into the system. I suspect that as we continue to refine that, we’re going to have much better information across the measures.

[1655]

The four new performance measures we’ve added to the service plan are job and post-secondary preparation — so we’ve not eliminated anything, as we’ve actually added to it; participation and youth apprenticeship programs, because we think that’s a key priority for students as they move forward; progress on the next-generation network, which is very important throughout the province and especially in some of the more remote areas, where we can ensure that we provide students with the best opportunity to be job-ready; and the other measure that of course is in there and that the member referred to is capital projects and how they’re being completed on time and on budget.

We continue to look at grade transition rates, six-year completion rates. We’re trying to focus in on those things that are absolutely critical not only to the ministry but to the young people in the province and working with the districts and other agencies to make sure we’ve got the best information we can.

The Chair: At this time the Chair would call for a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 4:56 p.m. to 5:05 p.m.

[J. Martin in the chair.]

R. Fleming: I wanted to ask the minister some questions about trades-training initiatives, some of it related to the skills blueprint, which I think informs the service plan we were just talking about in the budget. I just wanted to ask him about the skills blueprint that was announced. I’m forgetting the time, but I think it was about 15 months ago approximately. It’s mostly to do with advanced education, but a couple of things fell to the K-to-12 system to fulfil.

I guess the largest goal that was set out for the K-to-12 system to achieve was to double enrolment in ACE IT programs. I’m forgetting my acronyms, but it’s an apprenticeship…. The minister can tell me what the acronym stands for again. The ACE IT program, which has been around for a number of years now, in the skills blueprint is to see enrolment climb to 5,000 spots now.

The question that is being asked out there around the province is: how can this be accomplished? Looking at previous years of participation in the program, you have seen tepid growth, even decline in most years, of participation in ACE IT. So for it to all of a sudden double in three years, I think, to grow roughly from 2,500 participants to 5,000, seems implausible, not to mention the capital requirements.

We’ve just been talking about the capital budget this afternoon that is able to accommodate heavy equipment, or whatever, and training. Small capital is required for the physical space to handle more apprentices. But when you look at the numbers of registrations of ACE IT in high schools that have declined from 2,600 in the year 2007-2008 to just barely over 2,000 in 2011-2012, on the eve of the announcement of this skills blueprint, the trend line is going in the wrong direction, and the goal of 5,000 registrations seems unlikely.

I would ask the minister if just a year and a half on from the announcement of the skills blueprint plan whether he feels that the ACE IT registration projections are still valid and whether they’re still part of the budget, and what funding, if any, is attached in this budget to helping ramp up what would be a significant rate of growth in ACE IT registration.

[1710]

Hon. P. Fassbender: In the B.C. skills-for-jobs blueprint one of the things that we did is, I think for the first time in government, have a very robust collaboration between four ministries within government: Education, Advanced Education, Jobs and Skills and also Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation.
[ Page 7128 ]

The objective in all of that is to work very closely and develop significant partnerships. We’ve worked with the trade unions. We’ve worked with the B.C. Construction Association. We continue to work with individual organizations who bring expertise to the table. Everything we’ve done is based on getting the best at it we can. What are the jobs? Where are they? How are we going to deliver the skilled people to fill those jobs?

We’re working closely with the ITA. They are refining their procedures to make sure that whatever we do and whatever they do are in lockstep in terms of providing the appropriate opportunities.

We have initiated, as an example, 11 shoulder tappers in districts in the province where all of the data and all of the work we’re doing with the unions and with industry…. Clearly, there are going to be jobs available that we need trained and ready young people for. In total, the ministry has dedicated $10.5 million for a number of those initiatives.

[1715]

We also have included work that we’re doing with organizations like Junior Achievement that are going into the schools. Where their programs a few years ago were absolutely oriented to the more urban communities, they have now reached out and have some significant programs throughout the province.

We are working with people like FNESC in developing programs for our aboriginal youth that will ensure that they’re available. Advanced Education is also working, as the member probably knows, in providing mobile training units that are going throughout the province.

Am I confident that we’re on the right track and we’re going to see the numbers continue to grow? I absolutely am. I’m very much seeing the results of that collaboration and partnership at the school district level, where our shoulder tappers are also working with the aboriginal affairs ministry to ensure that we are in lockstep with them on giving students the best advice we can and helping to direct them in the right way.

