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 23, 2015

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 24, Number 3

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

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015

The House met at 1:32 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

D. Barnett: It is my privilege and honour today to introduce British Columbia’s first rural advisory council members. We have a council from all across the province of British Columbia here today to help government put together long-term ideas, work on policy issues and other things for the betterment of rural British Columbia.

If you’ll bear with me, Madame Speaker, I have quite a list.

I have Debbie Arnott from Cache Creek, Susan Clovechok from Fairmont Hot Springs, Geri Collins from Kamloops, Tom Hoffman from Williams Lake, Bill Holmberg from Houston, Chief Roy Jones Jr. from Skidegate, Sue Kenny from Dawson Creek, Jonathan Lok from Port McNeill, Grace McGregor from Christina Lake, David Pernarowski from Terrace, Chris Pieper from Armstrong, Sylvia Pranger from Agassiz, Gary Thiessen from Vanderhoof and Eric — or Rick — Thompson from McBride, B.C. I’d ask the House to welcome them and wish them well in all their deliberations.

D. Eby: Today in the Legislature — not here but in the precinct — we have students and a teacher from St. Augustine School in my constituency. Ms. O’Hara is ably leading a group of 36 grades 7 and 8 students coming to learn about the Legislature and what we do here in B.C. politics. I’m very excited to have them here, and I look forward to meeting them later on this afternoon.

D. Donaldson: Well, I, too, would like to welcome some of the members of the committee introduced by the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin. Bill Holmberg, Dave Pernarowski and Gary Thiessen I’ve worked with on both the regional district of Bulkley-Nechako and the regional district of Kitimat-Stikine.

Welcome to the Legislature. It’s very good to see some familiar faces in the gallery today.

Hon. S. Bond: I ran, so forgive me for my more winded introduction.

[1335]

First of all, I’m very, very delighted to be able to introduce someone from my part of the province, a fantastic advocate for the Robson Valley. I’m very thrilled to know that he will be part of the rural advisory group. I want to welcome and introduce Rick Thompson, who is representing the Robson Valley.

Orders of the Day

Hon. J. Rustad: In the main chamber here I call the continued committee stage for Bill 27. And in the little House I call the continued estimates of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. At 4 p.m. that’ll switch to the estimates of the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 27 — LIQUOR CONTROL
AND LICENSING ACT

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 27; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 1:37 p.m.

On section 2 (continued).

D. Eby: Before the break we heard the minister say that she intended section 2 to apply to home brewing, but there’s nothing in the section that limits it to home brewing.

Certainly, under the Interpretation Act, a “person” can include a company. Just for clarity, as the act reads right now…. If the minister wants to amend it, that’s what we’re here for. But I would discourage her from doing that, because I think it reads very well.

I think it says that if you run a business, making equipment, and you want to do R and D and create a batch of beer and see how your equipment works, you don’t need a licence from the government to do that. Why would you need a licence from the government to do that?

I just want to clarify that as the act reads right now, that kind of behaviour would not be caught, would not require a licence.

[1340]

Hon. S. Anton: Section 2(a) is very similar to the former section 55(2). The purpose of the section is to deal with manufacturing for personal consumption — for example, homemade wine, homemade beer. The kind of function that the member opposite is talking about is more properly determined or permitted under section 11.

D. Eby: We have an industry in British Columbia that is growing rapidly and that is internationally successful, manufacturing equipment for craft brewers around the world. They want to test their equipment to see if it works, to do R and D to make their equipment work better. It seems very clear to me that section 2(a) says that they don’t need a licence to do that — but not just section 2(a). Common sense says that.
[ Page 7586 ]

I sent the minister a letter about this. I raised it in the briefing. This is not a surprise that I’m asking about this. I’m just looking for a clear answer. I know what the intent of this section is. The minister has made clear what the intent is. It’s too bad the intent is not to help these B.C. manufacturing businesses, but whatever. The section, as it reads….

Can she confirm whether or not they’re required to have a licence? On plain reading, they’re not required to have a licence. They’d like that clarity. Can the minister provide that to this House before we vote on it?

[1345]

Hon. S. Anton: For the purpose that the member opposite is referring to, that does fall under section 11, which permits regulations allowing “consumption, use, sale, service, purchase or manufacture of liquor without a licence or permit, by prescribed persons or entities for prescribed purposes.”

D. Eby: I’m sorry to say that I didn’t hear an answer there about section 2, but those are all of my questions on section 2, and I’m prepared to go to section 9 on this.

Sections 2 to 8 inclusive approved.

On section 9.

D. Eby: I’m sure the minister will recall that there was a public inquiry in British Columbia called the Frank Paul inquiry. It was an inquiry into the death of an urban aboriginal man who was a chronic alcoholic. He drank non-beverage alcohol, mostly rice wine. Non-beverage alcohol, for many people, can be anything from hairspray to hand sanitizer to mouthwash to rice wine. Frank Paul’s beverage of choice was rice wine.

One of the core recommendations out of that public inquiry was that there should be a managed alcohol program for chronic alcoholics in a situation like Frank Paul. There are a number of these programs in Ontario. Section 9 appears to contemplate that there could be such a program in B.C. under the act as proposed.

Am I correct in my understanding of the sections here, as set out, that the minister has created a situation here, with the ability to serve alcohol in a community care facility and assisted living residence or hospital, where a managed alcohol program could take place as a harm reduction measure for people engaging in these kinds of activities?

[1350]

Hon. S. Anton: There are two parts to this answer. The first part reverts back to subsection 2(c), which says nothing prevents “a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner from providing liquor or a preparation containing liquor for medical purposes if allowed to do so in the scope of practice of his or her profession.”

Secondly, section 9. I don’t know what kind of residence might be contemplated by the member opposite, but there are three sets of terms here — “assisted living residence,” “community care facility” and “hospital” — and they’re defined. I think that in the situation the member is contemplating, if it was one of those kinds of facilities, then it may be permitted under section 9.

Let me give a more general answer. It wouldn’t be the goal of the structure of the Liquor Control and Licensing Act to stand in the way of a perfectly good program. Generally, somebody running that program would probably want to just come and talk to the branch and find out the best way of making sure it was properly licensed.

D. Eby: That concludes my questions on that section.

Sections 9 and 10 approved.

On section 11.

D. Eby: This is the section that the minister referred me to in relation to my questions about manufacturers of brewing equipment, whether for wine or beer, and their ability to test that equipment, to demonstrate it working to potential customers, to do quality control, to do research and development. I have to admit that I don’t see in this section any mention of manufacturers. I see a regulation-making power. Can the minister explain why I don’t read anything about manufacturers here? This is the section she’s referred to me repeatedly about manufacturers.

D. McRae: I’d like to seek leave to make an introduction, if I may.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

D. McRae: In the galleries today we have above us a contingent of students from the Comox Valley. There are approximately 50 students from Brooklyn Elementary attending in the galleries today, accompanied by their teacher, Caroline Parrish. Would the Legislature please make them welcome.

[1355]

Debate Continued

Hon. S. Anton: The microbrewing industry and the brewing of beer is obviously a very active industry in British Columbia over the last few years and, of course, very welcome by everyone, I think it is safe to say.

Just to remind the member that the purpose of this act is to regulate alcohol but not to regulate manufacturing
[ Page 7587 ]
equipment, which is why section 11 refers to the manufacture of liquor. It doesn’t refer to manufacturing equipment, because that’s not our role in this act. But, certainly, the goal of this section is to accommodate the kinds of circumstances that the member mentions.

Some other kinds of things that could be covered in this section include auctioning of small quantities of liquor by charitable organizations, purchase of ethyl alcohol by pharmacists, consumption of liquor in a church for religious purposes — I think that’s probably been going on for quite a few years; I certainly remember it from my childhood — and then also flexibility to accommodate unlicensed uses of small indoor family events, sale of liquor without a permit and in a residence for small family events, and so on.

One other is manufacture of liquor without a licence for research and development purposes or by an educational provider — for example, doing a course on brewing.

D. Eby: I heard the minister read from a list. It’s not in section 11, and I wonder: is that in a regulation that we can reasonably expect to see soon under this section?

Hon. S. Anton: The auctioning, the ethyl alcohol, the church use — those are all current uses. In fact, they’re currently in the act, and the intention is to place them in the regulations. The other things I mention are not currently in regulations. Obviously, we’re interested in them. I don’t want to promise that they’ll come, because that’s up to cabinet, but, clearly, it’s something that government is interested in.

Sections 11 and 12 approved.

On section 13.

D. Eby: Section 13(2) provides a fairly remarkable set of powers for the general manager, in particular if you apply for a liquor licence in B.C. This section says: “…the general manager may make inquiries and conduct investigations, including, without limitation, background investigations and criminal record checks, that the general manager considers are or may be necessary….”

Can the minister explain why such an incredibly broad investigation and background-check power, without any apparent restriction — in fact, explicitly the opposite: without limitation — should be permitted simply because someone has applied for a liquor licence in British Columbia?

We’re talking about everything from talking to ex-girlfriends, former landlords…. Certainly, criminal record checks make a lot of sense. Check with the police, but without limitation? Can the minister explain this?

[1400]

Hon. S. Anton: Section 13 reflects current practices done, obviously, with the consent of the applicant. The current section 16 says the person must be fit and proper. In deciding whether they’re fit and proper, the general manager must consider convictions of the person, may consider administrative penalties, financial integrity and other factors the general manager believes are relevant. Those kinds of things were considered before and will continue to be considered under the new act.

Sections 13 and 14 approved.

On section 15.

A. Weaver: I have but one question on this bill. It’s a question that permeates a number of sections, but I’ll address it here in section 15. In comparing this and the earlier bill, I’m wondering to what extent and the reason why and what the ramifications are of including the words “without prior notice” in quite a number of places. In section 15 it appears in four places: (b), (c), (d) and (f). Those words were not there in the previous version of this bill. I’m wondering what the ramifications of them being included now are.

[1405]

Hon. S. Anton: There are two forms of notice. One is without notice, and one is with notice. They’re broken down in this way. Without notice, it’s something that applies to the entire industry all at once. With notice, it’s special to your licence.

Let me give you an example. We changed the terms of the liquor primary to allow a liquor-primary licence holder to get permission to allow kids, children, in up until ten o’clock at night. That was a change that affects all of the industry, although they had to make that second application. That was without notice.

With notice would be that there’s something you’re doing that the general manager wishes to address with you and you alone. That would be a with-notice provision.

Sections 15 to 37 inclusive approved.

On section 38.

D. Eby: This section relates to the ability of local government and First Nations to control activities within their jurisdiction, within their geographic jurisdiction. Section 38 reads really well, in my opinion. The challenge comes in where subsections (4) and (5) say: “Subject to section 39….”

Now, I’m picturing a scenario where a First Nation has said: “We don’t want to have this liquor licence in our territory.” Or I’m picturing a situation where a municipality says: “We don’t want to have this bar or this club open in this area of our city. We don’t want you to issue
[ Page 7588 ]
this licence.” Yet section 38 creates — and we’ll get on to section 39 — the possibility that the general manager of the Liquor Distribution Branch could overrule the First Nation or overrule the municipality based solely on the manager’s judgment that their recommendation is not in the public interest.

Well, I’d like to know why the minister has put this provision in place that would allow the general manager, an unelected person, to overrule a First Nation or a municipal government that does not want a liquor licence in their community.

[1410]

Hon. S. Anton: The interplay between 38 and 39 does reflect current practice. The point of subsections (4) and (5) is that if the local government or the local First Nation doesn’t do the work that it needs to do or it doesn’t do it properly in terms of assessing local views — the views of residents, for example — then the general manager can step in and perform that role.

D. Eby: Actually, that’ll conclude my questions on 38.

Section 38 approved.

On section 39.

D. Eby: I just heard the minister say that sections 38(4) and (5) related to the general manager stepping in and performing the role of a First Nation or municipality. On reading section 39 itself, 39(1)(a): “Despite section 38, if (a) the general manager is satisfied that…the recommendation of the local government or first nation is not in the public interest….” I’m not sure why it would have this wording if it had the meaning that the minister said.

Clearly, the general manager is allowed to decide that the recommendation of the elected local government or First Nations government is not in the public interest. That seems to me to be incredibly offensive to First Nations, certainly, and not particularly trusting of local governments.

Can the minister explain what the public policy reason is for undermining the judgment of First Nations or local governments that a licence is not in the public interest?

[1415]

Hon. S. Anton: The question is around sub 39(1)(a)(ii). I’ll just note, first of all, that that is in the current act, sub 11.2(1)(b), so it is a repeat from the earlier act. It is a safeguard provision. I was asking the helpful staff here, and it’s not something that is used terribly commonly. It’s a safeguard in case there was some very unusual decision made by a local government or a First Nation that was clearly not in the public interest.

Sections 39 to 41 inclusive approved.

On section 42.

D. Eby: Subsection 42(e) gives the general manager very broad power to demand identification at any licensed facility, of any patron of that facility. Now, I would have thought that this ability to demand ID would be limited to prove your age or perhaps, to phrase it differently, in the event that there was some belief that the person had actually committed an offence. That’s not a limitation that’s placed on this ability to demand ID from anybody in a licensed facility.

Can the minister explain why she thinks the general manager needs to be able to demand ID from anyone simply because they walk into a bar?

[1420]

Hon. S. Anton: This is a change that actually came in with the amendments from a year ago. The purpose here is that the licensee — or, presumably, an employee — can always ask a patron to produce identification, but prior to this section coming into force, the general manager, through the inspector, could not make that same request. In fact, if an inspector went into an establishment and wanted to ask someone for ID, they would actually have to go through the licensee. This gives the inspector the direct authority to make that request.

Sections 42 to 46 inclusive approved.

On section 47.

D. Eby: This section relates to alcohol that is being sold or held illegally that is seized by the government. I found it unusual that this section specifically didn’t permit the general manager to sell seized alcohol. There’s provision 47(6) that the “liquor and packages forfeited to the government under subsection (5) must be destroyed or otherwise disposed of as the general manager may direct.”

Does this section contemplate and would it permit the sale of liquor that is seized? I can picture a very valuable bottle of wine, for example, or even a large quantity of alcohol that’s perfectly serviceable. Why would we destroy it instead of selling it and getting a return for the taxpayer?

Hon. S. Anton: In subsection (6) “disposed” in that case does include the possibility of selling.

Sections 47 to 59 inclusive approved.

On section 60.

D. Eby: This section contemplates training and certification for people who sell or serve liquor or supervise the sale or service of liquor. Can the minister explain whether there are any significant changes in this section from the
[ Page 7589 ]
existing training requirements or any changes contemplated under this section or the anticipated regulations from the existing?

[1425]

Hon. S. Anton: Section 60 is more or less a repeat of the former section 13. There is a slight change in the first section, which used to be that the general manager couldn’t issue a licence unless the person had completed the prescribed training program — the one we have now, of course, being Serving It Right. Now the general manager can issue the licence, but the licensee cannot use that licence until they get the Serving It Right. So it’s just an ordering piece.

Sections 60 and 61 approved.

On section 62.

D. Eby: Section 62(2). When I read it, I was surprised to read it. I think it’s notorious in the bar industry and in clubs and so on that there are bar mats…. This section relates to tied houses and inducements. The section says that “a person must not offer, give or agree to offer or give to a licensee, a permittee or an employee” anything — money, gifts, reward or remuneration, directly or indirectly — “for promoting, inducing or furthering the sale of a particular kind, class or brand of liquor.”

I can picture little shot glasses on the side of a bottle of hard alcohol. I can picture bar mats, mugs, signs, stickers. There are all kinds of things, promotional product that liquor companies give out. This section is far too broad to catch what I think the true mischief is, which is somebody offering money or offering bonus alcohol or giving some kind of significant gift to somebody in return for only selling their products and excluding others.

Why has the minister made this section so broad that it captures activity that’s really banal and well accepted by both bars and the public — that there are these gifts of signs, bar mats, mugs and so on?

[1430]

Hon. S. Anton: Section 62(2) is virtually identical to the former section 45(1). I will observe that government has a fairly broad regulation-making authority in subsection (3).

[D. Horne in the chair.]

Sections 62 and 63 approved.

On section 64.

D. Eby: This section relates to advertising liquor. It says a person should not “advertise liquor or the availability of liquor except in accordance with the regulations.” I don’t understand why the minister has reserved this power for the regulations.

I can think of all kinds of things that should be in this section for us to debate in this House: certainly, advertising to youth; advisory labels, perhaps, of “Don’t consume alcoholic beverages when you’re pregnant” or “If you’re drinking more than 14 drinks a week, you’re doing your health some serious damage” and these kinds of things; whether government stores should be able to advertise. These are issues the public is interested in. Why has the minister reserved this whole section for the regulations?

Hon. S. Anton: The ability to advertise was previously gained through regulation, so that is not changing in the new section. I will observe that there used to be a definition of “advertise,” and we have taken that out of the proposed amended act. The reason to put it in the regulation is because rules around advertising are something that it’s good to have flexibility on. It’s certainly government’s preference to contain that in a regulation.

Sections 64 to 72 inclusive approved.

On section 73.

D. Eby: Section 73 — well, the section I’m interested in — relates to municipalities or regional districts being able to designate areas where a person could be in a public place and consume or possess liquor in an open container.

[1435]

Subsection (2) appears to suffer from the same malady as the other section I raised, which is that there’s very little trust in municipalities. It seems to set up the possibility for regulations that would restrict the ability of municipalities to set these rules. If I’ve misunderstood, perhaps the minister can clarify. But why is the minister restricting municipalities in their ability to set these rules by creating a regulatory power that could rein that in?

Hon. S. Anton: This is similar to the former section 40. Although, actually, section 40 was slightly more restrictive because it allowed a municipality to designate a beach, a park, a campground as a place where liquor might be consumed. But that was subject to the terms and conditions approved by the general manager.

Now it is subject to sub (3), and the regulations may be designated, etc. The reason to allow the ability to regulate is simply a reflection of the fact, which is fundamental to this whole act, that liquor is fundamentally a provincial responsibility, and ultimately the province does need to have the authority, if necessary, to be exercised in such cases.

Section 73 approved.

On section 74.
[ Page 7590 ]

D. Eby: This section is an incredibly important one. It relates to the powers of police to arrest somebody who is in a state of intoxication in a public place, take them to jail without a warrant and hold them until they can be safely released. I was surprised to see that this language was very similar to the previous act, given that the technology has shifted so radically around being able to determine whether someone is intoxicated.

If we want to take away someone’s licence or if we want to stop them from driving, they have the right to a breathalyzer test. But this section contemplates that we could actually put somebody in jail without any breathalyzer test, without any indication other than the judgment of the peace officer that they’re intoxicated.

I can certainly tell this House, through experience with a number of people who filed complaints and provided me with copies of those in my previous life, that there was a lot of concern that people — and obviously, they have been drinking; their judgment’s impaired — felt that they weren’t intoxicated when they were arrested. They wanted the ability to have a breathalyzer test when they were arrested for being intoxicated in a public place.

I can think of several cases, off the top of my head, where this would have prevented police complaints. It would have prevented litigation. People think they’re not drunk, and then they blow in the breathalyzer, and they’re 0.13.

Why is it that there’s no section here that says if a person asks for a breathalyzer they should be given that, and they shouldn’t be arrested if they’re under a certain level? We do it for driving. Certainly we should consider doing it for taking someone’s liberty away, putting them in jail.

[1440]

Hon. S. Anton: This section is virtually identical to the previous section 41. It is something that has been in place for some time. It is common across most of Canada. I think we just have to remember that a peace officer has the obligation of acting in good faith, and it is assumed that they will do so.

Sections 74 to 76 inclusive approved.

On section 77.

D. Eby: Section 77 is dealing with supplying liquor to minors. Again on the issue of advertising, why is there not a prohibition on advertising liquor to minors in this act?

Hon. S. Anton: The rules around advertising directed at minors — that option is available under the regulations. In fact, under section 64(2) we “may adopt by reference a code, standard or rule enacted as or under a law of Canada.” In fact, the regulations now currently do refer to a CRTC code.

Sections 77 to 80 inclusive approved.

On section 81.

[1445]

D. Eby: Section 81(1)(a) allows the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, which is cabinet, the ability to make regulations “conferring additional powers and duties on the general manager.” Surely, the minister recognizes that this open-ended, unlimited power to make regulations giving additional powers and duties to the general manager has no place in this legislation. It should come to this House. It should be debated, and it should be discussed. Cabinet should not have an unfettered, unending authority to confer additional powers and duties on the general manager.

Can she explain why she feels the cabinet needs this authority to circumvent this place?

Hon. S. Anton: Sub (a) is currently in the act under section 84(2)(l). Sub (b) is new last year and carried over. It was 84(2)(l.1) and is now carried forward into this new act. Subsection (a) is limited because the regulations conferring additional powers and duties must, of course, be within the scope of the act itself.

D. Eby: I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Scott and Ms. Vale for their assistance to the minister. I’ve reached the end of my questions. This side of the House will be supporting this bill. If the minister has doubt about that, she can certainly call division on it.

We support the modernization of the act. It was a significant piece of work. Despite the concerns that I’ve noted during this section, I just wanted to congratulate those public servants that were involved in that significant task. We certainly support the modernization of the act and a number of the reforms that have come along. I think we’ve been pretty clear about what reforms we don’t support that this minister has brought forward.

One more time I would like to thank the public servants involved in this particular piece of legislation and their writing of it and their assistance to the minister. I’d like to thank the minister for her answers this afternoon as well.

Sections 81 to 122 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

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

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 2:50 p.m.
[ Page 7591 ]

The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 27 — LIQUOR CONTROL
AND LICENSING ACT

Bill 27, Liquor Control and Licensing Act, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. T. Lake: I now call second reading of Bill 23, intituled the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2015.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 23 — MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

Hon. S. Anton: I move that Bill 23, the Miscellaneous Statute Amendment Act, 2015, now be read a second time.

Bill 23 amends a number of statutes. Amendments to the Employment and Assistance Act and the Employment and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Act repeal sanctions for individuals who are the subject of Criminal Code or provincial offence convictions or civil court judgments for debt in relation to obtaining assistance for which they are not eligible. These amendments will allow government to recover fraud-related debts through minimum repayments to be established in regulation.

Amendments to the Liquor Distribution Act will provide for B.C. liquor stores to operate under certain rules available for other liquor retailers. These changes will clarify and simplify administrative processes in the statute. This removes outdated provisions respecting advertising and purchasing liquor products by B.C. liquor stores, as well as simplifies how government store operating hours are set. Together, these changes will help to continue modernizing the B.C. liquor industry in response to B.C.’s liquor policy review.

An amendment is being made to the Local Government Act to enable the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to provide municipal reclassification in exceptional circumstances. A second, consequential amendment is being made to update the name of the Motor Carrier Act to the Passenger Transportation Act.

Amendments to the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act will validate the reclassification of the corporation of the district of Maple Ridge as a city. The legislation will also confirm that any actions and proceedings which have occurred since the reclassification, and before the legislation is passed, are valid.

Pacific NorthWest LNG and the district of Port Edward have negotiated a mutually beneficial and unique tax agreement. The Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act will be amended to allow the district of Port Edward to enter into a 25-year tax agreement with the certainty that the agreement will not be invalidated in the future.

[1455]

The Maa-nulth First Nations Final Agreement Act amendment will provide the Provincial Court with the authority to issue and enforce orders related to prosecutions under Maa-nulth laws enacted in accordance with Maa-nulth foreshore agreements. The orders referred to under this amendment are in respect of payment for damages, costs associated with an investigation and prosecution or a declaration prohibiting or ordering specific actions.

Maa-nulth foreshore agreements are side agreements to the Maa-nulth final agreement where the province delegates local government law-making authority to Maa-nulth over foreshore areas fronting their treaty lands. The amendment is equivalent to provisions set out in the Community Charter and Local Government Act.

Amendments to the Natural Products Marketing (BC) Act enable marketing boards and commissions to require participation in biosecurity programs and insurance programs and imply an administrative penalty for failure to comply with requirements of biosecurity programs. Enabling marketing boards and commissions to require that producers have biosecurity programs insurance helps to ensure the continued economic viability of the regulated commodity sectors and minimal interruption of the production cycle in the event of major disease or disaster.

The proposed amendments to the Oil and Gas Activities Act increase regulatory certainty for oil and gas value-added facilities by appointing the Oil and Gas Commission as the agency responsible for overseeing their construction and operation. This streamlined process is designed to attract new investment for value-added production and facilitate economic growth.

The proposed amendments to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act will allow the province to enter into long-term royalty agreements with natural gas producers. These agreements will specify the royalty rates owed to the province by a producer. With this certainty, industry can plan their operations over a longer period of time and commit capital to jobs and production needs. In return, the province will have a guaranteed royalty rate each year, as well as incremental investment, jobs and economic activity.

Amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act give veterinarians authority to destroy an animal or have it destroyed where the animal is in critical distress and provide statutory protection from legal proceedings for veterinarians who make such decisions. Without this amendment, an animal in critical distress may suffer
[ Page 7592 ]
until an agent of the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals can be located to authorize destruction. This amendment is supported both by the College of Veterinarians of B.C. and the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The proposed amendment to the 1989 Provincial Symbols and Honours Act establishes a medal of good citizenship, recognizing British Columbians who have acted in a particularly generous, kind or self-sacrificing manner for the common good without expectation of reward. This amendment encourages the virtue of good citizenship and ensures that individuals whose lives and actions exemplify this virtue can be recognized by the province.

Amendments to the Public Agency Accommodation Act will streamline the process for ministers who wish to transfer land to the Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services for the purpose of disposal. Under current legislation, the process for transferring land is cumbersome and requires the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations to act as an intermediary. The amendments will relieve the FLNRO of this administrative burden, allowing any minister to transfer the administration of land directly to the Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services.

The proposed amendments to the Queen’s Printer Act will support government’s decision to enable the private sector to deliver printing production services which are currently delivered by the Queen’s Printer. At the same time, the proposed changes will provide the necessary legal framework to enable government to continue to manage and control the outsource printing of these materials. The shift modernizes government’s printing model and will expand opportunities for small-to medium-sized businesses in the industry.

The Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters Act, the SAFER program, provides cash assistance to eligible B.C. residents who are age 60 or over and who pay rent for their home. By repealing the Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters Act in this bill, we are strengthening the SAFER program and eliminating unnecessary red tape. The act sets out the guidelines for rental assistance for seniors. However, B.C. Housing already has its own regulation authorizing it to administer rent supplement programs. It does not require a stand-alone act to administer SAFER.

Repealing the act makes it easier to manage the SAFER program and to respond to clients’ needs. The legislation is an administrative change ensuring that all payments have been properly authorized. These changes do not affect the benefits for seniors or how the program is operated. Benefits will continue to be calculated through administrative policy.

[1500]

And finally, Bill 23 also makes transitional provisions, validation and confirmation provisions, a consequential amendment, as well as housekeeping corrections and amendments.

