2015 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 40th Parliament
HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Monday, May 11, 2015

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 26, Number 2

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

MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015

The House met at 1:32 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Hon. P. Fassbender: It’s my real pleasure to rise in the House today to welcome a visiting delegation from the Bavarian state legislature, who are with us. The members of the presiding council joining us in the gallery this afternoon are the hon. Barbara Stamm, the Speaker; the hon. Reinhold Bocklet; hon. Peter Myer; Ulricke Gote; hon. Prof. Dr. Peter Paul Gantzer; hon. Hans Herold; hon. Angelika Schorer; hon. Reserl Sem; and the hon. Sylvia Stierstorfer.

With them are a number of other officials. They met with various members of the legislative precinct today, and they’re in the gallery to observe how we do it here in British Columbia. I would ask all of the members of the House to join me in giving our guests a herzlich willkommen.

L. Krog: On behalf of the official opposition, I would like to join in welcoming our German visitors and guests. They prove with their intelligent conversation and their charm and wit why public education has been such a great success in Germany. They demonstrate it in great quantity.

I want all the members to again join in welcoming them here. Hopefully, this will be the first of many other visits and exchanges between our respective legislatures.

Hon. S. Anton: In July 1943 a young Saskatchewan man did what many young Saskatchewan men did at that time. He joined the navy. After training, he spent the next 18 or so months as a radio operator on the minesweeper HMCS Oshawa in that treacherous endeavour of escorting convoys across the Atlantic.

Seventy years ago, on the 8th of May, 1945, the Oshawa was in Halifax when Victory in Europe Day was declared. Their orders were to stay in port because of trouble in the city, the Halifax Riots. Well, no riot on the Oshawa, but I gather the fellas found some supplies and had a pretty good celebration of their own.

On the 11th of May, 1945, exactly 70 years ago today, the HMCS Oshawa took the surrender of one of the vessels which had so tormented the allies all those long years of the Battle of the Atlantic — U-boat 889.

[1335]

That young man from Saskatchewan is with us today. He is joined by his son, my husband of 35 years, Olin Anton, and he is also joined by a proud family tuned in from across the country.

Would the House please thank him for his service and make welcome Battle of the Atlantic veteran and my father-in-law, Mr. Clifford Anton.

M. Karagianis: It’s very timely that I would make my introduction just after the minister. I am very pleased today to welcome a number of visitors here in the gallery from the Esquimalt Legion. Bernie MacLean, our branch president, is an army veteran who served in the Cold War with operational services in Europe. He is joined by his partner Barb McFarland.

Doug Grant, branch manager, who served in the Cold War with operational service in the high seas, is joined by his partner, Sylvia Vink. Bob Haldane, branch first president, a naval veteran who served in the Cold War with operational service on the high seas — he’s a recipient of the Minister of Veteran Affairs Commendation for his work at the candlelight vigil at God’s Acre in the Esquimalt Veterans Cemetery.

Jim MacMillan-Murphy, our branch second vice-president, airborne veteran, served in the Cold War and as a peacekeeper with operational services in Cyprus and the Golan Heights and is a recent recipient of the Minister of Veteran Affairs commendation for veteran advocate work with veterans — also joined by his partner, Karen MacMillan-Murphy. Ken Irvine is the branch service officer, army veteran with operational service in the Second World War.

Neil Townsend, branch office staff, airborne veteran with operational service in the Cold War, as a peacekeeper in Cyprus — a long-service veteran who was awarded the Order of Military Merit, a degree of member, and the command commendation for his leadership to the Canadian Armed forces — is joined by his wife, Catherine Townsend.

They are here today to pay witness to a bill that I’m going to be introducing shortly, but I know them all well. They are wonderful people in our community, and all of them are heroic individuals and veterans. Please give them the very warmest welcome.

Hon. A. Virk: It’s my pleasure to introduce to you today in the House three individuals within my community in Surrey who have a passion for history. With us are Steven Purewal, Paul Mann and Manjinder Sidhu, who are visiting the Legislature today, along with their historical display titled Duty, Honour and Izzat.

The display shows the contribution of the British Indian Army and their contribution to Allied forces in World War I. It is especially important on the occasion of the centennial of the writing of In Flanders Fields, where the Indian Army fought side by side with Canadians.

I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the House to go and take a look at the display. It’ll be up until the end of the day. Will everyone join me in welcoming Steven, Paul and Manjinder to the House.
[ Page 8244 ]

D. Horne: Each spring session the Legislature hosts ten recent university graduates as interns. In the gallery today, joining the familiar faces of our current 2014 interns, are six of the incoming interns for 2016. Would the members welcome Sharday Bouquette from Simon Fraser University; and Heather Clifford, Jamie Cooke, Robert Hill, David McCauley, Michael MacDonald from the University of Victoria.

