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)

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Morning Sitting

Volume 23, Number 4

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

THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015

The House met at 10:03 a.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Prayers.

Introductions by Members

M. Bernier: I have amazing companies that operate in my riding, and there are none better than Huron Resources. I’m really honoured to have some friends in the precinct today. It’s great to have them operating in British Columbia and in my riding. I’m hoping that the House will please make a warm welcome for Kevin Carroll and Greg Douglas from Huron Resources.

S. Robinson: I’d like to introduce to the House a very familiar face. Mr. Chuck Puchmayr is here on the floor, joining us today. Chuck is a member of the New Westminster council. He’s also on the UBCM executive, having meetings here with a number of us for the next couple of days. He is the president of the Lower Mainland Local Government Association and the founder of A Beef with Hunger Society, raising cattle for the HIV protein food bank.

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I would love it if the members could give Chuck a warm round of applause for joining us.

Hon. T. Stone: It gives me great pleasure to introduce, for the first time in this chamber, my mom and dad, who are here for the day, Ken and Bernadette Stone. This certainly was not the career that was on the top of her list for any of her children to pursue, but I’m pretty confident that they’re both proud. I would ask the House if they could please make them welcome.

E. Foster: It’s a privilege to welcome members of Advocis, the Financial Advisors Association of Canada, to the Legislative Assembly. Small business professional financial advisers are critical to British Columbia’s economy, as the industry represents $2.8 billion in annual GDP and supports over 24,000 jobs.

For more than 100 years, Advocis members have delivered financial security and peace of mind through high ethical and professional standards. They are hosting a lunch reception today for members at the Grand Pacific, and I hope we can all attend.

On behalf of Members of the Legislature Assembly of British Columbia, I would like to welcome you back to Victoria.

A. Weaver: I have two guests in the gallery today. First is Adam Olsen, interim leader of the B.C. Green Party. He’s joined by Peter Fry, seeking the nomination for the Vancouver–Mount Pleasant riding. Would the House make them feel very welcome.
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Hon. S. Anton: Today in the precinct we are joined by a group of social studies students and teachers from David Thompson Secondary School in South Vancouver. Over 100 students are coming today. Not these ones. I think these are a different group. They’re joined by their five teachers, Mr. Stoelting, Ms. Chahal, Mr. Ascher, Mr. Panagopoulos and Mr. Vellescig.

These students are learning about the function of government, how a bill becomes law. David Thompson Secondary School is a top school in South Vancouver — top academic students, top technical students, art students. It produces all round classes of very excellent students in South Vancouver, as I said.

I would like all sides of the House, please, to congratulate them for being here and make them very welcome.

Hon. B. Bennett: It’s my pleasure to introduce four gentlemen who are in the gallery somewhere this morning. These gentlemen worked on the major dam projects in the province that have provided the province with low-cost, reliable electricity for the last several decades. I’m sure that the rest of the House would like to help me honour these men who worked on those projects.

They’re brought here this morning by the B.C. Building Trades. They are Peter Aussem from Lumby, Jack Whittaker from Nanaimo, Wayne Foot from Bowser, Clive Bollerup from Burnaby. They also brought along with them a younger person, an apprentice ironworker from Coquitlam who is now working in Fort St. James, Lindsay Norte.

I hope that everyone will help me make these people welcome, and in particular the four pioneers who did work on these major dam projects in B.C. that have given us the quality of life that we all take for granted here in the province.

S. Chandra Herbert: Well, as members know, this work often takes us away from our loved ones, from our families when they have special events, special occasions that normally we’d want to be there celebrating with them.

Today is my husband Romi’s birthday. I hope the House will join me in wishing him a very happy birthday and to have a fabulous day.

G. Kyllo: Gathering with us today in the chamber we have a group of grades 9 to 11 students from Eagle River Secondary School in Sicamous, accompanied by two teachers. We have Mr. Wiens, and Mr. Pickup. Would the House please make them feel very welcome.

J. Thornthwaite: I’d like to join the member for Port Coquitlam in welcoming a school group from Terry Fox, in particular, a student that is joining them in the precinct who happens to be my youngest daughter’s best friend’s boyfriend, Brendan Stewart. If we could possibly welcome him and his school group to the precinct.

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Hon. A. Wilkinson: Somewhere in the precinct, there is a grade 10 class from Sir Winston Churchill High School with their very professional and hard-working teacher, Monsieur François Clark. He comes here each year and is to be commended for his perseverance.

Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

WORLD RUGBY WOMEN’S SEVENS
IN LANGFORD

J. Horgan: What world tournament is played in Dubai, São Paulo, Atlanta, London, Amsterdam and Langford? Well, the answer is Women’s Sevens World Series rugby.

This weekend Westhills Stadium will play host to a match event with teams from around the world. Women’s Sevens rugby will be making its debut in the Olympics at Rio de Janeiro next summer, and this is your opportunity to join myself and the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Operations at Langford’s Westhills Stadium to watch the fastest game on earth.

The top four teams of the six event series automatically qualify for the 2016 Olympics. Currently, the Canadian team is second in the world, and Langford will be hot, hot, hot this weekend.

The Women’s Sevens program is proudly supported by Sport Canada, Own the Podium, B2ten and a host of other organizations. They have an impressive record, finishing second in the world tournament in 2013 and sixth in 2009. This weekend Langford is our opportunity to take the prize. These women train full-time, 11 months of the year at the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence here in Victoria, as well as the Canadian Rugby Centre of Excellence in Langford. Their games are fun to watch. The crowds cheer with enthusiasm, and of course, it is rough and beyond tumble.

Canada’s team is led by head coach John Tait and captain Jen Kish. Would you join me and all members of this House to saying, “Go, Canada, Go,” as we take on the world in Langford in the World Women’s Rugby Sevens.

CHAINSAW CARVING COMPETITION
IN CHETWYND

M. Bernier: Ten years ago the district of Chetwynd had an idea. What could they do to promote their ties to the forestry industry, promote their community and promote tourism? And what could they do to recognize and be recognized on the international stage? Then what could they do to be able to tie all that in and to do it with one event?

Well, if there’s anybody who has had the pleasure in this House to go up to Chetwynd, you’ll see the success of the decision that they made ten years ago. In 2005 Chetwynd decided to hold a chainsaw carving contest. In that first year seven people signed up, but now this annual contest has grown to the point where it’s recognized as one of the best carving events in the world, bringing competitors from Germany, Wales, Japan, Australia, U.S. and from right here in Canada.

As of just a few weeks ago, it looked like the logs, that are usually purchased down in Campbell River that are sent up north and transformed into breathtaking sculptures…. It looked like this event would have to be cancelled because they were not able to find the funding needed. They were not going to be able to reach that milestone of continuing on for another ten years. But thanks to the community, the sponsors, the Chetwynd council and the hard work of Tonya Richter and the local chamber of commerce in Chetwynd, this June 11 to 14, you can come visit and watch amazing talent at work.

When you drive around the community of Chetwynd, you’ll see the history of this event that has taken place over the last ten years, with 150 chainsaw carvings on almost every corner in the community. So this June I hope that everybody will bring their camera, plan a few days and come and enjoy the Chetwynd’s 11th annual chainsaw carving contest.

STREET 2 PEAK MT. KILIMANJARO CLIMB
BY EAST VANCOUVER STUDENTS

J. Kwan: Take a group of teenagers from the inner eastside of Vancouver, many of whom have already faced seemingly insurmountable challenges and barriers in their young lives. Add Streetfront alternative, a high school program to provide unique guidance that uses the outdoor experience and challenging physical activities as a way to engage and focus the students. Teach them the regular curriculum, as well as important life skills. Nurture the strengths of every student with an incredibly dedicated team of staff and teachers. Multiply that with the power of the whole Britannia Secondary School community. What do you get? You get a powerful message that says anything is possible.

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On March 12 I received the message that read “mission accomplished.” This mission is the incredibly successful Street 2 Peak challenge three years in the making to place 18 inner-city youth on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro — the highest point in Africa.

Street 2 Peak is more than a tough challenge of training and physical fitness. Street 2 Peak is a triumph of pub-
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lic education, from articulating and believing in such an amazing vision; taking on the risks and challenges; planning with focus and determination; and preparing students for the future with bravery, responsibility, integrity and tenacity — the Brit way.

The vision behind this expedition shows all of us that it doesn’t matter where you come from; it matters where you go. In the words of one student who spoke emotionally about the experience of the expedition: “Before I didn’t think I could achieve anything, and now there is nothing that I can’t achieve.”

A million thanks go to the Britannia Secondary School principal Geoff Taylor, Dr. Andrew Schofield, Trevor Stokes, Barry Skillin, Gord Howey, along with the many donors and supporters for believing in their students. The Street 2 Peak expedition shows us that, if you plant a seed of change, you can change the world.

PREVENTION OF
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

D. Plecas: Violence against women isn’t just a women’s issue; it’s everyone’s issue. It affects entire families. It affects entire communities.

Here in British Columbia, just in 2013 we had over 12,000 police-reported incidents of violence against women. This is clearly unacceptable. Every woman has the right to feel safe. Every woman has a right to live a violence-free life.

Granted, we are seeing progress. We now have a rate of violence against women which is the third lowest in the country. But we can do more, and we must do more. We’re reminded of that, this week being Prevention of Violence Against Women Week.

Earlier this month the government launched A Vision for a Violence-Free B.C., a long-term plan to stop violence against women. Our focus over the next decade will be to challenge beliefs and behaviours on the issue of domestic violence; ensure services are responsive, innovative and coordinated, and support women to rebuild their lives; address violence against aboriginal women; and foster strong relationships and new partnerships for stakeholders.

Furthermore, as part of the “Violence-free B.C.” strategy, $3.5 million worth of civil forfeiture grants will go to organizations throughout the province whose aim it is to end violence against women. In my own riding of Abbotsford South four groups received funding from civil forfeiture grants: Abbotsford Community Services, Abbotsford police department, the Salvation Army Centre of Hope and the Abbotsford Restorative Justice and Advocacy Association. I met with all of these groups recently and am deeply impressed with their commitment to help those people who are affected by violence against women and their dedication to a violence-free B.C.

ISLANDS TRUST AND
PROTECTION OF GULF ISLANDS

D. Routley: Islands are islands. They are not peninsulas. In 1974, in recognition of the special nature of the islands in the southern Strait of Georgia and Howe Sound, the government of British Columbia enacted the Islands Trust Act to protect this unique part of the world. Home to an unparalleled diversity of species of birds, fish, intertidal life, wildlife and plants, we have a responsibility to be protectors of not just that natural quality, but the unique communities and the culture of the Gulf Islands.

Artistic, sustainable living — these are the qualities that mark Gulf Island communities, many of them in my constituency. The original intent of the Islands Trust was to protect the islands from overdevelopment, and much of that impetus came from Nanaimo, where nearby Mudge Island was carved up into small-development lots.

These beautiful islands were served by small ferries, many operated by the Transportation Ministry. The formation of B.C. Ferries was supposed to guarantee quality and affordability of service and for many years did. Over the past decade, fare increases have caused economic and social crisis on our Gulf Islands that has resulted in the loss of businesses, residents and the rapid decline of property values.

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Against this backdrop, the Islands Trust and the Union of B.C. Municipalities commissioned a study which showed that over $2 billion of economic activity has been lost compared to what would have occurred had fares remained consistent with inflation.