R. Fleming: Again, the question, though, was about the accelerated credit for enrolment in industry training, the ACE IT program…

Hon. P. Fassbender: You found it.

R. Fleming: I did.

…and the goal to double — or more than double, because the baseline is even lower than 2,500 — to 5,000 spaces in three years’ time. We’re already into the second year of that three-year plan. Are there any numbers, interim targets, that show that there’s momentum gathering and that in fact these registrations have increased and that the 5,000 registrations even look achievable?

Then a secondary question — if I can ask him two at once, in the interest of time — is the secondary school apprenticeship program. It’s a phenomenal program, I know firsthand from high schools in my own district, but very difficult to expand because it requires close cooperation with employers who don’t always have hiring plans as part of their business plans. It’s an incremental program, but it’s a high-quality program.

Why aren’t they included in the expansion in the skills blueprint? Perhaps they are, but they’re never referenced. It is a formal apprenticeship, as opposed to a pre-apprenticeship program. Organized labour has an interest in my region in participating with the SSA in particular, and I don’t think they’ve been adequately engaged in helping to do that at this point in time. That’s what I’m hearing from the representatives of various craft unions.

[1720]

Hon. P. Fassbender: There are a number of elements that are involved in this. The member is right. Our numbers are showing a significant increase. We think we can meet the target that we’ve established.

More importantly, we’re also looking at secondary school training programs in terms of the apprenticeship and apprenticeship readiness programs. We’re working very hard to ensure that we work with industry and the trade unions. One of the things that were in early discussions is that Tom Sigurdson, as the member might know, had been working with us to develop a working group that can actually start to focus in on how we can do a lot of the exposure and the hands-on training much earlier in the system than we have in the past.

The skills blueprint and all of the components are working very well. We’re getting good support from industry, from the trade unions. We’re looking at apprenticeship opportunities. We have had submissions, I know that the Minister of Jobs has had a number of meetings with industry leaders and union leaders, talking about apprenticeship quotas on public projects and discussions around that. There have been no announcements on that, but there definitely is work going on. We are seeing, on some significant public projects, that a component in that will be apprenticeship training programs.

I think all of the pieces have definitely come into place as a result of the skills blueprint. I’m very confident, from the Ministry of Education’s point of view, that — with the pieces that we’ve put in place and how we’re working with the school districts, our shoulder tappers, which I mentioned, and so on — we’re going to see a growth in that area and, again, the opportunity for young people to be ready for the job market that exists and that is coming. Our relationship with industry and the unions is one that I think is going to bear significant fruit in the years to come.

R. Fleming: I want to ask the minister about teacher qualifications. It’s impossible to ramp up apprenticeship in the school system without having more qualified
[ Page 7129 ]
teachers to teach shop, and there are not enough people who are tradespeople that can go back and become teachers and get into the school system.

There’s a commitment in the jobs blueprint to make it faster and easier to do this. It apparently isn’t fast and easy enough. What I’ve been hearing in different school districts…. The member for Penticton is here. What I heard from a Penticton shop teacher is that they are down 2½ FTEs in terms of qualified shop teachers. It’s getting worse, not better, in certain parts of the province. I’d like to know about the initiative and how well it’s working. It seems to be uneven, at best.

Also, in terms of the needs of trades training, the minister will understand that there are huge regional variances. Penticton, just to stick with this example, is quite a significant manufacturer — not a lot of people know about that part of Penticton’s economy — yet they don’t have metalwork or fabrication as part of the trades that they offer at Penticton High School. They want to be able to do that. They’re down teachers. They don’t have the right, expensive shop equipment to be able to expand the types of trades they offer.

The B.C. Construction Association, I realize, has a grants program to allow the purchase of some of that, but it doesn’t seem to be flowing quickly enough. That isn’t easy money for them to raise, either, when it’s privately done and you have to wait on that.