I’d say to the interns who are joining us here for question period that if today is a raucous occasion, that’s not normal. It usually is a very polite affair, but given the fact that we have two more weeks, it seems to get more outrageous each day.

I hope that each of the members will make them truly welcome.

R. Chouhan: It gives me great pleasure to introduce the parents of our intern Sarah Marriott and more importantly, my constituents — Michael Marriott and Martha Stein-Marriott. They’re also joined by Sarah’s cousin Nancy Newman. Please join me to give them a very warm welcome.

P. Pimm: I would like to introduce John Turner, Jeff Beale, Doug Boyd, who are in the gallery today representing Northern Opportunities. Northern Opportunities is a very successful model demonstrating the power of partnerships, involving industry, school districts of the Peace River North and South and Fort Nelson, Northern Lights College, BCIT and First Nations.

[1340]

To date they’ve assisted over 2,000 secondary students from communities in northeastern B.C. by providing seamless transitions into career pathways. I’d like to ask the members of the House to please join me in welcoming them to the House and encourage them in continuing their efforts providing opportunities for students and assisting their development of a highly skilled workforce.

They’re here today trying to find additional funding opportunities to keep this very successful program as successful as it has been in the past. Please help me welcome them.

Statements

CASTLEGAR SCULPTUREWALK

K. Conroy: I want to introduce everyone to the sculpture capital of Canada. And you might ask: where is that? Well, it’s in Castlegar, B.C., where on Saturday they kicked off the sixth year of Sculpturewalk.

This year there are 31 amazing sculptures from artists around the world, including Cuba, Australia, Iran, 11 from the U.S. and 17 from Canada — 15 of those from B.C. You can also go on sculpturewalkcastlegar.com and see the beautiful pictures.

Since its inception, every year the community has voted on the best one. The city, along with a number of sponsors, has purchased the sculpture, and it’s been installed permanently in the city.

Businesses have also bought sculptures and installed them. Also, neighbouring communities have gotten involved and are buying sculptures and are also supporting the whole endeavour. One can travel throughout the entire West Kootenays and see first-class art.

Congratulations to all involved, and please take the time and come and visit the sculpture capital of Canada — Castlegar, B.C.

Introductions by Members

J. Thornthwaite: I’d like to introduce a constituent of mine, Shaun Hollingsworth, who is the Canadian chair of the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission. In addition to meeting with me, he met with the Minister of Energy and Mines, the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. I thank them for meeting with him. He’s a great guy, and I’d like the gallery to welcome him to Victoria.

B. Ralston: I, too, would like to join the Minister of Technology in welcoming our guests who are here in conjunction with the display on the history of Sikh veterans in the British Army. It’s a little-known part of history. There are many descendants of those Sikh officers and soldiers who emigrated to Canada and are among us in our communities here in British Columbia today. It’s a story well worth reviewing, and I commend it to all members of the Legislature.

Hon. S. Anton: I’d like to introduce a constituent of mine, well known to many in this house, Mr. Daljit Sidhu, longtime president of the Punjabi Market Association, here to see the Sikh exhibit, the Indian Army exhibit — and also a member of the insurance industry, which works very closely with government on matters relating to emergency management.

I’d like the House to make Mr. Daljit Sidhu welcome.

Hon. B. Bennett: There are several people here today from the Christian Labour Association of Canada somewhere in the gallery. I know they’re there.

I’m going to list the workers before the officials. Dave Fuoco is here from Peter Kiewit Infrastructure. He’s an operator. Karen Brimner is here. She is a lane tech, TCP. Joshua Sinclair is in the gallery. He works with Flatiron, and he’s a carpenter. T.J. Hatton is with Maple Reinders. He’s an ironworker.

The officials from CLAC are David Prentice, the B.C. provincial director; Ryan Bruce, membership development, government relations; Larry Richardson, direc-
[ Page 8245 ]
tor of training; Rob Schmidt, regional director; Kevin Kohut, provincial construction and mining coordinator; Tony van Hengel, provincial health care manufacturing and service coordinator; Paul de Jong, president of PCA; Darrel Reid, associate VP, PCA; Mike Martens, director of public affairs, western Canada PCA.

Please help me make all these folks welcome.

Moira Stilwell: I, too, would like to welcome my constituent, Mr. Daljit Sidhu, to the House today. He is one of many community-minded merchants who have established and supported the Punjabi Market in my riding for many, many years. I want to thank him for all the work that he’s done.