L. Krog: Misc bills. We get at least a few every session, and it’s always fun.

For the benefit of those watching in the gallery today — the young people, in particular — this is the situation where in the Legislature the government is not going to introduce separate bills with a whole series of small matters. They’re dealt with during the course of a miscellaneous statutes amendment act. Every session we do see a couple.

A number of my colleagues are going to speak to the various areas that fall very specifically to their critic role, but there are a few things I want to say about some of this bill, particularly around the Natural Products Marketing Act amendments. What that demonstrates quite clearly is that the government…. In the summer of 2014, when we had an outbreak of avian flu, 250,000 birds were killed. The disease paralyzed some 11 farms, while producers were left with no insurance. The government was caught off guard.

So here we are in 2015 trying to make up for lost time by introducing these amendments, which are extremely important. It recognizes the problems associated with the spread of disease amongst animals and the kinds of conditions in which they’re raised for human consumption. One would have hoped that the government would have been prepared for this problem, but it’s not untypical for governments not to be prepared, notwithstanding the warnings that they may receive from public servants doing their job and trying to ensure that governments are ahead of the game instead of behind.

These amendments will allow avian producers access to the insurance that they would otherwise not have had. Of course, that is, to use the old cliché, pretty cold comfort now for those 11 farms who were left with no insurance and faced significant loss in the circumstances. It’s too bad that it took that kind of disaster for the government to move and take some steps that would actually protect agriculture.

As I’ve reminded the members of this chamber many, many times, there are four wonderful ceiling murals outside in the rotunda, and one of them is devoted to agriculture. To quote one of the former Liberal members who retired from this chamber some years ago, “We have to eat to live,” or words to that effect.

Interjections.

L. Krog: Unfortunately, the members are asking me to tell us who. It was Val Roddick. We might as well give Val credit while she’s not here. But I digress for a moment.

One would hope that there won’t be some other lurking disaster down the road where the government will be caught off guard. I know the member for Saanich South has raised the issue of agriculture in this chamber many, many times on various issues, most recently around hazelnut farming.
[ Page 7593 ]

One would hope that the government is going to start to pay attention, particularly as we see the disaster occurring in the United States — year after year of significant drought conditions, meaning that the great vegetable basket of the state of California, which has provided so much fresh produce to British Columbians and Canadians generally over the last years, is in fact going to be a diminishing source of that food supply. Let this be a lesson to the government in the sense that what they’re doing with the Natural Products Marketing Act won’t be repeated in the future because of their failure to act appropriately at a time when they should have been acting.

I know there is certainly concern around the changes made to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act that are proposed. That is based on a number of things. I know the member for Surrey-Whalley is very interested in this topic — an area of particular expertise for him.

In this government’s desperation to try and recover from the fiasco of the political promise of the benefits of liquid natural gas, a “Debt-free B.C.” and all of those things we heard touted during the last provincial election campaign, they are as anxious as anyone to secure some deal on natural gas, unless the election date changes, between now and May of 2017.

[1505]

This bill, on the face of it, gives the opposition some particular concern. We’re afraid, quite naturally, that it will be used to give extended tax benefits, perhaps hidden tax cuts and other favourable provisions, to induce proponents to participate. Well, we will wait and see, and I’m looking forward to what the member has to say when he rises to speak to this particular issue. I think British Columbians are tired of seeing their resources literally sold down the river in order to accommodate a government that has overextended its mandate and, worse, made promises that it can’t possibly keep.

The credibility of this particular government around the careful management of provincial assets is no better demonstrated than by the fiasco we’ve come to learn about in the last few days around the sale of lands in Burke Mountain. You would think a party that has traditionally been so strongly supported by the real estate industry might have been able to strike a better bargain than the fiasco of Burke Mountain lands, where we see well over $40 million quite literally left on the table. Only in one of the busiest and most significant, rising real estate markets in North America, and I say that without exaggeration, could a government sell raw developable land at $40 million below its price— literally blow off a third of its value.

I come back to my point about the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act. We’re concerned about that. Following on that, of course, are the changes to the Public Agency Accommodation Act. Again, this ties very much into the opposition’s concerns around the sale of the Burke Mountain lands. The clichés are used over and over again. You know, selling the furniture, getting rid of the silverware, selling the farm and leasing the land back — whatever you want to talk about; there’s a whole series of them.

What the opposition thinks may be happening here is that the government is simply going to create a system that, from their perspective, may well make it easier to dispose of government land. But from the opposition’s perspective, it’s a rather frightening concept that a government, with the existing cumbersome process, they suggest — their thought, not the opposition’s — and given the time that one would think that would afford them to carefully consider whether they’re getting value for money for public assets, still manages to blow off lands at two-thirds of their value.

Now they want to speed up the process. So they won’t even have the opportunity for a couple branches of government to give the famous second look that W.A.C. Bennett was known for and decide whether or not the taxpayers and the people of British Columbia, whose assets these are, are going to receive the value that they deserve. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Many members of the opposition expressed their concern a couple of years ago when the government was talking about selling off Crown lands, particularly in the Lower Mainland where the government talked about selling surplus lands. You have to ask yourself a pretty basic question. How can you have surplus lands, even as a concept, in the Lower Mainland when there is so little developable land left there?

You’ve got all the prospects of increasing population in front of you. You know there is going to be significant growth. You know there will be a requirement for further public assets in terms of the construction of schools, post-secondary education institutions, potential government offices, health care clinics, hospitals — you name it — and all of the attributes of a contained urban society. And the government wanted to sell off land.

Now we’re told they want to bring in this process to streamline the process for selling government land. Forgive the opposition if we’re somewhat skeptical that maybe this is just part of the government’s continuing plan to sell off the patrimony of the people of British Columbia for peanuts at a time when, in fact, they should be husbanding those resources and ensuring that the people of this province have a full opportunity to use those resources in a way that benefits the public, that doesn’t see significant benefits go to major donors to the B.C. Liberal Party or, alternatively, to try and shore up the government’s incompetence in being able to handle the fiscal problems of British Columbia in a forthright, open, honest and transparent manner.

[1510]

In terms of the government’s treatment of people, this misc bill also speaks to that with the changes around the Queen’s Printer Act. You know, there are institutions in our society and in our province that have, I think, to use
[ Page 7594 ]
the cliché, stood the test of time. Surely, one of them is the Queen’s Printer. And for this government, 20 minutes before they announced their press release indicating the privatization of a significant portion of the Queen’s Printer services is when they tell those loyal public servants — who have provided able, competent and confidential printing services to the people of British Columbia for years — that their jobs would be eliminated.

In other privatization schemes, and in fairness to the government, they have attempted on occasion to work with the workers through their union and ensure that there was an opportunity to remain in the public service, where many have chosen to make their careers working on behalf of the people of British Columbia. And in this case, we’re assured that there would be a transition plan.

The minister announced: “A transition plan for employees is being worked on with their union, Unifor, and the Public Service Agency.” That was back in October 2014. Now, nothing would make me happier today than to see the minister responsible stand up in this House and announce what the details of the transition plan are. But that was October. Last time I checked, this is the month of April. We’re a long ways down the road.

I’m just wondering how those folks who worked for the Queen’s Printer feel about the treatment they’ve received at the hands of this government, whether they feel comforted by the prospects of a transition plan that is getting on to the point where it will last the ordinary gestation period for most pregnant mothers in this province.

Surely, a government that had any sense of compassion and duty to those people who worked for it would be able to move more quickly and ensure that the workers are treated fairly and honestly and decently.

When it comes to changes to the Liquor Distribution Act, bless them, the government is going to allow public liquor stores to advertise as other liquor retailers do. It’s the fair and right thing to do. Mind you, it would have been the fair and right thing to do to have allowed the B.C. government liquor stores to live and practice and operate on a fair and consistent field some time ago.

Of course, for years they weren’t allowed to open on Sundays, notwithstanding the union’s request to do so. The union made it clear they felt they could increase revenue to government. Lord knows, this government in particular, of any government, is a government that can suck up revenues so quickly — whether they’ve drawn it out of B.C. Hydro or ICBC, whether they have ensured that those corporations face difficult financial circumstances themselves because they’ve overdrawn the account.

One would have thought, in these circumstances, that the B.C. Liberals might have moved a little faster to ensure that B.C. Liquor Stores, unionized decent jobs and benefits for their employees, would have received the same advantage and ability to compete in what the government has made a fairly competitive marketplace, on one hand, philosophically, but now we know, with the introduction of Bill 22, they have turned around and upset the apple cart in a very real way for many of those very private stores that they claimed to support and believed needed support.

There is much to criticize in this bill, notwithstanding that it’s supposed to be fairly minor and modest changes.

Now, one aspect of it that falls to my particular critic role is that relating to the Provincial Symbols and Honours Act. I must advise the House, with no small amount of embarrassment, that it’s been a long time since I’ve bothered to look at that statute. It’s not one that springs to mind in normal use — certainly, in the practice of law.

[1515]

I just want to tell the members that if they bother to go there, they might discover some things about the province they weren’t aware of. Section 3 provides that the “flower of the tree botanically known as Cornus nuttallii and commonly known as the flowering dogwood is the floral emblem of British Columbia.”

Section 4. The mineral emblem, jade, “known in minerology as nephrite or jadeite” — forgive my pronunciation — “is the mineral emblem of British Columbia.”

Tree emblem, section 5. “The tree known botanically as Thuja plicata Donn and commonly known as the western red cedar is the arboreal emblem of British Columbia.

Section 6, the bird emblem. “The bird known taxonomically as Cyanocitta stelleri and commonly known as the Steller’s jay is the bird emblem of British Columbia.”

Then — I can’t resist — section 6.1. “The non-albino, white colour phase of the mammal known taxonomically as Ursus americanus and commonly known as the Spirit Bear is the mammal emblem of British Columbia.”

Then, of course, we get down to the fish emblem, which is obvious — the Pacific salmon, including the cutthroat trout, pink salmon, chum salmon, coho salmon, steelhead, sockeye and the chinook salmon. I wouldn’t even begin to attempt to pronounce the Latin phrases involved in those. It is fascinating.

Interestingly, one of the government’s major announcements of its legislative agenda involves amending the Provincial Symbols and Honours Act.

Section 19, which has been around for quite some time, is one of Gordon Campbell’s lucky legacies, left behind for the good people of British Columbia since 2003 and unused until, obviously, the Premier, in a moment of literary interest, much like myself, being forced to take a look at the statute, decided to draw up and give political life to what had been otherwise a provincial corpse. That was section 19.

I bet you not one of the members present in this chamber, until this bill was introduced, had given any thought to the existing section 19.

The section is entitled British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship. “The Lieutenant Governor in Council may
[ Page 7595 ]
award the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship to recognize persons who have acted in a particularly generous, kind or self-sacrificing manner for the common good without expectation of reward.”

The fact that since its introduction 12 years ago they have never bothered to award it, I hate to say, may suggest they don’t believe we’ve had any good citizens here for the last dozen years. I find that a shocking insult to the good people of British Columbia, who may have enjoyed an opportunity, who may have wanted to experience the joy of receiving an award at the hands of the Premier.

I understand that the member for Vancouver–Point Grey wishes to make an introduction of a class. I would defer to him for a moment, in my remarks, to allow him to do that with the leave of the House.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

D. Eby: It’s a wonderful pleasure for me to be able to rise in this House and introduce the fantastic students of St. Augustine School and their wonderful teachers and parents, who came all the way from Vancouver to see us hard at work in this chamber, passing laws, making sure there is money there for the public services we all rely on.

Would the House please make them welcome and wish them a good time on their tour today.

Debate Continued

L. Krog: I’m delighted to carry on with second reading debate, for the young folks who have just come into the chamber to understand what we’re dealing with. If I may, I’ll repeat myself slightly.

Interjections.

L. Krog: The enthusiasm for my remarks is almost inspirational.

To the young people who are listening, we’re dealing with the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act. That’s where the government throws in all kinds of tiny changes to various pieces of legislation that they don’t want to put in separate statutes. It’s sort of a convenient way of dealing with a number of little issues.

I’m dealing with one of those little issues now, which for the uninitiated, is section 19 of the Provincial Symbols and Honours Act.

This dormant matter….

Interjection.

L. Krog: The member from Prince George says she’s spellbound. I am again terribly flattered and inspired to carry on for a little more, perhaps.

[1520]

It has lain dormant for a dozen years. During that time, we have made significant awards under the statute for those British Columbians who have received the Order of British Columbia. The Order of British Columbia, which is sort of the gold standard, is not to be confused with the Community Achievement Awards, which, some have suggested to me, are in fact a more practical approach to the concept of rewarding good citizenship.

Again, section 19, as I say, says: “…to recognize persons who have acted in a particularly generous, kind or self-sacrificing manner for the common good without expectation of reward.”

Hon. A. Wilkinson: As you do every day.

L. Krog: The minister suggests: as I do every day.

Minister, I’m sure your cheque clears as regularly as mine does, and I understand that’s tomorrow.

In any event….

Deputy Speaker: I’m not certain how the House heard the minister, given he’s not in his seat.

L. Krog: Even with my fading hearing, I always hear the minister.

Now, if I may come back to the point, the fact is that we have a process in place and a program in place to reward, perhaps, those citizens who are not seen as worthy or having achieved the heights of the Order of British Columbia. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of that honour. To receive the Order of British Columbia is a pretty significant recognition of your contribution.

But I think there is a certain concern on the part of the opposition that we’re now talking about awarding a Medal of Good Citizenship. For those of us on this side of the House, there is a certain cynical view that perhaps it will be another photo opportunity for the Premier, who, as we know, is very good at photo opportunities, is regularly attendant on them and, I’m sure, may wish to participate in this.

We have a number of sections here to fill out the process for the awarding of the medal. We have a definition section being proposed in section 39 and a number of sections. “‘Medal’ means the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship referred to in section 19.”

It establishes a selection committee, and indeed, a selection committee is established under 19.1 consisting of the following: “(a) a Chair appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council for a term not exceeding 4 years; (b) up to 6 additional members appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council for terms not exceeding 2 years.”

If there was some specificity given to the appointments, perhaps reflecting various aspects of our community…. Oh, I don’t know. Say, the outgoing chair of United Way in Vancouver or the former head of the B.C. Federation of
[ Page 7596 ]
Labour or a Supreme Court justice or a retiring president of a university or people who have been already recognized with the Order of British Columbia, as a matter of fact — people who have, on the face of it, a non-partisan interest in who they will choose.

That might have been somewhat more inspirational for the members of the opposition. Otherwise, the concern is we will end up with a selection committee that will determine who gets the medals that may reflect a less — how shall I say? — objective aspect than most of us would think appropriate. In other words: who’s going to get the medals?

I’m a bit concerned when it says: “… have acted in a particularly generous, kind or self-sacrificing manner….” The term “generous” gives me concern. Does that mean…? Generosity based on what concept?

Interjection.

L. Krog: The member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head cynically suggested donation to the B.C. Liberals. I am shocked by that suggestion, simply shocked.

[1525]

However, one of my favourite quotes is that line “easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven…”

Interjection.

L. Krog: …for which I’m receiving support from Surrey.

The question is, though: what does “generous” in this bill mean? If generous means you have $1 million and you give away $900,000, that’s generous. But if you have $10 million and you give away $100,000, I would just suggest you are less than generous. If you make $10,000 a year and you give away $1,000, I’d suggest you’re more than generous.

My fear is that we won’t recognize those people who truly give in terms of their generosity. We will recognize those on whom fortune has smiled and the god of Mammon has descended and provided with all the benefit possible. With great respect, I have seen a number of them already receive the Order of British Columbia. I don’t know that we need to add now to their prestige by awarding them a medal, presumably at the hands of the Premier — more hopefully the Lieutenant-Governor, but quite possibly at the hands of the Premier.

Indeed, I might make a prediction with respect to this bill. Assuming for a moment that it’s going to pass…. And it might well pass, because the opposition is still the minority, the last time I did a head count. Assuming it passes, I am willing to make a bet — I hope I breach no legislation when I say this — with any member of the opposition for whatever reasonable amount they may propose that somehow there will be a photo opportunity in the presentation of these medals which will involve the Premier of British Columbia. I am willing to bet on that.

Interjection.

L. Krog: The member for Surrey-Whalley suggests I may have achieved some consensus here this afternoon. I think even the members in the government benches are smiling with a certain all-knowing acceptance that what I have to say, which they don’t always accept, may bear some semblance to the truth and may be somewhat accurate.

Having said that, I do hope that the government, in its wisdom, will ensure that this process and the people placed on the committee will be British Columbians that people will invariably respect and accept as being good stewards of the process, people whose judgment we will trust, and that it will not end up being an opportunity for Liberals to reward Liberals, for Liberals to recognize Liberals, to the exclusion of the many good people in this province who may well deserve and probably should have had for the last 12 years an opportunity to receive the Medal of Good Citizenship.

I can think of many in my constituency. I think every member here is aware of those who, without hope of reward, without consideration for public adulation, have gone about doing things in their individual communities, amongst their friends and neighbours, the kinds of acts that merit a Medal of Good Citizenship.

I do hope that the government will take the opportunity, that instead of treating this as some political reward, some recognition of its friends and supporters, we will see a process that works, so that those who actually get this medal will be able to wear it with pride amongst all the citizens of British Columbia, not simply when they go to a Liberal fundraiser or a convention or a gathering of the elites of this province — in other words, that it is awarded to people who truly deserve the medal.

Having said that, I know that there are many members in this chamber anxious to speak to this bill, anxious to contribute to the debate. I’m pleased to take my place and have the opportunity to listen to other members.

B. Ralston: After hearing the member for Nanaimo, I can recite one of the Latin expressions I know, tempus fugit. It means times flies, for those who aren’t conversant with Latin. I’ll forgo some of the other Latin expressions that I know.

[1530]

In any event, I do want to address one aspect of the bill, which is section 46, which is a proposed amendment to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act. Now, under the present Petroleum and Natural Gas Act the power to set royalties is in subsection 73(1). “Royalties are reserved to the government on petroleum and natural gas produced from any location held under this Act.” Subsection (2)
[ Page 7597 ]
gives the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council — that is, the cabinet — the power to prescribe a royalty that is payable to the government for petroleum and natural gas and goes on to introduce several qualifications to that.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

In addition, section 78 — and it seems that this amendment is directed to section 78 in particular — gives the power to create an agreement establishing a royalty, but it appears to be very limited and restrictive in that power in the sense that the….

I’ll read the section, since it is a bit technical, and it helps to perhaps understand my argument, for those many members who are keenly following what I’m saying. “Despite section 73 and the regulations under that section, the minister may make an agreement establishing the amount of royalty to be paid to the government, and the method of calculating the royalty, on petroleum and natural gas produced from a unitized operation or as the result of a conservation plan or a special project under section 75 of the Oil and Gas Activities Act.”

Now, that language restricts considerably the legislative power to enter into royalty agreements. What this amendment does is give the government a very broad power to enter into agreements. Subsection 78.1(1) — this is the amendment now, in section 46 — gives the power to the Lieutenant-Governor to “enter, with a person, into an agreement establishing the royalty to be paid by the person to the government, and the method of calculating the royalty, on petroleum or natural gas produced from a specified location or class of locations.”

It goes on to talk about the…. There’s no minimum term set. Under subsection (4), an agreement “may be for a term the minister considers advisable, but not for a term exceeding the prescribed number of years, and may also include any or all of the following….” It goes on to put certain conditions on that.

What, in effect, this amendment does is give the government unlimited power to enter into an agreement on royalties with a producer which could extend 15, 20…. It could extend for the projected economic life of the natural gas extraction operation. That’s clearly, in my view, the intention. I’m sure that when the time comes the minister will want to agree with me on that.

But the purpose for that is, in my view, to give yet another incentive, shall we say, or concession to those in the LNG industry to fix their costs over the economic life of the project. If you are building or you’re contemplating an investment in an LNG plant, one of the advantages that this will afford you is the government will be able to enter into an agreement on a very important part of the whole operation, which is to fix the royalties on your costs.

You will remember, those of you who follow these things, that one of the benefits that the government talked about — the two chief benefits in terms of government revenue from LNG, after the LNG tax was bounced down last February, not this year but the previous year, and then bounced down to a much lower rate in October — was…. They said: “Well, don’t worry about that. Never mind. There are these other fees and taxes that flow into the provincial treasury.” The two biggest ones were corporate income tax and royalties.

[1535]

This amendment now gives the government the power to enter into an agreement that will fix that royalty at a level — perhaps, given their skill at negotiating with LNG proponents — likely advantageous to the LNG producer.

This is unprecedented in the sense that these agreements could be very long term. No one else, no other government, even if the government changes its mind…. Unless it drafts these agreements in a very careful way, it will not be able to change the course on royalties.

And the Premier said today, as we all heard, that the revenue from natural gas royalties has diminished from 2005, when the price was very high — $2 billion in 2005 to $500 million per year roughly this year.

But rather than being interested in riding out the market cycle, the government is now taking unto itself the power to enter into a long-term royalty agreement on terms which a fair-minded public — given the record of the B.C. Liberals on resource management — would suggest might very well be advantageous to the producer and not to the public. That seems to be what the government’s objective, in bringing in this particular amendment, is.

On top of that, not only are they proposing to enter into these agreements that will be disadvantageous to the public and to the sale of the natural resource owned by the public, they are going to give themselves the power to keep these agreements secret. It’s perhaps no wonder that they’ve included this provision.

That, in my view, heightens the suspicion or the perception — and I’m sure that the minister will want to confirm this when the time comes. Unlike a typical commercial secret where other competitors may want to know, this is the assessment of royalties, the sole prerogative of the government that generates revenue for the government. Yet the government is proposing that the detail of that agreement will be kept from the public.

That’s what it says in subsection 46, 78.1(3): “The minister must, as soon as practicable, publish an agreement entered into under subsection (1) but may withhold from publication anything in the agreement that could be refused to be disclosed under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, if a request were made under that Act for disclosure of the agreement.”

I had some recent experience, because the Minister of Natural Gas Development and the Minister of Finance have spoken here in the Legislature about project development agreements. These are agreements not contained in legislation but are currently being negotiated, I have strong reason to believe, with leading LNG proponents.
[ Page 7598 ]

When the Minister of Finance said that these would have to be disclosed ultimately, the Minister of Natural Gas rejected it on the basis of commercial secrecy and proprietary interest. That difference of opinion, a major one, doesn’t yet seemed to have been resolved.

We did make a request under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for even notice of and terms on which these agreements might be set, and any detail about any agreements that have been entered into. We came back with the chronic results of a freedom-of-information request on these kind of matters: blank pages.

So I don’t have any confidence that, if this provision is passed and the government enters into long-term royalty agreements — that is the payment to the Crown for the utilization of public resources — they will be obliged to disclose them to the public.

[1540]

I think, frankly, that it’s outrageous. It’s the revenue to the Crown. It’s being assessed by the government. Surely, the public has a right to know and make its own judgment of whether the return that the treasury is receiving is a fair one or not.

There’s no doubt that the pressure will be downward on royalties. In some research a few years ago on royalties and the setting of royalties — this is on the oil side, but I think it applies equally to the natural gas side — a consultant who’d been involved in the oil industry for 35 years in the business of advising both governments and companies on royalties said that in his experience, no company had ever said there was a good time to raise royalties. Either the market was too hot and didn’t need more royalties, or the market was too slow, and it was the wrong time to increase royalties.

So the companies will, generally…. It’ll be their bargaining position — I mean, who’s surprised? — that royalties are too high and that they should been driven down. One doesn’t get the sense, when the government wants to keep the results of those negotiations secret, that they’ll be driving a hard bargain for the citizens of British Columbia.

It is possible. I mean, one only has to look at a Premier in Newfoundland, Danny Williams — not a New Democrat, by any means — who had the gumption and the guts to negotiate agreements with major oil companies. He took 10 percent equity and negotiated a royalty, all done in public. And the 10 percent ownership in these enterprises provided an effective financial window into the operation of the companies so that the government knew exactly what the companies were doing and achieving in their operations, got a revenue stream on the equity side and also was able to set royalties in a way that reflected the real economic value to the country.

Do you see this government doing that? Not a chance. What do they want to do? They want to hide the result of their agreement.

This is a very major piece of legislation that I suppose people on the government side hope will be disguised in a misc bill and sneaked through without a lot of debate. This is something that should be debated and should be questioned widely and publicly. That’s what we, on this side of the House, will be endeavouring to do as we deal with this bill over the next while. That’s the first part of the objection.

Then, when one looks at other provisions that are related to this, there are some minor language changes. But in section 51…. The note doesn’t really explain the purpose for this, so I just want to put those members of the ministry and the oil and gas division on notice that I’ll be asking a question about section 51.

It excludes “the operation of the following petroleum refineries” and says that they are “not an oil and gas activity within the meaning of the Oil and Gas Activities Act: (a) the Burnaby Refinery, operated by Chevron Canada Limited or its successors…; (b) the Prince George Refinery, operated by Husky Energy Inc. or its successors or assigns.” There’s a real question about why this change in definition of those two refineries.

Finally, just to wrap up on my part in this bill, which is relatively brief, I think I should also state that it does not seem to me to be coincidental that the government is in the process of tearing up the Fair Share agreement and renegotiating it. This bill, this section, contemplates a reduction in royalty revenue that is now presently being shared under the Fair Share agreement. It’s hardly a surprise that the government wants to tear up the agreement, reduce the flow to municipalities, because the royalty agreements that are contemplated here will generate less revenue for sharing with municipalities.

[1545]

The two rather disparate activities on the part of the government are directly related — the introduction of this and the contemplation of long-term royalty agreements, and the tearing up of the Fair Share agreement for the communities in the northeast, where the bulk of the oil and gas activity is, certainly on the production side of natural gas. It’s contemplated that revenue to the Crown will be reduced and they want to ensure, in advance, that the obligation to share that reduced revenue with the municipalities — the concomitant reduction in revenue to the cities and towns of the northeast — under the Fair Share agreement will be reduced as well.

Those two pieces fit together, in my view. I’m sure that this will be dismissed, of course, because it’s far too logical and consistent, by the other side. But that seems to me to be a further motivation for these royalty agreements.

This is not good news for the people of British Columbia. This is bad news for the people of British Columbia. We do not oppose natural gas development, providing there’s a fair return to the citizens of British Columbia. And what these amendments contemplate is a reduction in the royalty regime of the province.
[ Page 7599 ]

It’s not onerous, relative to other jurisdictions and certainly compared to some of the more progressive regimes in the world. In Norway, for example, the royalty regime and their operation of a heritage fund has garnered them a substantial fund that will fund the future of Norway for many generations to come after the oil resource is depleted there. Great Britain didn’t do that, and the Scottish oil boom is almost over. They have nothing to show for it.

Alberta, despite the creation of a heritage fund, never did that to any effective degree. They’re now in a cyclical downturn of the oil industry and the price of oil. It’s as if they never expected the price to go down, when the history of resource industries is, of course, one of the volatility and cyclical nature of resource prices.