Now we consider the possibility of the building of a bridge. The original mandate of the Islands Trust is in peril. The Islands Trust is officially opposed in policy to any fixed lengths. The official community plan, the last two versions signed off by government, opposes bridges.

We have a duty to all British Columbians — in fact, all Canadians and to the world — to protect the unique Gulf Islands habitat and its culture. We have a duty to respect process. Let’s reconsider this path and meet that duty.

PATRICK DENNETT AND
MOSSOM CREEK HATCHERY

L. Reimer: On behalf of my constituents in Port Moody, Anmore, Belcarra and Coquitlam, I’m honoured to rise in the House today to speak about Patrick Dennett, an extraordinary volunteer in my community.

In 2013 the Mossom Creek Hatchery was destroyed in a fire. It had been an important facility for students and community members to learn about environmental stewardship for almost 40 years. It was a devastating loss to our community.

Previously, Pat had no connection to the hatchery, but after hearing about the fire, he decided to volunteer his
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time as a project manager to rebuild the facility. Patrick volunteered full-time for over a year — about 16 months — overseeing the project from start to finish.

He was present at all stages of the project, from the initial consultation meetings to fundraising events to being on the jobsite every day. Using his extensive professional trades training and knowledge of city bylaws, Pat was able to rebuild the Mossom Creek Hatchery into a bigger and better facility. Additionally, his leadership mobilized many businesses and donors to come together to contribute their time, materials and expertise.

This new facility will allow future generations to learn about the importance of environmental stewardship, education and volunteerism in their own backyard. For his tireless work, both myself and Mayor Mike Clay have supported the nomination of Pat for the BCIT alumni community service award, a recognition that he truly deserves.

I wish him the best of luck and ask the House to please join me in thanking him for all of his hard work.

Oral Questions

SALE OF GOVERNMENT LANDS

J. Horgan: For the past week the government has denied that they held a fire sale of public assets to meet their short-term budget needs in 2013-2014, even though public servants appear to have been told otherwise. And then the government fell back onto “Well, the Burke Mountain example was an isolated case.”

Well, another day, another fire sale. We’ve learned through freedom of information that on March 21, ten days before the end of the fiscal year in 2014, the Ministry of Citizens’ Services sold a parcel of land at 5750 Panorama Drive in Surrey for $20.5 million.

Sounds like a good deal of money for a property in the Lower Mainland, until you look at what the expert appraisal said. The expert appraisal said that that land was worth $23.5 million, and B.C. Assessment said it was worth $27.2 million.

So my question through you, hon. Speaker, is to the Minister of Finance. Again, faced with evidence that you made a sale ten days before the end of the fiscal year, leaving money on the table, how is it that people should believe that you weren’t putting your political considerations ahead of public interest?

Madame Speaker: Through the Chair.

Hon. M. de Jong: To the hon. Leader of the Opposition, well, look, the plan around the identification and release of surplus assets, as I said yesterday and have said for some time, was laid out in detail in the budget.

The member presumably knows that, because in 2012 it enjoyed an entire page of exposure in the budget. In 2013, in February. In 2013 again, in June, when we reintroduced essentially the same budget. In 2014, where we laid out in detail the process, the objectives and even listed the properties — of course, many of the properties, not all.

[1025]

The properties were posted on a website. A reputable firm was engaged to market the properties, and the market responded. It is that market response which ultimately determined what fair-market value was and ensured that the people of British Columbia received fair-market value for the surplus asset that was sold on their behalf.

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

J. Horgan: Again, I appreciate that the minister said that there was evidence in the budget documents. It did not say in the budget documents that we’re going to sell the land regardless of whether we’re leaving money on the table. It said that was part and parcel of the government policy.

The Burke Mountain lands were appraised at $128 million and were sold for $85 million. The parcel on Panorama was appraised at $23 million and sold for $20 million. Again, real estate is something that the public can understand. Real estate is something that people say: “If I’m not going to get the price that I deserve for my property, I’m not going to sell it.” That’s an expectation, I believe, the public also transmits to their government.

My question to the minister is: if he is so confident that the government acted in the public interest and not in a partisan interest, will he release all of the appraisals for all of the land that was sold to meet the budget targets in 2013-2014?

Hon. M. de Jong: The member, of course, proceeds on the basis that an appraisal represents an ironclad and absolute certain estimate of the value of the property. We know that’s not the case.

I’ll give you an example, a fairly recent one, in fact — an example from yesterday. Recently Vancouver Coastal Health announced the sale of the Pearson-Dogwood lands, an important health care–related facility. The property being sold was assessed in 2014 at just over $150 million and appraised at up to $288 million. The total sale price was $302 million. Of course, those proceeds will be used to replace some of the aged buildings on the infrastructure.

There are countless examples of properties that have been sold…

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.
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Hon. M. de Jong: …well above or slightly above appraised values and properties that have been sold at below appraised values. They are estimates. Market value, for members of the House who may be unfamiliar with the notion of market value, is determined when the market and the private sector respond, put money down, purchase the surplus asset and then put British Columbians to work developing that asset.

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

J. Horgan: It’s a shame that the Premier can’t appoint Coastal Health to be the minister responsible instead of the one we’ve got now. I’m sure the Minister for Citizens’ Services would be happy to find something else to do, because what he’s doing now is a bit short of the target.

They sold a $5.6 million lot for $100,000. They sold a $17.5 million lot for $6.9 million. They sold a $20.6 million lot for $13.9 million. Now in Surrey they sold a $23.5 million lot for $20.5 million. I appreciate that when the minister talks about retaining private sector expertise, one assumes that you’re going to listen to that expertise.

This is what we know from the appraisal of the Panorama lot. This is a quote from the document. “The highest and best use of the lands would be a holding situation, pending rezoning to permit commercial, retail or office development.” That’s the end of the quote.

Now, if I had that advice and I had the public interest at the front of my agenda, not a partisan objective at the front, I would have taken that advice. I would have held the land and realized a greater return to the people of British Columbia.

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The reason we need to see all of these appraisals, not go through a circuitous FOI route that could take years, is that we need to have public confidence that the government is putting the people of B.C. ahead of their political objectives.

Once again, will the minister commit to releasing all appraisals for every piece of land that the government divested itself of in its fire sale to meet political objectives?

Hon. M. de Jong: I wanted to confirm and have — because the Panorama address sounded familiar to me. It is, after all, the parcel of land that was purchased many years ago to build a new hospital. The new hospital was built elsewhere. In fact, it was built at Surrey Memorial site and is now complete and servicing the needs of British Columbians in that area.

The members, when we had this conversation — and they have forgotten this; I recall, and they have forgotten this — prior to May of 2013, insisted that none of these properties should be sold — insisted that that site on Panorama should stay there as it had for many years and should be denied to the private sector, denied to people who would put it to work, who would develop it, who would conduct the kind of rezoning that might be necessary and, in the process, create jobs for hundreds of British Columbians.

We said in the budget in 2012, in 2013, in 2014 that we were going to identify properties that were surplus to the needs of the government. We were going to put them on the market. We were going to allow the private sector to unleash their energy and put people to work. We set targets, and as foreign as this might be to the members opposite, we followed through. We kept our words, and the results, the positive results, for British Columbians are there for all to see.

M. Farnworth: The results are there for all British Columbians to see: $43 million of taxpayers’ money left on the table at a loss that could have been better used elsewhere. That’s the result of the government’s fire sale when it came to public lands on Burke Mountain.

The minister claims there was no rush to sell public lands because they didn’t need the money, but the Auditor General made it clear that asset sales were critical to their budget targets. The Premier claims that the sale of lands on Burke Mountain would not have made a material change to the budget, but ministry staff said they needed to have for-sale signs up by Halloween and money in the bank by March 31, 2014, for a “once-in-a-lifetime land sale.”

To the minister: will the minister release the independent appraisals and prove taxpayers got value for money?

Hon. M. de Jong: Thanks to the member for the question. Again, I feel obliged to remind the members that the government fully disclosed, in about as public a document as the government tends to release — that is, the budget document — our intentions around identifying and selling, releasing, surplus assets.

We set targets. I understand that that, too, may be a foreign concept to members of the opposition — to set targets and then strive to achieve those targets.

The problem, or one of the problems, with the theory advanced by the opposition is this. The process relied upon a marketing exercise that, so far, I have heard no criticism of. A reputable firm took these properties to market, invited submissions, bids, offers from the market, and then took the best offer…

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Hon. M. de Jong: …market value, on behalf of British Columbians, which is precisely as it should be.

Madame Speaker: The member for Port Coquitlam on a supplemental.
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M. Farnworth: The government fought to stop the release of the appraisals. It was only when the freedom-of-information and privacy commissioner said, “No, you have to release the information,” that the information was released. That’s not being upfront and transparent when it came to the sale of these public assets.

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The minister set out the sales targets for the 2013-2014 budget. He told staff to make those targets. The public service knew that their job was to get the deals done regardless of the consequences.

At a time when condo buyers lined up around the block for the chance to buy a $100,000, 350-square-foot condominium in Surrey, the government is selling 16 acres for $100,000. I know an awful lot of people who would have lined up around the block to buy a 16-acre view lot on Burke Mountain.

Will the minister live up to his wonderful words that he said in the House today about being upfront and being public and transparent with all of the documents, and will he release all of the independent appraisal reports for the past three years, relating to land sales?

Hon. M. de Jong: Once again, we have heard from the leading member of the opposition who is suggesting that somehow what was driving this agenda was a fiscal imperative. There is no question that in identifying surplus assets in the manner that we did, in a deliberate way, that the government was seeking to realize two things: (1) derive fair market value for British Columbians, as the owner of those surplus assets, and (2) turn them back to the private sector so that they could utilize their capital, their ingenuity, their imagination to generate economic opportunities for British Columbians to work.

That is what’s taken place here. Properties have been marketed in a strategic way. The best example to rebut the member’s supposition, of course, is that, in the case of Burke Mountain, some of the properties are still on the market. That is hardly the definition of a fire sale. That speaks to the fact that these properties haven’t been identified — along with other properties — and are being marketed in a logical, coherent way, relying upon the expertise of professionals in the marketplace.

M. Mungall: The Burke Mountain lands were sold for a $43 million discount to a buyer who happened to have donated $1 million to the B.C. Liberal Party. The Panorama Drive lot was sold at a $3 million discount to Redekop Panorama Homes, and coincidentally, the Redekop family has contributed $650,000 to the B.C. Liberal party.

You can understand why most British Columbians might begin to wonder why they don’t have access to such real estate bargains. Full disclosure, Minister.

Interjections.

M. Mungall: I’m sorry to say that all the heckling in the world won’t drown out the facts here today. Full disclosure, Minister. Will he release…

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

M. Mungall: …the independent appraisals for the land fire sales required to meet the budget documents, or does he have something to hide?

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, the hon. member has made some statements, two in particular that engage my interest. Her characterization of this process is, to be generous, completely inaccurate. When properties are marketed in as public a manner as one can conceive, to suggest that somehow people were shut out of that process may fit with a political narrative that the member wants to present, but it is completely at odds with the fact.

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Now, the member has pointed to donations. My recollection is — I don’t consult these documents every day — that the B.C. Liberal Party was not the only party to receive donations from some of the people that participated in the bid process.

I expect that when she stands up in about three seconds, the member will confirm that the same donor provided funding to the New Democratic Party. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the same donor may have provided money to individual candidates in the New Democratic Party. But far be it from me to speculate about those things.

Madame Speaker: The member for Nelson-Creston on a supplemental.