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

BILL M217 — HONOURING OUR
MILITARY ACT, 2015

M. Karagianis presented a bill intituled Honouring Our Military Act, 2015.

M. Karagianis: I move introduction of the Honouring Our Military Act for first reading now.

Motion approved.

[1345]

M. Karagianis: As the MLA for Esquimalt–Royal Roads, I am very proud to introduce the Honouring Our Military Act.

This bill will create a provincial honour, the military service pin. It will recognize men and women who have served in wartime, dangerous peacekeeping missions and in domestic operations here in British Columbia, in Canada and abroad. This military service honour will recognize individuals from our province who have made tremendous sacrifices to represent Canada, to defend our cornerstone principles of democracy, freedom, peace and justice.

Qualifying recipients will have been based in British Columbia to protect our borders or to have been a British Columbian resident who has protected and served our country and our province abroad. They would be retired or current members of the regular and reserved army forces. Honourees would receive a certificate signed by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council and a lapel pin intended to be worn on civilian clothing so that we might recognize those who serve when they are not in uniform.

With this act, British Columbia would join with other parts of our country that have enacted such legislation. This honour was first introduced in Saskatchewan and has since been adopted in Ontario as well.

As the MLA for a community with a long and rich military history, it gives me great pride to table this bill today. The military service pin will symbolize the gratitude of the Crown and the people of British Columbia for our service men and women who have served with honour and valour.

I move that this bill be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting after today.

Bill M217, Honouring Our Military Act, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

RESPONSE TO EARTHQUAKE IN NEPAL

S. Gibson: I am certain that all members of the House will join me in congratulating Canadian disaster relief workers who recently travelled to Nepal to help save lives following the worst earthquake in 80 years to hit that country. The 7.8 magnitude quake killed more than 8,000 people, injured thousands and left countless more missing.

A team of 20 firefighters from Burnaby in my own riding of Abbotsford-Mission joined the efforts to find survivors following that tragic event. The call for volunteers was spearheaded by retired Burnaby firefighter, Mark Pullin, a member of the B.C. disaster dog society, who was joined by two firefighters from Mission, each with their own rescue dog.

These are highly specialized dogs. They assist rescuers by locating people trapped under the rubble. The dog will bark, scratch the sound and wag their tail if they find somebody alive. If somebody is deceased, they will lie down and cry. I understand this kind of work impacts the dog psychologically just as much as it does the handlers.

Our government is providing the Canadian Red Cross with funding to support emergency disaster relief efforts in Nepal. British Columbia’s $300,000 donation will provide urgently needed assistance to communities throughout the country’s worst-hit areas to help support search and rescue, food distribution and aid, such as blankets, hygiene kits and sleeping mats.

Customers of B.C. Liquor Stores can donate to the Red Cross earthquake relief efforts for Nepal at any of the 196 B.C. Liquor Stores throughout the province until June 6, 2015.

PAT BAY HIGHWAY
VISITOR INFORMATION CENTRE

G. Holman: On behalf of the Saanich Peninsula business community, I want to announce the re-opening of the Pat Bay Highway visitor centre this Friday, May 15.
[ Page 8246 ]

The centre will showcase the truly unique rural landscape, the walking and cycling trails, the parks and beaches of the Saanich Peninsula, as well as the venues like the butterfly gardens, Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre, world-famous Butchart Gardens, the Aviation Museum and a great mix of retail stores and restaurants — too many attractions to mention here.

The visitor centre is well placed, just north of Sidney on the Pat Bay Highway, to welcome ferry travellers to south Vancouver Island. The staff and volunteers at the centre will have conversations with tens of thousands of these visitors — yes, despite it all, there are still a few ferry travellers to south Vancouver Island — and encourage them to enjoy the amenities and attractions of the south Island.

[1350]

The Peninsula chamber is working to enhance the appeal and viability of the information centre and have even relocated their office to this site. This will improve the viability of the centre and allow it to move from a seasonal operation to a full-year service that is particularly important in the shoulder and off-seasons for local businesses.

Hats off to the Peninsula chamber board, its president Ian Brown, the executive director, Denny Warner, for their determination and resourcefulness in revitalizing the information centre and, of course, to all those volunteers who work so hard to welcome visitors to the Island.

I hope that members of this House will find an opportunity to visit the Pat Bay information centre. You will have to get in that right-hand lane, and some of you may have to slow down to make that turnoff, but I promise your visit will be worthwhile.

I hope both sides of the House will recognize that the Pat Bay visitor centre is an important gateway to south Vancouver Island and support the centre and our local businesses accordingly.