In the meantime, as is my understanding — again, I’m sticking with this example, but I know it’s true in other regions of B.C. — in Penticton, Okanagan College wants to partner and be more efficient and use underutilized shop space in the high school. They’re willing even to contribute their own capital reserves to do that, but the school district doesn’t have the money that can match it, and they don’t have the other elements that would allow for an expansion. They don’t have the teaching staff, and they don’t have some of the equipment for the trades that they think they could get students interested in.

[1725]

It’s way easier said than done in this blueprint document. I’m just wondering if the minister could comment on the elements of the plan that so far don’t seem to be very successfully rolled out.

Hon. P. Fassbender: I really appreciate the question because there is significant work that’s going on. Like everything, there are sometimes challenges that we face in the path. For example, the B.C. Teachers Council just passed a motion to find streamlined pathways to accelerate the ability for Red Seal–certified individuals to be able to get a teaching certificate faster. We have been able to get letters of permission in cases.

I saw one myself, personally, in a school in Prince George where they lost an automotive teacher, not because of cutbacks but because that person decided to move on to another career path. They didn’t have a qualified person to teach automotive. So a young man, who I talked to and who is passionate, who is certified in terms of an auto mechanic’s Red Seal was able to get a letter of permission to come in. He has a desire to make teaching his career. He was able to move in and fill that gap in that school.

I don’t know the specific case in Penticton, and I’m sure there are different cases throughout the province. But what’s happening is we are developing those relationships so that we can find significant pathways in getting rid of some of the challenges that may have been there in the past. And we’re seeing success in that area.

We also see other relationships with other federal agencies and industry where we’re going to be in a position in the coming weeks to announce some significant programs. I just recently was in Smithers and Houston, and I saw a program in the high school in Houston where they had a room that was excess to their needs. It was a storage facility.

[1730]

Because of their relationship and partnership with industry, they have some brand-new equipment that’s sitting in that class, which hasn’t been activated yet. Industry donated that equipment. The school district didn’t have to come up with additional dollars to buy new equipment in their partnership and in trades training, and these happened to have been state-of-the-art welding and other equipment that they were prepared to donate.

The school is in the process of getting that up and running. While I was there, I saw a Red Seal–certified electrician who was teaching the class and who has a teaching certificate now. They’re dealing with opportunities that are directly related to some of the jobs and the opportunities that are going to be in that area.

I am, again, confident that the relationships we’re building and the work we’re doing with industry, with the trade unions, with the ITA and so on is going to bear fruit as we move forward. While there have been some barriers in the past, we’re finding creative ways to break those down, and we’re getting the support of all of the people who have to be a part of that process.

[S. Sullivan in the chair.]

R. Fleming: I would like to just follow up on the minister’s answer there. He talked about the effort to expedite people who can replace or take on new trades-teaching positions. I know it’s not easy. I guess the question would be this: what is the level of coordination with faculties of education at our major universities? Is there a system?

We want to be flexible to allow people who want to do the job to have an opportunity to do it. At the same time, we’re asking people to come into the school system. The Red Seal isn’t enough. You have to have what it takes to be a good teacher. You’re going to deal with classroom conditions that are all too frequently oversubscribed. You’re
[ Page 7130 ]
going to have to learn how to deal with learning disabilities. There are a lot of kids with an IEP that are engaged in trades training. You need to know how to be a teacher. So you don’t want somebody coming in from the cold.

In terms of it being expedited, are things going to be lost? Is there going to be a practicum where this individual comes in and learns from the teacher? What is the program going to look like to become a teacher at one of our universities, to get your teaching licence? I just wonder if the minister could enlighten me on that. I think there is a concern that in some cases schools may be asked to look to have people who aren’t actually teachers taking on more and more work in the school system.

[1735]

Hon. P. Fassbender: As we look at training, teaching, all of those things, one of the things that the Teachers Council is doing is…. We’re not trying to lower any standards in terms of teacher qualifications and what they need to be an effective teacher. What we are doing is looking for ways where we can streamline the process. Where someone who has a particular skill and has a desire to be a teacher, we can find ways to help accelerate their entry into the profession but maintain the quality of training that they get to be a qualified teacher.

By the same token, I just saw in Kelowna a number of senior teachers who were going through a leadership process with the district principal. When I talked to them while I was there just the other day, they clearly said: “If we can find ways to partner with qualified people in a particular industry to help us expose our students to the opportunities….”