M. Mungall: As more facts become revealed on these fire sales, it’s no wonder that the Liberals are trying to play smoke and mirrors with those facts. The appraisal on the Panorama lot…

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

M. Mungall: …said: “The highest and best use of the lands would be a holding situation pending rezoning to permit commercial, retail or office development.” That’s what was needed to get the best value for these public lands, but that’s not what the B.C. Liberals did. In their fire sale they sold the land ten days before the end of the fiscal year at a $3 million discount to someone who has also made large contributions to the B.C. Liberal Party.

Why won’t the government release all its appraisals and let the public judge whether they received value for money for their land?
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Hon. M. de Jong: A good part of this conversation I have described earlier is involving the asking of questions that are legitimate to ask. I understand that. But when the member…. I hope that the member will pay attention, because the member is making very serious allegations. The member, within the safety of this chamber, is suggesting that access to the purchase of Crown assets was somehow linked to providing donations to a political party. That is the only reason that she would make the statement she just did.

I can tell you that as someone who has served in this place for 22 years — not perfectly and not without error — I take that assertion very, very seriously. If it is something that she genuinely believes, which is the only reason I can imagine she would make such a statement in this place, I would ask her to say it out there, outside of this chamber, where the same protections do not exist.

C. James: A very straightforward question for the minister, on behalf of the public: will he release all of the documents and all of the appraisals to be public today?

Hon. M. de Jong: The member will know — as someone who has tracked discussions and at one time led the opposition — that from the budget documents we set objectives, and we tied those objectives to documents that are already public. That is the assessed value of these properties, which is completely in the public domain.

[1045]

I’ve indicated that there are times when properties are sold above appraised values, estimates of what the market value is. There are times when they are sold below appraised value, based on unique market conditions or, as some members have alluded to, the zoning of the property or other considerations.

What I can, will and will continue to assure British Columbians of through this House is that the process for marketing these properties takes place via an exercise that is clear. It is fair. It is transparent, and it ensures that British Columbians receive actual market value for the property and assets that are sold on their behalf.

OIL SPILL RESPONSE AND
PROTECTION OF ROBERTS BANK
WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREA

V. Huntington: Delta South is home to critical wintering grounds for the highest number of waterfowl and shorebirds found anywhere in Canada. We have the largest number of raptors in Canada. We are the saltwater transition zone and the entry channel for the largest salmon run in the world. All this wildlife — all of it — is totally dependent on the internationally significant habitat of the Fraser estuary.

One heavy oil spill at Deltaport would destroy this habitat. It wouldn’t be 30 birds covered in oil; it would be tens of thousands of birds covered in oil. Oil would cover the mud flats. It would settle on the eelgrass beds, and it would smother the foreshore. It would destroy the most important migratory bird habitat on the west coast of the Americas.

The priority purpose of wildlife management areas is the conservation and management of regionally and internationally important habitat. I ask the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources: has he asked his staff to determine the impact of an oil spill in or adjacent to the Roberts Bank wildlife management area?

Hon. S. Thomson: Thank you to the member opposite for the question.

The Deltaport area, the Roberts Bank area, is an important area. It has a wildlife management area land designated in front of the delta, in front of the Fraser River estuary currently. As you know, the process and the project are under environmental review, and that process will continue. The province is participating in that review process.

We recognize the importance of wildlife management areas. That’s why in British Columbia we have 28 wildlife management areas across the province, ranging in size — 17 hectares all the way up to 122,000-hectare wildlife management areas in British Columbia, an overall total of 244,000 hectares of wildlife management area designated in British Columbia. We recognize the importance, and that will all be assessed through the environmental review process which is underway.

Madame Speaker: The member for Delta South on a supplemental.

V. Huntington: I just want to comment that that wasn’t the question I asked the minister. I did not ask about the environmental assessment process. I asked about his management plan in an oil spill situation on Roberts Bank.

However, the Environment Minister knows my concerns about the Port Metro Vancouver’s terminal 2 expansion, a project that will double the size of the Roberts Bank superport, a project that will bring even more ships to the fragile Roberts Bank. I have many concerns with the T2 expansion, including the absence of a full environmental-effects assessment and the failure of the province to undertake its own proper, full and independent environmental assessment.

Putting those concerns aside, today I’m asking the Minister of Environment for a commitment on oil spill response. As we saw last week, oil spills don’t just come from tankers. In her commitment to defend B.C.’s fragile coastal habitats, will the minister subject the terminal 2 project to the same world-class spill response requirements she expects of pipelines? Is she prepared to veto the massive Deltaport expansion if those standards can’t
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guarantee that a spill will cause no damage to the habitat of the Fraser estuary?

[1050]

Hon. M. Polak: I’m sure all members of this House share the concerns of the member who has just spoken with respect to the need to protect our critical habitats in British Columbia. We have some of the widest biodiversity in terms of species in British Columbia of anywhere in North America. One of those very special places is, in fact, the estuary that the member has described.

We have been on record as aggressively and vocally pursuing the interests of world-class marine spill response across the coast of British Columbia. That’s one of the things that is very important in this instance. We use examples such as the estuary in our discussions and in some of the research that has taken place. There are other specific areas, but we look across the coast broadly.

Certainly, these issues will be raised in the environmental assessment. I am confident that we will also see that modelling and planning addressed there.

WAIT TIMES FOR
HIP REPLACEMENT SURGERIES

J. Darcy: Earlier this week a national report was released that said what we on this side of the House have been saying for a very long time, and that is that wait-lists, surgical wait-lists, in the province of B.C. have been getting longer and longer and longer. Now, the Minister of Health likes to stand in this House and say we’re number one in Canada. [Applause.]

Well, you know, applauding doesn’t make it so. We’re not number one when people are waiting longer in British Columbia than in any other province except one in Canada. We’re not number one, and the minister should accept that. And you know, if the minister thinks that we’re number one, he should go to Salmon Arm….

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Please continue.

J. Darcy: The minister should have the courage to go to Salmon Arm and look Anne Morris in the eye. And he should say to Anne Morris that it’s okay that she’s already waited 18 months for hip replacement surgery, often in excruciating pain, and that she’s recently been told she has to wait another six months. We have the second-worst wait times in the country, and for some surgeries people are waiting twice as long as the national average. And what the minister has said is: “We’re studying the problem.”

My question to the minister is: after 14 years in government, with wait times getting worse, how can the minister think it’s okay to just set up a committee to study the problem?

Hon. T. Lake: Well, I’m no expert on the subject of campaigning, but I would not say that that slogan of the member opposite, “We’re not number one,” should be their slogan going into the next campaign. It probably will be the result, I hope.

The reality is the population….

Interjections.

Hon. T. Lake: I know this is a serious issue, and I know that I am concerned about it. The members opposite are concerned about it. But let’s put it into context. The population of British Columbia since 2001 has increased 14 percent. Since that time the number of hip replacement surgeries has increased 90 percent. The number of knee replacement surgeries — up 138 percent. I learned this week of a 75-year-old gentleman who has had two hip replacements and three knee replacements, and he’s still on the ski slopes.

[1055]

It is a challenge to meet the demand of hip and knee and cataract surgeries, but we are working diligently. We identified this as a concern in our priorities document for the B.C. health care system a year ago. Dr. Andy Hamilton is leading the Provincial Surgical Executive Committee to get to the bottom of the backlogs in the system to make sure that we can have an efficient system to increase the number of surgeries that we do. Island Health, just this past week, did an RFP for 5,000 surgeries to address this problem.

We are working on this problem. We’re going to ensure the people around the province get access to their surgery as quickly as possible.

[End of question period.]

Tabling Documents

Hon. S. Bond: I today am tabling a revised version of the Destination B.C. service plan. There was a minor error in it, so I’m tabling a revised version.

I’m also presenting the British Columbia Labour Relations Board 2014 Annual Report.

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 Energy and Mines. In this chamber, second reading on Bill 9.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]
[ Page 7281 ]

Moira Stilwell: I seek leave to present a petition, please.

Deputy Speaker: Proceed.

Petitions

Moira Stilwell: I rise today to present a petition that was presented to me in my office by a number of high school students in Vancouver-Langara who belong to Kids for Climate Action. Many of them may be here visiting today from Winston Churchill. The petitioners respectfully request that the House oppose expanding exports of thermal coal through British Columbia.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 9 — WORKERS COMPENSATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

(continued)

G. Kyllo: I’m happy to stand and speak in support of Bill 9, because it is of the utmost importance that every worker in our province return home safely to their families each and every day.

That is why we’re introducing the amendments to the Workers Compensation Act. The Workers Compensation Amendment Act is legislation that will strengthen workplace health and safety as part of our government’s pledge to enact the recommendations of Mr. Gordon Macatee’s WorkSafeBC Review and Action Plan.

Bill 9 builds on our efforts to improve worker safety. On both sides of the House we take worker safety very seriously. As women and men with families, we are all shaken when we hear of a workplace fatality anywhere in our province, and we wonder what could have been done to have prevented it.

The sawmill tragedies at Babine Forest Products in Burns Lake and Lakeland Mills in Prince George are a sobering reminder that firm, swift, decisive action must be taken to ensure that these types of accidents never happen again.

I can personally relate to this issue. I represent a riding that is heavily reliant on the forest industry. I’m also a business owner, employing more than 200 men and women. They might look to me as their boss, but I look to them as men and women with families, members of my community. I feel a deep responsibility for their health and safety on the job.

This act is designed to strengthen WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to promote and enforce occupational health and safety compliance for workers across our province. Mr. Macatee’s report set out 43 recommendations, of which 12 require legislative changes in order to be implemented.

[1100]

Through amendments tabled in Bill 9, WorkSafe B.C. will be enabled to finalize the implementation of the action plan’s recommendations.

The specific amendments contained in this bill will provide a range of new safety enforcement tools, including expansion of the ability to shut down a workplace where there are unsafe conditions.

It will ensure timely employer investigations of workplace accidents and reports. This means that there will be specific time frames for employers to conduct investigations when there is a significant workplace safety incident.

This bill will shorten the process for finalizing financial penalties to improve their effectiveness as an enforcement tool. For example, new administrative penalties will be able to be issued to employers on the spot, similar to traffic tickets.

It will expand the court’s authority to bar the worst employer offenders from continuing to operate.

And we will enhance workplace safety expertise on the WorkSafe board of directors by adding two new director positions to ensure that there’s occupational health and safety and legal expertise on the WorkSafe B.C. board.

Together these amendments will greatly expand the ability of WorkSafe B.C. to demand compliance with safety regulations, to expedite investigations into workplace accidents and to issue stop-work orders where unsafe conditions put workers at risk. For example, under the new amendments, WorkSafe B.C. will be able to seek a court injunction to shut down employers who ignore WorkSafe B.C. orders and continue to use unsafe and dangerous practices at their worksites in B.C.

This legislation is part of our government’s commitment to take all necessary steps to ensure that tragedies, such as those at Babine and Lakeland, never happen again.

April 28 is the annual Day of Mourning, and we will remember Robert Luggi, Carl Charlie, Alan Little and Glen Roche, and everyone who has lost their life in a workplace accident.

Let me be clear that these amendments in Bill 9 will not adversely affect business. They take a balanced approach to promoting worker safe while fostering a prosperous and sustainable business environment. The amendments also strengthen WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to deal with employers who are repeat offenders and commit gross violations which might lead to an unfair competitive advantage and endanger the safety and lives of B.C. workers.