CHILLIWACK SPORTS HALL OF FAME

J. Martin: As we know, every community in this great province has a rich sporting history and a fervent local team spirit. A few years ago a small group of volunteers assembled to establish the Chilliwack Sports Hall of Fame, a time and place to recognize those Chilliwack athletes, teams and coaches who have left such a memorable legacy.

Inspired by the display in Delta, then president, the late Judy Fitzsimmons, got to work bringing together Chilliwack sports organizations, media, sponsors and community partners. Glen Ringdal and the Chilliwack Chiefs were eager to support the initiative. Working with Barry Douglas, the hall of fame was established on the concourse in Chilliwack’s Prospera Centre.

The goal of the hall’s board is to preserve the legacy of present-day athletes while reminding residents of the heroes of yesteryear. The first two hall of fame induction ceremonies have included honourees such as the former B.C. Lions defensive linesman Rick Klassen, the Canadian Armed Forces 3-Field Squadron, Olympic hockey player Dave Archibald, long-time high school basketball coach Joe Ogmundson and the Turbo junior baseball team, who qualify for five straight national championships.

I’m so proud of the partnership that current hall of fame president Eric Welsh and his board have formed with the Chilliwack Museum and Archives. Through this work, the Chilliwack Sports Hall of Fame is inspiring many new young athletes to take up sport and develop habits of active, healthy living. Together, they are further enriching our community and celebrating the spirit of teamwork, athletic development and leadership.

CHILD CARE PROVIDERS

M. Karagianis: May is Child Care Month. We’re celebrating the work of thousands of caring and dedicated child care operators and early childhood educators right across British Columbia.

Friday, May 8 was Provider Appreciation Day. It’s a special day to recognize child care providers, teachers and other educators of young children everywhere. Every day, they make a difference in the lives of children by reading stories, helping them explore and learn through play, introducing them to the joys of music through songs and so much more.

Provincewide, aboriginal child care centres help aboriginal children connect to their cultural roots through singing, drumming and language-learning opportunities. This month the B.C. Aboriginal Child Care Society is renewing its From Seed to Cedar campaign. The goal of the campaign is to increase awareness in communities and to encourage our leaders to make aboriginal early childhood development and care a big priority.

A priority it must be for all children. Some experts believe that 80 percent of our essential life skills are learned before the age of six. Those early years provide a critical foundation that helps shape how we treat ourselves and others and how we live our lives.

B.C.’s child care providers deliver quality, non-profit, universal and accessible child care, and they do it day in and day out, often without the enormous credit that they deserve. They allow working parents the opportunity to go to work, secure in the knowledge that their children are in good hands while they provide financial security for their families and keep B.C.’s economy thriving.

To the thousands of early childhood educators and assistants, I say: “Thank you for a job well done.” You are making a difference in the lives of children and building a good foundation for the better future of our children and all of our society.
[ Page 8247 ]

ANAEROBIC DIGESTER PROJECT
IN DELTA

S. Hamilton: I rise today to speak to the House a little bit about a creative example of farming in my community of Delta. Just down the road from my home is Jerry Keulen, the owner of Seabreeze Farm. He recently completed the installation of an anaerobic digestion system on his dairy farm. He decided to pursue this project after researching biogas facilities in Europe and determined his farm would be a good candidate for a similar system.

[1355]

Anaerobic digestion systems are used to store and ferment agricultural waste products and feedstock in order to produce a renewable source of energy known as biomethane. Waste products are stored in large tanks which capture the methane that is released from the material as it decomposes.

The methane is then cleaned and sold to FortisBC, which distributes the gas throughout its existing infrastructure to heat the homes and businesses in our community. The remaining biomass material can then be used to fertilize crops. In other words, Jerry will be turning waste from his dairy cows into energy for our community.

This sustainable approach to farming has many benefits. It diversifies agriculture, allowing farmers multiple sources of income and thus helping to support growing generations on the farm. It significantly reduces agricultural odours, generates rich fertilizer, helps fight climate change and reduces landfill tonnage.

Delta is a rich hub for agriculture in British Columbia. In fact, the Minister of Agriculture has visited Delta on several occasions in order to tour some of our prized agricultural areas. He more recently made a stop at Seabreeze Farm to learn more about its exciting approach to sustainable practices in agriculture.

I wish the Keulen family all the best for this project. I know it will be a resounding success, and I anticipate this will spur more innovative approaches to creating a sustainable agricultural industry in British Columbia.