One of the things they talked about was in the technology area. In Kelowna, where this particular school was, they want to work with people in the industry who come in and provide support to the teachers on where technology is and where it’s going, without expecting the people they’re bringing in to be the teachers. They are guided by the teacher and their students’ needs.

I think there are a number of opportunities, and we are working with the Deans of Education. I met with the dean of UBC, who wants to sit down with me and talk about how they can play a more significant role in their teacher training programs to encourage people to come into the teaching profession who may have a particular career right now but have a passion to want to be a teacher. We’re looking at a number of things.

The Teachers Council is broadening their net in discussions with the post-secondary institutions in terms of teacher training for the future, what that looks like. I suspect that in light of all of the things that we’ve learned and where we are today, and as I heard at the international conference, everyone is looking at new approaches to the future of education and how we can provide the window into the career opportunities.

I do believe also, and I heard in Banff at the conference, that technology is going to play a huge role in bringing expertise into the school system that is guided by the teacher in the classroom. The teacher doesn’t have to have all of the expertise. I think there are some very exciting and creative things that are going to happen. We’re seeing it already beginning in the way that we’re moving.

Letters of permission. As I said, the young man that I met had always wanted to be a teacher, went into a profession in terms of auto mechanics, was very successful and was recognized as such, but had the passion in his belly to be a teacher. We were able to find a path when there was a need to help him realize that, but he’s still going through additional education to give him the other qualifications that he needs to be a teacher that has a well-rounded background as well.

There are a number of things that are happening that I think, again, are going to meet the needs of the system but, more importantly, of the students.

R. Fleming: I thank the minister for his answer there. I think schools need to be safe, but shop class presents unique challenges there. I ask about qualifications and some of the initiatives in that light.

I just want to stay with trades training for a little bit and ask the minister a couple of different questions about it, though. I know the blueprint and the labour market outlook report that government had are sort of responsible for motivating an emphasis on trades training.

[1740]

If you look at the labour market outlook report that government relies on, first of all, it’s interesting that two-thirds of the job projections, the jobs openings going forward to 2020, are not from economic growth. They’re from people dying or retiring. We’re talking about successorship planning.

Interjection.

R. Fleming: Who knows?

Within the labour market outlook report, the largest areas expecting employment growth are not actually trades. I think the three largest categories — occupations with strongest expected growth and demand — are health care; natural and applied sciences; and art, culture, recreation and sport.

They don’t have a blueprint of government. There are a whole host of areas in a diversified economy, as you’d expect, that require support and planning and that will appeal to a variety of students. I mean, I think even Jessica McDonald’s 2014 report, where she investigated the ITA, she acknowledged that fewer than one in ten of these jobs anticipated in the labour market outlook are going to be trades.

The question I really want to ask is about the other 90 percent of jobs. How does government check in as to whether its labour market strategy of making educa-
[ Page 7131 ]
tion relevant to kids all across the province and helping them develop a career path that’s personalized for themselves and is going to lead to employment is sophisticated enough if most of its attention is just on that 1/10 of where the new jobs are expected to come from?

Hon. P. Fassbender: I think the incorrect assumption is that everything is focused on trades. What it is, is that, data driven, the work that’s been done by the Ministry of Jobs, the work with the industry sectors — and it’s not just one sector; it’s across the spectrum…. If you go on the site and you’d look at the Find Your Fit and you’d look at the data that drives where the opportunities are, it is across the spectrum.

What we do know is there are some opportunities that may be more immediate and in certain sectors. For example, in a city like Kelowna, the technology growth in that community, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, is significant. The relationship with the industry sector in a market like that, in a community like that, will reflect the reality of what jobs will be there.

Clearly recognize, again, when you look at the Find Your Fit on the jobs website and the data that backs that up, that we have done it not only provincially but community by community. In a community like Burns Lake the opportunities for jobs, where we want young people to maybe stay in their community rather than leave, are driven by what we are in the data that we have of where the growth is going to be.

We’re looking across the spectrum. It isn’t just based on any one industry sector. It’s based on everything.