This is not good news. This will lower the royalties and the returns to the citizens of British Columbia. We will oppose that and do our best to bring this to the attention of the citizens of British Columbia, particularly those in the northeast, who I’m sure will agree with the position that I’m taking about the link between tearing up the Fair Share agreement and the reduction of royalties in long-term agreements, to the disadvantage of the citizens of British Columbia.

A. Weaver: Thank you to the previous speakers for highlighting some of the issues I, too, would like to speak to and against in similar cases. First off, I do wish to thank the Minister of Natural Gas Development for making staff available for a briefing today, which we found very helpful in explaining some of the rationale behind the royalty amendments that I will discuss later.

As was mentioned by the member for Nanaimo, this Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, like previous acts, is always interesting. There’s a potpourri of topics in here, some of which some members in this House will approve. Others, some members in this House will not approve. There are many different angles that one could take with this bill. In voting yes or no on the second reading, one has to weigh the pros and the cons. One might actually think that the ways of dealing with some of these are at the committee stage, which I certainly will explore in more detail, some of the ideas there.

[1550]

There are a couple of sections that concern me quite profoundly. But I want to preface that there is one section here that is actually good and something that I find very easy to support. It’s an election promise that the B.C. Liberals will be able to keep.

The irony here should not be lost on many people. I’ve had the privilege of serving in this Legislature for two years. In that two years I’ve heard a lot about the 1990s. I’ve heard it referenced time and time again, about what happened in the 1990s. Well, did you know that in the 1990s, the Provincial Symbols and Honours Act was brought into place?

Guess what is there in section 19 of that act. Section 19 states this: “The Lieutenant Governor in Council may award the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship to recognize persons who have acted in a particularly generous, kind or self-sacrificing manner for the common good without expectation of reward.”

This was one of the prime announcements in the throne speech — that government would actually bring forward a B.C. Medal of Good Citizenship that already exists. This has got to be one of the most bizarre moments for me in this Legislature, to see the hubris, the narcissism of a government that thinks that it’s okay to make a big deal about bringing in a medal that’s been on the books for almost 20 years. It’s truly, truly…. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s happening in B.C. politics here in the House.

You know, what is so sad about this is that British Columbians are paying the price. British Columbians are paying the price for a government that clearly does not have an legislative agenda this session, apart from desperately trying to fulfil its election promise about LNG.

We watch one after another after another of the big players in the LNG market cite what I have been saying for two years. The growing glut of natural gas. The price is dropping. Japan is bringing on nuclear reactors again. Australia is well ahead. Companies are merging. The price of oil is dropping. And B.C., rather than recognizing that we are late players in this game, that we do not have a competitive advantage, that we will maybe one day find a use for this natural gas….

I see some small little additions here — which I call the methanol and the refining amendments — where there are some kinds of ideas: that perhaps we should do something in case it doesn’t pan out and there are other projects that we might go for.

But what this government is doing with amendments, two of them in this act, is continuing this generational sellout, which my friend from Nanaimo–North Cowichan…. I describe it as a generational sellout, but I cannot take credit for the term “multigenerational sellout.” That goes to the member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan. But it’s far beyond that. We see this taking another step.

Not only are we letting the minister enter into royalty agreements that will hamper future generations, not only government but future generations, by irresponsible promises made by a government that had no idea what it was doing during an election campaign except for offering a message of hope wrapped in hyperbole in a desperate attempt to get elected.

“Say anything. We’re not going to get elected, but let’s hope we get a few seats.” And lo and behold, we have a majority over here, a government that does not know what they’re doing on this file and that has become an embarrassment internationally on the LNG file. We’ve watched company after company after company look at us and say: “What’s going on?”
[ Page 7600 ]

Here we now have in this bill the greatest, most serious insult that future generations could have. It’s saying: “We are going to lock you into royalty rates with one company. We’re also going to forget municipal charter acts. We’re going to go over that too, and we’re going to do what we can to write legislation so that this one company may — may, possibly, perhaps, if things go well — make an investment decision by June of this year. And they’re the only one thinking of doing it.”

[1555]

The level of irresponsibility here — I cannot underestimate it. British Columbians should be walking in the streets over this legislation. I know they’re not going to pay attention to a miscellaneous statutes amendment act. Buried within that is not only an intergenerational or a multigenerational sellout; it’s a historic one. It’s a historic sellout to foreign multinationals of the rights of British Columbians and future generations to gain value from our natural resources.

It’s a very sad day in British Columbia if we were to pass the relevant sectors in here. Sadly, as this government no longer listens to constituents, to small business owners — we see it in the liquor legislations — to the opposition, to independent members, they are marching to the beat of their own drum, because they think that by being elected as a majority they have carte blanche to do whatever they want, with no accountability.

But there will be accountability when British Columbians do realize this, and we can see it happening around the province. There will be accountability in 2017 for this multigenerational, historic sellout that is continuing here in British Columbia.

Let’s move directly to section 23, the Port Edward tax agreement. Now, where is this coming from? The Port Edward tax agreement. For those riveted at home to the debates that are happening now, Port Edward is near Prince Rupert. It’s where Petronas and BG and Shell…. It’s in the area where there was going to be an LNG facility. It’s an area where there used to be a vibrant pulp mill, but of course that shut down because we’re not nurturing our forest industry; instead, we’re natural gas.

It’s LNG or nothing in B.C. right now. It’s a message that’s being sent to business in B.C. I recognize the minister is troubled by those words, but the reality is that business in B.C. has heard the message: you’re either with us on LNG or we’re not interested in where you’re going. That is the signal, because the government here is picking winners and losers in the marketplace — a so-called free enterprise government picking winners and losers in the marketplace. The winner they’ve picked is LNG.

But it’s even worse than that. It’s not winners and losers; it’s winning companies and losing companies, because we see legislation at the scale of individual municipalities. We’re amending the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act to allow the district of Port Edward to enter multi-year agreements with Pacific NorthWest LNG.

What is going on here? We’re introducing law so that a municipality can forget the rest of the law that’s applied to municipalities in the province so that they can negotiate and do special deals with one company. We’re picking the winning technology and the winning sector, and we’re picking the winning company.

This is no longer a government that has any credibility as a free enterprise government. This is a government that is really a pick-a-winner-and-loser government. They’re picking losers as we go along, and it’s continuing to manifest itself with this legislation.

To be able to have this agreement last up to 25 years and establish an amount or formula to be used for the duration of that agreement for one company may give business certainty for that one company. Sure, Pacific NorthWest is going to have business certainty, and we all know business needs certainty, but this is giving an intergenerational sellout at the same time.

There’s no certainty for British Columbians here. This government was elected to represent British Columbians, not elected to represent Pacific NorthWest natural gas and Petronas and market that company to British Columbians, which is what is happening here in this legislation.

There are many other examples in this. I have another couple on this particular section.

You know, we see Port Edward being given the power to set a unique tax rate for Pacific NorthWest LNG that could be different from other class 4 properties. “No, we’re picking one company over another. You want to develop this land, your class 4 property? Guess what. If you’re LNG, it’s one thing; if you’re forestry, it’s another.”

[1600]

This is sending a message to industry that you are either…. “You want to do industry in B.C.? You’re with LNG? We’ll do anything we can for you.” But if you’re a struggling industry in another sector, maybe not. It’s LNG or nothing here in British Columbia.

A government that has the audacity to claim leadership on climate. The audacity — for a Premier to be invited by the World Bank and to claim, in this province, that she is leading a government that has leadership on climate policy. It does nothing but make the government of British Columbia a laughingstock within credible people across Canada.

This government has no credibility on the issue of climate policy. It was the previous administration, under the leadership of Mr. Campbell and the leadership of Barry Penner, the Environment Minister, that built that credibility that this government has destroyed in the matter of two-and-a-half short years.

Now, I recognize the Minister of Health did his bit. He was a very fine Minister of Environment when he was there, but he’s no longer there. The Minister of Environment is doing what she can. Unfortunately, they are but a few within a caucus of many who are doing
[ Page 7601 ]
everything they can to unravel the leading climate policy that existed in this province.

Interjections.

A. Weaver: The truth does hurt. When the members opposite start heckling, they recognize that the truth does hurt — the truth to try to claim leadership on greenhouse gas emissions.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: The Minister of Health suggests I’m losing credibility by telling the truth. I would suggest to the minister that the government has lost credibility by not telling the truth for two years.

You can check my page: andrewweavermla.ca. It’s there from December 2012. That’s on Facebook prior to the election, during the campaign. I’ve said the same thing about LNG. I haven’t changed my tune. The government has — a $100 billion prosperity fund, a $1 trillion hit to GDP, “Debt-free B.C.,” no PST, thriving schools and hospitals. La, la, la. “Come to B.C. We’ll tell you what you want to hear,” not what you need to hear. Unfortunately, here we are in B.C. with yet another generational sellout happening before us.

Subsection (4)(b) exempts agreements from cabinet regulations that prescribe limits on tax rates, relationships between tax rates, formulas for calculating tax rates and so on.

Section (4)(c), another exemption for PNW properties, allows an exemption for them being prescribed as port land under the Assessment Act. That, again, means that cabinet regulations that prescribe the actual value of the port land — or they establish rates, formulas, rules or principles for determining the actual value of the port land — would not apply. Let’s just throw that out, because it might not give a company certainty.

Subsection (4)(d) exempts PNW properties under an agreement from the Ports Property Tax Act — we wouldn’t want to tax LNG — which generally outlines property tax provisions for ports.

Whose needs are actually being served here? Is it British Columbia’s needs? Is it this government that is voted and tasked to represent British Columbians and provide the oversight that British Columbians want? Or is it the winner that they chose in the winning sector, in an economy, in a market that’s falling? When other jurisdictions are diversifying their economy, we are not.

The Community Charter was written to provide fairness and a level playing field for businesses. This act seems to empower Port Edward to create an unfair playing field.

It gets worse, with the royalty agreement section in sections 44 to 56. Sections 44 through 66 have received a lot of focus already, as they appear to be particularly troubling. They appear to allow the minister to enter into royalty agreements with natural gas producers. The minister can enter into an agreement without approval from the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council if the agreement is “in respect of a prescribed class of agreements” — whatever that means.

There are several concerning points here. The entire purpose of this section appears to allow this government — a government that’s lost credibility on the LNG file, if it ever had any in the first place — to lock future governments into royalty agreements without offering as much as any way of oversight or checks and balances to protect British Columbians from, frankly, irresponsible decision-making that is ongoing in British Columbia today on this file.

[1605]

We already have a royalty regime in place. The problem, of course, is that as far as the government is concerned and, perhaps, the industry is concerned, this royalty regime may not be certain in future governments. Perhaps the government is worried. Perhaps the government is worried that in 2017 the B.C. Green Party will be sitting over there, and they’ll be sitting over here. There’ll be a lot of my friends to the right over there and a few of you over here.

Perhaps they’re worried about that, and they want to give PNW, some certainty by locking in 25-year royalty rates at some rate that is to be prescribed at some point by a minister, if he or she wants, with some consultation — maybe, maybe not. Who knows? Because we’re not going to be actually bringing this forward in a very open, public fashion.

You know, the powers that have been given to the minister in this amendment act with respect to royalty creation in the natural gas sector are enormous. Not only are they enormous; they’re enormous powers to one minister — not the minister in the next government or the government after that but the minister in this government, a minister who’s part of the government that is so desperate to fulfil their irresponsible election promises.

The media are not going to…. They’re going to start probing. They may have given the government a few years of grace on this, but mark my word, when people start looking into this, it’s going to come a cropper if it’s not already starting to. This is egregious — what’s going on in this particular amendment.

Under the changes, the minister also has to disclose information that would be required to be disclosed under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. However, the section in here does not clarify who determines if the information needs to be disclosed or not. Is it an independent body that’s at arm’s length from the ministry? Or could the minister, theoretically, decide what should be or should not be disclosed? It’s not clear.

There are other aspects of this act, which I’ll just very briefly speak to, that I’d be interested in exploring further
[ Page 7602 ]
at committee stage. That’s with respect to the oil and gas activities changes, section 48, where we have (e.1) and (e.2) to include two types of oil and gas activities, and these are the “construction or operation of a manufacturing plant designed to convert natural gas into other organic compounds” and the “construction or operation of a petroleum refinery.”

Again, it’s seeming to me, in light of the fact that I know of one proposal that’s been brought to government on (e.1) and one proposal that has been brought to government on (e.2), the government again is going forward and trying to pick winners and losers in a marketplace before actually letting the market decide who those winners and losers should be. I’m curious about what the government is intending here, and I will, indeed, speak to it at committee stage.

With that, I do thank you for the time. I look forward to further discussions in committee stage. At this point I’m still in a quandary with respect to the vote at second reading — not because I support everything in it, but because I’m not sure at this point. I still need time to reflect on whether or not the merits of supporting it at second reading or not supporting it at second reading are more on the positive or negative.

Clearly, the egregious royalty and Port Edward changes, which are the government desperately trying to pick winners and losers in the marketplace to fulfil election promises, are unsupportable.

Obviously, I support the B.C. Medal of Good Citizenship — again. It’s already been on the books for nearly 20 years. And the irony of this, of course…. Again, it’s one of these priceless moments that you get in this place, in the Legislature, after listening as an independent here for two years to “in the 1990s this” and “in the 1990s that.”

[1610]

Well, one of the things that happened in the 1990s was that this B.C. Medal of Good Citizenship was brought into place. Obviously, I support that. Obviously, there are other aspects in this updating of various acts that I support. But these two changes are very, very troubling.

With that, I’ll pass and look forward to hearing the continuing debates.

R. Fleming: I wish to speak to Bill 23, which is a miscellaneous statutes amendment act. We’ve had a lot of miscellaneous acts go through this Legislature in recent years, and some of them contain sections that amend laws that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and this bill is within that spirit.

Nobody on this side of the House and nobody on the government side of the House would wish to see a miscellaneous bill pass without comment or without question before we get to the next stage of debate. It is in that spirit that I wish to make a few comments this afternoon on a couple of sections.

There have already been some very good comments made by members this afternoon on various aspects of this act. If my comments range a little bit, I apologize. It’s because the miscellaneous bill itself covers a lot of territory that one wouldn’t expect legislation to combine in such a fashion. But of course, that’s how this bill has been introduced, and that’s how we will proceed.

I think the comments around the Provincial Symbols and Honours Act were well made by the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head and the member for Nanaimo as well. While there’s nothing wrong with recognizing and encouraging deeds and acts of good citizenship in our communities, it’s kind of interesting to see how this is being introduced at this time — and by whom, of course.

I can think of a lot of examples where this government and the head of this government have recognized the importance of families, have recognized the importance of school leaders, parents, kids. I speak to this as the Education spokesperson for the opposition.

When the cameras are rolling…. When the highest priority at that very moment as the television cameras appear is the safety of our kids, for example, from horrible things happening, living on the fault line as we do in British Columbia in seismically unsafe buildings, where we have hundreds of them…. Where government has made, in the strongest, most unequivocal words possible, a commitment to do something to live up to a timeline to work with the engineering profession, to work with school boards…. Only for it to mean, after the cameras have stopped rolling, absolutely nothing.

Anybody who may deserve recognition in the communities that we represent here as members, 85 distinct parts of British Columbia…. We can well think of people who deserve and some who get recognition by this level of government and others for the things that they accomplish in their lives and the things they do for others in our communities. I think all of us would want to shelter them from something that could potentially be an utterly meaningless exercise.

It has already been commented upon that the supposed uniqueness of the amendment to the Provincial Symbols and Honours Act, to create this medal, is in fact not unique at all. We’re covering ground that was passed in this Legislature as recently as 2003. This amendment simply allows something that is already possible under the original legislation that was passed in 1996.

So what is this about? What exactly does government and the Premier have in mind to sign and distribute a new category of certificate that’s being enabled under this amendment? Why does it supersede underutilized things that are allowed already, and what exactly does government have in mind? I think that is something that deserves to be answered.

[1615]

It’s not good enough just to say: “Oh, we thought this thing up, and we thought it sounded good in the throne
[ Page 7603 ]
speech, and we need to see it go to fruition.” There has to be something explained about this. So far, I haven’t heard anything from government in the introduction and debate on this bill that gives proper motivation or answers any of the questions that have been raised. We’ll look forward to further asking questions of government at the committee stage of debate.

Jumping over to the Maa-nulth First Nations Final Agreement Act. Now, there may well be deficiencies in legislation that have to be amended, and that’s perfectly legitimate. What raises questions around this section of the bill is around the penalties for contravention of this act. What penalties are in place currently for what contraventions? What are the gaps, exactly, that are trying to be addressed here by government?

I think more seriously, in this section of the bill, the question really is around: can somebody be penalized twice, both for what exists in law now and what will become law later with this amendment? Can, in fact, for the same infraction an individual who is in non-compliance with the original act and now the amended one be penalized twice? It’s an important legal principle to establish before this bill becomes law. We haven’t heard yet from the government whether there’s a risk of that occurring.

It’s not clear to me at all, for example, how much consultation was actually done with those who live in the Maa-nulth boundaries of their settlement, and it’s not clear what motivates this amendment at this time, based on the lack of evidence that there has been consultation with that nation.

I would also echo some of the concerns we heard from the member for Surrey-Whalley about changes to the Oil and Gas Activities Act, among other things. There is a debate in a number of jurisdictions — Alaska to the north of us, Alberta very much so just to the east of us — about taxpayer maximization of resources after decades of extraction activities and royalty regimes that have been in place.

There is, of course, the government’s story here around LNG. Leaving aside how well that story holds up at this point in time, I think the broader concern simply is about whether the royalty regime in B.C. has been adequate and continues to be adequate, whether long-term agreements that cover the ups and downs of the market have concerns contained within them, and also about the principle of transparency.

These are the people’s resources. Every British Columbian has a share in the resources beneath us that have a value, that can be extracted, that can be produced, that can be sold. Not just oil and gas activities, of course, but that’s what we’re dealing with here in the hopes of creating a new industry that has not exactly taken off according to plan, if I can put it mildly.

What concerns me are these clauses that amend the legislation around the Oil and Gas Activities Act that will remove and make more difficult the public’s ability to get information about the business dealings on royalties that are concluded with private companies — how long the terms of the agreement are, what the financial returns are, whether there are things such as a minimum and maximum royalty regime.

We need to be able to assess whether a government has acted competently in the public interest in its negotiations around the value of the natural resources which belong to all of us as a fundamental part of our democracy.

[1620]

This government talks all the time about how we can’t have a modern society with proper public services for our kids and for all demographics of society, whether we’re talking about health care or education, without being reliant upon oil and gas and other resource extraction activities.

Prove that they’re doing a good job. Don’t shield it in blanket carte blanche exemptions from freedom of information to the public. That is a section of this bill that I think should raise a lot of alarm bells with the public, especially given this government’s record. We’ve been talking about it this week in question period, and we’ve been talking about it over a number of years. The Information and Privacy Commissioner has been talking about it, indeed, in her reports to the public.

Given the record of this government for poor, untimely disclosure and for erring on the side of redaction and failure to release information, when we’re talking about huge numbers here, when we’re talking about economic dividends that should belong to every British Columbian, people had better be worried about what amendments like this in a miscellaneous bill can mean for years and decades to come. That’s a concern about Bill 23 that has yet to be adequately answered and is of huge concern to every British Columbian, no matter what part of the province they live in.

The Natural Products Marketing Act. Again, there are some concerns here about insurance requirements that may arise, whether there are going to be standards imposed, how those will be deduced and what they will mean for those that the legislation touches upon and their businesses. I expect that will be canvassed later, and I will let various critics ask those questions and hear from the minister.

I do want to say at this stage in the debate that it would be remiss of me as a Victoria MLA to not make any comment upon the winding down of the Queen’s Printer Act after 155 years of service to British Columbia. I haven’t heard an adequate motivation for why the announcement was made a year ago by government that Queen’s Printer was going out of business.

It was suggested that the printing industry is changing, and that’s hardly news. Of course it is. The volume of printing has gone down. But there was nothing that said to me that there was a business case saying the elimination of Queen’s Printer, at least in that category of busi-
[ Page 7604 ]
ness, provided economic benefits to the taxpayer.

There was nothing offered by government in its news releases and in the limited media coverage that there was that suggested that where there is security of printed products required by government — and that can range on everything from provincial examinations to reports that must remain confidential until they can be released, even the budget documents themselves — those responsibilities and risks to government have been eliminated. They haven’t. Yeah, times have changed, but those kinds of things are of enduring value to government.

Bottom line is there are 30 individuals in this community who are going to lose their jobs at Queen’s Printer. Those are people with families. Those are people who contribute to our economy. Those are people with skills who have served the public well, and we haven’t even been given any indication, any information, from the government that winding down this function at Queen’s Printer has any benefits to the public, to this community.

Now, I know this government likes to send out these little dog-whistle messages to a section of its base every so often to re-establish its hard right-wing spurs, that it’s a pro-privatization, anti-regulation kind of party. There’s a Tea Party section to the B.C. Liberals that has to be satiated every once in a while. Maybe that’s why Queen’s Printer is on the chopping block. Maybe that’s why.

[1625]

It’s certainly been told to me by senior Liberals who no longer work in this government that that’s how we arrived at the debacle that was the B.C. Rail privatization. The discussion was as sophisticated as this. I’m told by senior former employees in the Premier’s office…. I know the member from Kamloops has sneezed, perhaps. It sounds like he sneezed, perhaps. But let’s remember how B.C. Rail worked out in the end.

I think the court documents show how ham-fisted and idiotic that was, and corrupt. You’ve got two people who pled guilty to corrupting the bidding process on B.C. Rail. Now, the reason….

Interjection.

R. Fleming: They lost their jobs. Kept their houses and cars and everything else, and the trial was mopped up. And their legal fees were paid for. Wow, what a tough-on-crime government. Wow. Taking bribes, and you can keep everything you’ve got.

That privatization of B.C. Rail was described to me and to others…. If the members don’t want to hear it just from me, this has been well canvassed — people who have written about this government. Because the government couldn’t privatize ICBC, which they wanted to do….

That was the big prize. They wanted to privatize ICBC, and then they appointed an individual to oversee the privatization of ICBC who came back with a report to the then Finance Minister and said: “If you privatize ICBC, it will be the dumbest thing your government could possibly do, and there is no public interest served by its privatization.”

They had to move on to some other topic to satiate their right-wing base. They had to move on to another Crown corporation, and it was B.C. Rail’s turn. That was going to happen no matter what.

I certainly hope that Queen’s Printer is not some randomly selected target with no business case behind it, à la B.C. Rail. I don’t hear anybody saying that the loss of provincially strategic rail services has been a great thing for British Columbia or that the corrupt, rigged process has been a moment of pride for this government. I certainly hope…

Deputy Speaker: Member, let’s talk about the bill.

R. Fleming: …that the privatization of Queen’s Printer doesn’t go in that litany of botched, ideological, unjustifiable privatizations that have been rammed through by this government.

On that note, because I know there are others who want to speak to this miscellaneous bill this afternoon, I will conclude with the concerns I’ve raised on Maa-nulth, on the oil and gas royalty act and on the Queen’s Printer privatization. Thank you for the time this afternoon.

D. Routley: It’s interesting. I won’t say it’s a pleasure or an honour, but it’s interesting to rise and speak to Bill 23, the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, which is anything but simply miscellaneous.

We are accustomed in this House to being drawn to legislation that is entitled “miscellaneous.” By tradition of this House, that would indicate that the measures taken would be simply housekeeping, simply miscellaneous pieces of legislation that need to be amended in order to be consistent with previous changes to other bills. But as has become a custom in this place, this is anything but simple.

Why on earth should we be asked to endorse a bill that has, in an alphabet-soup manner, amended significant pieces of legislation and put at risk the public interest of British Columbia? Why? Well, I would suggest one simple reason. It is the political well-being of the B.C. Liberal Party that is at stake.

[1630]

If we look at all of the measures in this act, there are some that are worthy of support, but there are some that are definitely putting at risk and putting to vulnerability the public interest when it comes to our natural resources and the assets of British Columbia.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

The member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast mentioned to me during the last speaker’s contribution that
[ Page 7605 ]
if the members opposite felt they should defend this bill, then have them stand up and do so; have them stand up and defend the measures that are being taken to excuse the government from its responsibility to openness around natural gas and commitments that they’re making to multinational corporations; have them stand up and defend the changes that are being made to significant pieces of legislation that impact British Columbians going forward, including the Queen’s Printer, which was mentioned by the previous speaker and will have a direct impact in people’s lives and direct impact in the provision of services in British Columbia.

We are asked to endorse a bill that has, on the one hand, provided opportunity for the Premier to engage in her favourite pastime, that of photo opportunities — to stand with British Columbians who have shone with distinction in their communities and bask in the inherited light of that shine from other people’s sacrifice. We’re asked to endorse that.

We’re asked to endorse a discretionary award that has, in fact, been on the books for 20 years. At this time the provincial government, the B.C. Liberals, have seen fit to adapt it, to amend it, to morph it to their particular need — the need of appointing friends to committees. They can then award friends with distinctions and then award the Premier with the opportunity for photo ops in awarding those distinctions.

I don’t feel comfortable with that. I don’t think British Columbians would feel comfortable with that. But this is just a miscellaneous statutes amendment act. Of course, it is inconsequential. But then we look at the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act changes that are going to be forced upon the Legislature and the people of B.C. by an inevitable majority vote of the elected monarchy of the current Premier.

We have little to do but to point to the problem, call out loudly to our friends and neighbours and hope that people will notice that in the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, the B.C. Liberal government is, in fact, giving away the resources of British Columbia in order to satisfy its political goals and satisfy broken election promises that everyone agrees were never realizable.

I speak to so many people who say to me: “Well, they’re all like that. All politicians are like that. All political parties are like that.” It’s so sad to see people who have essentially resigned themselves to this outcome — and such a blank cheque written to a government like this, the B.C. Liberal government, that will take that and say: “Well, you know what? This gives us permission. People expect us to be deceitful. People expect us to be dishonest. So why not?”

The people have resigned themselves to the outcome that their government will not serve them, that their government is beholden to interests far above the reach of their own — interests that donate millions upon millions of dollars in order to achieve legislative goals that suit their business interests. That’s the crew that we have opposite that serve that interest, that don’t serve the public interest.

How else could it be that the petroleum and natural gas amendments of this bill could offer the B.C. Liberal government the opportunity to offer natural gas proponents extended tax benefits, hidden tax cuts and other favourable provisions that would entice these proponents to advance their LNG export projects? That, after all, is the basket into which the B.C. Liberal government has deposited all the eggs of their political future and the well-being of the B.C. economy.