FEDERATION OF B.C. NATURALISTS

S. Chandra Herbert: That would be my take on the opening music to Hinterland Who’s Who. I have one for the House. Who loves to get out there and expose themselves to nature, fascinated by being in the buff? Well, I speak of the Federation of B.C. Naturalists — not naturists, so members can keep their clothes on. No, the B.C. naturalists. They’re interested in the bufflehead, of course — birds, botany, bugs, earth, land, air, water.

B.C. Nature, as they are known to more of us, a group of 5,700 members with 53 naturalist clubs…

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: I hear one of them in the House right now.

…was founded in 1963, with their mandate for us to get to know nature and keep nature worth knowing. Indeed, we have some expertise in this House. They’ve been instrumental in protecting some of our most loved parks, wild spaces, creatures and on and on it goes.

Now, they haven’t stopped. Indeed, they have not stopped. They call us on our difficulties in this House in having a good relationship with nature and remind us that it’s not about domination but in relation to nature. They’re advocates, citizen scientists. There’s also the Young Naturalists Club, helping young people connect to nature in a world where tweets mean more to a kid about being on the phone than being out in nature.

I’m here just to say thank you to our naturalist clubs, to B.C. Nature, for doing so much to connect us to the place that really gives us a reason to be. Our provincial motto, of course, is “Splendour without diminishment.” I want to thank B.C. Nature, thank B.C. naturalists for ensuring that our province continues to be splendour without diminishment.

Oral Questions

USE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND
FOR CARBON OFFSETS

J. Horgan: I think we’ll all agree — rarely, in this House, but I think on this issue we can — that our agricultural land reserve was created to protect farmland for farming. It was with that in mind that the agricultural spokesperson for the official opposition raised an issue with the minister in late April about foreign companies buying agricultural land for carbon sinks.

What that is, hon. Speaker, as you will know, is that companies purchase farmland to plant trees where food used to grow and then sell that offset to companies that are emitting carbon in other parts of the world, in fact, much less other parts of British Columbia. At the time, the minister diminished the question, said it was radical and it was appropriate that the Agricultural Land Commission deal with these issues.

[1400]

On May 8 the Agriculture Council, formerly headed by the radical from Kelowna, sent a letter to the minister saying: “The B.C. Agriculture Council is concerned that our province’s land use policies do not adequately manage foreign ownership of farmland.” Now, at the time we raised the issue, it was outlandish.

I’m asking the minister: when the B.C. Agriculture Council raises the same issue, will that be the same response?

Hon. N. Letnick: Thank you to the Leader of the Opposition for his question. I really appreciate hearing
[ Page 8248 ]
from the Leader of the Opposition as well as hearing from the B.C. Ag Council and all constituents throughout British Columbia about the agricultural land reserve, which we all respect and want to see continue.

Actually, 4.7 million hectares are in the agriculture land reserve today, which is 38,000 hectares more than back in 2001. We will continue to support the agricultural land reserve throughout British Columbia.

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

J. Horgan: The minister will forgive me if I question his math in this regard, because when the member for Saanich South raised the issue in estimates, the minister said: “There are approximately 2,000 hectares of B.C. agricultural land that’ve been used for carbon credits. About 1,500 of those are in ALR land.”

That was the minister’s proposition not that many weeks ago, but quietly last week the Ministry of Agriculture released information that showed that it’s actually 8,500 hectares of ALR land, not 1,500.

The question, I think, for British Columbians is…. If we have over one million hectares of forest land that is not being restocked, where trees used to grow and we cut them down, and we’re now taking agricultural land where food used to grow and plant trees, there’s a bit of a disconnect.

Why don’t we focus on growing trees and carbon sinks in our deforested lands rather than on our agricultural?

Hon. N. Letnick: Thank you to the member opposite for the question. We all know that tree farming is a permitted use on ALR lands. However, tying up ALR lands by covenant, which is what would be required to get the carbon offset credits that the member is talking about, has to go through the Agricultural Land Commission for the authority for that covenant to hold any weight.

That, as we know, was changed in November 2011 by all members of this House unanimously passing an amendment to the Agricultural Land Commission Act which would see that any covenant…. Actually, I think I have it right here, and I’ll read it out: “A covenant that restricts or prohibits the use of agricultural land for farm purposes has no effect until approved by the commission.”

This was approved by all members of the House. I would ask the members on both sides of the House to give the Agricultural Land Commission a chance to do their work.

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

J. Horgan: That’s going to be news to the Agriculture Council. In their letter of last week to the minister, they wrote: “There is no mechanism to ensure that the ALC is aware of proposed restrictive covenants. This means that the agency delegated with the authority to protect farmland has no way of monitoring whether this is happening.”