It is necessary to enact these changes now, because waiting would delay WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to implement Mr. Macatee’s action plan recommendations, which are going to ensure worker safety. Mr. Macatee has reviewed the legislation that is before the House to ensure that it meets the intent of the action plan.

Our government’s work continues to ensure that B.C. has an inspection and investigation system at WorkSafe B.C. that is second to none in the world. Our government has reacted swiftly to the Macatee action plan to intro-
[ Page 7282 ]
duce legislation that further supports our world-class safety and inspection regime — and that B.C. has exceptionally safe workplaces — and to give British Columbia families the secure knowledge that their workplace safety concerns are being heard and acted upon.

A. Dix: I rise to speak to Bill 9, Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2015.

Safety before profit. Safety is our number one priority. People should come home from work safe at night to be with their families. Those are the words that have been enacted in legislation, really, in British Columbia since 1917, since the creation of the present system.

What the Babine and Lakeland explosions and fire show, as the Langley farmworkers’ deaths and subsequent coroner’s inquest show, is that while that is the rhetoric and that is the law, that is often not the fact, the reality for workers in British Columbia today. That is something that we have an obligation to address not just in legislation but, in fact, every day in the province.

What those incidents show is that in those cases, safety did not come before profit. Profit came before safety. That is not my conclusion. That is the conclusion, in fact, of WorkSafe B.C. itself in the reports it did on those accidents.

Two deaths and 41 injuries, two preventable incidents, no prosecutions. Finger-pointing between government agencies. Families without answers. Laws designed to protect workers not enforced.

[1105]

The struggle of injured workers to get access to their legal rights and compensation. And the stunning failure of the B.C. government, of the WorkSafe system and the companies who own the mills to respond adequately to what happened. That is what happened here.

If ever there was a need for an independent public inquiry, we need one into the Babine and Lakeland explosions and the failure to keep workers safe in B.C. That is what the victims’ families and that is what workers who suffered injury are asking for, and so many others as well.

In January of 2012 an explosion and fire destroyed the Babine Forest Products mill in Burns Lake. It killed two workers. It injured 19 more. It injured more than that — workers affected by the trauma of the incident, families affected by the trauma of the incident. Less than four months later two more workers died, and 22 more workers were hurt in the fire and explosion at the Lakeland mill in Prince George.

Both incidents were preventable. Reports into them both conclude that. Both were linked to the buildup of wood dust, a combustible hazard that the government has known about, that WorkSafe has known about, that others have known about for years. In both cases, a botched investigation by WorkSafe B.C. means that no one will be held liable for the deaths and injuries that were preventable. The administrative fines in each case of $90,000 — not the money recouped but administrative fines of $90,000 — are the response the injured workers have received with respect to justice.

These events occur in a context, and the context was set by the government when they changed the name. They created the name WorkSafe in 2002. They made fundamental changes at the agency.

The previous member who spoke talked about a balanced approach. There was no balance here. In fact, if you go back to 1917, that idea of balance was fundamental to what both sides gave up in the creation of the Workers Compensation Board — workers giving up the right to sue in order to get fair treatment and fair benefits and speedy response at an agency that would protect them in the workplace, working with their employer. That’s what they gave up.

What happened in 2002 was totally without balance. It was unilateral on the part of the government. It did not involve workers. It took away rights from workers, it took away safety procedures from workers, it took away money from workers, it took away compensation from workers, and it took away pension from workers — without talking to workers.

What the government did was they cut benefits to injured workers, they reduced worker safety regulation, and they cut premium rates. They broke the historic compromise in 2002. That wasn’t a compromise. That was unilateral action on the part of the government. They took away, cumulatively, billions of dollars from workers and made permanent cuts to the system preventing injuries. They reduced inspections. They reduced written orders. They reduced penalties. That was the situation.

Since 2002 there has been no independent review of the consequences of those actions, but the government sent a message that day. Let it be clear that the old compromise, the old arrangements that involved what the member called balance were torn away, and a new arrangement was set in place. A message was sent everywhere, and 12 years later the minister, the Premier, the government, the public understood that WorkSafe had lost its way. They said so publicly.

Front-line workers at WorkSafe — who, under very difficult circumstances, continue to do an excellent job for workers in B.C. — raised the issue, for example, of combustible dust years prior to the incident, and action was not taken by WorkSafe as a whole. That is the evidence of the very reports that were commissioned subsequent to the accident.

In 2004, in addition, a law came into place nationally called the Westray law which gave prosecutors the ability to prosecute companies, directors and senior managements. Since 2004 there have been 1,500 workplace-related deaths and countless injuries in British Columbia, and not one time has the government applied that law — not one charge. Even in this process, they continue to reject the idea of a dedicated prosecutor respon-
[ Page 7283 ]
sible in the wake of the fiascos of Babine and Lakeland.

[1110]

This is a message as well — that laws unanimously passed by parliament have no application. Laws have to have meaning in the workplace. When you say to workers that they have the right to reject unsafe work, that right has to exist in fact, not just in law. Frequently in British Columbia, that is not the case.

If this bill is a response to the Babine and Lakeland incidents, what do we learn about those questions — the question of worker safety, of prevention of those incidents? Well, hon. Speaker, as you know, in 2005 the U.S. Chemical Safety Board issued a report on the dangers of combustible dust. In 2007 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the United States, OSHA, developed a combustible dust national program. In its 2009 high-risk strategy, WorkSafe itself identified airborne wood dust as a danger to workers’ respiratory health. In spite of all of the previous action by other agencies in other parts of the world, they did not recognize, in that policy, wood’s combustibility as a high-risk hazard.

On April 27, 2010, two years before Lakeland, just under two years before Babine, they did issue a guideline which stated that layers of dust as thin as a dime pose an explosive hazard.

The guideline: “If combustible dust collects in a building or structure, or on machinery or equipment, it must be safely removed before accumulation of the dust could cause a fire or explosion.”

Yet we know, as a matter of policy at a senior management level at WorkSafe, that nothing was done to adequately enforce these regulations. This in spite of messages received by the workers of the CEU on the ground who said the opposite, who argued to management that the opposite was needed. No action was taken.

This is a fundamental failure — nothing that takes away the responsibilities of the mills themselves, their responsibility. Sometimes when we criticize government agencies, we don’t acknowledge that, fundamentally, the responsibility is of the companies and the employers themselves, but this was clearly a show of a lack of leadership by the government — one that was, frankly, often moved past by workers on the ground. When people say that they didn’t know….

In September 2007 M and K sawmill in Quesnel warned about wood dust’s potential to explode. June 2010 — the Canfor mill in Fort St. John was notified that wood dust could explode. WorkSafe cited the threat of the fire hazard and the explosive atmosphere created on a continual basis by wood dust.

July 2010 — the Tolko mill in Quesnel. “Wood dust is combustible when exposed to heat or flame and may form an explosive mixture with air in the presence of an ignition source.” Similar warnings to the Tolko Merritt mill.

In January, 2011, the Elko mill in Elkford was warned: “Wood dust is a combustible dust and must be controlled to minimize the risk of fires and explosion.”

Yet this was the work being done on the ground by members of the CEU. This was the work being done based on what was known by them, and yet Hampton can say in its response to the WorkSafe report: “To our knowledge, prior to January 20, 2012, no one in the sawmilling industry knew this fact, and no representative of WorkSafe had expressed this fact to the industry, nor had Babine or any other sawmill in British Columbia received a warning related to combustible sawdust from any regulator.”

This was a policy issue at the most senior levels of WorkSafe, the most senior officials of WorkSafe, who were not called even to testify in advance of recent events towards the inquest in Prince George, into Lakeland.

What does this tell us with respect to Babine? Well, a year before the incident happened, the explosion happened, there was a dust explosion and fire at Babine. WorkSafe was aware — through reports, including a report by the company itself — that this mill had “a tremendous amount of dry wood fibre dust resulting in a very large fuel load.” There was no response from WorkSafe to the report.

[1115]

In the fall of 2011 a WorkSafe inspection report found that four out of five samples exceeded the workplace exposure limit for wood dust. That was a respiratory question, not a question of explosion, for WorkSafe.

The inspection report found that Babine was in violation of the OHS regulation because “workers in various positions in the sawmill are exposed to pine wood dust in excess of the exposure limit, which suggests that the current ventilation systems and water misters are not adequately protecting some workers.” No penalty was issued. Babine was only “required to notify the board in writing of the steps to be taken to correct the contravention cited in the inspection report.”

On December 6 there was a significant fire at Babine. Shortly before the explosion, another fire at Babine. The fire was reported to WorkSafe investigators by an employee. There were also a number of smaller fires, other fires, in the months leading up to the explosion. On January 20, as we know, as everyone in B.C. knows, the explosion occurred.

What does the report say about that? What the report says about it — WorkSafe’s report — is that it was money before safety. It talked about the stumpage rate for salvage harvest pine at 25 cents per cubic metre. And it said: “there is still profit to be made due to the low stumpage rates. The more lumber processed, the greater the profit. At the Babine sawmill, much effort was devoted to tweaking feed speeds, shift arrangements, assignment of workers and other production-related activities to attain a higher production level of lumber per shift. A similar effort was not put into controlling the potentially explo-
[ Page 7284 ]
sive levels of dust created by these increased production levels.” No action by WorkSafe. No action by the company. To the contrary, action was taken — just not action on worker safety.

In fact, as the report says — this is the government’s report — “the industry has adapted to the increased processing of beetle-killed pine in most areas with the exception of effective waste control and removal. The wood dust at the Babine mill was excessive and created a hazardous situation for all workers.” The terrible explosion and its consequences occurred, and what this tells us is — regardless of what was in the act, regardless of what was in the mandate, regardless of what was known in the worker safety world — that money came before safety, in these cases. That is the practical reality of what happened in those cases.

With respect to Lakeland, as early as February 2009, WorkSafe observed at Lakeland: “No recent monitoring of explosion of wood dust has been conducted. Wood dust exposure will be further evaluated during subsequent inspections. This is an item that should be re-evaluated due to changes in productivity that have occurred over the recent years, and the fact that a majority of wood being processed is dry, pine beetle kill.” A year later, WorkSafe report: “We discussed dust exposure and the need for appropriate respiratory protection for workers.”

Why did WorkSafe emphasize the respiratory hazard and not the combustion hazard, given what they understood and what information they had received on that question?

The Prince George fire department inspected Lakeland on November 29, 2011, and found excessive wood dust. Did WorkSafe have this information, and if it did, did it act on it?

After the Babine explosion — and remember there was an explosion at Lakeland the same weekend as the Babine explosion — WorkSafe received anonymous call on February 3, 2012, from a worker who reported extreme levels of dust at Lakeland. He said he was worried that Lakeland would become the next Burns Lake. On February 6 two WorkSafe officers inspected the mill. They discussed the wood dust observed throughout the mill. At the time of the inspection, the airborne concentration appeared to be below the exposure limit — the exposure limit but not the question of explosion. They reviewed the requirement to prevent the accumulation of hazardous amounts of wood dust, yet WorkSafe did not issue any orders. They merely provided for the employer’s reference the text of regulation 4.41: “Refuse, spills and waste material must not be allowed to accumulate so as to constitute a hazard.”

[1120]

So what could they have done? Well, according to the law, there are things that obviously the employer could have done, and that is detailed at length in these reports.

What could WorkSafe have done? They could have inspected the sawmill at Babine. They could have established a lower standard and ordered compliance. They could have issued a stop-work order. They could have imposed a fine. They could have prosecuted for the violations in occupational health and safety regulations. They did none of those.