[1635]

They must come through with some kind of approved project at any cost. The cost was defined in Bill 6 debate around LNG royalties and corporate taxation. Now we have Bill 23 that opens the door to any giveaway that government should imagine would materialize a deal. Not only are they actually opening the door to the favourable provisions around tax benefits, tax cuts and royalties, but this bill essentially shields those agreements from Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act scope.

Not only are these deals going to be offered, at any cost to the interests of British Columbians, in order to achieve a political benefit for the B.C. Liberal government — a promise during the election which, of course, could never have been fulfilled — but even to remotely come close to actioning the promises that the government made during the election campaign….

This bill offers them the tools to offer any benefit they should imagine but then hide that from the public. Not only hide it from the public, but exempt it from approval from the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council or cabinet. In a sense, the minister has complete control over the future of the LNG industry and the deals that are being offered to corporations in order to land the deal — land the big one that the B.C. Liberal government absolutely needs to salvage any vestige of political credibility.

Having made this great commitment, having now opened the barn doors to any imaginable benefit to be offered to these corporations, having hidden it from FOI scope so that the people cannot discover what those agreements might be, using project development agreements which are more common in the Third World but now are common in use in British Columbia and then exempting them even from cabinet approval, the government has, in effect, bound the hands of any future government in British Columbia because, of course, these agreements can be entered into over any length of time.

As the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head said, it is not just a generational sellout but a multigenerational sellout. In fact, what we see is the B.C. Liberal government saying it’s the resource of the people of B.C. In order for us to save our political skins, we must have the free hand to give this resource away, to give it away into
[ Page 7606 ]
perpetuity, to hide that giveaway from the public and not even require the approval of cabinet to make that giveaway.

It is absolutely sad and inappropriate in the extreme that these measures should be taken in a miscellaneous statutes amendment act, which is typically considered to be simple housekeeping in correcting aspects of bills that are affected by other legislation that’s been passed in this House.

It’s a sad day in British Columbia that we see….

Interjection.

D. Routley: Yeah, it is. The Minister of Energy and Mines repeats my words.

It’s a sad day when the people of the province are asked to endorse a bill that gives away their resources — this from a minister who champions the non-existent community of Jumbo and the passage of millions of dollars of public money to his friends and insiders of the B.C. Liberal government.

But then the government counts on the disengagement of the people. The government counts on the resignation of the people that their government is not going to be truthful with them, that they would be dishonest with the people of British Columbia.

[1640]

That is a sad circumstance, when people have come to the point when they have resigned themselves to the fact that the government isn’t telling the truth. They’ve resigned themselves to the fact that powerful, moneyed interests in this province will be far more important than theirs as citizens. I’m sure the Minister of Energy and Mines is proud of that.

For me, even after ten years in this House, I find it galling. It’s disturbing that the government can continually reach new heights or plunge to new depths of deceit when it comes to dealing with the public interest of British Columbia. This is what we see.

We see the Public Agency Accommodation Act being streamlined in order to make the process of government selling land easier, less complicated. So far, the government has shown, in selling land, that they’re prepared to give away tens of millions of dollars of benefit to insiders and donors to their party.

We saw $128 million worth of property in Burke Mountain sold to a person who has donated almost $1 million over the past decade to the B.C. Liberal Party, and for $43 million below its appraised value. One property valued at $5.5 million sold to that same individual for $100,000. You can’t buy a doghouse in the Lower Mainland for $100,000, but this person managed to buy over 13 hectares of developable land for $100,000.

That’s what the government does bold-faced, right in the faces of the people of British Columbia. “We don’t care what you think. We don’t care what you say. We won the election. We’re a monarchy. We do what we want, and we’ll see you next time the 28-day campaign rolls around.”

It’s absolutely discouraging to talk to young people who come to this House about the value of their vote, the value of their citizenship. I always tell the young people about the famous B.C. entrepreneur Jimmy Pattison. I tell them about the fabulous wealth, the dozens and dozens of companies he owns and all the power that he has in the province.

I ask them, every class: “How many votes do you think he gets?” Three students in ten years have said: “One.” They always say 50, 500 or 5,000 — whatever. Then I tell them: “No, he gets one vote, the same as a person who lives under a bridge, the same as your teacher, the same as your parents, the same as you when you have the right to vote.”

The raw value of us as citizens is supposed to be defended in this place. At election time we expend the value of that citizenship by choosing our government, and then we make this assumption that the government will be working on our behalf, in the public interest, an assumption that is diminishing, that is being pulled apart by the behaviour of the B.C. Liberals over this past decade.

This is no change, when you come to a point where the government is selling property, prime real estate, to donors. This donor donated almost $1 million over ten years — $220,000 plus since the time the property sales plan of the government was announced. Donations the day before and the day after the sale — how blatant can you get? It’s $43 million below appraised value, while every newspaper you open has article upon article telling us that there are bidding wars for properties in the Lower Mainland. The primary concern of economists is that we’re experiencing a bubble of speculation.

[1645]

Deputy Speaker: I think the member has covered this point already, and I’d ask him to move on to second reading of Bill 23.

D. Routley: Absolutely.

That in this bill we should see the government streamline the process to allow itself to make even more efficient giveaways of public assets seems unbelievable.

You know, I used to write paycheques for people. I used to employ people. In a small business you employ people. You hope to employ yourself, but primarily, you worry about the survival of your business and the survival of the people who work for you. It’s something that you go to bed at night worrying about — whether you’re going to be able to continue employing people who, in a small business, you become so attached to.

You hope to treat people with respect. You hope to return the favour they’ve done by committing themselves to your dream as a small business person. You hope to reward them — but in the end, at least be able to write their paycheque.
[ Page 7607 ]

There are many pressures at all levels of business, from small to medium to large — many pressures on profit, many pressures on business, many forces which encourage people to do less by the people who work for them. That can translate to poor safety standards. That can translate to a lack of benefits or an unfair payment arrangement based on any number of factors. But in the end, regulation and government standard are the bottom line.

When we look to the government, we would expect the government would uphold the highest standards in employing people, would be the most respectful employer, would be the one that is the most committed to safety standards, the most committed to encouraging people to develop themselves within a professional environment. The most basic consideration is respect. The government should be the most respectful employer.

The measures that are being taken around the Queen’s Printer are a spit in the eye of that notion. Twenty minutes before the government announced the loss of the jobs at Queen’s Printer, the people who lost those jobs were informed. It’s an absolute lack of respect.

The minister promised that there would be a transition plan put in place. A couple of years have passed, and nothing has happened. I would ask the Minister of Citizens’ Services, to whom this particular section of the bill is responsible, to reconsider, to think that the value of this privatization is not worth the insult to the respect of those workers and to, at the very minimum, set the example to other players in the economy of how such an arrangement and transition should be handled. At the very minimum, do everything possible to minimize the impact in those people’s lives.

I heard a long time ago about a person who developed a light monorail system, which is in use now in an airport in Indonesia and several other places in the world, where individual cars from different areas ramp up onto this monorail, and they’re towed by a little locomotive around. As they come to their drop-off points, they leave the train.

[1650]

The idea is not so significant in the fact that it’s a monorail or in the fact that it’s a dispersed system. The idea was unique because the person who designed it believed in something called minimal displacement. He used existing technologies in the auto industry in order to achieve his design so that the minimum number of people would be displaced by a transition to a new technology.

This individual person took upon himself the responsibility to design a system to have minimal impact in people’s lives in a transition. That person had respect for people. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to ask the B.C. government to have respect for the workers, respect for the people who serve it? I know that every business person in this province feels that every day. I know the Speaker did in business. I know that many members on the other side must feel that.

I wonder, just as the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast said that members who felt this bill was defensible on the government side should stand up and defend it, if they could stand up and reflect on their relationship with employees and how they would treat employees if they had to make a significant change that affected the lives of the people who work for them.

I bet most of them would reject announcing to people who have worked, in many cases, decades in service to this institution and to the people of B.C…. They would reject the notion that telling them 20 minutes before a news release went out that their jobs were going to be eliminated could in any remote way be defined as respect.

A miscellaneous statutes amendment is supposed to be a minimal intrusion on legislation. It’s supposed to correct legislation — housekeeping. Again, this is anything but that. It’s a giveaway of the resources of British Columbia. It’s a photo op for the Premier, celebrating generous British Columbians. One can only imagine what that means after the giveaway of lands to generous B.C. Liberal donors. It confirms a disrespect for the people who have served this province for decades.

V. Huntington: I’m rising to speak briefly on Bill 23, the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2015. My colleagues have spoken at some length on many of the issues. I don’t wish to repeat all the points that they have made. But I do want to speak more broadly of my continuing concern, and that of so many of the citizens of B.C., about the levels of secrecy, and the discretion we are seeing conferred on ministers.

Moreover, the protection of a specific industry is rampant throughout so much that the government is negotiating, agreeing to and legislating. We are creating classes of locations and classes of companies, and we, the public, have no idea what the parameters of those classes will be.

What we can discern, however, is that the details are all secret or will only be available in the regulation and that there is no doubt the regulation will be developed in close consultation with these distinct and carefully protected new classes of company.

The government is struggling to save part of its dream of a strong liquefied natural gas industry in this province. I understand that, and I have consistently said I wish the government luck. But I wish them luck only insofar as they are open, transparent, fair and respect the public right to know.

[1655]

That never seems to happen in this mad dash to capture whatever is left of an LNG market over the short term. Perhaps we should be taking our time to get ready — in an organized, thoughtful, trustworthy manner — for the next cycle of world demand on the LNG markets. We could plan carefully for the long term and ensure that the value judgments the people of B.C. want to see are protected. We want a successful LNG industry, but we don’t
[ Page 7608 ]
want to sell our souls to get it.

The citizens of this province don’t want this industry at any cost. They want to know that the future opportunity and value of the B.C. resource base is not being compromised. They want to know that their government is not selling them out at an embarrassing loss. But how can we tell the public not to worry? Everything is secret. Everything is hurried. The opportunities we were told about are not coming to fruition. The LNG tax act cuts the revenue in more than half the original promises. How do we trust the future returns when the government seems to be giving them away?

My colleague from Oak Bay–Gordon Head talked about picking winning companies. But I think the government told Port Edward district that if they didn’t sign an agreement acceptable to Pacific NorthWest LNG, the province would move in and legislate a provincial cap on LNG processors, just like they did for the ports. Note that subsection 11(2) also ensures Pacific NorthWest will never be designated port land and that the Ports Property Tax Act will not apply — yet another loss for the province and the municipalities of this great B.C.

All of this might be all right if we knew what it meant. My office asked Port Edward if the agreement was available, and we knew what the answer would be. Of course it isn’t. It’s private. But the inspector of municipalities, the province, gets the agreement in 30 days. They already have it, for heaven’s sake. It was completed a while ago, while we are tying ourselves into knots to control what is normally a municipal power.

Then we get to section 46 — even more secrecy, an uncomfortable gift and concentration of power, with no oversight, in the hands of one minister. He can even make decisions that are the purview of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. What is that? The minister can decide to withhold anything that he thinks might not be disclosed under an FOI. Why aren’t government members concerned about this provision?

The minister can enter into agreements that would commit the government to deals that could last for decades. He can determine content, scope, length and virtually anything else he wants to include. He doesn’t even have to go back to cabinet. It is disturbing power in the hands of a single minister, and it can affect the future of this province. I guess we could put our faith in his wisdom and independence from industry. I guess we could say we really like becoming the banana republic. I just don’t happen to want to go down that road.

It is a question for me of democracy, respect for the public, honesty, openness, transparency and trust, a question of democratic governance and the expectation that our government will uphold the values of our democracy.

I hope we get a productive LNG industry. I want it to be successful. I just hope we aren’t throwing out yet more of our diminishing faith in representative democracy to get it.

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

Hon. S. Anton: I move second reading of Bill 23.

Motion approved.

Hon. S. Anton: I move that Bill 23 be referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting after today.

Bill 23, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2015, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

[1700]

Hon. M. Polak: With leave, I call committee stage debate on Bill 22, the Special Wine Store Licence Auction Act.

Leave granted.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 22 — SPECIAL WINE STORE
LICENCE AUCTION ACT

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 22; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 5:03 p.m.

On section 1.

Hon. S. Anton: I’m joined by Doug Scott, assistant deputy minister and general manager of the liquor control and licensing branch; and Janice Carlson, senior policy analyst, liquor control and licensing branch.

D. Eby: I’ll start with some preliminary questions. I just want to welcome Mr. Scott and Ms. Carlson. Thank you for assisting the minister and myself in understanding the legislation before us here today.

Can we start by understanding whether this legislation presents a limit on the number of licences that could be issued pursuant to its provisions?

[1705]

Hon. S. Anton: Section 2(2) says: “Bids may be accepted under this Act in respect of only a prescribed number of special wine store licences.” As I said earlier today, it is government’s intention…. We haven’t settled on a final number, but it’s government’s intention to go no more than two dozen.
[ Page 7609 ]

D. Eby: We heard from the minister not too long ago that there would be no new locations. Now there will be new locations. I’m trying to find out whether there is any provision in this bill that would limit the minister’s ability to revisit that, to change that regulation, to introduce as many new licences as she’d like — more than two dozen, less than two dozen. Is there any provision in this bill anywhere that limits the number of licences that the minister could choose to issue at any time under this legislation?

Hon. S. Anton: Not in the bill.

D. Eby: Very helpful. The second question I have is with respect to the type of licences that will be issued under this licence. It’s my understanding that these will be essentially a modified VQA licence that will be issued. I say “modified” because they appear to be able to sell products that VQA licence holders are not able to sell. Can the minister advise whether these are, in fact, VQA licences that are able to sell a larger number of products? Do I have that understanding correct?

Hon. S. Anton: These are not what we would call a VQA licence. VQA licences are a special form of licence which is held by the B.C. Wine Institute. The B.C. Wine Institute has 21 of those licences, 20 of which are active. Just for information, it’s one of those VQA B.C. Wine Institute licences which recently moved into a store in South Surrey. These are a different form of B.C. wine licence, and B.C. wine is defined in the part of the definitions section under “special wine store licence.”

D. Eby: Can the minister confirm that these licences will carry the same benefit that the VQA licences do: namely, that the holder of the licence does not have to pay for product until the product is actually sold to a consumer?

[1710]

Hon. S. Anton: The operation of the licence would be similar to the way a licence of an independent wine store operates or a liquor retail store operates. The product that they combine with that licence is more limited, but the way the licence operates will be the same.

D. Eby: Is the minister saying, then, that the grocery stores will have to pay for their product up front, like those other licence holders? Is that what she is saying?

Hon. S. Anton: The powers of the licence holder to purchase product will be no different. They will not be unique, additional or different in any way beyond those of the independent wine stores or the licensed retail stores.

D. Eby: I’m going to try one more time.

Is the minister saying, then, that these other stores can buy product without paying for it up front? I don’t understand why she is answering the question this way.

My question is…. The holder of one of these new licences — do they have to pay for the product up front, or do they not have to pay until it sells to the consumer?

The minister doesn’t seem to be answering the question. I would appreciate it if she would try to do that.

[1715]

Hon. S. Anton: I’m going to check up on that answer and get back to the member on it in a few moments.

What I can repeat is what I said a moment ago, which is that the purchasing ability of this licensee will be the same as that of the independent wine stores or the licensee retail stores.

D. Eby: I appreciate the minister looking into that for me.

The question that might clear up a lot of this might be simply this. The minister has talked about dormant licences. What is a dormant licence?

Hon. S. Anton: This is based on the B.C.-product-only licences which existed in 1987.

[1720]

D. Eby: I have to admit I’m not familiar with the B.C.-product-only licences that existed in 1987. Does anyone still have one of those licences in British Columbia? I know of VQAs. I know of LRSs. I know of public stores. I know of independent wine stores. I don’t know of B.C.-product-only licences from the ’80s. Are they in the wild, or are they exclusively in a cupboard in the minister’s office?

Hon. S. Anton: At that time we had a number of B.C.-product licences. Some of them evolved into what are now the VQA licences. Some of them are dormant, and those are the ones we’re talking about here.

D. Eby: If I understand this properly, there was a pool of B.C.-product-only licences. One portion of them were released as VQA licences. The others were never issued and remain dormant, using the minister’s word, and that is what we’re dealing with here today — that pool of unissued licences. The rest of them that are in the wild are all known as VQA licences.

Hon. S. Anton: It’s not that they were never issued. It is that, as I said a moment ago, some of the licences at that time evolved into the VQA licences, and others discontinued over time and reverted back to government.

D. Eby: This is challenging to understand. There are
[ Page 7610 ]
some dormant licences that reverted back to government. The legislation, though, enables the issuing of an unlimited number of licences, limited only by regulations that have to be written, and there’s no apparent limit on that.

How do we reconcile the idea of a handful of dormant licences with the legislation that’s in front of us, which has no limit on the number of licences that can be issued?

[1725]

Hon. S. Anton: That number is still being established, but the reason that I’ve been saying under two dozen is because we do believe it is under two dozen.

D. Eby: The credibility in any event…. Maybe to clarify, to understand these licences a bit better, does 3 percent of the value of the sales made by licensees holding these licences go to the B.C. Wine Institute?

Hon. S. Anton: First of all, I will answer the consignment question. The answer to that question is that only the VQA stores may have wine on consignment. The private liquor stores and the independent wine stores may not, and these new stores will not be able to do that either.

In terms of the 3 percent…. I think, actually, the percentage may be 4 percent, not 3. That’s a contract between the B.C. Wine Institute and the VQA store owners, and it’s not relevant to the new licences.

D. Eby: It’s just unusual wording, and I want to really nail this down. So that means that there will be no transfer of money from holders of these licences to the B.C. Wine Institute through some sort of royalty system similar to the VQA licences.

Hon. S. Anton: That’s correct.

D. Eby: We’re getting somewhere. Here we go.

The one-kilometre rule. Where in this legislation does it have any mention that these licences would not be subject to the one-kilometre rule as a matter of policy? Why would they be exempt from that policy?

[1730]

Hon. S. Anton: The regulation containing the one-kilometre rule applies only to licensee retail stores. The government liquor stores have agreed, through a memorandum of understanding, that they, too, will comply with that one-kilometre rule. So the only two entities that the one-kilometre rule applies to are the government liquor stores and the licensee retail stores.

D. Eby: I guess I’m just trying to understand. These licences are a completely unique species of licence. There is nothing currently available that has the same privileges and restrictions as this class of licence. Is that correct?

Hon. S. Anton: I guess the closest they would be is to the independent wine stores, except that they are limited to 100 percent B.C. product. Of course, they are able to go into grocery, although an independent wine store could constrain itself to the same line of products and go into a grocery as well.

D. Eby: Again, I’m having trouble understanding how these can be dormant licences if they are a brand-new kind of licence that is different from everything else that we have in British Columbia. How do those two things reconcile?

I just asked: how can we have an unlimited number of these dormant licences under this legislation? The second is this question I’m asking now: how can these be dormant licences if they’re brand-new, if they’ve never existed before?

[1735]

Hon. S. Anton: These always were B.C. wine licences. The change here: they’re being reissued under terms that allow them to go under grocery. Of course, this came out of the liquor policy review, part of which was the very strong interest from British Columbians in having liquor in grocery. As was announced at the time, there were two forms that the liquor in grocery took. One was the licensee retail stores, and the second was wine on shelves.

D. Eby: I think that it was also made clear that the wine on shelves were VQA licences that would transfer into a grocery store. These are not VQA licences. The minister has been really, really clear about that. They’re separate and distinct and unique.

How much money does the minister think will be generated by the sales under this legislation, if we pass it, for the provincial treasury?

Hon. S. Anton: We believe that there is value there, but we would only be speculating if we tried to guess what the market would be willing to pay for them.

D. Eby: The minister is reneging on a promise of no new locations in British Columbia that she made to industry. She’s providing these new licences with special privileges, including the ability to locate directly beside existing businesses. Surely, she has some anticipation that there is a public benefit flowing from this.

Has nobody given any thought to the benefits that could flow from this, or the costs? I ask the minister again: has she really received no estimate of the value to the public of selling these licences?

Hon. S. Anton: The wine-on-shelves policy was announced over a year ago. There’s been plenty of messaging the public, with industry and so on, over the last year about this initiative. The answer I gave a moment
[ Page 7611 ]
ago about the amount: it would only be speculation to guess at an amount.

D. Eby: One of the great benefits of having a VQA licence discount, when you’re purchasing product…. We have an e-mail from the VQA to their members saying that the discounts persist after the wholesale price reform, which contradicts the minister’s message about a level playing field.

[1740]

We raised this many times in the public, as well as other issues that I have raised here. I’m just hearing the answers from the minister for the first time. Can the minister advise if these new licensees will be paying the exact same wholesale price as LRS stores and government liquor stores?

Hon. S. Anton: If the licensees are purchasing through the Liquor Distribution Branch, they will pay the same wholesale price on the product as would an LRS or an IWS or, indeed, the LDB itself. If they are using direct delivery, they have the same opportunities for direct delivery as do the LRSs and the IWSs.

D. Eby: The minister says that if they’re using direct delivery, they have the same opportunities. Can she explain what that means? The question is: are they paying the same price for products as the other types of stores in British Columbia — the one wholesale price that the minister told us many times about in this place?

One of the advantages of having a VQA licence is that you can order direct from the winery at a discount. Is that what’s going to happen with these licences?

Hon. S. Anton: The member references often the VQA licences. These are not VQA licences.

The obligations and the abilities of these licensees in terms of purchase will be the same as those of the independent wine stores and the licensee retail stores.

[1745]

D. Eby: Does the minister anticipate that all of the licences that are issued will result in new locations at the grocery stores at which they’re issued? Or does she expect that there will be some trade between grocery stores and these kinds of things? Should we expect 24 new locations in the province — or more, if the minister changes her mind when she’s writing the regs? Or should we expect that they’ll be held, and does the legislation tolerate holding and not using these licences?

Hon. S. Anton: This is actually sections 9 and 10. The auction establishes the eligibility to apply, but each licensee — or proposed licensee at that point — has to meet the criteria, has to pay the fees, has to propose a site that the bid will go into, and they have to do that within a certain time. In other words, they can’t hold on to these indefinitely. They have to use them. Although one site may go in with their bid, it is possible that an alternate site may be chosen. They do have some flexibility on that.

The member opposite used the number 24. I said a maximum of two dozen. It’s not yet settled what that number will be.

A. Weaver: I have a number of questions on section 1. With respect to the grocery store definition, could the minister please tell me the rationale behind 929 square metres being chosen as a cutoff? This converts, of course, to exactly 10,000 square feet.

[1750]

Hon. S. Anton: The 10,000 square feet. I somewhat agree with the member’s sentiments about flipping between square metres and square feet. I’ll use 10,000 square feet for the moment.

The intention of that number. First of all, it is the same as the number being used for liquor in grocery, the full-service liquor in grocery. So we’re using the identical criteria. The reason for choosing that number was to not be in convenience stores but also to limit it to groceries. These stores look like traditional grocery stores. They’re not general merchandise stores. They’re not convenience stores. They are grocery stores.

A. Weaver: Do regulations attached to this bill or anticipated regulations attached to this bill allow for grocery stores that are true grocery stores? There are many in the region that I live. I suspect there are many in the regions that others live.

I can name two right near my house: Pepper’s grocery and Mount Douglas Market. These are two family-run businesses that are very clearly groceries, primary groceries, yet they are under 10,000 square metres. But that’s all they do, sell groceries, and my community goes to them because they support local grocers.

My question to the minister is: does the minister anticipate regulations allowing exclusions or allowing others to be part of this who may not fit within this 10,000-square-foot definition that we see here?

Hon. S. Anton: The number here is contained in the legislation, so there would not be a regulation overruling it.

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

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:52 p.m.

The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.
[ Page 7612 ]

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

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

Hon. M. Polak moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Madame Speaker: Have a wonderful weekend.

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

The House adjourned at 5:53 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

(continued)

The House in Committee of Supply (Section A); M. Morris in the chair.

The committee met at 1:37 p.m.

On Vote 43: ministry operations, $813,473,000 (continued).

The Chair: Good afternoon, everybody. The Committee of Supply, Section A, is back in session again.

M. Elmore: My question to the minister is…. ICBC’s investment income went from $671 million in 2013 to $853 million in 2014. Then it’s predicted to decline to $425 million in 2015. I’m wondering if the minister can explain, first, the large increase at a time when interest rates were generally low. Did it involve the sale of financial assets in terms of boosting that? Is it related to the $179 million reduction in the net change available for the sale of financial assets, and if so, what assets were sold?

[1340]

Hon. T. Stone: First off, just to directly answer one of the member’s questions. Did the increase in investment income last year actually involve the sale of any assets? I clearly can say to the member that there was no sale of any non-investment assets.

The member, quite rightfully, has pointed out a very significant gain in the investment portfolio, an increase in investment income last year. I think I should say generally, just as an initial comment, we’re very pleased and continue to be very pleased with the performance of those who manage within ICBC’s investment portfolio. If you go back three years, five years, ten years or 12 years, quite consistently year over year ICBC’s investment portfolio outperforms the market. It was that case when I was on the board four years ago. It continues to be the case today.

In terms of the rationale or the explanation for why the investment portfolio performed so admirably last year and why there was such a gain. There was a decision taken by the investment committee of the ICBC board to rebalance the assets from one class to another. There was actually a decision taken to move a significant dollar value of investment out of equities and into high-yield bonds.

It just happened, from a timing perspective…. Timing is so important in life; it certainly is in investments. When this decision was taken and executed, it just happened that a lot of these equities were at a very high value. Obviously, when you move investment from one class to another, that triggers a gain at that particular point in time, and equities were very strong when this transfer of assets was undertaken.

As a general practice within ICBC’s investment practices, the investment group rebalances assets every year. If there is one particular asset class that performs really, really well, then it triggers the need to move some of the dollars out of that particular asset and move them into a different asset class to ensure that the overall portfolio is very well balanced.

So again, the rationale I’ve just provided, I think, explains why there was such a significant gain last year.

In terms of the second part of the member’s question. Why is the anticipated income for the forthcoming year so much less than last year? Again, the significant gains that were realized last year were one-time gains really crystallizing the value of those equity investments when equities were very high.

[1345]

The gains that are anticipated in this forthcoming year are much more in line with what would be expected based on the mix and the balance of the different asset classes.

M. Elmore: Thanks to the minister for the response. That makes sense.

I’d like to move on now to talking about optional and basic insurance, particularly the first question — the net incomes of optional versus basic insurance. The ICBC service plan states that the net income for the fiscal years 2014 and ’15 are $373 and $210 million, respectively.

So if the minister could explain: what’s the split of the net income between basic and optional insurance for these two years? Also, what is the marginal capital test ratio for the two programs for the same two years?
[ Page 7613 ]

Hon. T. Stone: First off, the net income numbers that the member was looking for, the split between basic and optional. Again, these are 2013 numbers: $3.3 million on the basic side and $365 million on the optional side.

In terms of the second part of her question, which related to the minimum capital test, the MCT, the split is as follows: on the basic insurance side, 149.3 percent, and for optional, 298.6 percent.