Health care and tourism, absolutely. We are working in each one of those sectors to make sure that students have the best information they can, where the career opportunities are. Whether it’s in health care or whether it’s in tourism, in the mining sector, in forestry, if it’s in LNG and the oil and gas industry — across the spectrum we’re driving that by data, and we’re providing the opportunity.

The Find Your Fit allows students to go in and say: “I might be interested in being a carpenter.” Then they can start drilling down into what jobs are available within carpentry. It isn’t just building a house. There are a host of other opportunities for jobs in that sector, and we’re trying to find ways to ensure that students are exposed to that.

R. Fleming: I might just ask the minister to explain the role of the Industry Training Authority in rolling out the skills blueprint in the K-to-12 sector, both in terms of funding it — what the ITA budget contributes to these initiatives, for example around the ACE IT program — and also planning and development of new opportunities.

[1745]

Hon. P. Fassbender: I mentioned a little earlier about how we have a multiministry approach on the entire issue of job readiness, skills training, apprenticeship programs and all of those things. I would suggest to the member opposite that in terms of details….

For example, I know that the ITA has $5.06 million for the ACE-IT and the SSA programs within their overall budget responsibility. I don’t have all the details on that. When the Minister of Jobs is doing her estimates, I’m sure that she will be more than prepared to give more detail on ITA and some of their other programs.

I do want to say this. With the approach that we have with Education, Advanced Education, the Ministry of Jobs and the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations, for the first time, I think, in a long time, we as government have broken down the silos between those ministries. We collaborate very closely on all of those initiatives.

ITA is an integral part of that under the Ministry of Jobs umbrella. We work very closely with them in terms of ensuring that what we’re doing in Education and Advanced Education fits the overall goals that we have within the skills-for-jobs blueprint and the other initiatives that we have.

I would encourage the member to listen to the estimates for the Ministry of Jobs, where a lot more detail on ITA and some of the refinements that they’re doing in their programs will, I’m sure, be asked and answered at that time.

R. Fleming: I thank the minister for that advice. I know that it’s a collaboration between several ministries. Because the ITA is sort of pivotal to the K-to-12 ministry on the deliverables in the plan that are his responsibility, maybe I could ask just one more question about the ITA.

It’s interesting to me that so much is expected of an agency that has been under so much controversy lately. It was only in 2013, a couple of years ago, that the ITA CEO, Kevin Evans, was sacked.

[1750]

I don’t know the circumstances, but it was after very disappointing results around apprenticeship completion rates in B.C., which actually fell to 37 percent in the year of his dismissal, from 43 percent just three years earlier.

So there was some real performance problems there. Not sure it’s fair to put it on any individual. There were budget cuts in the ITA, as well, so they were expected to do more with less.

I’m concerned that in this reallocation around the skills blueprint plan, we’ve got an agency that was barely functional — or had a scathing internal review done, which was government-commissioned, very recently — and has had additional responsibilities heaped upon it with no increase in resources that I can ascertain from this budget.

I mean, the ITA report that was authored by Jessica McDonald is…. Well, I’ll just read the Globe and Mail article about it that characterizes the tone of her report. She said:
[ Page 7132 ]

“The Industry Training Authority, a creation of the B.C. Liberal government, has been buffeted by one-off decisions, created bad blood between key partners and has suffered whiplash from abrupt policy changes without consultation, she found. There are no overarching targets, and as a result, funds are being spent in the wrong places….

“What Ms. McDonald found, however, is that the agency responsible for funding trades training and setting standards for credentials has contributed to the problem the government is trying to address.”

That’s a very recent report. Those are astounding findings, yet the ITA is at the core of the K-to-12 ministry’s, the Ministry of Education’s, ability to deliver more in terms of participation rates in trades training for young people that are in high school.

I just need to know from the minister if there is any plan that will allow school districts, his own superintendent of trades, to be able to cope better than the ITA has performed thus far and whether there are new mechanisms contemplated to deliver trades training, to ramp up trades training, in different regions of the province, which are within his ministry’s power.

[1755]

Hon. P. Fassbender: I think I said that the ITA falls under the minister responsible for jobs. But the member opposite is correct, and I am going to say a couple things as they relate to the Ministry of Education. It was the minister responsible who asked for the report because there were concerns that the ITA, in this day and age and with the changes that we’ve seen and that we’re going to continue to see, was perhaps not delivering as much as was expected.