What else didn’t happen? No action was taken. In spite of the March 15 meeting between WorkSafe and sawmill owners, no action was taken in the interim with respect to the issue of wood dust.

What did they fail to do, therefore, at Lakeland? There was a failure, again, to consider evidence, to get the response on Babine in time to save those workers, failure to deal adequately with the workers, failure to deal with a stop-work order, impose a fine, to deal with the occupational health and safety regulations. What the report on Lakeland shows is the same thing as the report on Babine shows — that these issues were not the priority, in spite of the act.

That is if you go through the situation we faced before the accident. Then after the accident we know that in spite of what we learned, this terrible situation which took everybody, I think, in some ways…. It certainly shocked everybody in the community, from members of this House to members in both those communities to everyone in B.C. — what had happened. It would be, in fact, almost two years before a systematic inspection on wood dust occurred.

What did that inspection show? Sixty-one percent of mills in violation, but that happened two years later. That is not a culture of action. That is not a culture of imposing the rules that are in the law in the workplace to the benefit of safety for workers. It’s quite the contrary.

There was the failure of the prosecution, the failure to consider relevant information. This is relevant directly to the bill, where we talk about reports from the employers being required on an urgent basis. In that case, a report from the employer was not considered by WorkSafe, according to evidence given at the coroner’s inquest.

There was a failure not just to apply the Westray law but to even consider the application of the Westray law, a failure to consider evidence, a failure to deal adequately with the workers and compensation question — I’ll return to that, because it is nowhere in this process — and a failure to adequately inspect other mills until March of 2014. The response only came, really, two years after the Babine explosion, when the government was embarrassed by what was obviously to everyone concerned a fiasco of a process — a failure to prosecute, a failure to hold people accountable.

Then action came, to some degree. It only came after the eloquent intervention of families of those who died, eloquent intervention of injured workers forced some action from the government.

So we have Mr. Macatee’s report — not an independent process, not an independent assessment — a report that
[ Page 7285 ]
does not deal in any serious way with the cuts that this government imposed on WorkSafe in 2002, does not deal in any serious way with the significant cut, the massive cut in benefits received by injured workers, the benefits that they’re supposed to get in this system. It doesn’t deal with it in any way.

It does not do those things, but it does make some recommendations, some legislative recommendations — which, as the member for Vancouver-Hastings has said, we support in this House. Those include a new compliance agreement system. We’ll be asking questions about this in committee stage, about the fact that there are no specific consequences for the employer if it fails to fix the problem.

It talks about a new ticketing system. The question will be: is this too minimal to ensure deterrence or punishment, to be either an act of deterrence or punishment? Nonetheless, we will have questions for that at committee stage.

Changes to the board at WorkSafe. Changes to the standard by which one could apply a stop-work order. Changes to ensure that employers create new accident reports; investigation reports, two of them, within 24 and 30 days of the accident.

[1125]

Now, these changes and some of the other changes — which, in fairness to the government, are non-legislative — are, I think for the most part, of value, but they are nowhere near sufficient to deal with what has happened in this case.

They don’t, as I have said, deal in any way with the struggles that those workers have had to receive adequate compensation. They don’t in any way deal with the fact that there are less inspections at WorkSafe than there were prior to 2002 — I mean dramatically less inspections. There were cuts of the numbers in the range of 40 percent initially, and that pattern has continued.

You look at this case and you look at other cases, including the case of farmworkers in Langley where there was — as a coroner’s inquest said, a coroner’s inquest whose recommendations were not followed by the government — a need for more inspectors and more inspections.

This is not what’s being proposed here, which is to dramatically beef up. If you’re going to make this law work any more than you’re going to make the Workers Compensation Act work as it currently stands, you need the capacity to enforce the law and to build a culture in which people have the right to refuse unsafe work.

If that doesn’t happen…. All of the evidence of Babine and Lakeland, all of the evidence in the case of Langley, all of the evidence on the road to Abbotsford in that case — all of that evidence shows that that culture was not in existence in those cases and that WorkSafe, in spite of regulatory responsibility, was not on those cases. And the responses aren’t there.

If you have a report that says that some technical changes are sufficient to deal with this cultural problem in the wake of what happened in those cases, I think we will be disappointed. For example, even in a technical sense, there are no new fines to meaningfully deter and punish negligent employers in this legislation. The monetary limit on fines remains the same as it has been since 2004, save for some CPI adjustments.

There is nothing in the bill to deal with the ongoing issue where unannounced inspections…. In a practical world, if you talk to workers and employers, unannounced inspections are known about in advance of those inspections. There’s nothing to address that question and what happens under those circumstances, because random and surprise inspections…. Read the coroner’s jury’s recommendation in the Langley case. Random and surprise inspections are the only way to truly know where workplaces are in terms of safety at that moment.

What we need is legislation and supports that support the workers at WorkSafe who are trying to keep workers safe and support workers in their workplace. The lesson of these accidents, of these explosions and fire, is that profit came before safety. There’s no dispute about that. There’s no dispute about that in any of the reports done by the government, by the safety authority, by the workers, WorkSafe itself — no dispute about that.

There were enormous economic pressures, and in the face of those economic pressures, safety took a back seat. The reports say it in page after page after page after page. And these responses don’t do what is needed, which is to give WorkSafe a well-funded, robust and tenacious enforcement agency to enforce the law — not just set the law; enforce the law — work with employers, be on the ground, be there in person, show workers that it matters when they raise issues of concern, when they phone WorkSafe after an accident such as Babine and nothing of substance happens.

I, obviously, will support this legislation, but I also clearly think it’s inadequate — inadequate to deal with problems in the compensation system, inadequate to deal with problems in the rehabilitation system, inadequate to deal with the lack of recognition of the impact of PTSD on workers in these kinds of cases, inadequate to address the lack of resources on the ground to keep workers safe. It’s inadequate in all these ways.

It is legislation that is worthy in the sense that it improves the means at the disposal of WorkSafe and the means at disposal to keep workers safe, but without action on the ground, it will not have the desired effect.

[1130]

Workers and their families have been extraordinarily courageous in this process. I think this is something that the minister and I can agree upon. They have become voices for safety in the midst of grief and tragedy that I think is unimaginable.
[ Page 7286 ]

I’ve met with dozens of these workers. I know the minister has as well. They don’t believe that this is an adequate response to what happened, and I believe they are right. But without them, there would have been no response. That’s clear.

I want to acknowledge today people such as Maureen Luggi, Ronda Roche, Lucy Campbell, Joanna Burrows, Glen Little, Bruce Germyn, Kathleen and Dirk Weissbach, Kenny Michell, Dave Gurney and other workers both at Lakeland and at Babine who have lost enormously, who struggle with that loss every day, yet have courageously become voices for worker safety in British Columbia.

They join other advocates from other accidents — people like Phuong Le, whose husband was permanently injured in the Langley farm workers accident. While they haven’t accepted that this is justice, it is not justice. They haven’t accepted that this response is adequate because it is not adequate. They have continued to struggle on.

I want to say to them: there is hope. They deserve credit today for what has happened. They deserve credit for the fact that any action was taken. We owe them more than that.

We owe them a workers’ compensation system, a workplace safety system that keeps workers safe in the future, that ensures that what happened to Glenn Roche and to Al Little and to Carl Charlie and to Robert Luggi does not happen again. We owe them that, and this is not nearly good enough.

In one of the meetings I’ve had with workers at Lakeland and Babine, a worker said to me very simply that all he wants — and it’s something we cannot give him — is his life, the one he had before the accident. We owe them something.

So today I think we need to commit ourselves to doing better than this, to ensuring that WorkSafe has the power to help keep workers safe, that employers have the message that workplace safety does not come second to profit, as is shown in these reports. When concerns brought up by front-line workers at WorkSafe are not acted upon at the most senior levels of government and management…. That can’t happen again. We have to be true to that, to those voices in the community.

While we support and will vote in favour of this legislation, we will not stop working until an independent review of WorkSafe compensation and workplace safety happens in British Columbia. We know we’re working with all the families and workers to make that happen in the future.

M. Morris: I’m certainly not going to review all of the circumstances of the tragedies that we experienced in Prince George and Burns Lake. That’s before the inquest. It was interesting to hear the member opposite reflecting on all the circumstances that have been presented to the inquest so far, but I’m going to wait for the jurors to make their recommendations on that.

Over the course of my career in the RCMP I attended dozens, perhaps even into the hundreds, of industrial accidents where people were crushed, burned, where limbs were severed, where they were electrocuted — just a whole list of tragedies that I investigated as an RCMP constable and as a non-commissioned officer in the force. In the logging industry, in the forest industry, in the mining industry — it didn’t matter where it was.

All of those situations were equally tragic. What I did see from all those incidents that I investigated and assisted WorkSafe B.C. — or Workers Compensation Board, as it was known back in those days — is that we always learned from those tragedies so that we mitigated the situations from happening again in the future.

[1135]

I see the same thing happening with every situation that WorkSafe comes across. They double their efforts to make sure that we keep our employees safe in all aspects of work right across British Columbia, right across our country. I think we do a very good job of it in Canada.

One of the things that we did learn from these tragic situations and the investigations that were done into the Prince George and the Babine situation was that you can’t compromise the investigations. If you’re going to do a causal investigation to determine what the cause is…. That was our role as RCMP constables — to go into these industrial accidents and to have a look at the situation to rule out foul play, to rule out criminal intent, to rule out all those things that, perhaps, might lead to a criminal investigation.

Once we did that, then the WorkSafe folks would come in, and they would do their investigation to determine exactly what the cause was, what could be done to mitigate it in the future and if there were any administrative issues that they needed to look at based on the previous and prior work that these particular companies had done.

As a result of the investigations that were conducted here, we learned that we can’t do a causal investigation and a judicial investigation at the same time. I think Mr. Macatee’s report adequately addressed that. He said that we’ve got to keep that separate in the new era we’re faced with now.

We’ll have investigators go out and look at the causal factors of whatever the tragedy is or whatever the accident was. Once they determine that perhaps there might be a judicial consequence to this, they stop everything in their tracks, and they turn it over to an independent person who assesses the information and assigns a new investigative team to go and have a look at that. I think that was a step in the right direction.

I’ve heard, many times, people asking for a public inquiry, many times that people want this relooked at again. I’ve heard them say that evidence was ignored. The problem that you have is that any evidence that is obtained without the proper Charter warnings to witnesses — to anybody involved in the investigation — is inadmissible in any court.
[ Page 7287 ]

That’s the problem that this particular investigation faced. I think we’ve taken some great steps to address that and make sure that doesn’t happen again in the future.

There is an abundance of things that take place. When I was in the RCMP as a supervisor and as a manager for a large number of people, under federal legislation I was personally responsible and liable for fines up to $100,000 if I did not practise due diligence and make sure all the employees under my control or within my area of responsibility received proper training, used the proper equipment and wore the proper equipment at all times to ensure their safety.

The same thing applies to British Columbian industries. They have to make sure that the employees are wearing the proper protective gear all the time. Sometimes that slips. Sometimes the employees don’t wear the equipment that they’re supposed to wear, don’t have the harnesses on that they’re supposed to wear, don’t have the type of footwear they need or the other types of clothing they need. The employers have to take action on that.

WorkSafe provides oversight to that. They make inquiries into that to make sure that those things are being done. They make examinations. They’ll make audits to ensure that the people in our work environment in British Columbia are as safe as we can be in today’s environment.