M. Elmore: Thanks to the minister.

Just to continue looking at the respective costs of basic and optional.

[1350]

As reflected by the surplus from 2013 on the optional side, we can conclude that optional insurance is at a high cost. I’m just wondering if the minister is aware of a recent report on the profits of the automobile industry companies in Ontario. There’s a report by two professors from the Schulich School of Business, commissioned by the Trial Lawyers Association of Ontario and released in early April.

The report caused some headlines in Ontario and here in B.C. It asserted that auto insurance policyholders in Ontario had been overcharged by some $3 billion from 2001 to 2013. The report urged the regulator, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario, FSCO, to reduce the price of auto insurance.

The situation is somewhat different in B.C., as we benefit from the public monopoly on basic insurance, and the government insists that ICBC’s optional insurance competes with private insurers. The report does have relevance for our 2.4 million optional policyholders here in B.C. who insure with ICBC.

The Ontario report highlights two key indicators used by FSCO to assess prices, and these can be compared. There is a comparative basis for ICBC’s optional insurance. On the capital side, the capital levels, the amount of capital or equity is important for the stable pricing of insurance.

Comparing the FSCO models of levels of capital with that held by ICBC’s optional business, as outlined in the marginal capital tax for optional, a comparative shows that ICBC has twice the capital that they deemed necessary in Ontario. In Ontario it’s 59 percent of earned premiums. For 2013, since ICBC’s annual report for 2014 hasn’t been released, the Ontario model suggests that about $940 million was required, while ICBC reported approximately $1.9 billion — close to 300 percent.

The federal regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, requires insurers to have a capital ratio of at least 150 percent assets to liability reflected in basic. Intact Financial, the largest private auto insurer in Canada, has a target of 170 percent. ICBC’s optional, ended 2013, as stated here was in the level of 299 percent. Had the optional capital been at the Intact Financial levels, close to $800 million could have been returned to the 2.4 optional policyholders.

My question to the minister is: why does the government allow the appointees to the ICBC board to continue to force optional policyholders to carry this high capital level?

[1355]

Hon. T. Stone: With respect to the determination of the MCT, the minimum capital test, requirements for ICBC’s basic and optional sides of the business — I think we canvassed this last year as well — I think it’s important, first and foremost, to again remind folks that the practices ICBC follows are those that are required by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

ICBC follows OSFI’s standards. Essentially, what the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions does is look at the risk profile of the company in question. They determine, based on the types of products that are offered and types of risk profiles that are represented by the products offered, what levels of capital are therefore required in order to provide good, prudent comfort that the cash reserves will be there to meet the obligations of the company in question.

The standards would take into account, for example, the impact of any adverse events that might take place. If there was a significant depreciation in equity values in the investment portfolio, obviously that would apply significant pressure on the corporation and therefore play into the calculation of what an acceptable level of capital should be on reserve for that particular company.

I should point out that the actuaries inside of ICBC do a lot of these calculations and review the numbers on a regular basis. That’s a core part of their job. The work of ICBC’s actuaries is then cross-checked by external actuaries that are engaged and brought in. They verify the work that ICBC has done. Then there is another check and balance where the MCT levels are again checked by ICBC’s external auditors, which is the PwC.

So ICBC follows the standards that are set by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions in determining the MCT levels. ICBC’s actuaries do ongoing calculations to make sure that ICBC is in the appropriate zone on those MCT levels on an ongoing basis, and that actuarial work is cross-checked twice by external actuaries and by the company’s auditor.

[1400]

I would also point out that the MCT percentage, the 298.6 percent number which I mentioned earlier…. If you net out the transformation program from that, it actually brings the MCT number down to 260 percent, which is very much in line with the industry average across the country of about 243 percent.

A final caution I would make is that every insurance company is different and has a different risk profile and, therefore, has different MCT requirements. As much as we strive to compare apples to apples, it can sometimes be difficult. That being said, I’m confident that ICBC’s
[ Page 7614 ]
MCT levels are very much in line with what the industry average is across the country.

M. Elmore: Thanks, Minister.

I presume the minister is aware that the capital equity of ICBC counts as a government asset on the province’s balance sheet. It just leads to the question if that’s one of the rationales for the high capitalization of optional insurance, to make the balance sheets look good, if you can comment on that.

Hon. T. Stone: The member may have to rephrase the question, if I end up not answering the question. Certainly, the type of financial transaction that the member has described doesn’t actually take place with ICBC. ICBC is an independent commercial Crown with its own financial statements. Its assets are not rolled up onto the books of the province.

I’m not entirely certain what the member’s question was really trying to get at. I’d be more than happy to give it another shot if she would like to rephrase her question.

M. Elmore: I’d like to reference looking at optional insurance, just comparing B.C. to Ontario. We have the marginal capital tax, but the other aspect I’d like to pose to the minister are the profit targets, the return on equity.

If we compare, just for comparison’s sake, B.C. with Ontario, our most populous province, they have an ROE measure of 6 percent of earned premiums. With this guideline, the profits of surplus from ICBC’s optional business for 2013 were about three times higher than what we see in Ontario. The comparative difference is approximately $270 million, or $112 per policy.

[1405]

If we look at 2008 to 2013, our 2.4 million optional policy holders have paid some $1.4 billion more than would have been the case if we’d used the ROE guidelines from Ontario.

My question to the minister is: will he direct his board to lower the price of optional insurance and save policyholders that extra money?

Hon. T. Stone: A very quick response in terms of the question the member just asked: would I direct ICBC to reduce optional rates? She used the context of Ontario as a comparison. The very simple, straight answer is no. I have no intentions of doing that, and here’s why.

A couple of things. First off, we’re talking about a completely different province, in Ontario, with a completely different product mix, a completely different risk profile than here in British Columbia.

In British Columbia on the optional side of the business, as the member knows, we actually compete aggressively with the private sector. The market actually determines the price on the optional side. Consumers have choice. Consumers can opt to embrace the optional products offered by ICBC or can opt to purchase other optional products from private sector operations. Those rates are determined by the market, the competitive marketplace.

Again, I go back to my initial comment. ICBC is an independent Crown. They have a board of directors. They determine, based on all of the information that they have on a daily basis, what any rate increases will look like. On the optional side they very aggressively compete with the private sector and will continue to do so.

M. Elmore: Thank you to the minister for the response. I just have one final question before I wrap up my series of questions. I think policy owners could characterize and rightly feel that they are being subjected to a backdoor tax in terms of seeing increasing rates on their policies.

[1410]

My last question has to do with the B.C. Utilities Commission. In March 2013 government imposed a new basic insurance rate limitation scheme on the BCUC. The change significantly increased political involvement in the rate-setting process and decreased the commission’s authority respecting the compulsory basic insurance.

In November 2014 the government released the report of the independent review of the BCUC. The commission recommended that among other things, the government restore the Utilities Commission’s independence to regulate public monopolies — recommendations 1 and 2.

My question to the minister is: will the government accept this recommendation and rescind the March 2013 cabinet orders and return the full rate-setting authority over basic compulsory insurance to the Utilities Commission?

Hon. T. Stone: The first part of the member’s question, I think, related to the rate-smoothing framework that was brought in a few years ago. The bottom line with respect to the intent behind the rate-smoothing framework was to provide consumers with some protection from the volatility that had been experienced on rates over a number of years.

[1415]

From 2010 to 2013 we actually saw a swing in rates from a reduction of minus 2.4 percent to an increase of over 11 percent. With the rate-smoothing framework in place, that actually provides a level of protection to consumers that the peaks won’t be as high and the valleys won’t be as low. So far it’s working as intended.

With respect to the member’s comment about the recommendations coming out of the core review that looked into the BCUC, I’m not the minister responsible for BCUC. So I recommend that the member direct any subsequent questions she has about BCUC process and recommendations to the minister responsible for the BCUC.
[ Page 7615 ]

S. Fraser: I want to thank the minister for being here, and his staff. Thanks for answering questions here.

I’m going to keep it brief because we are limited on time. I’m just going to focus on one issue. It’s the potential alternative access to the Alberni Valley and beyond from Highway 19 as an alternative access from Highway 19 to Port Alberni, alternative to Highway 4. I’ve raised this issue before with the minister and all of his predecessors for the last ten years.

I’ll just go at it again because there’s been a little bit of change. I understand, certainly, the highway project itself is not anticipated in this budget. It’s not part of the fiscal plan, and I understand that it is not. But it has been reported that the ministry will be designating $100,000 towards a feasibility study towards the project of an alternative access to Highway 4, which is the only road-based access to Port Alberni and beyond.

I just want to make a comment. There’s the economic picture of the benefit that an alternative access could have for economic reasons. There are a lot of big plans in Port Alberni around a hub for a port facility, an LNG facility. There are many things that are being looked at.

There’s also the issue of safety. Highway 4 shuts down way too frequently from car accidents, from trucks losing their load — it’s a windy road — or from trees coming down in Cathedral Grove. It is the only lifeline. I have great concerns about what that means, for the isolation that can cause, in times of emergency especially.

Can the minister just confirm that there is $100,000 in this budget to address a feasibility study towards a possible alternative route?

Hon. T. Stone: Yes, I can confirm that we have allocated $100,000 in this year’s budget to put towards doing a business case on an alternate route. The member and I have spoken about this subject a number of times. We canvassed it, I believe last year, in estimates as well. We actually mentioned this specific project in our transportation plan, B.C. on the Move.

We do understand. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. This connector is going to be needed, and it’s going to be needed to foster the economic development and to leverage some real strengths that exist in Port Alberni and beyond. It’s also going to be needed from a safety perspective. So we’re pleased to be advancing some dollars to actually get on with doing the analysis on this proposed alternate route.

S. Fraser: Thanks to the minister for the answer and for the confirmation of the study being undertaken. I didn’t — I may just have missed it, because the tome that is the budget is sometimes confusing — see any line item of $100,000 in the budget. Again, I could have just missed it, but if the minister could just guide me in the right direction there.

Then, also, if the minister could give me a bit of a timeline and just how this study would unfold. I’m hoping that it will involve the community, certainly the Alberni Valley transportation committee that have been working on this for a number of years now — just if the minister can update us on that too.

[1420]

Hon. T. Stone: The first question. In terms of where the $100,000 would be found in the budget or where it’s allocated, it’s included in the…. If the member refers to page 17 of the ministry’s service plan, there is a line item here called “Major highway corridors and roads” for 2015-16. There’s $119 million allocated. The $100,000 is included in that $119 million number.

In terms of the timeline for actually doing the cost-benefit analysis, we’ve had extensive discussions with the regional district and other stakeholders in the area. The plan at this point is to begin the work on this by early summer — possibly earlier than that but certainly by early summer. We anticipate that we will probably have a finished product at some point this fall.

Certainly, through this year we will get the work done and release the results publicly. I can commit to the member that we’ll make absolutely certain that there’s every opportunity for the community — whether it’s community organizations, the chambers, the local governments, First Nations, industrial interests — to participate in this process.

B. Routley: Thank you for the opportunity to ask this question. I think it’s necessary to spend a little time giving you a preamble and a bit of a feeling for the history of the problems that I’m about to describe. I’ll kind of lump them together, as they’re both to do with debris on public roads and rural communities, specifically in the little community of Youbou.

That’s commonly referred to by people who live along the region of Cowichan Lake. It’s a 26-mile-long lake just west of the community of Duncan, just an hour’s drive over the Malahat here. That community of Youbou is on the north shore. On the south shore is the little community of Honeymoon Bay and Mesachie Lake.

At one time I used to actually walk on the logs that are now being transported on the highway because I worked on the booming grounds. Actually, I don’t go back as far as the 1940s. I started in 1970 in the mill, but we used to have logs on the lake — in fact, huge volumes of logs on the lake — from the woods all the way around Cowichan Lake, right from Honeymoon Bay.

There used to be the Gordon River logging camp. There used to be Caycuse. Eventually there was Renfrew, and that morphed into Honeymoon Bay logging camp.

[1425]

Again, to kind of make a long story short, these communities are not unfamiliar with the forest industry. In fact, most of these communities relied almost entirely on
[ Page 7616 ]
the forest industry, so it’s not like they’re complaining or wanting to bite the hand that feeds them. But on the other hand, there is a responsibility by the company that’s involved. TimberWest, in this case, is the primary owner of the logs that are now transported.

Now, again, it might sound like complaining to you, but I see it as going from logs that used to go from the south shore into the lake. There used to be a dry land sort right in Mesachie. The road used to go far behind the golf course, the only golf course in the region, into the dry land sort and then into the lake. It didn’t create a dust problem in Honeymoon Bay or Mesachie at that time.

It used to be that logs on the north side of the lake…. In fact, I used to go up with the tugboat, and we would tow them. It was a five-hour tow from Hawes Bay up in the west end of the lake all the way to the Youbou mill. Well, now they’re transported by a very rough logging road, and they get dust all over them. And then, depending on the weather — whether it’s the rainy season or the dry season — they come loaded down with mud and dust. The first thing they do is go from the gravel road to pavement. As soon as they hit the pavement, right by the post office at the start of the town, they start dumping mud and dust.

Again, it’s not that we’re against the forest industry. Not at all. We support the forest industry. But we have, since the huge rise in the number of logs that are being trucked out of there, a lot of log exports, I would suggest. Some of them are logs that go to other mills on the coast of British Columbia. They normally are trucked to TimberWest dry land sort in behind the pulp mill in Crofton. There’s an area where all the logs eventually end up at that sort.

So I guess the issue comes down to all of this dust and debris. There’s been ongoing talk. I’ve had meetings myself with representatives from your ministry, who, I might add…. I very much appreciate their role in being supportive and listening and working with this and going to meet with the company to try and get something happening. But over the years — and this has been years now…. The company started off saying: “Well, we’ll send somebody in to clear the dust off the road.” Well, that didn’t work because we ended up with more dust.

You know, all the young women that like to hang their clothes out on their…. They couldn’t do that anymore when you came along and started griming dust all over the place. It was getting in everybody’s houses along the Youbou Road. It was wrecking their cars. People were complaining they couldn’t even take their kids out for a walk, and seniors were complaining that they couldn’t go for a walk on the road and that it was not only dangerous because of logging trucks but really dangerous because of the huge volumes of dust and then muck.

We’ve shown the pictures to the company. They’re highly aware of it. They did promise to put in a truck wash. Everybody hoped that trucks would come in three minutes or maybe a little bit longer, get washed down with high-pressure…. There are such things available. You can drive a log truck through and blow most of the dust off and then not drag it all the way through town. We were really hoping that would happen.

I know there have been some negotiations with some lands, and it seems to be hung up. But now I’m hearing from the area director, the CVRD director and from the community on the south side, the Honeymoon Bay side and Mesachie, where they’re also concerned now about mud and dust.

The golf course says it’s affecting their business. They can’t go and sit out on the deck of the restaurant. I don’t think the minister would want to go out there and play golf and then go out and sit on the deck on a sunny day and have a cloud of dust every time a log truck goes by. So you can imagine the problem that creates for their business. It’s a real issue.

[1430]

Again, as I understand it, the only tools available for the ministry right now are…. It’s supposedly against the law to dump debris on the road. You’re not supposed to be able to do that, right? If I had a company and I was driving chip trucks on the road, blowing chips all over the way, you’d soon be on top of me and demand tarps and all the rest of it.

[G. Kyllo in the chair.]

If I had some other kind of truck with gravel, I noticed that they have to have a cover. You know, you can’t be driving down, bashing everybody’s car. But it seems like we’ve got this problem with log trucks that we need to have addressed. It’s frustrating to have the communities year after year, and the CVRD directors, pounding on us as MLAs to try and do something about this.

It’s my hope that the minister…. I’ll get to the question part now. I know I could probably go for another half an hour, but you don’t want to hear that. I think I’m running out of time. Anyway, the question that I have, I guess, is twofold.

I’ll start with question 1. Does the government have any ability to create tools through regulations — to, say, start out with a fine? I know that in safety they’re starting to talk about $1,000 fines. In fact, we’re working on legislation on safety to do just that. Are there some other tools in your toolkit to be able to motivate the industry to actually do something?

I mean, after all, this is a very profitable business that they’re doing, exporting logs. Surely you can get some action out of them on putting in a wash or getting something to happen in an expedited way. I believe it’s possible. I think you have the power, and I’m sure that you’re just the man for the job. We’re looking forward to some action on this.

Hon. T. Stone: I appreciate the context that the member for Cowichan Valley provided. I certainly understand
[ Page 7617 ]
the issue. First off, I just want to say that my understanding is that this issue has been going on for about ten years. That’s way too long. This issue has got to be dealt with and fixed once and for all.

To that end, staff advised me that the issues relating to the land acquisition and so forth for the truck wash have actually all been resolved. In fact, I think the construction, the actual implementation of this truck wash, should take place in the next couple of weeks and should be operational shortly thereafter. The staff feel — and, certainly, in talking to the community — that the truck wash in and of itself should address the vast majority of this problem.

That being said, there are two other things that we’re doing. One is we’re going to increase the presence of our CVSE officers. We’re going to send them out there on a more frequent basis to do more inspections.

[1435]

The goal here being…. If there is an example of a piece of debris falling off the truck or lots of dust being kicked up that’s in contravention of the permit that is in place, then a ticket should be issued and a fine should be assessed. We’re going to complement the truck-wash piece with some heightened enforcement in the coming months.

The last piece is actually taking a look at the permit that the company has. We’re in the midst of assessing whether or not there may be opportunities for us to actually strengthen, as a matter of the content of that permit, the obligations of TimberWest when it comes to debris and dust.

I’m hopeful that with a combination of these three measures, we’ll finally, together, once and for all, solve this problem for the people who live in Youbou.

B. Routley: Thank you very much, Minister, for that answer. I very much appreciate the good news that TimberWest will be starting…. Certainly, the area director for Youbou, Klaus Kuhn, will be pleased, and that will deal with the problem with Youbou.

I’m also pleased to hear that you’re considering alternate tools. I think that’s kind of what has been missing. It seems frustrating to the community that they were essentially told they didn’t think that there was any other tool than removing the licence, so it’s good to hear that you’re thinking about an innovative approach. That would be welcome, because I think we’re not alone. It’s not just in this community. I’m sure there are other communities.

My final question is…. I hear the focus has been on fixing the problem at Youbou. Now it’s becoming a problem on the south shore as well, in Honeymoon Bay and Mesachie Lake. At least, I’m hopeful that ministry representatives will…. I’m sure, once the truck wash gets up and running in Youbou, the people on the south side are going to be immediately wanting one as well and saying: “Well, what’s wrong with our town?”

I’m hopeful that with the tools that you’re talking about, you can look at this — if it is, indeed, working. If that truck-wash solution can work in Youbou, it would be great if they could do something. I know they’ve got plenty of private land, and maybe they can do something to find a way to make that happen there as well.

I just would appreciate any kinds of words of comfort you could give that community — that you’ll be monitoring to see if that is working in Youbou, and then if it is, that you won’t forget about Honeymoon Bay and Mesachie. I know I won’t, so I’m certain that you’ll be just as concerned about one community as the next.

Thank you, Minister, for your response.

Hon. T. Stone: Certainly, we will take the best practices that are developed, hopefully, in the situation of Youbou and apply those best practices to the folks in Mesachie and Honeymoon Bay. I certainly understand the conflict or the concern that would be generated otherwise, and besides it’s the right thing to do. We’ll loop back with the member as we move forward.

S. Chandra Herbert: My question relates to motorbikes and the sounds that come out of those back pipes, which wake up my neighbours, drown them out from having conversations, sometimes over dinner. Indeed, not just my neighbours — I’ve heard from folks in Kamloops, Kelowna, the far north, Vancouver Island, Victoria. They think something needs to be done.

The association of police chiefs wrote the Minister of Transportation some time ago, requesting a change to legislation so that there’s actually a real standard so that when they go out, pull over a noisy bike and test it, they have the law on their side.

[1440]

The legislation talks about testing centres — not really in existence anymore. Then there are municipal bylaws, some which seem to stand up in court, others which the police say they try to use but which don’t really work. They’ve requested that the ministry bring in legislation, bring in support for a standard called SAE J2825, which was created, in part, by a motorcycle council with industry and others. It’s a simple test that anybody can be trained to do. You can actually get the data you need to convict if somebody has broken the rules and so there’s no question.

I’m just curious. I’ve had conversations with previous transportation ministers always saying they’re going to look at it. It never shows up. I just wondered where that’s at now.

Hon. T. Stone: I appreciate the member’s question. I, as well, have received a number of concerns from residents in my constituency in Kamloops relating to motorcycle noise, so it is a problem that we’re aware of. It is not specific to the West End or any other particular community. It does happen around the province.
[ Page 7618 ]

We actually have a working group that was formed only a short while ago, consisting of the chiefs of police, representatives from the CVSE and the Ministry of Transportation. We’re, as a starting point, kind of laying everything on the table.

What is each municipality doing around the province? Where are we hearing that there is a bylaw in place which actually seems to be standing up in court, as the member mentioned? Where do similar regulatory requirements seem to be failing? What requirements are actually on the books provincially? Are those requirements modern, or is there a need — and I think there probably is — to update provisions?

[1445]

We’re having a discussion with the chiefs of police and CVSE with the intent of coming out with some recommendations this fall that we would then take to a broader group of stakeholders, which would include the various motorcycle organizations, local governments and so forth to get input on these suggested changes. That could involve policy or regulatory changes in the province but also could involve recommendations relating to educating police forces in different parts of the province on how to properly test for the sound.

Strategies perhaps could be layered on top of regulatory requirements which are in place and which would stand up in court if the enforcement was done a certain way and if certain strategies were employed. There’s a learning curve, I think, for lots of people here.

I can say to the member that it certainly is my intent, our ministry’s intent, by this fall to have a set of recommendations and a broader discussion taking place so that perhaps in early 2016 we could actually begin to make some very pragmatic but focused changes — possibly involving policy, regulatory changes and education and awareness — and to really apply a more consistent approach across the province and one that’s going to actually get at the root of the problem.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you to the minister. That’s the most I’ve gotten in my time here in terms of pushing the need for this kind of reform. I appreciate it, and I look forward to what the ministry comes up with. Hopefully, there is a broader public consultation, because I think people will have a lot to say about this matter.

One of the ideas that had been put forward in the House by my predecessor for Vancouver–West End was lowering the decibel level allowable for motorcycles from 90 down to 85. Cars are generally around the 80-decibel level, but for some reason, we’ve allowed motorcycles to be ten decibels louder.

There’s no science to say that that makes them any safer. Indeed, the motorcycle industry, various councils and organizations will tell me that, no, loud pipes do not save lives, as the sound travels backwards. Mostly, the problem is oncoming traffic, left turns and things like that ahead of you, not from behind.

Is that going to be considered, as well as potentially adjusting the decibel level over time?

Hon. T. Stone: I can say to the member that nothing will be ruled out. In terms of potentially requiring a lower maximum decibel level, I would say we’re not going to remove that from consideration. The intent of the discussion that’s taking place now is to have everything on the table. Let’s work through it as a group and then put forward some practical recommendations for, again, broader consideration of all stakeholders involved.

S. Chandra Herbert: One of the other issues that folks and motorcyclists raise with me is…. They say they ride their bikes responsibly. It’s not them that’s the problem. I think, for most, that’s the case.

There are a few who decide to go to a number of motor vehicle…. Some say they’re even the shops that are supposed to be changing out pipes that break the rules. They change them out because they’ve broken the rules. They come back the next day. The same shop out front will sell modified pipes, which can be really loud and break the rules. Have there been any kinds of investigations? Has the ministry taken a look at shops that might be, in essence, breaking the law?

Now they, themselves…. I don’t think the law says that they’re not allowed to change the pipes. They’re only really breaking the law when they’re too loud. But if you’re putting a pipe on a bike that is going to break the law, surely that should be considered as well. Just to pass that on — hopefully, the ministry can look into that as they’re doing their consultation. I just wonder if that issue has come up at all so far for the ministry.

Hon. T. Stone: Staff advise me that this is not an issue that has had a particular prominence in terms of direct complaints to the ministry. But the member is absolutely correct. It would be very similar to the decibel issue. Let’s throw it on the table and make sure that it’s part of the broader discussion that we’re having.

[1450]

D. Donaldson: I am going to ask a question in order to give the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure an opportunity to go on the record. I think that he knows what this will be about, based on how much I’ve been talking about this topic in the Legislature and with himself and with his staff outside of the Legislature. The topic is, of course, the provincial contribution to the capital funding required for the construction of the Upper Skeena recreation centre, serving the Hazeltons.

First, I do want to acknowledge the support from the minister and his staff to date. It’s been a couple of years that we’ve been talking about this. The minister has made his senior staff available to meet with me and the Heart
[ Page 7619 ]
of the Hazeltons fundraising delegation and with municipal councils from the Hazeltons at the Union of B.C. Municipalities annual meetings over the last couple of years on this topic. That’s much appreciated, and I wanted to convey the thanks of the delegations who have met with the minister and his staff as well.

I have a folder here, and it’s over 80 individual letters from constituents that I’ve received since the current facility, the Ken Trombley ice arena, was permanently closed by an engineer due to structural issues just about a month ago. The letters are from young and old, First Nations and non–First Nations, all describing how much the facility means to the community and asking for provincial support.

Many of them are from elementary school children, complete with drawings. I know that some of these drawings are pretty fun. There’s one of the arena and one of the Zamboni tractor that actually cleans the ice. I’m going to send them over in the folder to the minister’s office this afternoon. I know that with a young family, he’ll be interested in some of the artistic renderings, and so I hope he has time to look at a few of them personally.

The letters tell a story, and the story has been told in the letters much better than I can ever describe. I’ll quote from a couple of them here. This is one from a former forestry worker who now is a teacher in the community. He describes how, when he first moved to the community, there was a lot of tension in the forest industry around extraction issues. There was a lot of tension in the community. He says:

“In the fall of 1995 I was asked if I played hockey. Of course, I answered that I played. Didn’t most people in smaller communities with an arena? I went to the arena not knowing what to expect, given my experience over the past few months.”

That was the experience of tensions in the community.

“Much to my surprise, the very groups of people that were at each other’s throats during the day were playing hockey with and against each other. The game was fun and good-natured. The weekday pressures were left at the door. In my 20-plus years in Hazelton, this was the only place that I had ever witnessed this on such a large scale. There was no hierarchy of social standing or ideology, just acceptance and the common goal of having as much fun as possible.”

There’s another letter here from a school teacher, and I’ll just try to dig it up quickly. She touches on the same topics around the social fabric that the facility has meant to the Hazeltons.

“I have met so many people from all of the different communities in the Upper Skeena at our arena. I have spent five years playing women’s hockey. When I first came to Hazelton, before I had my kids…. I love the action and the time with other women, young and old, from all walks of life.