All of the recommendations from the McDonald report have been accepted and actually are implemented. Significant changes were made in the board structure, significant changes were made at the management level, and the targets and the performance of the ITA today are significantly ahead of where they were when the report was commissioned and the recommendations came out.

There are focus sector advisory groups that are now part of the ITA, which, again, fits into the skills blueprint, to be sure that we understand where jobs and opportunities and economic growth are going to be in this province. Tom Sigurdson, who represents the labour movement, sits on that board and is having significant input in terms of those relationships. We in the Ministry of Education have a very close relationship today that we perhaps didn’t have in the past. That is bearing fruit, as well, in terms of achieving the goals that we have.

As the minister responsible for the K-12 system, I do believe that the structures we’ve put in place and the leadership of the Minister of Jobs in ensuring that the ITA is meeting the needs of this province now and in the future are bearing the fruit that we want.

Our relationship in those areas of the province where we see economic growth, and the relationship with the ITA and the unions and industry, is better than it’s ever been. I think, again, we’re seeing those numbers coming through that are showing us that we’re meeting the needs. The most important is the needs of the young people and being ready for their futures.

R. Fleming: I think I’ll just step away from trades training for a bit. I know we just have a little bit of time remaining this afternoon.

I wanted to ask the minister about the appointment of a special adviser to the Vancouver school board. This was done about a month ago. I think it was done under circumstances that bear an explanation.

The minister took the unusual step of using his power to appoint a special adviser to go into the Vancouver school board and audit them. What was unusual about it is that this appointment of the special adviser came exactly a week after the Vancouver school board had told the Ministry of Education that it had engaged — or re-engaged, because they had done an audit for them previously — their own audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, to identify savings.

So now we have the spectacle of Ernst and Young appointed as a special adviser by the minister and the Vancouver school board having PricewaterhouseCoopers reporting to it. They’re both looking, presumably, at almost identical things around the budget.

We’ve been talking about how scarce money is throughout the province, and in this ministry in particular, all afternoon. I’ve just got to ask the minister if he was aware that the Vancouver school board was re-engaging PricewaterhouseCoopers to do a follow-up audit on one that had been done two years previous at their own cost.

[1800]

Why would the ministry come in, at the cost to taxpayers of $180,000, and impose another auditor to do what looks to be duplicative and not welcomed work being imposed on the Vancouver school board? Why would he do that if he knew that Vancouver already had a blue chip audit firm working for it to identify savings?

Hon. P. Fassbender: There’s been a lot of discussion about the special adviser and the sequencing and so on. Let me make it very clear for the member opposite. Neither I nor the ministry team was aware prior to our announcement of the special adviser that Vancouver had made an in-camera decision, which was in camera and happened the Tuesday before the Thursday that I made the announcement.

Even on the Thursday, when I phoned the new chair of the Vancouver school district and told him that I was doing that, did he say to me: “Well, we made a decision on Tuesday night in camera, and we’ve already made a decision to review a previous report with the same firm.” Absolutely I did not know that until after the fact.

Now, I did offer, as the member is well aware, to pay any cancellation charges that they may have incurred
[ Page 7133 ]
or would incur in cancelling the review that they had done. I did that for a very specific reason. They are not the same review.

The Vancouver school district staff recommendation, as I found out afterwards, was to review a previous report and to update it. The special adviser that I have appointed to go into Vancouver is looking at a much broader spectrum of issues when it comes to the fiscal management. The intent, and I made that very clear to the chair when I phoned him on the Thursday morning, was to provide them with a solid base of information to move forward in their fiscal planning on a wide spectrum of issues, including capital and a number of other things, that would ensure that we can work together as we go forward.

We’ve had a chronic situation with Vancouver over the years in a relationship where every year they would come forward and talk about how they were going to have to cut back and so on. Issues like accumulated surpluses, how those are being established, how they’re being identified and how they’re being allocated were part of the review of the special adviser that I have initiated in the Vancouver school district.

[1805]

The sole purpose, and I made that very clear to the new chair, was that — they have a new board, a new chair — I want to change the relationship. But in order to do that…. To ensure that we’re all looking at the right numbers and the same information was the rationale for sending in the special adviser.