We learned a lot from Lakeland. We learned a lot from Babine. All those practices are in place here again today. I think we have a very robust system in place to ensure that workers are safer in the sawmills and the industrial plants that we have.

I’ve gone through several sawmills in the last year or so in the interior of the province, and I’ve never seen cleaner environments. There is very little dust on the ground compared to what we had before. It’s tragic that those things have happened, but we’ve learned a lot from that.

[1140]

I think the legislation for these changes that we have here in this House, which we’re discussing now, are going to take that step ahead and enhance workers’ safety within this province to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can, and to make sure there are tools in the toolbox for government and for the administration in the province here to take the appropriate steps to deal with some of those situations where they’re, perhaps, not quite as diligent as they should be when they’re addressing workers’ safety.

Every death is tragic. The families will never forget the death of a loved one that might have been involved in an industrial accident. This government takes that very seriously as well, and we try to mitigate to the extent that we can to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the future. And I hope it never happens again, but unfortunately we know that there are unfortunate incidents that happen. That’s why we have the police in place. That’s why we have emergency services in place to try and address those whenever they surface in the future.

I support this bill, and I look forward to it going through.

B. Routley: In spite of the fact that I am going to support these changes…. They’re basically commonsense changes that are long overdue. And this government, in my opinion, has blood on their hands, because at the end of the day, this government was proud of the fact, back in 2002, at deregulating WCB regulations. They took pages out of the regulation book and threw them in the garbage.

Deputy Speaker: Member, withdraw that word, please.

Let’s have temperance in the House. It is absolutely essential. That’s the hallmark of this House. Thank you very much.

B. Routley: Thank you, hon. Speaker.

You know, I, for far too long, have seen what’s happened in workplaces when, at the end of the day, the concerns of workers are ignored. And let’s talk about what happened in the Prince George area. Back in 2010 there was a WorkSafe training session in Richmond. Guess who was trained?

Deputy Speaker: Member, the remarks that you made earlier — please withdraw those.

B. Routley: I withdraw the remarks.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Continue.

B. Routley: Back in 2010, in the Richmond office of WorkSafe, there was a training session held. And guess who was there? It included a hygiene officer from the Prince George area, and they were getting training about explosive dust. This is 2010. In 2011 there were three dust explosions in the Prince George area — three. This wasn’t news.

By the way, the regulations from the United States are full of dust explosions. We’ve had dust explosions on the coast of British Columbia. We had an electrician open a panel box. As a result of the dust blowing out of there and the arc that was…. His eyeballs were glued together. This was years ago.

Back in the 1970s any sawmill on the coast of British Columbia you could go into, and guess what you would find. You would find a spark watcher, an assigned person whose job it was to look for sparks when they were working around dust. There are lots of places with dust, whether it’s planer mills or sawmills. Dust is not some new invention, some new problem.

What’s really shocking to me and unacceptable is to find out…. I just phoned this morning and asked the steelworkers: “Why did the workers’ representative walk away from the hearing? Why did the people that are there that represent unionized workers walk away from the process that’s going on?”
[ Page 7288 ]

Let me tell you in their own words. I heard from Steve Hunt. I said, “What’s going on?” and he said: “Well, there’s no point in being part of a process that is basically a whitewash.”

It’s a whitewash for the government. This is political interference, as far as I’m concerned. It’s covering up what happened at WorkSafe B.C., which is an absolute tragedy. It’s a tragedy, what’s going on.

[1145]

At the end of the day, just three months…. Okay. Back in January of 2012 an explosion at the Babine Forest Products mill in Burns Lake killed two workers and injured dozens more. Just three months later, on April 23, 2012, another explosion at the Lakeland sawmill in Prince George, B.C. killed two more workers and left others with life-changing trauma and injury.

Let’s again go back to the notion. This is not some new surprise event, explosions in mills. They’ve had explosions in mills where there was dust. There’s no question that WorkSafe B.C. had been discussing this internally. One of the things that came out during the inquest was that a document by a man named Nakahara concludes on February 27, 2012…. This is before the Lakeland explosion.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

He had concluded that wood dust was the cause of the explosion at Babine, and he goes on in his memo to talk about dust enforcement strategy, but it says that because of the push-back by the industry they would not enforce. If there was ever a smoking gun about that kind of cover-up activity…. It’s unbelievable…

Madame Speaker: Member. Member.

B. Routley: …that that kind of stuff could happen.

And who is there for the workers?

Madame Speaker: Member, please take your seat.

Let me remind members. Debate at second reading is about the general principles of the bill. Temperance and moderation are the hallmarks of parliamentary debate.

B. Routley: In my career I’ve gone to investigations and witnessed forest workers that have lost their lives. I’m sorry if I get a little passionate about it. But if you, too, hon. Speaker, had been on the worksite and actually seen the workers….

Madame Speaker: Member, the principles underlying Bill 9, Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2015. Please address your remarks accordingly.

B. Routley: Again, I point out that at the end of the day, this is a move in the right direction. I acknowledge that the minister responsible has ordered the report, the Macatee report. They’re starting to move in the direction of putting back some of the safeguards that will help forest workers and their families. But I think the very fact that this legislation needs to be done in 2015….

We went through years and years, during the Dirty ’30s all the way up to and including back in 2005, the last big event that I attended with the government of the day, when I was representing steelworkers and we were talking about the tragic increase in the number of deaths in the forest industry.

Guess what the problem then was. The problem then was the fact that fallers…. The evidence at the Gramlich hearing was that the contractor signed off on the responsibility for the safety on the hood of a truck while it was pouring rain. He took on the safety responsibility. He claimed he didn’t know he couldn’t go to work in the fog.

We ended up with a faller who bled out on the side hill because there was fog. The nearest helicopter couldn’t even fly to him because there was fog. The negligence was the lack of enforcement compliance and the ignorance of safety rules and guidelines being important.

Hon. Speaker, I get emotional because I know that those regulations and safeguards were written in blood.

Madame Speaker: Hon. Member, the principles of Bill 9, Workers Compensation Amendment Act.

B. Routley: Those principles are now starting to come back. We’re starting to put back some kinds of regulations. There’s compliance enforcement, a $1,000 fine. We’re going to have a $1,000 fine. But we heard this back in 2002. We heard there were going to be million-dollar fines if people weren’t complying. Million-dollar fines and people would go to jail. That’s what this government told the people of B.C.

[1150]

At the end of the day, what we have here is WorkSafe B.C. failing to work together with the forest workers involved in the industry.

In his letter Mr. Hunt says: “We have struggled to have our concerns and our voice heard by WorkSafe B.C. We were only successful after directly appealing to then Labour Minister Margaret MacDiarmid and threatening to shut down the B.C. forest industry.” What? Really, to get a bill like this to press for…. Now we’ve got the Macatee report, again, that’s headed in the right direction, and we’re going to support it at the end of the day.

Again, I apologize if people dying upsets me. I worked in the forest industry all those years. I worked in the forest industry, and I went to one too many death investigations. The story is all too familiar. “Somehow we didn’t know anything about it.”

Workplaces are dangerous places. We accept that. There’s some level of risk. You’re never going to do away with all of the risk, not all of the risk.
[ Page 7289 ]

But when you know that explosions happened back in 2010, when you have the hygiene officer for the Prince George area getting training in explosive dust and then that doesn’t translate into going around the mills taking a look at the beams, taking a look at what’s going on, making sure that they’re actually dealing with the dust problem, making sure that there’s sufficient activity and devices on the worksite to deal with the level of dust, particularly at Lakeland….

I’m sorry, Minister. I know you come from there. I get it. I am not, Minister, trying to hurt you in any way, shape or form. I’m sure it’s emotional. You’ve dealt with those families. But it’s also emotional for the people at Babine that went through their tragedy. Then we learn nothing over three months. There was no alert that went out, no red alert that said: “You’ve got to get out there and stop this.”

Interjection.

B. Routley: Well, if there was, how come it happened again? It should have been prevented in the first place. Are we just waiting? Are we going to hear again: “Well, we’ve done some things”?

This legislation is a move in the right way, the summary of Bill 9. But then you hear from the steelworkers that their members and the families and the communities were once assured by WorkSafe B.C. that they would conduct the most thorough and exhaustive investigation in their history.

On November 29 WorkSafe B.C. disclosed in its investigations into both explosions, Babine and Lakeland, that they were complete and would be submitted to the criminal justice branch for determination of charges under the legislation. At no time was there any consideration of charges under the Criminal Code, particularly the Westray provisions regarding employer corporate negligence.

During the 2013 provincial election campaign it was revealed that in January of that year, at the direction of the B.C. Liberal ministers, the B.C. Safety Authority was ordered to suppress its investigative report into the Babine sawmill explosion, notionally to not jeopardize any criminal or WorkSafe B.C. investigations that were underway at the time.

Madame Speaker: Member, noting the hour.

B. Routley: Well, we’re close.

On January 10 the criminal justice branch announced it would not be laying charges against Babine and made a similar pronouncement…

Madame Speaker: Member, noting the hour.

B. Routley: …a short time while later.

Noting the hour, I move adjournment of the debate and look forward to the opportunity to continue.

B. Routley moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Madame Speaker: The Chair will wish this afternoon that all members be respectful. The decorum in this place must be respectful of the institution. That is the expectation.

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

Hon. M. Polak moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Madame Speaker: The House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 1:30 this afternoon.

The House adjourned at 11:55 a.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
ENERGY AND MINES

The House in Committee of Supply (Section A); J. Thornthwaite in the chair.

The committee met at 11:07 a.m.

On Vote 20: ministry operations, $25,524,000.

The Chair: Good morning, everyone.

I’d like to welcome the minister. Do you want to proceed with your opening statement?

Hon. B. Bennett: Yes. I don’t want to use my critic’s time up in a opening statement. I’ll just say that we are a relatively small ministry. We’re responsible for the mining file, which I think we’re going to be focusing on today. We are also responsible for a portion of the energy file for government.

My colleague the Minister of Natural Gas is responsible for pipelines, oil and gas and the LNG file. I’m responsible for electricity, which means the utilities — B.C. Hydro, in particular, but also Fortis. I’m also responsible for the renewable energy portfolio as part of the ministry. As Crown corporations, we have the Columbia Basin Trust, Columbia Power Corporation and, again, B.C. Hydro.

A relatively small ministry but a very active ministry with lots of balls in the air and, of course, with Mount
[ Page 7290 ]
Polley having happened in August of 2014, some interesting issues to deal with. Having spoken to the critic, I know that we’re going to discuss Mount Polley. I’ll be as open and as succinct as I am able to be.

With that, we’ll get started.

N. Macdonald: First, I just want to thank the minister for the briefing that his staff provided. It’s one of a number of briefings that the ministry has provided.

[1110]

As the minister said, we’ve had a conversation. We’re going to be focusing during the mining section on Mount Polley.

I did hear one of the staff supporting the minister say that he was going to stay there just in case there was a budget question. While these are budget questions and budget debates, it’s a term that often is used quite loosely. In this case, it’s going to be the same.

We’re going to focus on Mount Polley. My intention is to give context — not for the minister, who knows this file very well, but for any of those that would be looking to the text. Of course, we are talking about Mount Polley. Early on August 4, 2014, the collapse of the northern flank of the perimeter embankment at the massive Mount Polley tailings storage facility sent 24 million cubic metres of water and tailings into Quesnel Lake through Hazeltine Creek. As well, there was flow into Polley Lake.