“The relationships I built while playing hockey let me into other areas of life in Hazelton that I would have never been part of. Our arena has been a place where people get together and work together for our kids, for sport and for our community.”

Those are just a couple of the themes touched on in the letters. I think it’s probably like a lot of other small communities in rural areas and in the north.

The Heart of the Hazeltons fundraising committee — the honorary chair of that committee is Hazeltonian Olympic gold medallist Carol Huynh — has managed to raise close to $4 million, a phenomenal amount in an economically challenged area, to cover the one-third community contribution for the project.

[1455]

Now they’re seeking the one-third support from the provincial government and one-third support from the federal side through the Build Canada fund so that kids and adults can be enjoying themselves once again, as soon as possible, at the new Upper Skeena recreation centre. I’d like to just give the minister the opportunity to state for the public record in this budget estimates venue that support for the Upper Skeena recreation centre, from the provincial perspective, is a top priority.

Hon. T. Stone: I appreciate the member for Stikine and the obvious passion that he brings to the table with respect to this particular project. I am very familiar with it, as the member knows. At the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention last year I met with Mayor Alice Maitland and the broader delegation. I’m trying to remember if Mayor Lowry was there. I think she was — as well as a broad coalition of individuals from the community.

This was, I believe, the third meeting that I’ve had in a year and a half with the delegation from the Hazeltons. I will admit that from the first meeting through to the last meeting they really won me over. I was a bit skeptical in the first presentation. I had looked at some drawings and read some briefing notes and so forth that talked about a building and an arena.

By the second meeting and certainly into the third meeting and by hearing the really poignant and personal statements that were made by folks from industry, First Nations, local governments, the health community and others, I realized very quickly that this is not just a building. It’s not just an arena. It’s really about the soul of the community.

This is a project that I think is going to have a profound impact on bringing people together in a community that doesn’t have a lot. I just want the member to know that this is a project that I think has tremendous value for folks up and down the corridor, but particularly in the Hazeltons.

Unfortunately, it’s not eligible under the eligibility criteria of the new Build Canada fund. Those are points of criteria that are developed by the federal government, as the member knows. That being said, we have identified this project as a provincial priority. It’s a project that we see a lot of merit in.

We’re having discussions with the federal government to see if there isn’t some other way to leverage federal dollars, perhaps from a small amount of dollars that are left over from the old incarnation of the Build Canada fund, where this project actually would have been eligible. The
[ Page 7620 ]
criteria were a little bit different then.

I think we’ve really got to make that effort. When you see what First Nations have done and what they’re bringing to the table, what the community and the local governments are doing and what the industry is doing, we’ve got to try and do our part as well. I don’t have anything definitive to say to the member today, but I want him to know that I’m working really hard to come through for the people of the Hazeltons with respect to this project.

R. Fleming: I just wanted to ask the minister a couple of questions about an infrastructure priority in my community — really in this entire region.

I was really pleased to get a press release a couple of weeks ago that said, “The hon. Minister of Transportation announced this morning that construction on a highly anticipated interchange at Highway 1 and McKenzie Avenue will begin later this year, with the interchange set to open in mid-2017,” and then, unfortunately, the date was April 1, 2015. It had been retweeted by Bernard von Schulmann, so that should have been my first clue.

However, the press release — I really think it could be….

[1500]

Interjection.

R. Fleming: The question is about when a press release almost identical to this one…. I think people have been waiting to hear more details for a number of years now. It’s the number one priority of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce. I can offer the minister countless anecdotal stories about contractors and service providers who simply won’t send out workforce crews or do service calls after certain hours because the congestion has become that serious.

I think we’ve had one chance to canvass it this legislative session in the House, where I relayed to him the ICBC statistics that it’s also the most dangerous intersection on the Island, in terms of the number of crashes. No fatalities in recent years, but plenty of near-misses.

I know he understands the scale of this problem. The mayor and council of Saanich wrote to him in January asking specifically for a working group that would appoint experts and civilians to a body that would begin the planning work, utilizing what had been very successful in the Sayward Road intersection on Highway 17.

I wrote to him in March — I haven’t received a reply yet — asking the very same thing that the mayor and council wrote to him about: his opinion on the idea of a working group, if that could be set into motion and when they could begin their work.

I’ll tell him that in greater Victoria projects work best when they have an adequate amount of consultation. There are some sensitive environmental concerns here. There is some tight space. There’s a mixture of public property and private land that may need to be part of the solution here. There will be options that have to be ruled in or ruled out.

I guess my question really is…. I looked at the B.C. on the Move document. Nobody is satisfied in the capital regional district that the Highway 1 at McKenzie congestion problem may be addressed anywhere between 2015 and 2025.They want a much more specific timeline. They want to get to work on it right now, even if it doesn’t involve breaking ground.

In terms of planning — getting the district of Saanich involved, making sure this project is done right to accommodate public transit, B.C. Transit — to make sure that the problem isn’t just pushed up the hill to Burnside or that it causes another traffic light failure somewhere else on Highway 1, it needs to be a comprehensive plan.

So I would ask him again — he’s got a couple of letters, both from me and from the district of Saanich — if he can provide any details on timeline, whether he favours the working group idea and when he might be able to more formally make an announcement.

Hon. T. Stone: Yes, for the member opposite. As he knows well, we mentioned and actually included a specific reference to the need for an interchange at McKenzie in B.C. on the Move. That’s by no accident. It is a key priority of our government to move forward with an interchange.

The member is absolutely correct. The number one bottleneck in British Columbia outside of the George Massey Tunnel is right here on Vancouver Island at that particular location, at McKenzie. In fact, it’s in part about east-west flow, but it’s also a heck of a lot about north-south flow.

My parliamentary secretary, the member for West Vancouver–Sea to Sky, who actually spent a good number of weeks meeting with communities and stakeholders right up Vancouver Island as part of our Vancouver Island transportation engagement, reported back to me that right up to Courtenay one of the top two issues that he heard in almost every community that he went to was the need for an interchange at McKenzie. I think that also represents just how significant a project this will be and how much impact it will have on residents, not just in greater Victoria but right up Vancouver Island.

It’s critical from an environmental perspective — I know the member has some strong feelings there — dealing with this congestion, ensuring that the whole concept of bus lanes or rapid bus is kind of wrapped into the broader view of this corridor, so we can get people out of vehicles.

[1505]

It’s important from a quality-of-life perspective. People spend way too much time sitting in their vehicles. It’s important for safety, and it’s also important for the economy.

I put it into B.C. on the Move. I specifically mentioned it there because I wanted to send a signal to folks on
[ Page 7621 ]
Vancouver Island that this is a key priority for our government.

What we’re doing to bring that priority to life is we are actually doing a tremendous amount of engineering work, technical work now to scope out different options. The member is right in his characterization that this will be an extremely complex project. There will be a significant amount of land acquisition as part of this project — some public, some private. We also want to make darn sure that it’s done in a manner that takes into full account the impacts on municipal roads, particularly in Saanich.

We’re going to work our way through the technical work. We’re doing that now. We will then engage with the district of Saanich. I actually met with Mayor Atwell only a couple of weeks ago, made that commitment to him face to face that we absolutely will work with Saanich and other stakeholders in the region once we have some options to actually put in front of all these other stakeholders. We are moving, I believe, at a fairly rapid pace with respect to this particular project.

The last thing I’ll say is that this is also a project that will carry a pretty significant price tag, as one could expect, so it’s one that we are going to need some federal support on from a Build Canada perspective. Just for the member’s assurance, it is a project that I have flagged for the federal government. I have indicated it’s a priority for British Columbia, and we’re strongly encouraging the federal government to come to the table to participate as a funding partner on this particular project.

R. Fleming: Thank you to the minister for his answer. I did note that the federal budget this week, at least the top-line broad strokes, included some money for what I would think would make this project eligible, particularly on a public transit component of perhaps adding bus lanes on Highway 1. That would really make a big difference, I think, on alleviating the congestion, subject to the studies he’s referred to. I’m pleased to hear he has met quite recently with the mayor of Saanich.

I would ask maybe a different question now, then, about the Belleville international ferry terminal. This is something that is near and dear to me. I actually was a city councillor 15 or 16 years ago that rezoned this parcel. I was there when the federal government, Transport Canada, divested it into provincial hands.

We have seen a number of ministers responsible for the Provincial Capital Commission and Ministers of Transportation come and go, saying all the right things about how important this international ferry terminal is for economic generation, for the visitors that it brings.

I have to say we’re extremely fortunate that we have four international ferry operators there today who have been extremely patient with a government that has had stops and starts and appointed blue-ribbon panels to look at revitalizing the Belleville international ferry terminal, but nothing has come to fruition. The rezoning is there. All the elements are there. The land consolidation is there. We’ve just never, ever had a realistic commitment or capital contribution or business case where some public money, perhaps on a grant and a loan basis, would be available.

I think the project has become more expensive, not just with the march of time but because the condition of the dock has fallen further behind. There’s probably a much more extensive revitalization required today than in previous years, but the importance has only grown. I think we get a million passengers through there a year. There have been studies, if I’m recalling the numbers correctly, that we could double that to two million a year.

We’ve just had a study recently from Tourism Victoria that shows that American tourists in the capital region spend, on average, $200 more per day than other international visitors.

[1510]

The connection to America, the gateway link to Port Angeles and other U.S. destinations, is critically important — again, a major economic priority for this region. It’s government-owned land. It’s in the government’s court to make a move. Nobody in this region wants to see the government appoint a blue-ribbon task force again where the terms of reference say: “Sure, you can revitalize this port, but you can’t have a single dollar from government.” That won’t work.

The last time that happened we basically got a hotel and condominium redevelopment plan with a ferry terminal attached to it. It was a complete bust. Every business leader on that panel admitted, privately, that it was a no go. I don’t want to go down that road again.

The On the Move document, I believe, refers to Belleville International’s redevelopment again. That’s encouraging, but again, no timelines and no specifics. All the ingredients are here. The international ferry terminal operators, the carriers, have said they would agree to a terminal improvement type of fee to fund the project.

We just need to have the right kind of partnership to make this go. Failure to do it now, at this critical stage — because so many years have gone by — could have very serious repercussions.

I would ask the minister: what’s the plan on the Belleville International ferry terminal? It’s referenced, but people in this region want a lot more specifics from him so that we can finally put all the energy and goodwill that exists in this region towards getting a project done.

Hon. T. Stone: Again, I have identified in many speeches I’ve given in Victoria, and included a reference to it in B.C. on the Move, that it’s time to get on with revitalization of the Belleville terminal. There’s no question about it.

This is a project that is going to need to be dealt with through a number of phases. The most important phase, or the initial work that needs to be done, is the safety up-
[ Page 7622 ]
grades to the docks and the wharves that the Black Ball comes into. Our understanding is that that work has got to get done, and not in five years from now. It needs to get done very, very soon.

I’m absolutely committed to ensuring, as a starting point — and working with the two operators — that we get on with the safety upgrades so that, first and foremost, there are no concerns whatsoever relating to the ongoing safety of the wharves.

Beyond that, if I can refer to it as phase 2 — we’re already starting to have some discussion with the two operators as well as the harbour authority, the city of Victoria and others — would be looking at access improvements and how we can make better use of the properties in question and enhance and improve access.

Phase 3 would involve a new and combined terminal that would really, as the member rightfully pointed out, welcome visitors to the gateway that this is. This is not just an entry point into Victoria. It’s an entry point into our capital city, and it’s an entry point into Canada.

Yet, and the member probably has heard from more people than I have over the years, certainly a lot of folks I’ve talked to who have just arrived — I’ve spent some time down there talking to passengers de-boarding — were underwhelmed. That’s probably the best way you could put it in terms of what they see and the experience they have when they walk off of the Clipper and off of the Coho.

It’s important that a revitalization take place in terms of a terminal, but we’ve got to get the first piece done, which is the safety upgrades. We’re having some very good discussions with the operators on a solution that will get that job done in the near term.

Then, as a priority, I want to continue the discussion with all the stakeholders so that we can focus on improving access and, in the mid-term, actually come to an understanding, with all of the parties, as to what a revitalized terminal looks like — what a new entry point could actually look like at that location.

The chamber of commerce in Victoria has made that priority very clear to me face to face. The new mayor of Victoria, as the former mayor of Victoria…. Mayor Helps was very, very clear about how important this is to the city and, frankly, the willingness of the city to be part of the solution, which I found very refreshing.

[1515]

The harbour authority as well. As the member knows, they’ve had some grand plans and some less grand plans over the years, but they’re an important part, as are the First Nations. I met with the chiefs. They have some very good ideas as well, and they need to be a part of the solution moving forward.

The bottom line here is…. The member knows this, but I want to read these numbers into the record. The economic impact of the two companies: 750,000 passengers between the two companies every single year, 127,000 vehicles coming into Victoria, $200 million to $300 million worth of freight every single year and close to 4,500 jobs that relate directly to the two operators and the people that are brought into greater Victoria.

It’s absolutely critical that we get on with a long-term fix here. We’re going to start with the safety improvements. I think we’ll have good news on that front in the coming months.

C. Trevena: To cap off the Belleville terminal, I’m glad my colleague from Victoria–Swan Lake raised it. It’s very important, both for safety — because it’s rotting — and the Clipper terminal is already thinking about putting extra buildings on the site and are urgently looking at ways of integrating the two sites. Particularly when we’ve got the impetus of the new border security and the smoother return to Canada for Canadians or people coming through the border, there is a possibility there of getting the two working together. It’s going to be an economic driver. I know that the two companies are very eager to see moves on that.

I’m going to change tack a little. In our last half-hour, I guess, Minister, I want to talk a bit about trucking and a bit about Highway 3. If you’ve got the staff on both around, I’ll start on trucking and move on.

The trucking association is obviously very pleased to see that there is a trucking strategy in B.C. on the Move. But I have a couple of questions about it. One is on the truck parking areas. In the pullout box, “Let’s Get Moving,” there are going to be two new truck parking areas in the Lower Mainland and ten new truck inspection pullouts throughout B.C.

Talking to truckers and the trucking industry, there is a real concern about the number of truck stops, rather than pullouts, for truckers. Just thinking of my own experience of Highway 1 into Highway 19, from Victoria effectively up until Cassidy there is no truck stop. Again, it’s not until…. I’m trying to think where the next one is. I mean, there are pullouts around, but there aren’t truck stops with washroom facilities further north.

That’s just in that one stretch of highway. As I say, talking to the trucking industry, there is a real need to do more truck stops, rather than inspection pullouts.

I’m wondering if the minister is going to be looking at widening this beyond just the two in the Lower Mainland and looking provincewide for truck rest stops. In fact, the trucking association is even wanting the terminology to change from “rest stop” to “safety rest areas,” which are designated, which have washrooms and which are not linked to inspection. I think that is going to dissuade some drivers from pulling over with the possibility of having their vehicle inspected, when they really do need a rest.

Hon. T. Stone: The trucking strategy is a piece of B.C. on the Move: A 10-Year Transportation Plan which I’m really excited about. It’s the first time that we, as a prov-
[ Page 7623 ]
ince, actually have a trucking strategy embedded within our long-term planning.

There are really three components to the trucking strategy. First off, we are going to upgrade and replace a whole wide range of bridges and overpasses. I think we canvassed that the other day. Secondly, we’re going to be making a number of improvements to streamline the permitting process.

[1520]

That’ll involve, in part, pushing more permits to our on-line system so that they can be handled 24-7 and be much more quickly turned around, which will be really good for the industry. And in part, we want to push more of the really low-, low-, low-risk permits into regulation, so we’re doing a lot of work on that right now. Those changes are going to be a significant enhancer or boost to the trucking industry.

The third piece, as the member has pointed out, relates to investing in truck parking areas and inspection pullouts. There’s a third piece to this, which is actually mentioned in the rehabilitation of highways, bridges and side roads theme, which involves rest areas.

In the trucking strategy, as the member pointed out, we’ve specifically mentioned in B.C. on the Move the construction of two new parking areas in the Lower Mainland. That’s really to address the fact that there is a massive shortage of usable parking space for both short-haul as well as long-haul truckers.

For example, if you take a look in Surrey and Delta, there’s a tremendous number of trucks being parked on agricultural land, and they’re not supposed to — or in residential neighbourhoods — and it’s simply because there aren’t very many truck parking options available. We’ve identified that as a need, and that’s really where we’re coming from when we mention the truck parking in the Lower Mainland.

In terms of the pullouts, that’s a safety issue, both for truckers but also for our CVSE officers. We’ve identified a number of locations on corridors across the province where we really do need an improved or a new pullout that’s going to make inspecting commercial trucks in that particular location much, much safer for the men and women who work for CVSE.

Going back to rest areas, we didn’t specifically mention rest areas under the trucking strategy because we’ve got rest areas profiled in the rehabilitation of highways, bridges and side roads. In B.C. on the Move we’ve made the commitment to up to 30 rest area improvement projects that will be delivered across British Columbia. This will include widened pullouts and expanded rest area parking for truckers.

I just want to assure the member that a good number of those 30 rest area improvements — it’s on page 15 of B.C. on the Move — will involve improvements focused on rest areas for truckers at different locations around the province.

C. Trevena: I thank the minister for pointing that out. So we have rest area improvement projects and new rest areas at priority locations in this. How many new rest areas will be built, and which highways have been identified as the priority highways where they will be built?

Hon. T. Stone: We haven’t determined exactly how many new rest areas will be developed and how many will be upgraded. We anticipate up to about 30 projects total, which will be a combination of new and expanded. We’re still in the process of identifying locations around the province, but we will actually start making decisions and announcing these projects in the coming months so that some of this work will actually begin, with the improvements being usable for this summer and into the fall.

C. Trevena: I understand that there are consultations with the B.C. Trucking Association on this and there are going to be conversations about this, which is very important because they’re the ones who know exactly where their drivers will need to pull out.

The rest areas that we have for regular vehicles, for cars and families who pull out in the summer, are a little different from what’s needed for truck rest stops.

[1525]

I wondered if the minister could perhaps give some sort of clarity on that differentiation — the number and the dollar figure that’s been allocated to this, specifically for trucking.

Hon. T. Stone: Again, the commitment that we’ve made in B.C. on the Move is for there to be up to 30 rest area improvements. We’ve detailed the types of improvements that will take place. That’s 30 rest area improvements delivered in various locations around the province each and every year. We have established a budget of $9 million over the first three years, so $3 million per year to deliver about 30 projects per year.

Now, in terms of the access for trucks, one of the common enhancements that we’re going to see at existing rest areas is improvements to the access in and out — and larger parking lots — so that more rest areas around the province than we currently have are accessible and therefore usable for truckers.

The other key improvement that I really want to highlight here…. I think it’s as important, if not more important than the emphasis on trucking with respect to rest areas. A good number of our rest areas today are not fully accessible. That’s just not acceptable in today’s day and age.

We don’t often think of accessibility challenges for persons with disabilities as involving rest areas. But far too often there are challenges encountered by people with disabilities, so a lot of the improvements are going to really focus on ensuring that our rest areas and the facilities at those rest areas are fully accessible to persons with disabilities as well.
[ Page 7624 ]

C. Trevena: That’s a very good point.

I just want to move on now on trucking to driver training. We had a bit of a discussion about this when we were talking about Highway 1 last week. Transport driver is, I think, in the top ten of skill requirements in the jobs plan that was issued. But there is, at the moment in B.C., no mandatory training for truck drivers, which would enable truck driving to become, as people have explained to me, more of a profession and less of just a job that it is now — more and more easy to become a job.

While I understand the problems, particularly for the large commercial vehicles…. They can go over to Alberta, get their truck driver’s licence and come back to B.C. and operate because they’ve got their licence. Is there any thinking of following Ontario’s model, where you have to have mandatory truck driver training before you can get your licence to ensure…? So that in B.C., you have that proof. If you’re driving in B.C., you have had that mandatory truck driver training.

Again, talking the other day about safety — these big rigs — the volume on our highways is just going to grow and grow and grow. People are seeing those who aren’t necessarily either skilled and trained drivers, for one, or trained in specific types of driving, such as mountain driving.

[1530]

[M. Bernier in the chair.]

Hon. T. Stone: The really quick answer for the member is that we’re not at the present time considering introducing any new mandatory training requirements for commercial truck driving in British Columbia. I’m not entirely familiar with the specific requirements that are in place in Ontario that the member referenced in her question, so I’ll certainly take a look at that and see how we stack up.

It is a requirement today in British Columbia that if you want to obtain a class 1 commercial licence, you do have to go through some very specific requirements as detailed by ICBC, one of which is to perform a commercial road test. There are also endorsements that are required, such as the use of air brakes. Of course, there’s a national safety code that also has another layer of requirements that have to be met on an ongoing basis — for example, requirements relating to doing an external inspection of your vehicle at certain intervals. A tremendous number of requirements are currently in place today.

Always interested in what other jurisdictions are doing and considering other potential enhancements that could make our roads safer, but at the present time we don’t have plans to introduce any new mandatory training requirements in British Columbia.

[1535]

C. Trevena: It would be appreciated if the minister would look at other jurisdictions. We are talking about safety on our highways. I think everybody is agreed on the importance of that.

I’ve been talking to truckers who say they got their truck driving licence, and they knew they weren’t really ready to go — so anything that can improve that and bring up the professionalism. I think the industry would really appreciate that, particularly since it is there as part of the jobs plan, as one of those ten — just ten — really required jobs. So anything we can do to bring up that level of professionalism.

I’m going to switch to a couple questions on Highway 3. One is, first off, the construction. The southern transprovincial — it goes through a number of communities. B.C. on the Move references it, and the minister announced not long ago that there is going to be some work going into, I believe, the Princeton-Hope and then Cranbrook to the Alberta border section.

There is also a huge need in the middle: Grand Forks, Castlegar, Nelson — that whole area. I know mayors have been lobbying the ministry very hard for that to come forward. The local MLAs have been lobbying very hard for that. But it does, just at the moment…. These sections — say, Princeton to Hope and Cranbrook to the border — without being political, are in Liberal ridings, and we are seeing that those communities in opposition ridings are getting no money at the moment at all, although the need is very much there.

Hon. T. Stone: First off, I always love to talk about Highway 3 in this context: there is a really constructive group of mayors up and down Highway 3. The member’s nodding. She knows it well. They cut across the entire political spectrum. What they do so well is they come together through the Highway 3 Mayors Coalition. As a group they put forward their top two or three priorities or projects for government’s consideration. I have endeavoured to try and determine who started that approach, because it’s one that I think works really, really well.

The member mentioned a moment ago that there are a number of projects that we will be moving forward with on Highway 3. On April 8, so only weeks ago, we did announce a $28 million project from Sunday Creek to Sunday Summit. It’s 5.3 kilometres of realignment and four kilometres of new climbing lanes. Work is getting underway now. This is a joint project, jointly funded with the federal government.

There is also a focus in B.C. on the Move on continued four-laning and realignment in the Hope-Princeton section of the highway, as well as the East Kootenay component of the highway.

As well as that, we have in our plans for this construction season, next year’s construction season…. We’re going to be doing a fair amount of rehabilitation work, as well, on sections of Highway 3, which would be more, as the member referenced, in the centre, the central parts, of Highway 3.
[ Page 7625 ]

[1540]

A specific project that we’re moving forward with is the Creston intersection of Railway and Pine. That is a project that has been awarded, and work is going to start very, very soon. We expect that project will be done by the fall of 2015.

Again, the Sunday Creek to Sunday Summit, which is more in the Princeton area, as well as the Creston intersection of Railway and Pine, were projects which were specifically profiled and prioritized by the mayors coalition. Again, back to my opening remarks, we appreciate it so well when a region comes together, like they have, and unifies behind it a handful of projects that the government can then consider.

Just as one final note, we have invested about $200 million in the last ten years throughout the entire Highway 3 corridor. There’s been resurfacing of about 570 kilometres, construction of 24 kilometres of passing lanes and redecking or replacing of 15 bridges, such as Skagit 1 and 2, Cedar Creek 1 and 2 and Skaist bridges.

The final point I mentioned, the rehabilitation. We’re expecting that the dollar value on the rehab work that we’re doing this coming construction season will be approximately in the $6 million area, and a good amount of that repaving work is going to be done in the Salmo area.

C. Trevena: I appreciate the minister’s explanation. Thank you very much. I agree with him completely that having the mayors and communities working together is always going to be the best for the interest of any stretch of highway that is a connector route.

I’m now going to be asking questions on behalf of another group of species on Highway 3, and that’s wildlife. There has been a lot of work done on studying the highway, the vehicle-wildlife interactions, accidents on Highway 3. There’s been a lot of work put into this. I’ve got to say, particularly on the Alberta side of the border, from the Alberta-through-B.C. section of the highway.

I know that the ministry was sent a very detailed and very interesting report on this. It was put together in 2010, so it may be seen to be somewhat out of date, but I think that some of the information is still very important.

It goes through various sections of the highway. It does note that in B.C. some of the vehicle-wildlife accidents are higher, and there are some, really, greater instances, in particular, if I can quote from the report. It breaks it down. Just over the border, Hosmer to Sparwood, it’s got “the highest matrix score for British Columbia sites” and in the entire area, going from Alberta through B.C.

Looking at long-term solutions, it goes on. The next section, Alexander to Michel 1, “is the most critical habitat linkage in the entire Highway 3 corridor. It is the most important site, from a conservation and management standpoint, to preserve for local- and regional-scale movements of wildlife, particularly fragmentation-sensitive species such as grizzly bears, wolverines and lynx.” I don’t know if the minister is aware of this. I learned this recently, that whereas male grizzlies may cross the highway, female grizzlies will not cross the highway, causing problems for, literally, grizzly development.

The ministry has been approached by a transportation corridor project that is working on this and has asked for the involvement of the ministry in really developing some very strong approaches to wildlife crossings throughout this stretch, for underpasses, bridges and so on. There are some very good examples if you just go into the Alberta border.

I’m wondering whether there is money in the budget for this in the short term and also in the long term. I know that some enhancements have been made, in having the signs up, “Watch for wildlife,” but in the longer-term planning of wildlife crossings to ensure that things like grizzlies can cross without fear, because it’s going to really impact the species.

[1545]

Hon. T. Stone: A great question. It is a challenge that we encounter in British Columbia every single year just by the very nature of our province and the wide variety of species that we do have. The fact is that when you build a highway, you’re building it through someone else’s home, whether it’s bear or deer or elk or whatnot.

There are about 5,500 wildlife collisions in British Columbia every single year, and 5,500 is way too many. Obviously, unfortunately, some of those result not just in tragedy for the animals but can have tragic consequences for humans as well. And then, the tremendous amount of material damage cost to vehicles. So we’re very much committed to enhancing our resources for wildlife, for strategies that will reduce incidents of collisions with wildlife.

We did a profile in the second section of B.C. on the Move, “Improving Highway Safety.” One of the priorities for action is investing $75 million over the first three years of the plan on a variety of road safety initiatives. That’s about a doubling of previous years’ funding levels in the ministry for these types of safety programs: enhanced avalanche technology; guardrails; the variable speed zones, which we talked about the other day; but also wildlife detection technology.