I even offered, as I said, to ensure that if there was anything in our terms of reference which were broader than the ones that they had agreed to, that we would add that and ask the special adviser to do that. We even offered to ensure that any other reports the Vancouver school district wanted to provide to our special adviser — that they could do that.

I think the rhetoric around this is all based on inappropriate and incorrect information. We did not know. When we did know, we said we would work with them and we would cover any costs that they might have out of the ministry budget — not out of the education budget but out of our ministry operating budget — to ensure that we had the same information, and I make no apologies for that. I think what we have to do now is wait for that report to come out, and then we’ll see where we go from there.

R. Fleming: I thank the minister for that account, because it’s now on the public record. I don’t really want to get into secondhand information. However, this is pretty well canvassed in the media.

But what I just heard in the minister’s answer that I think surprises me is that the chair of the school board has been quoted as saying that he was given a 15-minute heads-up that the minister was going to take the very lightly used, rightly so, and controversial step of appointing and imposing a special adviser into the new chair’s school district. He was given 15 minutes’ notice of that.

Then what I heard the minister just say in his answer is that, in light of new information from the chair in this conversation that they had, the school board had appointed their own audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, to look into largely the same areas — how to achieve savings and efficiencies and manage potential budget cuts in their district. He did nothing with that new information. He did not change course. He simply offered to cancel what they had done and stick with his own plan. That’s not dialogue.

To say, as I heard the minister say, that he wanted to start a new relationship with a new chair and a new board of the Vancouver school board by imposition and by superseding their jurisdiction, to me, is a completely insufficient explanation. Now, I just can’t believe that this kind of approach would work.

That new chair, who may be new in the capacity as a trustee, is, by the way, a chartered accountant and knows his way around budget management. And this is his first significant interaction with the Minister of Education since he was elected in November — unbelievable.

The question for me, I guess, at this time is simply: when is the special adviser’s report going to be made available? I know the timelines were quite tight. And when will it be made publicly available?

Does the Vancouver school board now hold the record as the most audited school district in B.C. history? What I have seen since the comptroller general’s review, since their own internal reviews and now the appointment of the special adviser is not something driven by accounting principles or by a collaborative effort between the ministry and the district.

It’s politics, and it’s politics from the provincial government, disagreeing with how things are characterized in the Vancouver school board, the second largest district in the province, and wanting to have their way in how the district administers its budget. That’s about the only area where the ministry doesn’t get to have its way in making determinations.

[1810]

Instead of working collaboratively, I think what we’re seeing is that the minister has started this relationship with a new board and new chair down the wrong path, the same old path of confrontation.

Hon. P. Fassbender: The member opposite is wrong, wrong and wrong. First of all, the chair…. Let me make it really clear. When I phoned on the Thursday, the chair did not tell me that they’d made a decision — never even mentioned it — never mentioned that they had decided to engage a firm. That conversation did not happen in that conversation that I had with the new chair.

That said, when I did find out after I made my announcement, and it got out in the media — or in the
[ Page 7134 ]
Twitter world first, actually — I immediately picked up the phone and called the chair and said: “I was not aware that you’d made a decision to engage a firm, but here’s my offer. I don’t think that two reviews by two separate firms does make sense. But from what I understand, the difference between the terms of reference of what we have asked for and what your review of a previous report was going to do…. If there is anything in your review that isn’t in our terms of reference because ours are much broader, I am more than happy to include that. And I am more than happy to hold the Vancouver school district whole if you choose to cancel your review, add whatever you might feel isn’t included in our review, so that we can have one review.”

I made that offer after I made my announcement and found out that they had decided to move ahead. They chose not to do that. They chose to have the two. I respect their right to do that.

But I will also say the reason that I chose to send in a special adviser is that the day after the budget was delivered I received a letter, dated that day, from the Vancouver school board saying that they were facing a $15 million to $18 million shortfall and that they were not able to deal with that. They saw it as a big problem.

That has been the chronic situation with Vancouver school district for years. I think we need to clear the plate. We need to look at their fiscal planning and their environment and where the opportunities are in an objective third-party way so that we can move forward together in a positive way. That is the intent of the special adviser. I told that to the Vancouver school district chair.