There’s clearly, again, yet another disconnect — planting trees where food used to grow and not planting trees where trees used to grow. Perhaps we could get the minister responsible for Natural Resource Operations and the Minister of Agriculture to get together and figure out where we need to aggressively plant trees and where we need to aggressively plant food.

Again, will the minister respond appropriately to the Agriculture Council, who has the same concerns as we on this side of the House — that food should be grown on farmland, not trees?

Hon. N. Letnick: Thank you, Madame Speaker, for the opportunity to respond to the question. Once again, I have to say that the Agricultural Land Commission and the agricultural land reserve is respected by parties on both sides of this House. We continue to see growth in the agricultural land reserve and continue to see funds going to the Agricultural Land Commission. Indeed, over the last few years we’ve seen an increase from about $2.5 million to $3.5 million in annual funding for the reserve to do its work.

[1405]

The covenant was brought in by vote by all members of this House. All we’re asking for is the opportunity for the independent Agricultural Land Commission to do its work to examine these extra hectares that have been proposed as being used for carbon offsets. If it turns out that their covenant has been put on and has been respected by some third party, let the Agricultural Land Commission look at whether there are some compliance and enforcement issues.

I’d just say the Agricultural Land Commission is an independent body when it makes these decisions. Unlike maybe some other members of the House, who have in the past overruled the Agricultural Land Commission, we on this side of the House want to see them do their work.

L. Popham: On April 17 and again today the minister said government put a change to the Agricultural Land Commission Act which said: “A covenant that restricts or prohibits the use of agricultural land for farm purposes has no effect until approved by the commission.” The Agriculture Council has a more practical view. It told the minister that the ALC is most often made aware of restricted covenants only after the land has been removed from production or as a result of a complaint, so the legislation doesn’t work.

Who should British Columbians believe: a minister who changes his story every day or the Agriculture Council?

Interjections.
[ Page 8249 ]

Madame Speaker: Members. The Chair will hear the answer and the question.

Hon. N. Letnick: On both sides of this House we recognize the importance of preserving good agricultural land for future generations. We’ve continued to do that throughout the years that we’ve been in government, since 2001. The independent Agricultural Land Commission, indeed, now has 38,000 more hectares in the ALR than it did in 2001, so I don’t think anybody on this side of the House needs to take lessons from people on that side of the House.

Specifically to what the Agricultural Land Commission can do if it finds that covenants have been placed inappropriately, they can, if they find some contravention, make sure that they include the ability to ensure a stop-work order, remediation or mitigation of damage that has been done. That’s totally within their power as a quasi-judicial body.

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

L. Popham: The minister likes to boast that since 2001, 38,000 hectares have been added to the ALR, but this minister didn’t even know until last week that more than 20 percent of that area that’s been added to the ALR has been converted into carbon sinks. Worse still, this minister has no idea how to stop it.

I think it’s finally time that the minister admits that he doesn’t understand what’s going on in the ALR and put a stop to it. This situation is out of control.

Hon. N. Letnick: There we have, again, someone who’s declaring someone guilty without even having a proper investigation done. I think that’s inappropriate. If any members of this House….

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Interjection.

Madame Speaker: Victoria–Swan Lake.

Please continue.

Hon. N. Letnick: When it was brought forward to my attention that there potentially were more acres that had used for carbon offsets, we immediately forwarded that information to the independent Agricultural Land Commission. They now have the opportunity to review the file and make a determination as to whether or not covenants have been placed. If they have been placed improperly, they have all the tools necessary to take care of the issue. I would ask all members of this House to have patience and let the independent Agricultural Land Commission do their work.

[1410]

V. Huntington: The B.C. Agriculture Council says that government needs to take threats to our farming land base seriously. In its letter the council says: “Establishing clear, allowable use restrictions and implementing processes to support proactive management and enforcement represents only a portion of the solution. Land use regulations” — and those regulations are the ones the minister is responsible for — “administered by Agricultural Land Commission must also address these issues if we are to keep farmland in B.C. for farming.”

The Agriculture Council is reaching out to the minister, and I would like him to tell us how he intends to respond to their call for stronger land use regulations that will protect B.C. farmers from having to compete with international investors.

Hon. N. Letnick: Madame Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to answer the question and, to the member opposite, for the question.

We have a great working relationship with the B.C. Ag Council. We have for many years taken their advice very seriously. We have reflected their advice many times in different regulations and legislative changes that we’ve seen here in this House. We’ll continue to do that.

We received the letter last week. I’m going to look at it, obviously. I’ve asked staff to review the letter and provide me with some briefing on the contents and potential answers to the letter. But let there be no doubt that we on this side of the House — and I would assume, they, on the other side of the House as well as the independent — take very seriously our agricultural land reserve and want to see it continue for generations to come.