There is technology that’s in use in different jurisdictions around the world that is proving to be highly effective in reducing the incidents of collisions with wildlife. We’ve made the decision to move forward, initially, on a pilot basis with two wildlife detection systems. They are going to be both installed on Highway 3, because, as the member rightfully points out, while we have tremendous numbers of wildlife in the Cariboo, on the Island and up north, the Serengeti of Canada is arguably in the southeast corner of the province, along Highway 3.

We’re going to install two wildlife detection systems. One site will be at Michel, which is a 5.5-kilometre seg-
[ Page 7626 ]
ment of Highway 3 east of Sparwood. The second site will be at Elko, a 2.6-kilometre segment of Highway 3 east of Elko. The technology is going to include sensors and associated equipment capable of detecting large animals on or near the roadway. Motorists will be alerted via signs that will then light up and advise that there are animals on the road up ahead.

The project budget for this is about $2.5 million combined, for both of these two systems. There is a request for proposal on B.C. Bid to procure the technology. Our plan would be to award the project and have the technology implemented later this summer so that it could be fully active by fall of 2015.

C. Trevena: It’s very, very good news to hear that there is going to be this technology going in.

I wondered if the minister could say whether, in the long term, there are any plans to do underpasses or bridges. I know this has been seen, very well, not just to alert motorists but to ensure that you get that safe passing so that wildlife keeps completely off the road. Obviously, it’s a much more expensive proposal. But is it part of the minister’s long-term budget?

[1550]

Hon. T. Stone: Kind of two parts to my response. First off, we’re very hopeful that this wildlife detection technology is going to prove to be of high value and actually deliver the results that we anticipate, in which case our intention would be to install more of these wildlife detection systems around the province on other corridors.

We have a budget to do that. We’re going to be investing $75 million over the first three years of our ten-year plan, so $25 million per year. A portion will go into wildlife detection.

The member’s question with respect to overpasses and underpasses and so forth. We actually do make, as a standard practice with, certainly, any new infrastructure — as well as enhancements to any existing infrastructure — a consideration of wildlife and the conflict that exists between motorists and wildlife. For example, in the Kicking Horse Canyon project — the 22 kilometres of the 26 kilometres that are done — there are three wildlife overpasses.

I believe British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in Canada to actually try this whole concept of a wildlife overpass. They work very, very well, by all accounts. There’s a fair bit of exclusion fencing that has to be part of it so you can direct animals to the overpass, but they’re working really well. We also have one that was installed as part of the Okanagan Connector project when it was built. It, by all accounts, works well.

The other piece I would say, in terms of new infrastructure, was the South Fraser Perimeter Road. While I don’t have the exact dollar figure in front of me today, there was a pretty significant wildlife component to that project that involved a number of underpasses that were actually built, as well as exclusion fencing along that new route, which has had a dramatic impact on reducing the prevalence of collisions with deer, in the case of the SFPR.

C. Trevena: I thank the minister for that, and I hope that he and his staff will be working, as this goes forward, particularly with Highway 3. There is a Highway 3 transportation corridor project called At a Crossroads. They have been working very hard on this and have been in touch with the ministry staff, I believe, in the area in the eastern part of the province. I hope that that is followed up.

My last question for this year to the minister. It’s going back to ferries, and I don’t know whether the minister will be able to answer this. It is the inland ferries. I understand that the Nakusp ferry had broken down, either yesterday, I believe, or a couple of days ago. It was out of service.

When the new one came into service there was the promise that there was going to be always a backup. There was a lot of traffic going to Nakusp in the last couple of days because there is a local government conference happening there, and they were all held up because they couldn’t get on a non-existent ferry.

Apparently, the situation…. There is a ferry now working as a backup, but I just wanted to ask the minister if he knows how long the ferry was out and why a backup wasn’t in place. Apparently, there is always a backup for that inland ferry.

[1555]

Hon. T. Stone: Staff have advised me that last weekend the MV Columbia hit a submerged log, they believe. I guess everybody felt it and so forth. The decision was made at that point to continue to operate the MV Columbia. Albeit they operated at a much lower speed, so there were some disruptions to the schedule — delays, I guess, is a better way of putting it — for a number of days.

Divers subsequently went down. My understanding is they went down and actually did an inspection yesterday and identified that there was a pretty significant structural issue with a rod in the motor. Nothing that made the vessel unsafe for having passengers on board, but a pretty critical rod in the engine had some issues, so the MV Columbia was pulled out of service.

The MV Shelter Bay is a vessel that can provide relief service or backup service. The challenge with bringing the MV Shelter Bay on stream was that it needed to be recertified by Transport Canada before it could be brought back on, so unfortunately, there has been a complete disruption in service, my understanding is, through most of today. We are anticipating that the MV Shelter Bay should be certified and should be in operation by 6 p.m., later this afternoon.

[1600]

C. Trevena: I appreciate that, Minister. Thank you very much. I’m hoping, then, that the MV Shelter Bay will be continuing as a backup, since it’s going to have its Transport Canada certification so that if there are any added problems, they’ll be able to have free flow on their free ferries in the Interior lakes.

With that, I wrap up this part of my questions to the ministry. I thank the minister and thank his staff for the information this year. I appreciate it.

Hon. T. Stone: I thank the member for North Island for the exchange that we had this year. While she says this may have been her last question this year, I’m certain that I can anticipate many sharp questions on the floor of the chamber in question period in the days ahead. Thank you very much for the exchange over the last couple of days.

The Chair: Just a motion to recess, then.

Motion approved.

The committee recessed from 4:01 p.m. to 4:06 p.m.

[M. Bernier in the chair.]

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
JOBS, TOURISM AND SKILLS TRAINING

On Vote 31: ministry operations, $198,360,000.

Hon. S. Bond: Good afternoon, hon. Chair. I look forward to spending some time with you and members from the across the House this afternoon. I’m very, very pleased to be joined by a fantastic team that supports the work that we do in jobs, tourism, skills training and labour every day. I will quickly introduce some of them, but obviously there will be a number of people joining us throughout the course of the next few days.

I want to thank one of the members opposite, who is in one of the critic portfolios, who gave us some sense of the outline for today and in the days ahead. That is very helpful as we’re bringing staff from various parts of both Vancouver and Victoria. This will shorten my remarks.

I’m happy to be joined today by my deputy minister, Athana Mentzelopoulos, and David Curtis, who is the assistant deputy minister of management services and also our executive financial officer. Since the critic opposite gave us a sense of where we’re headed, we’re also joined by Gary Herman, who is, obviously, the head of the Industry Training Authority; Erin Seeley, who is an executive director who looks after the PNP program; and Scott MacDonald, my assistant deputy minister for labour market and immigration.

From time to time my colleague and partner in the ministry, the Minister of State for Tourism and Small Business, will also be here and available for questions. She’ll join us from time to time.

With that, I look forward to the discussion and questions.

S. Simpson: Thanks to the minister, and welcome, and welcome to all the staff that are with her. We’re going to be here for a couple of days, but we have a fairly tight timeline in terms of numbers of hours just because of the way the world works here.

I’m going to try to be as precise as I can be, as the minister said. Today we’ll be dealing almost exclusively with skills training, ITA, those questions that relate to the blueprint and those things. That’ll be our piece of work for the rest of this afternoon.

Could the minister, maybe just to start, give us a little bit of an update of the current status of the blueprint in terms of what’s happening with placements and what the thinking is around both placements in post-secondary institutions and support for that? Then we’ll talk a little bit more about that. So just a rounding of where things are at, at the moment, with the blueprint.

Hon. S. Bond: We are just about to approach one year since we announced the blueprint. We continue to lead the country in the thinking that would see us attach dollars and the focus of our training on labour market–driven data. So we are actually seeing a significant amount of progress. We work across five ministries, in fact, including Aboriginal Relations, Social Development, Education, post-secondary education and, of course, our own ministry.

In terms of some of the very specific deliverables, we were responsible in JTST for about 34 deliverables in the skills-for-jobs blueprint. As of today I’m very pleased to say — and actually, the member’s getting a sneak preview, because next week we’re going to be celebrating the one-year anniversary of introducing the blueprint — we have delivered 22 of the action items.

One of the major initiatives was, obviously, dealing with the transformation of the Industry Training Authority. Obviously, Mr. Herman is here today to help talk about that. If we go in terms of our ministry, we have worked through the report that Jessica McDonald did. We have allocated $10 million in funding to priority apprenticeship programs for women.

[1610]

There is a very significant list of accomplishments. We continue to make progress. We look forward to having further discussion about what the next steps might be. But I think, in terms of JTST’s role, we have 22 of the action items of our 34 that have actually been completed.

S. Simpson: Could the minister tell us, in relation to that…? I did have the opportunity to ask a small number of questions to the Minister of Advanced Education about how success or progress gets measured. The minis-
[ Page 7628 ]
ter had some limits. He said they do some measurement within the institutions, but then it’s not their job once the institutions were past the institutions.

Could the minister tell us — she said that there has been progress made, and she’s satisfied with success in a number of areas of the blueprint — how is progress being measured? What are the analytics? How is that being accomplished?

Hon. S. Bond: I think the member opposite has a really important point. It’s very important to me. That is, that we actually demonstrate progress using metrics.

One of the recommendations of the blueprint was to create a labour market priorities board which brings together deputy ministers from the five ministries, in principle, and the Industry Training Authority to review the outcomes. When we created the blueprint, we took all of the most recent labour market data, looked at the job projections that we have going forward and identified the gap in terms of where we needed to make improvement, where we needed to focus training.

Through the work at the labour market priorities board — obviously, we’re just reaching the first year of the blueprint — they will take the time to look at how post-secondary institutions have responded, how the Industry Training Authority has responded. Are we seeing increased seats in the right areas? What are the measurables?

I am very committed to making sure we can demonstrate progress in a measurable way. There are measurements attached to most of the action items that we had, but generally speaking, the oversight and measurement takes place at the labour market priorities board.

S. Simpson: Again, on this question, could the minister tell us: what’s the tool that’s used by the board or by ITA or by whoever, if the board has primary responsibility for measurement? What are the tools that are being used to measure that? What’s the criteria for success?

Just to elaborate a little bit, the minister will know that getting people into classrooms is one thing. Getting them a placement, if they’re seeking a trade and looking to get a Red Seal, an apprenticeship, particularly in some of the skilled trades is another thing. I’m sure the minister would agree that success isn’t….

If you complete the classroom piece and you don’t get to the end of the road at the end of the day — and I know it’s too early to assume if people will or won’t have got there yet — then you haven’t got success. What are the tools that the board or the ministry are using to do that measurement of what will constitute success?

Hon. S. Bond: Obviously, because of our limited time, these are broad questions, so I want to be as focused as possible.

We are tracking things as early as transition from K to 12 to post-secondary, for example. We want to make sure that if a student graduates, they are moving on to post-secondary. One of the key things we look at is: when you finish post-secondary, are you attached to a job? So there aren’t tools, if we’re thinking: is there something we just apply to the data?

[1615]

What we are doing is using data for the first time in our province in a way that very few other jurisdictions are. We are working across five ministries plus the external agency of the Industry Training Authority to say: are we starting kids focused on the areas we need them to be soon enough? Are they transitioning well to post-secondary?

We know that two-thirds of the jobs that are going to have job openings over the next ten years will actually require post-secondary education. So there is a systematic and systemic approach to this. We work with Education, post-secondary, moving our way through the ITA. Remember, we’re at the very beginning of this. We have baseline data. We know where the gaps are in terms of potential skills shortages.

What we need to do is see that gap closing so that we can ensure that where the demands are in the future, we actually have the workforce to meet the need. A year…. We’re in early days but extremely pleased about the cooperation we’re seeing through ministries and from post-secondary institutions. Certainly, the Industry Training Authority is also very focused on the mandate of the blueprint.

S. Simpson: The resources that get applied…. Now, we know that, based on the blueprint, I believe…. I might not have the terminology right, but the minister will correct me. The program grant for Advanced Education — roughly 25 percent of that grant was reallocated to accomplish the objectives of the blueprint by looking at those seats, presumably, that are identified by the board in identified areas.

So those resources are there. Maybe the minister could talk a little bit about what money there is there and identify whether there were additional resources applied to support that particular allocation. The second thing is — and this relates to the ITA: what is the allocation of resources from the ITA to support classroom work on skills training?

Hon. S. Bond: We’ve said from the very beginning, in terms of the creation of the blueprint and bringing ministries together, that it wasn’t about new resources. It was about taking the $7.6 billion that is allocated to education and training and making sure that it is aligned with the best labour market data that we have. So it’s about that $7.6 billion allocation of resources and how we then align that against labour market data.

The member is correct that the intention is for 25 percent of the post-secondary education allocation eventu-
[ Page 7629 ]
ally — there is a transition period here — to be allocated to those courses, to those programs, that are deemed to be most in need. We would use current labour market data. Post-secondary institutions would line up 25 percent of their funding against that particular labour market information.

I can’t speak directly to the AVED budget, but I’m quite certain it was over a four-year period that we would get to the 25 percent. So we’re not there yet. We’ve seen fantastic cooperation from the post-secondary institutions, and I’m really excited about their thinking in terms of how we can meet labour market demands in the province.

[1620]

When it comes to the Industry Training Authority, their funding would be considered part of that $7.6 billion total allocation. We allocate $94 million to the Industry Training Authority. Again, because they’re partners in the blueprint, they also have the need to line up, to realign, the courses that they offer and the support they provide against the blueprint principles.

S. Simpson: Just so I can get to numbers I understand, the $7.6 billion sounds like it’s an all-in number for everybody who might be considered part of this — Advanced Ed, ITA or whatever. Could the minister, then, tell us a number? If I take 25 percent of that, it’s $1.9 billion, I think. But what is the number if I wanted to have a number that said: “This is the dedicated dollars going towards the success of the blueprint and the work of the blueprint, out of the $7.6 billion.” Is it $1.9 billion, $1.5 billion, whatever the number is — after four years, understanding it’s not today?

Hon. S. Bond: Okay. The specifically targeted aspect was actually the Advanced Education piece, so that 25 percent of post-secondary education funding would be targeted. But everyone — obviously the ITA, for example — is expected to take their $94 million and ensure that their broad programming is aligned against the blueprint.

It would be very difficult to say: “This much is attached to the blueprint.” What I can say is that, specifically, for post-secondary institutions, it’s 25 percent.

The ITA has been, in essence, transformed to look at the way they do their work. We have a new board in place. We have made significant changes at the ITA. But I think it’s fair to say that all of their work is guided by the blueprint, knowing that we need to make decisions based on appropriate labour market data.

For example, in the education system there isn’t a targeted allocation to the blueprint, but there is the thinking that says we need to give young students, in particular, more choice from the very beginning, expose them to the kinds of skills and training options that they may find useful to get a job at some point in their careers.

We don’t have a targeted allocation in education. I think perhaps the best way to look at this is that the labour market priorities board looks at all funding that is attached to training and education in the province and then makes decisions about how allocations line up against the blueprint. They actually are tasked with looking at how the money goes out the door. Does it fit the needs of the blueprint? The decision-making is across those five ministries plus the ITA.

S. Simpson: I’ll try again for a number. Obviously, the majority of that $7.6 billion still continues to go for what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call more traditional advanced education programs — whether it be history, geography, whatever — all of those things that our universities and colleges provided before there was a policy decision to target 25 percent of that money — not to suggest for a minute that a number of the programs that are inside that target weren’t there already and being delivered as well. It just becomes a question of summary allocation. That’s part of the challenge.

I’m trying to determine here…. The minister said funding for training and education, that the board kind of looks at that and measures that. So first of all, could the minister clarify that when she talks about that training and education, she’s talking about that training and education that’s deemed to be more applicable to the objectives of the blueprint? And if so, what is that envelope that we’re talking about? I’m trying to just get a number, all in, that’s being spent to make this a success.

[1625]

Hon. S. Bond: As frustrating as this will be for the member opposite, there isn’t a number. It isn’t about an allocation of a certain amount of money to the blueprint. It’s about making sure that the system we have in place…. There is a fantastic system in place through K to 12 and post-secondary. We are recalibrating that system. We’re saying: “We want to find ways to ensure that the system reflects the labour market needs of today and tomorrow.”

It is not a matter of either-or. Traditional, as the member…. It’s hard to describe that system, but let’s use that word, “traditional,” compared to some incremental changes that are required to meet labour market demand.

This is really about saying we spend $7.6 billion a year. We want to make sure that as we think about the labour market demand today and in the future, our system is aligned against that. So where there are specific, I would suggest, allocations would certainly be in post-secondary, because we need to see some shift of thinking. But it’s 25 percent. It’s not the whole amount. The institution will still have the choice of carrying many, many of the programs that they have today.

The other area where you are going to see a fairly, I would think, direct allocation is the Industry Training Authority — their $94 million. They are about training for today, training for tomorrow. They use the blueprint as their guiding principle.
[ Page 7630 ]

The fact of the matter is that the pool of dollars is $7.6 billion. We are lining those dollars up against what data tells us the workforce of the future needs to look like.

S. Simpson: I’m just going to try one or two different questions on this, and then we’ll move on a little bit.

Just so I’m clear, now, the $7.6 billion that the minister talks about — that’s Advanced Education’s total spending envelope here for what they spend on an array of things in advanced education, the majority of which, presumably, is not going to be directly related to the blueprint. That doesn’t mean it’s not complementary, but it’s not directly related. English classes probably are helpful to the blueprint, though they might not qualify.

Again, I was trying to get that number. I understand that the full $94 million from the ITA appropriately goes there. Maybe I’ll ask this question, and I’ll find this number another way. If I take the $94 million that the ITA spends, I take the program dollars for Advanced Education and take 25 percent of that, knowing that it’s ramping up to that over a number of years — it’s not all today — am I going to come up with the number? If somebody says to me, “How much money gets spent on this piece of work of the government?” would I be in the ballpark if I took that 25 percent, added $94 million to it and said that’s the number?

Hon. S. Bond: Probably not, because the blueprint isn’t about taking…. In the case of post-secondary, there was a conscious decision made that we needed to target some of that funding.

The blueprint is about change in the system. It’s about a new way of approaching the spending of training and education dollars. It’s about thinking differently. As ministries think differently…. For example, there’s very complementary work being done by Social Development and Social Innovation. While you can’t attribute their entire budget to it, it is very much about finding new ways of training and supporting people based on the blueprint principles. So no, you couldn’t add up just post-secondary, 25 percent, and the Industry Training Authority.

[1630]

The blueprint — it’s exactly why we chose the name “blueprint.” It is the road map for how we get to a British Columbia that meets the labour market needs of today and tomorrow. We expect ministries, organizations and institutions to use the blueprint, to think about the labour market data that we now have — and it still needs refinement; we do that regularly — and have that information shape their spending decisions.

[M. Morris in the chair.]

S. Simpson: I may be back to this before we’re done today, but for the moment I’m going to try a slightly different question.

When this was first put in place…. I know the announcements were made by the Premier and by the minister, announcing the blueprint and announcing the focus and the target of this and announcing what was the emphasis at that point on the potential LNG industry and where that may go.

We now know…. I still know that that’s a substantial aspiration of the government, to achieve the objectives that the Premier has laid out numerous times, of four or five or however many plants. We know, just from what’s happened, that at least in the short term the number may be less than had originally been the hope. Fair enough.

It’s my understanding from people talking in the sector that the expectation is that today, if we were to get a final investment decision today, there actually is the workforce, probably, to take the first one on — roughly 4,000 folks or so is what I’m told. I’m told by people in the industry sector that we probably have the workforce to take the first one. The second, third ones, if they came, might be an entirely different matter, but the first one is there.

People talk about the Kitimat workforce, which now is coming to the end of that work, and a very complementary and compatible workforce to what an LNG plant development would look for.

That being the case, and being that we’re looking at some other areas, are there adjustments around what has been the emphasis on the LNG-driven trades or skills in terms of the work of the board to look more broadly at other areas? I believe it was, essentially, that set and health that were the two prominent sectors when it was initially established. What’s the status of it now in terms of the breadth of where the board is looking for skills?

Hon. S. Bond: I think that’s a good question that allows us to basically describe the labour market data that we’ve created. The member is right. Part of our major focus at the beginning…. And it continues to be in terms of why liquefied natural gas had a high priority.

One of the things that proponents look for…. As you can imagine, after what happened in Australia, one of the biggest challenges with the Australian liquefied natural gas sector was labour, and it caused projects to become very expensive because of the inflation as a result of labour issues. So we needed to spend a great deal of time working to understand our labour market and understand the workforce we have today — how we could grow it in order to assure liquefied natural gas proponents, for example, that we actually understand the industry and the needs.

[1635]

I’m very proud of the fact that…. I think if you spoke to the LNG Alliance and others, they would tell you that…. In fact, in very public ways they have said that if other governments had paid attention to the workforce issues the way this one has, they wouldn’t have had as
[ Page 7631 ]
many issues as they’ve had in other jurisdictions.

But we didn’t stop there. The labour market data that we have — I’d be happy to show the member opposite at some point — is extremely detailed. It has, from the beginning, been about the diverse economy that this province has. For example, in my office I now have charts, which are updated regularly, which look at projects across all sectors. We have a threshold of spending or the cost to build a particular project. We can now tell….

We look at the size of the project, where it’s going to be, when it’s going to start. We go and work with the proponent, whether it’s a mine, whether it’s Site C, whatever it is. We can now, through the way we look at labour market data…. We know that we need so many pipefitters, that we need so many labourers, that we need so many of whatever the occupations are. We know roughly when we need them in the cycle of that project, and we adjust the data.

For example, because we may see a delay at the beginning of one of the projects, we then move that data further down the road so that we can say: “It has a start date of 2016, it has a peak in 2018, and it will finish in 2020.” All of that data was what the blueprint was based on — not solely liquefied natural gas, but certainly the need to demonstrate to proponents that we actually have taken the time to do the job and reassure them about that aspect.

It was as important as taxation, emissions — all of those things. It ranks very highly on the proponents’ list in terms of what the government needed to do. I think from our perspective, we have…. We have been told that we lead the country with the sort of detail in that data, and that shapes the thinking in the blueprint. But I think the last thing I’ll say to this question is just that while economic growth is critical to our labour market data, the bigger number that actually influences the need to train is not about economic growth at all. It’s about an aging demographic.

When you look at the data we have, between now and 2022 two-thirds of the job openings that will be created are not related to economic growth. They are related to the fact we’re aging, and we’re going to have a whole bunch of people retiring. The number is big, but two-thirds of that number has nothing to do with economic growth. It has everything to do with replacing ourselves.

S. Simpson: I appreciate the last comments of the minister. It is my understanding that probably over the next seven years we will lose 25,000 to 30,000 of our construction tradespeople, who will be headed to retirement over that time. That loss is one that we need to deal with.

The challenge here…. I guess coming back to this…. If we look at those placements and the training that is or isn’t going on, this brings us to an issue that I know the minister is well aware of: the other half of the skills training, particularly when we talk about skilled trades. The ability to get the classroom, the foundation work done — that’s one piece. That’s being done, whether it’s the ITA’s work, institutions’ work, the work of unions that run their own trades programs. There’s an array of avenues there.

The reality is that they all, I think, are working in a more collaborative way than maybe they were in the past. I think most people would agree to that. But there are serious questions about the other piece of this, which is the job placements and the apprenticeship job placements on the other end.

Could the minister talk a little bit about that and about how she intends to get at an issue that continues to be a troubling one in terms of numbers of placements?

[1640]

Hon. S. Bond: We know that apprenticeship is critical, and I want to just confirm the member’s comments about the collaborative process and also give credit where credit is due. Unions in particular do a great job of their Red Seal training. They have worked very hard to develop those systems, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning from them about some of the kinds of things we need to do to have a responsive apprenticeship system.

We’ve actually paid a lot of attention to this. There is more work to be done. I continue to be concerned about completion rates. I think that it is an issue, though, across the country. If it was British Columbia alone, I’d be even more concerned, but it is a national issue.

There are a number of things underway. We are co-leads with the federal government for all jurisdictions working on the issue of harmonization, allowing apprentices to, for example, take part of their training in one province and complete it in another. It’s a very important initiative for us. We know that people want to come to British Columbia, so we think that’s an asset for us. We are co-leads on the national agenda on apprenticeship.

We obviously have a series of tax credits that encourage employers to consider having apprentices. We created a series of grants that would allow people to train in more remote areas of the province. They are grants; they are not loans. If I recall, the number is about $16,000 if you’re prepared to move and take your training somewhere in a more remote area, perhaps.

I think one of the important initiatives that I’ve talked at length with not only industry but organized labour about is the need, if we are spending public dollars on public projects, that there should be some expectation that apprentices be involved in those projects.

That work is nearly finished. We’re going to have some variation about whatever decision I make in terms of moving forward. I know there’s been calls for quotas, for example, of apprentices on public projects. My goal is to ensure that we have incremental growth of apprentices on projects that are funded by taxpayers. That work is underway, and I’m looking forward to sharing that publicly quite soon.
[ Page 7632 ]

The member is correct. There has been a lot of collaborative work on these files, but I would be the first to admit that there is more work to be done.

S. Simpson: It is a concern. I had the opportunity in preparing for estimates…. I spoke to a number of organizations. I spoke to some of the unions that run their own training programs, and their model is slightly different in that they don’t accept somebody into the training program unless they have a pretty solid guarantee on the placement afterwards.

I’m talking to unions that have 300, 400 people on waiting lists, and the reason they can’t open up is because they can’t fulfil that back end with the placement. They can’t find the placement. They’ve got some classroom space to take more, but they can’t make that happen. I spoke to two or three unions who are in a very similar situation where they can’t make it happen because of that back end.

The minister talked about quotas. We’ll talk a little about that in a minute — particularly coming back to that — but the minister talked about some of the tools that she’s using now, including the tax credits for employers to encourage them to take and put apprentices in place. Could the minister tell us what the takeup is on the tax credit program for apprenticeships?

[1645]

Hon. S. Bond: We have some numbers related to the B.C. training tax credit. There are two goals of that tax credit. One of them is certainly what the member opposite is concerned about. It’s to attract workers and employers to make sure they’re participating in apprenticeship training programs and making sure there’s that connection.

Secondly, it’s to encourage workers to actually complete their programs, because we really need to work on completion rates. We continue to be about the same as the rest of the country. We are certainly not seeing the completion rates that we see in union programs. That’s something that we need to…. We have been working with them in terms of looking at those numbers.

The B.C. training tax credit has been extended for an additional three years to the end of 2017. Each year approximately $31 million in tax credits are claimed by both apprentices and employers. Eligible apprentices can claim tax credits and so can employers. As of December 31, 2014, over $190 million in tax credits have been claimed by apprentices and employers since the inception of the program in 2007. We’ve seen just under $200 million in tax credits.