Yes, I think there are a lot of politics, but it isn’t only coming from the provincial government. I can assure the member that there are significant politics around the Vancouver school district. I want to rise above the politics and get a good fact base in front of both parties, so they can make the right decisions, and we can work with them in moving forward in a positive way.

That’s the intent. That’s the purpose. And I hope…. We have set a deadline of on or before the end of May for the report to come in. I also committed to the chair and the vice-chair when I talked to them. I said that we will share that information, the preliminary report, with them first and then the final report. When that final report is delivered, the Vancouver school district will have it. We will have it, and of course, when we do, it will be public.

R. Fleming: I’ll maybe ask one more question in this regard to the minister because I found his initial answer quite incredible, actually.

Would he agree, though, that instead of continuing with this cycle that’s now been established, this pattern of government and school district…? Instead of agreeing and cooperating on some kind of efficiency expertise or audit, where they each appoint their own that reports to themselves and not the other party directly, where the terms of reference are derived or drafted by one party and not the other…. This is an absurdity.

I would never recommend this kind of approach. It would never work for, say, a mediation or an arbitration process. Both parties have to have the confidence in an independent individual.

[1815]

We saw that work with Vince Ready. It would have never have worked in any other way.

By the way, it’s quite curious how he’s been completely airbrushed out of the Premier’s photo ops going back to the date of settlement, but I’ll leave that aside. Poor guy, because he did the province a favour and stopped the train wreck from happening.

In this situation, it seems to me that instead of special advisers being appointed and imposed over the objections of chairpersons who have their own audit firms on retainer, wouldn’t it be better to take up a suggestion? It’s not one that’s original to me. Perhaps it’s time to call in the independent Auditor General. She would have jurisdiction over provincial tax dollars that flow into the school board, would have the capacity and expertise to look at all the major issues and scope, give an audit opinion about whether that operation is well run, and maybe even provide some objective analysis around the funding questions.

The minister said in an interview recently that he wants to stop the blame game between Vancouver and the ministry. Well, then, have somebody investigate what the blame game is all about, because at the heart of it, it’s about disagreements over funding and the responsibilities of the Vancouver school board.

Would he agree that perhaps the independent Auditor General of British Columbia could play a role in getting the ministry and the Vancouver school board to work together — where they could both have confidence that somebody who has no agenda and has no unique political master would produce something that might be seen as neutral and independent to both?

Hon. P. Fassbender: I absolutely have the utmost respect for the Auditor General for the province of British Columbia. I also have the utmost respect for third-party, independent accounting firms, whose reputations are without question. In this particular case, I believe we made the right decision in terms of who we appointed. There is no bias that they will bring to it.

If the member were to read the terms of reference, inherent in that is the relationship between the Vancouver school board and the ministry. That is part of it, and the recommendations that may come out, on how we can work better together, are at the heart of what we’re doing. That is the intent.

The challenge, of course, that I have…. When I say that that’s the intent, the member or others may choose to accept that or not. The proof of the pudding will be
[ Page 7135 ]
in the report and, then, where we go from there. But I clearly said to the new chair, when I talked to him on the Thursday, that the intent here is to ensure that we both have good information on which to build, moving forward. That’s the intent, that is the purpose, and that is what we are going to do.

I clearly know, as well, that it seems that every year…. And Vancouver, quite honestly, is one of the districts in this province that stands apart from most of the other school districts in the way they interact with government. Every year we hear about deficit budgets, and every year they add to their accumulated surplus. Somehow, for me, I’d like to know how that works, why it works.

I accept the fact that some of the former trustees from previous boards talked about the fact that all of that money is allocated. I want to know how that’s done and why it’s done. I think they deserve to know the answer to that as we move forward so that we’re not suggesting that there are different interpretations, that we have exactly the same interpretation.

That’s why, if you read the terms of reference, I clearly see that this is going to provide us with the information to stop what has been going on for far too long in the city of Vancouver and the Vancouver school district and the province of British Columbia. I want to see us move forward in a positive way. This report will help us get there. I stand on that, and I believe it.

Having said that, Mr. Chair, I’d like to move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:19 p.m.

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