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

V. Huntington: I think what the letter is trying to say to the minister is that an agriculture industry needs agricultural land. In their letter to the minister, the council goes on to say: “The B.C. Agriculture Council believes in the holistic approach to economic development, one that provides not just for today but for future generations of British Columbians. We call for the development of foreign ownership land regulations that support B.C. business, care for B.C.’s environment and support the well-being of future generations of B.C. families.”

Other provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec — put restrictions on foreign ownership of farmland. It needs to happen here. My question is: how will B.C.’s Minister of Agriculture respond to the council’s concerns about this real and growing problem?
[ Page 8250 ]

Hon. N. Letnick: Madame Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to answer the question.

We’ve seen an increase in agriculture performance, in terms of GDP impact, over the last few years. We’ve seen it go up by 3.5 percent per year. That’s in comparison to 1.9 percent per year for the general economy.

We’ve seen 60,000 people directly employed in agriculture — 20,000 farm families, which hasn’t changed very much over the last few years. We continue to see new entrants coming into agriculture. Indeed, when you go around the province, as I have and many of the members have, you see an agriculture industry that’s booming.

We see areas of tree fruits that are moving forward with the replant program — $8.2 million over seven years. We see the highest meat prices that we’ve seen in many generations. So we’ll continue to support agriculture throughout British Columbia. We’ll continue to look at these regulations.

On the question, specifically, it’s not a matter of who owns the land; it’s how the land is used. We’re working right now to make sure that we work with the ALC so they can come to a conclusion on that particular aspect.

B.C. HYDRO MANAGEMENT AND
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLAN

A. Dix: For three weeks the government has been unable to answer basic questions about B.C. Hydro’s five-year technology and telecommunications plan — a scheme that is years late, over budget, half-finished and missing all of its performance targets.

It’s late. We’re in year 7 of a five-year-plan. I think that’s late.

Over budget. They’ve spent $492 million even though they budgeted $400 million.

Half–finished. They’ve managed to complete three of the six key components, missing all the targets they promised to reduce. If you gave them half a billion dollars to spend, they could reduce operating spending by 30 percent. Operating spending has gone up as well. A Liberal daily double.

Why is the plan late, half-finished, over budget and not achieving its targets?

[1415]

Hon. B. Bennett: It’s no surprise that my critic with B.C. Hydro would want to focus on things where he thinks there’s a political opportunity. What I can say to the member is that the IT program within B.C. Hydro did have problems. There’s no question about that, and I acknowledged that when the critic questioned me during estimates. There’s no reason for me to say otherwise.

What I can also say, though, is that those problems were recognized in the 2011 review that was done by the deputy ministers committee. Systems were put in place to resolve those difficulties. And in fact, when the new CEO was hired, one of the things that she did after the first six months that she was there…. And she has not been there even one calendar year yet.

What she did was she actually replaced the CIO with B.C. Hydro because there had been some serious issues in 2000 and 2010. Hydro is on top of it at this point in time. I have faith in the CEO to resolve the issues around IT and make sure that ratepayers are being treated respectfully.

Madame Speaker: Vancouver-Kingsway on a supplemental.

A. Dix: Well, I have in front of me the “B.C. Hydro Information Technology and Telecommunications Five-Year Plan,” the one they originally did and the update. I just want to take the minister through it.

On page 8, he’ll recall in estimates, the five-year target to reduce operating costs by 30 percent. It’s two-thirds of the way down the page on page 8. You know, the one they said didn’t exist? Well, they completely missed it. On page 31 there’s a $400 million budget. They’ve spent $492 million of it, and they’re only half finished. There’s the commitment to finish the system in 2014. I guess they got in charge of this in 2011, according to the minister. That’s on page 26 and numerous other pages.

They’ve finished half of it. They’re half finished, and they’ve spent all of the money. That’s the checklist here. Rate, check. Over budget, check. Wasteful, check. Unfinished, check. Completely unsuccessful, check. And ratepayers have to pay for it, checkmate, to the tune of massive and ongoing rate increases.

Can the minister explain when that system, when that five-year plan, now in year 7, will finally be finished?

Hon. B. Bennett: Well, here’s what I can tell the member of the opposition. In 2010 there was a recognition that there were issues at B.C. Hydro around IT. Frankly, there was a recognition by government that there were other issues that needed to be looked at. In 2011 there was a deputy ministers committee that was struck by the previous Minister of Energy and Mines. That deputy ministers committee went in and worked…

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Hon. B. Bennett: …with B.C. Hydro. The result of that was, first of all, that they found almost $400 million in operating costs that no longer exist. So they saved almost $400 million over three years in operating costs.