I think the other thing that’s been really helpful is in our work with the federal government on the issues of apprenticeship and training, more broadly. I talked to the federal ministers about how we characterize the work that is being done in both jurisdictions, federally and provincially. What we have started to do is work together in terms of the package of supports that are available for apprentices and employers.

I can give the member an example. When we put together the initiatives that are in place for people involved in apprenticeships…. I’ll give the example. We have a great graphic, which I’m not allowed to share, obviously, because we’re not allowed to do that. I’m happy to share it with the member after.

If you take the case of an individual who has three dependents — so if they’re married and have two children — when you add up the package of supports through your preapprenticeship and apprenticeship training from the federal jurisdiction and our jurisdiction, there is a total available, and obviously at the maximum end, of $55,700 when you combine federal and provincial supports. We should be clear that that’s a combination of both grant and loan. There are loan portions and grant portions.

In my discussions with the federal government, one of the things I think is important is that apprentices or employers don’t really care where the money is coming from. They just want to make sure they get all the support they possibly can. I’ve urged the federal government, to say: “Let’s talk about this as a package of supports, and make sure that we’re providing maximum benefit.” That’s work that we’re doing jointly with them.

If you are a single individual using the same series of supports, the maximum that you could receive both federally and provincially, loan and grant, is $46,600.

S. Simpson: I thank the minister for those numbers, and I would appreciate the data if it’s available afterwards.

The minister talked about $31 million being provided. I think you said it was in the last year.

Hon. S. Bond: Each year.

S. Simpson: Each year roughly $31 million in tax credits to both students — employees, potential employees — and employers. Is there a division between how much of that goes to one and how much goes to the other?

[1650]

Hon. S. Bond: We’ll work to get the information that the member opposite…. I don’t have the breakdown in terms of the $31 million — which portion is apprentices and employers. But I can assure the member opposite that there are a lot of categories here.

There are training tax credits that are basic. There are completion credits for both employers and apprentices. When you add in the federal dollars…. We can tell you, for example, that in 2014-15, 6,000 apprentices in our province received the federal apprenticeship incentive grant. That was $6 million, but again, that’s the federal grant.

We’d be happy to put together some information that lays out the categories and the breakdown for how ap-
[ Page 7633 ]
prentices and employers can actually claim these credits.

S. Simpson: I appreciate that, and I’d appreciate the information.

I guess where I’m trying to get here is I’m trying to determine whether the tax credit incentive…. I understand there are a lot of dollars being invested by both the federal and provincial government, as the tool or the vehicle, the incentive, to try to ensure that students stay in the programs and that there are employers there who are prepared to fulfil that apprenticeship responsibility and have some motivation for that. The motivation is dollars, partly. They get a skilled worker out of it, too, hopefully, at the end of the day.

I’m trying to determine here or get some sense of, the success of that program in accomplishing this objective, particularly since we know there’s some struggle. I’m sure the minister is looking at options and alternatives to improve that rate at the back end and what might do that. I guess it’s back to: how is the minister assessing how those programs and the dollars and that piece is working, and getting a sense of that?

Hon. S. Bond: I think that the success…. We have work to do. I can’t speak to the overall impact of the tax credit regime. It’s obviously working. We have $31 million a year going out the door to apprentices and employers. But it certainly shouldn’t be the only incentive and shouldn’t be the only tool we use to try to increase the number of apprentices in the province.

[1655]

I, like the member opposite, hear stories from families: “My son or my daughter is an apprentice, and they can’t find someone to take them on.” There certainly are those needs.

We’re doing a number of things. We launched a program called apprentice match. What it does is it allows apprentices and people who want to be apprentices and companies to register so that they have a chance to actually look and find a match. It’s one of the ways we try to connect potential apprentices to employers. That’s another tool.

When you look at…. One of the great pieces of work that, I think, the Industry Training Authority has done over the last year is we’ve now got 15 apprentice advisers on the ground. Of the 15 that we have, six of them are focused particularly on assisting First Nations individuals across the province.

Those apprenticeship advisers…. Their job — and they’re placed all around the province — is to work not only with apprentices but with employers, to say: “How can we help you be prepared to take on an apprentice?”

I’m also looking at things like…. Small businesses find it very difficult. If you’re a small business person, it’s very hard to take on an apprentice. So I’ve asked the team to look at some innovation. How can you find a way to cluster employers so that they could share an apprentice? Are there ways that we can make it easier for a group of small businesses? Those kinds of things.

One of the big impediments that we’re working on is trying to figure out how we reduce or eliminate the need for apprentices to leave their place of work, leave their families. In the past many of them left. If you were in Vanderhoof, you had to go to BCIT to get your apprenticeship training. We want to make sure that we’re thinking of ways to deliver it closer to home, perhaps on the jobsite. We found, for example, in the Rio Tinto example, that there were opportunities for apprentices to do some of their theory in the evenings on their worksite.

There are a variety of ways. It is not all about tax credits. There needs to be a significant degree of innovation, and we’re beginning to have those discussions across the sector. I know that we’re working to have a forum later in the year, which was one of the recommendations in the McDonald report. Each year we should actually come together, talk about skills training, talk about innovation and how we do it differently.

Gary and the team at the ITA are working very hard with our ministry to put together a discussion that would have us talk about some of these very necessary changes that need to take place.

S. Simpson: I appreciate those comments. There are a number of issues here.

I know that the minister talked about the advisers. I know one of the previous criticisms was…. What the union programs would have told you previously was that they believe that part of their success was having these advisers. They worked closely with employers and apprentices and tried to smooth out those problems that sometimes would arise between those two parties and also were prepared to call an apprentice to task when they didn’t seem to be getting on with doing the job. They believe, certainly, it was a big piece of that.

My understanding was that ten had been put in place. I believe the minister says there are now 15. Is the plan to go up to 21?

Hon. S. Bond: I think the recommendation from Jessica McDonald was actually 15 in total. We wanted to be sure that there was a significant emphasis on First Nations. We are at 15 now, and six of those, as I said, would have a particular focus on working with First Nations.

S. Simpson: So we’ve now kind of achieved that objective, the objective of 15.

One of the issues with this…. The minister was talking about small businesses. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. Then I want to come back and talk a little bit about some of the larger players and how to get at those folks.

One of the critiques that I got…. I was up talking, ac-
[ Page 7634 ]
tually, to the chamber of commerce in the Kootenays — one of the chambers — and one in the minister’s own community. During the discussion we spoke about skills training, because that was a big issue for those business groups as well.

One of the frustrations that was raised, interestingly, in both communities was from smaller business people — not very small, but moderate-sized businesses — that were committed to apprenticeship programs.

[1700]

A gentleman in the Kootenays who ran a woodworking finishing facility had a couple of apprentices there and always had been committed to that and believed in that program. His frustration was that he’d get them a couple of years down the road, and then the bigger guy up the street, who wouldn’t play at all, would offer them a couple of bucks an hour more. He poached them away for a few dollars an hour more. All of a sudden the apprenticeship essentially ended for a couple bucks.

This guy had done the right thing and put a program in place and committed and committed his journeymen to providing mentorship. All of a sudden he loses these younger workers after they’ve started to actually get some skills that will benefit him in his business. He loses them to the guy up the street who’s benefiting from this program and from the apprenticeship program without putting any skin in the game or investing.

Could the minister talk a little bit about how she views that? Does she view that as an issue, and how does she think that we get at that?

Hon. S. Bond: Yes, it is a problem, and as Gary would remind me, there are three ways to get apprentices. You either grow them yourself, you poach them, or you import them. Our number one goal is to grow more of them here in British Columbia.

From a good-news perspective, when we look at employer sponsorship, we’ve actually seen that number…. When we look at how many employers in the province are hiring and training apprentices, it’s actually gone up 21 percent since 2004. When we look at 2014-15, we will be just under 10,000 in the province. I think it’s 9,958 or something like that. So we are certainly working to grow more of our own.

I think the other thing we need to recognize is that it is a problem across the country. In fact, when we’re looking at the work we’re doing nationally, we are talking about harmonization for a reason. We want to be able to see that kind of apprentice mobility. We think that British Columbia is an asset just because of the place that it is. We are going to have, we hope…. It has been predicted that we’ll have the leading economy in the country this year.

The other thing I should let the member opposite know is that we actually track all of our demand, all of the trades. We look at where our apprentices are being engaged and where not. We’ve seen, for example, that we’ve had a significant increase since 2008 in crane operators. It has been 61 percent — an overall increase since 2007 of the numbers of employers that are engaged in at least 16 of the high-demand trades that I’m looking at. So we track the numbers.

Poaching is an issue. One of the reasons that we’re looking at innovation in how you train and how you offer apprenticeships is for that very reason. How do we make it easier for more employers to be involved? Tax credits play a role — absolutely. But we need to think about what other supports they need.

The good news is, and there is good news on that file, we’ve seen a 21 percent increase since 2004. But there’s a lot of room for growth.

[1705]

S. Simpson: There always have been suggestions. I’m sure that the minister and the minister’s staff here are more than aware of the different options that get floated periodically about how you put carrots and sticks out there to encourage people to participate — things like the tax credits and whether there are sticks out there for people who aren’t playing maybe quite by the rules that we think everybody should be playing by, rightly or wrongly.

Does the minister have any view…? I know the minister has views on most things. But what is the minister’s view on whether we need to put in place other kinds of incentives — or deterrents in some cases, if necessary — to change some of how people behave when these kinds of situations occur?

Hon. S. Bond: I think it would be fair to characterize our approach as more carrot than stick, and I think that’s appropriate. I also think, though, that governments need to lead by example. That’s why I’m very interested in looking at how we…. If we’re going to invest taxpayer dollars in large projects especially, there should be an assumption that we lead by example in terms of apprentices on those projects. For me, that’s a very important initiative that I am contemplating.

I should say to the member opposite that I have also challenged the federal government. You know, they have been very…. There are a lot of infrastructure programs that people across the country have the opportunity to be involved in. They currently have a voluntary program where they encourage employers to step up and take apprentices. As I’ve done my policy work, I’ve also encouraged them to consider making a step beyond voluntary and look at those billions of Canadian taxpayer dollars that are going into infrastructure projects. From our perspective, we think that, generally speaking, people appreciate apprentices on their worksite.

One thing I do have to note for the member opposite: as I’ve contemplated the policy work around apprenti-
[ Page 7635 ]
ces on public projects, we don’t have a lot of data about the impact of having a large number of apprentices on a public project. Is it more costly? Does it delay the project? What does it do?

I can say this. The approach we take, if we move forward, will be incremental. That’s why we’re not jumping to having a quota at the beginning of a process like this. We want to make sure we’re careful about the impacts, making sure that taxpayer dollars are used appropriately on those projects.

I have to admit that I’m a carrot rather than a stick person, and we’re trying very hard to think about innovative ways to ask employers and encourage and incent employers to be involved with apprentices.

S. Simpson: To follow up on that a little bit, about what makes sense and whether quotas make sense, I’m in favour of quotas, particularly if we’re talking about public dollars or public resources. My understanding is, for example, that when you look at the LNG sector…. I know there’s the LNG working group, where most of the primary discussion is about how to make sure there’s a workforce that’s successful for any of these projects that move ahead. My understanding is that not everybody is of the same mind at that group. I’m aware of that. But for example, the LNG Canada project, which is Shell — in their case they are talking about 25 percent.

[1710]

They’re looking at upwards of 7,000 people that it could take to build that, I understand. They’re looking at 25 percent. I also understand that there certainly has been a discussion at the working group table about what the numbers should be — whether it’s 20, or it’s 25. It’s a significant number that’s being discussed in terms of an apprenticeship or percentage of apprenticeships at that table.

If the most prominent projects, arguably, the province is hoping to see in the next decade, over the next number of years, are talking about those numbers, does the minister think that that helps to then be able to be making commitments elsewhere?

We talked about public projects and the need to lead by example for the public, particularly in these areas. If those are the kinds of goals that industry is talking about on the most prominent and what will be the highest-profile projects, maybe, in the province, at 20 or 25 percent…. The minister doesn’t believe that maybe we should be looking at similar kinds of numbers on significant capital projects — not small ones but significant projects — that are paid for with taxpayer dollars?

Hon. S. Bond: I think what’s most important is that we demonstrate a commitment to ensuring that when there are public dollars involved…. And they would be on larger-sized projects. We have to think about what the impacts are for a small highway contract, for example. You know, there’s a different set of expectations there.

My concern is that we don’t have enough data or experience in the province to warrant, perhaps, in the early stages, a quota. It doesn’t mean it won’t be a…. The work that we’ve done…. We’ve looked at that. We’ve looked at a variety of ways of ensuring that there is employer participation.

I do want to highlight what the member said, because I would absolutely agree with him. One of the things that is very impressive about not just the LNG proponents…. They do stand out. Obviously, I meet with them — the LNG alliance, the LNG Working Group. They are very committed to looking at the use of apprentices — and yes, many of them. I’ve heard 25 and as high as 30 percent on some projects. But we have to remember that those are massive projects. Those companies have that experience in other jurisdictions.

British Columbia hasn’t had that practice. I think it’s important that we do our homework. It is an important policy decision, I think, to make, if a government is going to lead by example. It’s not a matter of saying: “No, not ever would we have a quota.” I think it goes back to the carrot approach again. These are companies that are already standing up and saying, “We have an amazing track record with apprentices,” and they do.

It’s been a really interesting discussion and, again, lots of collaboration and positive discussion with organized labour. In fact, I know we both know him well, Jim Sinclair. He would be the first person to tell you that it needs to be 25 percent, and you need to do it yesterday.

For me, it has been listening to all the voices, all of the stakeholders that have a role, and yet finding a place, potentially, where government could lead by example in the country.

S. Simpson: I’ll ask the minister. I don’t know that the minister can answer this, because, obviously, it’s a piece of work that’s ongoing. I know that we’ve talked about the need for the public to lead by example in public projects, projects that are paid for by the public, and also the public service. We’ll get to that in a bit. Could the minister, to the degree that she can without breaching confidences, talk about the ideas that she views and how she sees beginning to get commitments for projects that are paid for with taxpayer dollars — and what that looks like?

[1715]

We know that if we’re going to encourage — even with the carrot and without a stick — the private sector to be more engaged in this piece, it will be helpful if we as government and taxpayers are saying: “This is part of the deal.” When we look at the value that we get from a public project, we obviously get whatever we build, whether it’s a road or bridge or whatever it is. But we get something else too. What we get is an improved and a more skilled workforce, because we oblige you as the contractor to bring a plan. When you bring your bid, you bring
[ Page 7636 ]
a plan with your bid.

That may be something…. I believe project labour agreements make sense, but this doesn’t have to be a project labour agreement to do that. This can simply be a requirement of a bid that doesn’t require anything else. Can the minister talk a little bit about how she sees that working?

Hon. S. Bond: I think the member opposite speaks very accurately about the benefit of government saying that there is an expectation around apprenticeship on public projects because the benefit is multipurpose. We get a great project, and by the way, we have a skilled workforce. If you think about an LNG project in particular, and as I’ve met with them over time, typically their buildout is four years, so it’s a perfect match for them. They have been very, very positive about the role that apprentices would play in their projects.

When I went back to look, when my team showed me recommendation 9, which came out of the LNG working group…. Recommendation 9 is: “Aspire to a goal of having 25 percent overall of the apprenticeable trades workforce on LNG-related construction projects.” I actually think it would be public projects, but it was an aspirational goal. They’re not suggesting that we’re going to get there overnight.

The things that I am looking at and the policy work that we’re doing is threshold — how big of a project. As the member said, you’re not going to have a small paving contract with the same expectations as, you know, a $20 million project. So I looked at threshold, the impact of the general contractor and subcontractors. How does it impact the subcontractors? Accountability — it’s great to say you have to have it. How do we know? All of those kinds of things.

All of that work…. It’s been a large body of work. We looked across the country to see who else was doing what, and as I said, the federal government has a voluntary process in place.

So in essence, lots of factors to consider, but I can assure the member opposite that the work will be made public very shortly.

S. Simpson: I agree. You have to make this work so that it’s not overly onerous. And the minister would know that the formula often has a combination between how many journeymen are on the project working and what percentage of apprentices related to journeymen you would have. We’ll look forward to getting more information about that.

Just in relation to those projects, and it is a major project and it’s one that there’s been some level of controversy about — Site C. There’s some level of controversy because of the decisions of B.C. Hydro to set aside what had been a past practice around the Allied Hydro agreement and to bring a different approach to how to put a workforce in place and to do that.

[1720]

Is there an expectation on the part of the minister, through the work of her ministry, that there are going to be apprentices as a requirement there? I concern myself about that because I know…. I understand there are a number of court cases that may well delay this till who knows when in the future, depending on how the courts determine those cases. I think there are some injunctions in play. That will be what it is. But I know the Minister of Energy, I believe, has publicly announced that his expectation and hope is that in a number of months the first pieces of that project will be moving forward.

My question is: is there an expectation of the minister that in order to accomplish the blueprint, there’s going to be a requirement around apprentices on that project?

Hon. S. Bond: Obviously, it’s a critical project for British Columbia. One thing I can assure the member is that B.C. Hydro…. I don’t have the numbers with me. I regret that, but we will see if we can figure that out. They have an incredibly solid track record on the use of apprentices in their workforce. It’s a very high number. So while I am not the person who will determine the labour model — that will be determined by B.C. Hydro in consultation, and I know there’s much discussion going on, probably as we speak — I would have every expectation that just as they have in their normal course of business placed an emphasis on apprentices, it will certainly factor into the model that they determine.

S. Simpson: I certainly would look forward to any information with regard to that. Actually, part of the challenge is that the performance in the public service — not just the provincial government; the public service — is lacking. The last numbers that I saw say there are about 300 apprentices, give or take, in the public service, and that includes municipalities, everybody in. About half of those are probably with Hydro, and the other half are with everybody else.

The question I would have for the minister is…. We have this need when we spend taxpayer dollars on projects, with letting contracts on projects, to make sure the people who build those projects, hopefully, if they’re significant enough, step up. We also have an issue in the public service with what is a severe lack of apprentices — as I said, about 300, and I’m told about half of them probably are in Hydro and the other half are spread among everybody else. Has the minister turned her thought to that and about how we get the public service to have more apprentices?

[1725]

I’m not sure of this entirely, but somebody said to me the other day, I think with Ferries, that they got a couple of apprentices, and they work in the kitchen. Other than that, there are no apprentices on the ferry system to speak of at all. This is nuts. We should be expecting those or-
[ Page 7637 ]
ganizations to be supporting the work of the government in accomplishing the objective.

What’s the minister’s thinking about how we get the public service to step up on the apprenticeship question?

Hon. S. Bond: I actually think that’s a really valid concern. I have seen the list, and in fact, we’ve been contacting some of those organizations to talk about the issue. I guess I would characterize it this way. It is a concern, but the majority of our policy work to date has been on the capital side.

I view it this way — that we need a starting point. We need to make sure that we react, that we take a leading role. The majority of my focus has been on capital, but I think there is a legitimate next question, which is: what about the operating side, where we see those numbers that are so low?

Yes, I have seen the list. The priority of my work has been capital, but there’s nothing to suggest that we have not begun to think about that list and what we could do, starting with the carrot approach, as we discussed so much earlier in this these discussions.

So, aware of the list, think there’s work to be done, but the priority of my work has been on capital at this point.

S. Simpson: I appreciate the minister talking about where her focus has been at the moment. I guess the observation I would make is that when we want to — and with carrots — encourage the private sector to conduct itself in a different way around this question of how it contributes to a skilled workforce that’s beneficial to them, we’re in a much stronger place to make that argument when we can point to ourselves and say we’ve stepped up and we’re doing a reasonable job of that ourselves. Today I think we’d be hard-pressed to say that.

[P. Pimm in the chair.]

I’m going to move away from that a little bit. I want to go to…. The ITA, at one point, released a plan. I believe it was called the action plan to deliver a skilled and qualified workforce for the LNG sector. It stated at that time 20,000 new trade workers by 2018, and it was, I think, around the expectation that about five plants would be built, etc.

We know that that’s not going to happen by 2018, but if I’ve heard the Premier correctly, the aspiration around the five plants has not changed — the timeline maybe, but the aspiration around the plants hasn’t changed. Presumably, that was an action plan, so presumably it was about getting it done. Could the minister tell us: has the ITA revised that plan, and what are their targets now?

[1730]

Hon. S. Bond: We do have an action plan. We’re certainly not revising the action plan in the sense that we don’t believe that we’ll continue to require workers for both the liquefied natural gas industry and other industries in the province. When you look at the projections that were made and when I look at the types of workforce that the action plan is based on, it’s 11,800 construction trades helpers and labourers, 3,800 steamfitters and pipefitters, 2,000 welders. For all of those jobs, the skills are easily transferable.

We work regularly and continuously with liquefied natural gas proponents who are helping us refine our data. In fact, it’s getting better and better. As I said to the member opposite before, we’ve been held up across the country as a province that has buckled down and tried to figure out how to use data to drive decision-making.

So the plan is in place. Two of the items, for example, are complete. We created a liquefied natural gas sector advisory group, and our 15 apprentice advisers have been hired. And then, we have a number of actions that are in progress. There are proposed actions that are further along — or later in the plan, probably a better way to say that.

The plan was developed in collaboration, in particular with the LNG Working Group and stakeholders, including industry and First Nations reps. All of our plans are built from the perspective that as projects potentially start a little bit later, it doesn’t mean the demand doesn’t exist. The key thing that I think about a lot is that depending upon the type of economic growth we have, we still have two-thirds of the job openings in the next eight years that will be needed simply because we’re replacing the workforce of today.

The action plan is in place. We have two items that are complete. We have six that are in progress, and we have proposed actions that relate to the other eight.

S. Simpson: One of the things around that whole question about…. Obviously, or presumably, much of this is measured by looking at labour market demand. That’s the work the committee is doing and, presumably, the ITA. Everybody is doing some of that work, but the committee is leading that work for the ministry.

One of the things that Ms. McDonald said in her report when she talked about labour market analysis…. She said that the ministry’s current labour market analysis will require enhancement to create predictable provincewide planning to set targets. We know that with some of that growth there already were some challenges in that. Could the minister talk a little bit about what changes have been made?

[1735]

This will lead to some questions, and we’ll probably end up doing some more of these questions on Monday, questions about the work of the board. But can the minister talk about the changes that are made to create a more robust labour market analysis to compare this against?
[ Page 7638 ]

Hon. S. Bond: It’s been a lot of work. I really want to commend the ministry team, who have done such a fantastic job. We started with us. The member opposite talked earlier about: how do you lead? We had to redesign, or reorient — I guess that’s the best way to say it — the ministry. So we started with us, and we created within the ministry a labour market information office. We have a team of people that are now focused on making sure we understand labour market data in our province.

We have a sophisticated labour market model which helps us make projections, but you obviously have to feed information in. So one of the things we do, in a very different way than we have in the past, is that we engage regularly and consistently with industry. We talk about what their needs are, what the timelines are. As I described earlier, we can take a particular project, look at the timeline from beginning to completion and tell the member opposite exactly which occupations are required when and at what phase of the project.

We have a labour market model. We feed information into it, and the end result of that is a product called the labour market outlook. I think we’re doing a better job of being systematic and regular about that so that that will become a document that people rely on. But it is always a work in progress, because projects change — their start dates, their midstream dates. We had to, in essence, reorient the ministry.

I was also very pleased yesterday to see the federal government announce $4 million for labour market data improvement. That’s been a very important discussion that we have had with them over and over again, and they recognize it as well. We have very poor data across the country, and probably every jurisdiction would say the same thing. So we were very pleased to see a response to some of the concerns we’ve expressed. I’m very pleased that my deputy and assistant deputy minister are on working groups that will actually talk about the kind of data that we need.

It is essential that if you’re going to design programs and make policy decisions, you actually have to have really good data to base that on. I’m really proud of the work that our team has done within the ministry to start looking at things differently. It’s what led to the blueprint, and it’s absolutely essential that we continue to refine and improve the quality of data that we have.

[1740]

S. Simpson: Now, it’s my understanding — and, again, I could be corrected here — that it was probably the 2011 labour market outlook that identified the million-jobs number that has been bandied around. My understanding is about half of that is people leaving the workforce and needing to be replaced because they’re leaving current positions. The other half is an expectation of new positions.

With the minister saying, and we know that this is…. I think the minister has said that this information, not just at the provincial level, has been shaky. I saw a recent TD report that talked about these kinds of outlooks. The quote was, “It’s a shaky-growth accounting model,” I believe — what the TD report said about the model that gets used for labour market outlooks.

Could the minister tell us whether there has been any re-evaluation or assessment of that million-jobs number? Is the ministry staying current on looking at those numbers and whether they are changing as we move forward?

Hon. S. Bond: As I said in the previous question, we have a very sophisticated labour market model now. It’s not our staff sitting in the back room with an abacus trying to figure out how to get to a million. There are adjustments, and as projects change and as timelines change, obviously the labour market needs move, potentially, a little bit further out.

Having said that, there are puts and takes. I can tell the member opposite that the million number is still accurate. When you look at the retirements, the potential economic growth, that number will come out. The labour market outlook will be issued once again this year. In July the new labour market outlook will be produced. All of the numbers — we use Stats Canada data. We input all the best information that we can.

The one thing that I think I would like to just correct for the member opposite is that of those million job openings…. I remember being taken to task, quite publicly, by someone thinking that I suggested they would be a million new jobs, so I want to be clear. That is not the case. It is actually two-thirds of that million — it isn’t a half; it’s actually two-thirds — that are based on retirement and an aging demographic. So no matter what happens with the other economic growth side, two-thirds of that million job openings is actually simply replacing ourselves.

I think it’s a fairly robust model. I have to admit at times it feels…. When you’re dealing with the data, it’s more of an art than a science, but we’re turning it into a science in the ministry.

[1745]

S. Simpson: I’ll look forward to July and seeing the numbers.

A little bit in relation, again, to the ITA and how positions are put in place. Could the minister tell me: what is the current situation on wait-lists related to apprenticeships, in terms of the ITA-driven programs particularly? What are the wait-lists for apprenticeships, and where are we at with that?

Hon. S. Bond: We announced, between the Industry Training Authority and AVED last year, $6.8 million in targeted funding to apprenticeship and foundation seats in the province. I’m advised that what that did…. I can’t
[ Page 7639 ]
go trade by trade, but I can tell the member opposite it reduced, on average, the waiting period by eight months in those programs. We made that announcement. It was $6.8 million.

The last thing I want to say, before I quickly do this, is that I’d be happy to offer the member opposite an opportunity to come and sit down with the staff and work through the numbers related to the million before July. We don’t have to have you wait until the report comes out. We’re happy to share the methodology.

Noting the hour, I move that the committee rise, report progress on the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure — and no, I’m not having a flashback; I was the minister once there, but that’s theirs — and on the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:48 p.m.

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