The expert panel report stated that there have been seven failures of tailings storage facilities, where there has been a release of water and tailings, in B.C. since 1969 and that with current practice B.C. should expect two failures every year — six in the next 30 years.

The expert panel’s conclusion firmly rejects that business as usual can continue. The panel does not accept the concept of a tolerable failure rate at tailings storage facilities. They describe that as institutionalizing failure. This is from page 118 of the report on the Mount Polley tailings storage facility breach by the independent expert engineering investigation and review panel. When I refer to the report, as I will for the rest of the time here, just to be clear, that’s, of course, what I am referring to.

I’m going to, at times, paraphrase their findings and their conclusions. I’m going to be lifting quotes directly, but there is always a question of interpretation. I’m making a case. It’s not my intention to mischaracterize their words. If the minister or staff feel there is a different interpretation, then I would appreciate a precise explanation if they have a contrary view and that they refer to the report or supporting documents to point out the disagreement.

The perspective I have and, I think, the perspective most British Columbians have is that the ministry and the minister are responsible for the laws, the regulations and the code that are created to ensure safe and responsible mining in the province. This ministry and the minister have a crucial role in ensuring that those laws, codes and regulations are followed.

I want to understand, in the time that we have available to us — which, in my understanding, is just today — how that responsibility actually manifests itself with looking at Mount Polley, assuming that what took place there is consistent with what has and is happening across the province at all 123 active tailings dams and other dam facilities that are not part of an active mine.

Now, as the minister knows but the public may not be aware, Mount Polley from 1995 to 2011…. The engineer of record is KP or Knight Piésold. AMEC was the engineer of record from 2011, and they were passing over to BGC as the Mount Polley failure took place. Of course, the Ministry of Energy and Mines are the regulators.

Just for context, this is, as I understand, from the expert panel. The base of the dam was built unknowingly on a continuous glaciolacustrine layer — and in several areas, including at the foundation where the Mount Polley tailings storage dam failed. So you have this layer.

The panel found that the foundation shifted and slid on this glaciolacustrine layer much like slipping on a banana peel. It slid and rotated enough to lower the top of the dam by 3.3 metres. That’s my understanding. The base slid on this layer, which was unknown to both the engineers and to the ministry, and it lowered the top of the dam 3.3 metres, which isn’t a great deal, but it’s enough. The panel is clear that the glaciolacustrine layer — this is their term — is the “loaded gun” that sat loaded since the structure was first built in 1996.

[1115]

The 3.3 metre lowering of the dam wall was a problem primarily because of the ten million cubic metres of water that was contained behind this dam and the fact that the water was sitting 2.2 metres beneath the crest of the dam. The dam top drops 3.3 metres, the water sits at 2.2 metres, and you have a vast amount of water one metre deep that is uncontained. It is that that rushes out, creating the massive failure that the world saw on TV, with 24 million cubic metres of water and tailings rushing first in Polley Lake and then backing up on itself and rushing down Hazelton into Quesnel Lake.

I think, for the minister and me, we both need to accept the experts panel and accept that what they say is correct. The Leader of the Opposition called for an independent investigation. These are experts that the government chose, but I think if you look…. I could not find fault with their credentials, their experience. Frankly after I had read it, I couldn’t find fault with the work that they did. I did not hear complaints from workers, from industry, from First Nations or community groups, so I think any reasonable person would move forward with the understanding that what they’re saying should be the basis of any discussion.

The expert panel, I think, was clear that the dam failed because of slipping at its base, but the result we witnessed, the massive movement of 24 million cubic metres of water and tailings, happened because there was too much water
[ Page 7291 ]
in the Mount Polley tailings storage facility. There was no beach. The dam was too steep. There was no buttressing. All of these were key factors in the Mount Polley disaster.

I think the other key piece here is that if that glaciolacustrine layer did not exist, this dam could just as easily have collapsed from overtopping, which it nearly did in May of 2014, or from internal erosion, which was happening and could have led to the massive failure.

The panel is clear in saying all of those things, and I think that’s where we need to begin the discussion. Let’s start with the glaciolacustrine layer. It was unknown at the time that Mount Polley failed, but I think we can agree that we know it now and that we know it is a potential issue. The questions that I would first ask…. What was the Ministry of Energy and Mines doing with that knowledge in the months since the Mount Polley failure?

The Copper Mountain mine, Similco, which has been assigned a very high consequence classification based on the significant environmental and economic damage that is associated with a hypothetical dam failure, also has a glaciolacustrine layer that is in the process of shearing. Kemess South also has a creeping GLU layer or glaciolacustrine layer.

The question I have for the minister is: what is the ministry doing to ensure that these mines will not fail the same way that Mount Polley failed?

Hon. B. Bennett: I think it’s important for me, given the narrative that my critic just painted…. Most parts of that narrative we agree with. We know that there are important lessons to be learned from what happened at Mount Polley, and we know that we can learn many lessons from the independent report.

[1120]

It is, I think, however, important to never lose sight of the fact that the independent panel stated unequivocally, without any doubt, that “the root cause of the breach” — that’s actually a direct quotation — and another, “dominant contribution to the failure” was this “shear failure of the dam foundation materials.” Again, that’s a quote. That’s from page 135. That’s what caused the what caused the accident. Had it not been for that unstable glaciolacustrine layer, we wouldn’t have had the accident on August 4, 2014. That’s what the panel said.

The member is, I think, quite correct to point out that the panel also indicated there were other issues in terms of the management of that tailings storage facility that they think regulators ought to be looking at. The Canadian dam safety association should be considering whether it should change its policy guidelines, etc. We don’t disagree that there are other issues around the management of tailings at B.C. mines, but I will continue, where necessary today, to remind everyone that the cause of the accident was the unknown unstable layer beneath the perimeter dam.

Just to finish that part of my answer, there are various places in the report where the panel actually very specifically states that the panel found that “inspections of the TSF would not have prevented the failure.” That’s on page 116. The panel found that the regulatory staff are “well qualified to perform their responsibilities.” The performance of the regulator was as expected. That’s page 116.

“The panel has found no evidence of failure due to overtopping prior to the breach development.” That’s on page 11. The panel “did not find evidence that the breach was caused by piping or cracking resulting in uncontrolled internal erosion.” That’s page 12.

It’s clear what the cause of the accident was, and it’s clear what it wasn’t. If the member wants to focus on now on what else we can learn from that accident, that is totally consistent with what I as the minister have been doing since August 4, 2014, and I’m happy to do that.

In terms of what we have done so far to ensure that we do not encounter the kind of situation that occurred at Mount Polley, first of all, we decided that we would tell all companies with tailing facilities in the province that when they got their annual dam safety inspection done, it would be due on December 1, 2014, as opposed to when it ordinarily have been due to the ministry — in some cases many months after that. So you have to have it done by December 1, 2014.

Secondly, even though it is an independent inspection of your dam, you have to hire an independent engineering firm which is not associated with your company or your facility to oversee the work that was done in the independent inspection. That was the very first thing, I think, that we did to make sure that that annual inspection was done quickly, that we got the results of that and that the work and the results of that annual inspection were overseen, scrutinized, by independent engineers.

Subsequent to that, we sent a letter out early in the new year to all companies that have tailings storage facilities, telling them that we expected them to assess their tailings storage facility — their dam, in particular — to determine whether they might have similar soils to what existed at Mount Polley under their dam. They could do that, largely, by investigating and assessing records from the time that the facility was built.

If they needed to go out and do additional drilling to make that determination, they were to do that as well. And then they were to report back to the ministry and tell the ministry: “Yes, we have that kind of glaciolacustrine materials about the site” or “No, we don’t.”

[1125]

If they do have it, they are confident, based on what’s done in terms of investigation before the dam was designed, and based on the construction and maintenance of the dam that there’s no potential dam that there is no potential for the kind of breach that occurred at Mount Polley.

I’ll tell the member when we expect to hear back from all of them. We expect to hear back from every company that has a tailing storage facility by June 30, 2015.
[ Page 7292 ]

One other thing that we’ve done, a third thing that we have done since the report came out January 29 or 30 of 2015, is that we have adopted one of the recommendations of the panel that mines of a certain size ought to have an independent engineering panel overseeing the engineers who are working on the….I’m going to call it the TSF. It’s going to be a long day if I say “tailing storage facility” every time.

The engineering people, the engineer of record. Now, in most cases that’s an independent engineering firm because our mining companies in B.C. tend to be relatively small. They have some engineers, but often their engineer of record is an independent engineering company.

What we have said is: “Yes, you have your engineer of record. You are going to need to adopt what is an emerging best practice of having a separate panel of engineers oversee the work of your engineer of record.” That was recommended by the independent panel. It’s something that we could agree to do and do quickly, so that’s been done. All the companies have been apprised by letter that they must do that.

I think it’s fair for me to mention that many, if not most, of the proposed mines, mines under development, already had adopted that best practice in the province, and many of the operating mines had also already adopted that practice. Not all of them. Companies like Teck had. But some of the other companies had as well.

So all companies of a certain size will now have to have that independent panel of engineers, just watching over the work that the engineer of record does. Those are the things that we’ve done.

The member referenced Copper Mountain and also referenced the panel’s statement of how many TSF breaches there are. I think…. I can’t remember the numbers, but it was a surprisingly large number of breaches that happened over a ten-year period.

I think it is fair and accurate to just point out that my ministry actually gave the panel that information. That’s where they got that information. They came in, and we allowed them to sort through all the documentation that we have.

When they talk about…. Was it two for every ten years?

Interjection.

Hon. B. Bennett: You know, if the number was two every ten years, what they’re talking about is any escape of water or tailings from a TSF. We’re not talking Mount Polleys. Mount Polley has happened once in the history of this province. There’s never been anything as catastrophic, even close to as catastrophic, as what happened at Mount Polley that we’re aware of, certainly.

I can’t promise you that 150 years ago something like that didn’t happen, but we cannot find any evidence that it’s ever happened at that scale before. However, any release of tailings captures many incidents on mine sites across not only B.C. but around the world and in every province in the country. So when they say that that number of breaches are there, on average, they’re not talking about Mount Polleys.

I don’t say this in defence. I’m quite comfortable with the work that the ministry does and how we’re responding to this accident. But I think it’s important for the public to know, particularly people who live around mines and First Nations communities, that they were not referring to a Mount Polley–type accident happening twice every ten years.

N. Macdonald: I think the minister and I agree on a few things. I think we don’t want to go back and forth picking out quotes as to who’s to blame. I think the process is…. It will come across like applying blame, but the process is to get to a place where we can act with confidence that the Mount Polley disaster is not repeated. I think we both share that interest.

[1130]

Specifically, if the minister can come back to the two cases that we have. It might be time for the minister to go on record with the explanation as to what is involved in terms of looking at this particular layer, because it’s not simply a case of the mines drilling in and having a look. There are particular things that this report did with that layer to identify it, and there is a cost to that and a complexity, I think, to that work.

There are two mines that I referenced — Copper Mountain and Kemess South. They both know, through the process that the ministry has put them through recently, that they have issues. I can’t speak for Kemess South, but I know Copper Mountain…. I know where that sits. I know that it sits on top of the Similkameen River. I think below it there is a mushroom factory. This is a high-risk dam. They have an identified layer.

Can the minister just lay out the process that the company is required to go through and how the Ministry of Energy and Mines knows that that is going to be completed in a timely manner?

Hon. B. Bennett: The member and I had a brief discussion about this the other day, and it is, I think, worth putting on the record. Everything I know about this comes from those three experts in the panel report. And I’m going to say “apparently,” because I don’t profess to understand this as well as several people in the room here.

Apparently, this glaciolacustrine layer level of clay and silts in some cases has the potential to change its character under what they call loading. If there is weight put on that layer, it is like a sponge. It can be compressed. This glaciolacustrine material was, of course, compressed during the ice age, and then as the ice receded, the sponge got thicker without that weight, without that pressure and compression.
[ Page 7293 ]

When you put a lot of weight on top of those materials, again, in the form of a dam, a large amount of tailings — 20 years of mine tailings — and a large quantity of water, you are loading up those materials again and starting to approach the weight that they once had in the past.

Apparently, I am advised directly by the panel, some of that GLU — glaciolacustrine unit — actually has a memory, and when it is loaded up or compressed to the point that it was in its past, there is a trigger for some of that material. That material can become slick. It can become the banana peel.

In order to determine whether that particular GLU has that kind of characteristic, which would actually change under weight, there has to be certainly a full understanding by the geotechnical engineer of record. There also, as I understand it, has to be some laboratory testing.

I think the panel even said it had to be advanced laboratory testing to make the determination about whether the GLU has those kinds of inherent unpredictable characteristics — or actually, not unpredictable, apparently predictable, characteristics — so that it changes and becomes more slick under weight.

So we ask all of the companies that have tailings facilities out there to tell us: “Do you have glaciolacustrine materials on your site, close by to your TSF? Do you have any under the foundation of your dams?”

[1135]

We would also expect them to report back to us, if they do, that their engineer of record has done the appropriate kind of analysis to determine whether, in fact, the glaciolacustrine material at their site has this characteristic of changing under weight.

We would expect to hear back from all of these companies that that work has been done. They would have to search their records, I would assume, very, very carefully and go back all the way to the beginning, when the site was being investigated.

If you look at the independent panel report, there’s a page that shows the number of holes that were drilled. In the preliminary investigation of the site which leads to the design of the dam, there were a number of holes drilled around and under where the perimeter embankment went. Unfortunately, none of them went deep enough to reach this particular GLU, and, according to the panel, that’s how it was missed.

All of the companies that have TSFs in the province are going to have to use engineers to make a determination as to whether that same lack of investigation, that same mistake, could potentially have been made when their TSFs were built.

The final thing that I should say, in the interests of a full understanding of this…. It is not the fact that you have GLUs or glasciolacustrine materials on your site that is really the danger point. It is the fact that you need to understand where they are, whether they’re under your foundation, whether they have that characteristic I spoke of a minute ago where they change under loading, and the response to that knowledge.

The perimeter embankment at Mount Polley, as I understand it, having read the panel report, could have been designed differently to sit on top of that unstable layer of clay and never breach. We never would have had the accident if the dam had been designed to sit on top of an unstable layer. Unfortunately, they didn’t know the unstable layer was there. They didn’t design it for that. They designed it to sit on stable ground, which goes to the member’s comments about steepness, about the amount of water, all of those kinds of things. Had they known that the layer was unstable, they would have designed the dam differently.

N. Macdonald: Thank you for the answer. I think it’s a very good explanation, one that the minister shared with me before. I think it is important to get that on the record.

Not to jump on the minister’s words, because I don’t think that’s fair, but the minister repeatedly said that the ministry had an expectation. It will be part of the line of questioning that the minister will see because what I want to understand is…. There is a public interest, and the minister will have an interest and a responsibility that will at times conflict with what the mining company may want to do, right? That’s part of what I want to understand from the minister: how do you get companies to do things that come at a cost?

The process that the minister described involved laboratory work. There is a cost. There is a cost that perhaps the mining company is not interested in taking on but that the minister expects them to do. So how do you move from an expectation? In the report we see examples again and again of a ministry expectation that didn’t move into any action from the company. That’s part of what I want to understand.

We’ll stay with Similco for a second just to understand historically — to get some sense of what happened. Just to sit with Copper Mountain, which was called Similco…. In August 2007 the Copper Mountain mine, then called Similco, had a waste rock slide from their mine that led to tailings in the Similkameen River. About 35,000 tonnes of waste rock were involved. I don’t think most of that went in the river, but that was the shift, I understand, that took place.

Clearly, the ministry would not want that to be repeated, and the question I have is: what penalty, what fine, what directive was given to that organization, to that company, to the management, so that they would improve their management of waste rock in the riparian zone? I just want to get a sense of what tools the minister has and uses to change behavior that is clearly not in the public interest.

[1140]

I think at that time for sure there was a mushroom plant beneath the area where the slump took place. It
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went into the Similkameen River. The Americans complained about it.

How do you change behavior in that example, which is historical? You can give examples of what you used. Then, more broadly, how do you get companies to do things further than simply expecting them to do them? How do you make sure that the work that you expect to see done in Kemess South and Copper Mountain is done in a timely way, so that in June, if that’s what you’ve set as an expectation, it’s there on your desk, ready to be interpreted, no questions asked?

How does the minister do that, and historically, where are the examples to show what has been done?

Hon. B. Bennett: Of course, the minister sits at the desk where the buck stops, and I’ve always accepted that. In terms of decisions that are made by the ministry, certainly with respect to permitting but also with respect to health and safety…. The decisions, the work that’s done, is done by people who have legislated authority to make decisions — statutory decision-makers.

There was a decision made many, many years ago, long before the B.C. Liberals were around, that a lot of the decision-making in a ministry like Energy and Mines ought to be done by people who are not politicians. I can tell the member that that can be frustrating, because the public always assumes everything goes to the minister’s desk, and it depends on how you feel that day as to whether you say yes or no. Of course, that isn’t the way it works. You are advised as a minister how the decision went and that it’s made by a statutory decision-maker.

I just say that because there is, I think, sometimes this misperception that ministers decide all of these things.

How do you enforce the rules? It’s a good question. We enforce the rules by carrot and stick may be the best way to put it. Our inspectors are out all the time working with companies. If there is something that an inspector sees with respect to health and safety, they have the option of issuing an order under the legislation, a health and safety order or an environmental order.

In 2013, the last year that I have stats for, there were 2,106 orders given by the ministry, so it is quite regular that orders are issued.

If you encounter the bad actor — I think that’s where the member is focusing the question — and you have issued a number of orders and they do not comply, then the statutory decision-maker has the authority to issue an order that the mine actually be shut down. I can give the member examples of where we’ve actually done that. We shut a mine down in 2014, for example, because they were not achieving the goals that were set by these orders.

That’s how it’s done. You issue an order. You monitor to make sure the company is doing what it’s supposed to do. If they don’t do it, which is extremely rare, you have the option of shutting them down. Of course, the inspector — oftentimes geotechnical engineers, other people with a lot of technical training — will make the assessment as to the risk to the public, the risk to workers, the risk to public health, public safety. They’ll make the assessment as to whether the non-compliance warrants shutting the mine down or not.

The Chair: Member, noting the hour.

N. Macdonald: I think we can sneak in another one — the minister has been really quick on this — if he doesn’t mind.

There are a couple of things. Just in looking through the orders, most of that number would, of course, be very minor things. I think we’ve seen where it’s as minor as fixing a door. The vast majority of those sorts of orders that the minister is talking about relate to those sorts of things.

[1145]

The real nub of what we see in the report is serious, big issues that are serious costs to the mine, where we have repeated attempts or communications from the ministry trying to change behavior, and it doesn’t seem to. I guess the question then…. I talked about the 2009 Similco and the threat that ultimately, if a mine doesn’t go along with what the ministry is telling them and the minister wants them to do, then there is the shutdown possibility. Of course, at that time Similco was shut down, right? It wasn’t operating.

I guess to broaden it, are there fines that are available to the minister? Underneath any sort of conversation, any attempt to persuade, the carrot-and-stick approach still needs the stick. That’s what I want to get a sense of.

I assume that if the staff does not provide an example of any penalty for the 2009 incident, where the Similkameen River had waste go into it and a movement — not insignificant — of 35,000 tonnes of material that shouldn’t have moved…. If the ministry cannot provide a penalty, then one did not take place.

We’ve talked about the glaciolacustrine layer. That’s one that is an unknown. Let’s talk about things that are very, very well known.

I wanted to turn to the first theme, which is related to the beach that engineers build on the inside of the TSF, the tailings storage facility dams. These are, as the image suggests from the term “beach,” a gradual, above-water slope on the inside of the dam wall that separates the water from the actual dam.

If there had been a proper beach in the area that Mount Polley failed then, the panel states it would not have failed. A proper beach was a design requirement of the Mount Polley tailings storage facility. While it did slip and fell 3.3 metres, if the beach that was required and should have been there was there, we would not have had the massive failure that we saw.

The 2006 safety review of Mount Polley cited on page 62…. This is on page 62 of the report. It noted the lack of a tailings placement strategy had impeded the systematic
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development of a tailings beach for a very long time in 2006. So in 2006 they’re saying it’s a long time.

They called the lack of such a beach a “deficiency,” noting that the dam had not been designed as a water dam. But Mount Polley was, subsequent to this, allowed to become a water dam, with ten million cubic metres of water ultimately stored. Without the water, we do not have the situation we now have, and with a beach that was properly built, we also would not have had the failures.

I guess the question comes: did the Ministry of Energy and Mines review that 2006 dam safety report?

The Chair: Minister, and noting the hour.

Hon. B. Bennett: We’ll come back to this. This is an interesting and complex part of the discussion about Mount Polley.

What I’ll say before lunch is that the question of whether the mining company and its engineer of record were in compliance in relation to the things the member mentioned — the steepness of the dam, the lack of the beaches, the situation with abutments…. That question was not determined by the panel but will be determined by the two investigations that are ongoing today.

I can’t say during these estimates that the company was in compliance with respect to those particular items. That will be determined by these other investigations. I can say that the panel makes it really clear that none of those things caused the accident. But we will have to wait and find out whether in fact the company was in compliance.

[1150]

I can tell the member a couple of things. One is that there was water lapping up against the dam continuously in the 1990s right up to the year 2000. I say that because the panel actually has a quotation in there where they say that.

I can also say to the member that MEM, based on what I read in the panel report, asked all the right questions over the years, from the time that the NDP were in power to the time that the B.C. Liberals were in power, which is why I have not made this a political discussion. It really shouldn’t be. The staff of MEM asked all the right questions.

If you read the report, you will see how the engineer of record responded. It’s distressing, frankly, to read that our government engineers were asking: “Are you sure there isn’t that kind of a GLU in play here? Does the steepness of your design actually mean that this TSF is safe, based on all of the engineering principles that are applied?” “Yes, it is. Yes, we are sure.”

There’s a lot of interesting commentary within the report about how, ultimately, as many good questions as you can ask, as much as you hold people’s feet to the fire as the regulator, you are reliant on the engineer of record to tell you the truth and to be accurate about that.

The panel states that the regulator can’t be the engineer of record. If the regulator suddenly decides to tell a mining company how they’re going to build that dam, they turn from being the regulator to the engineer of record. They have actually usurped their own position. So there is a lot of reliance on the engineer of record, and that’s not something new, frankly. That’s not some B.C. Liberal policy that just started under Gordon Campbell in 2001. That’s a long-standing approach to how we build things in the world.

Noting the time, hon. Chair, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 11:52 a.m.

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