B.C. Hydro was put under a commitment that their operating costs would not rise any more than one-half of the rate of inflation, and they’ve been successful since 2011 in doing that. There aren’t that many corporations, either public or private, that would be able to do
[ Page 8251 ]
that. They have eliminated almost 1,000 positions at B.C. Hydro. Again, that is not an easy thing for either a private or a public corporation to do.

The new CEO, on the IT front, has had to let go of the person who was in charge of IT and is fixing what needs to be fixed on the IT front. We’ve taken the steps that are necessary to take pressure off rates and to make sure that our rates here in British Columbia remain the third lowest in North America.

[1420]

C. James: I heard the minister basically say to the public: “Trust us.” Well, if you take a look at this government’s record when it comes to IT and computer systems, you might forgive the public for never trusting this government on any computer system.

Let’s take a look at the list. First, the Education Ministry — $97 million wasted on a system that never worked. Children and Families Ministry — $182 million, and the system still isn’t fully up and running. Then there’s the Health Ministry. Millions of dollars, and their systems work is stalled. Now, here, B.C. Hydro — a five-year information technology plan without any end in sight.

Again to the minister, can he tell us how much more of ratepayers’ money it’s going to cost before B.C. Hydro completes its so-called five-year plan, and when is the plan actually going to be done?

Hon. B. Bennett: Well, I’ve already acknowledged that in 2009 and 2010 there were issues around the IT budget, but let me tell the member what the rest of the years look like. In 2011, in terms of capital spent on IT, there was a budget of $84 million. What was spent: $80 million — $80.8 million, to be exact — so under budget in 2011.

They don’t want to hear what the actual facts are. In 2012 the actual budget for IT was $87 million. What did they spend?

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Hon. B. Bennett: They actually spent $82 million, so under budget again. In 2013 — under budget again by over $10 million. In 2014 — under budget again. In 2015 the budget was $88.4 million. They spent $69.8 million. So for the last — let me count them — one, two, three, four, five years they’ve actually been under budget on their IT.

Madame Speaker: Victoria–Beacon Hill on a supplemental.

C. James: We’re back in Alice in Wonderland. We’re over budget on under budget, and we’re over budget on things that haven’t got an end yet. The minister can’t get his stories straight.

It’s important to note that the oversight for this project ultimately touches directly on the Premier’s office. Dan Doyle, the Premier’s current chief of staff, was the chair of the board of directors at B.C. Hydro as this mess was unfolding. He was actually a member of the audit and finance committee responsible for “monitoring strategic issues related to information technology.”

So we have a project that’s over budget, that’s missed its target, that’s still not finished. Can the minister tell us why the oversight of B.C. Hydro, including the Premier’s current chief of staff, completely failed?

Hon. B. Bennett: It’s one thing to criticize B.C. Hydro. That’s allowed in question period and any other time, I suppose. It’s another thing to criticize government and my leadership of the ministry. That’s fair. That’s allowed. But to denigrate somebody who has spent his whole life serving the public of British Columbia — not only for a B.C. Liberal government but also for their government of the 1990s, in that failed, dismal decade when they were in government….

You know, if the member who said the things that she just said about….

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members will come to order.

Please continue.

Hon. B. Bennett: I think it’s unfortunate that the member would bring that person into this discussion. So let me end my answer.

I just gave some numbers on capital and how B.C. Hydro over the last five years was actually under budget. Let’s look at operating for the last five years — actually, the last six years. In 2010 they were under budget for operating. In 2011 they were under budget. In 2012 they were under budget — 2013, 2014 — and it’s estimated that in 2015 they will be under budget for operating, on the IT front, for B.C. Hydro.

[1425]

PERMIT FOR SOIL DUMPING IN
SHAWNIGAN LAKE WATERSHED

B. Routley: The Ministry of Environment is investigating South Island Aggregates regarding concerns of contamination coming from their site and going into Shawnigan Creek. Now the Ministry of Energy and Mines is investigating the same company due to suspected illegal dumping of contaminated fill, in violation of their Mines permit.

Will the Minister of Environment confirm today that no contaminated soil will be permitted to be dumped from the South Island Aggregates site until all of the requirements and conditions of their permit are met?
[ Page 8252 ]

Hon. M. Polak: Permit conditions are legally binding. That means that we enforce those conditions, and if companies wish to operate under a permit, they therefore need to abide by the conditions of the permit.

Madame Speaker: Member for Cowichan Valley on a supplemental.

B. Routley: That’s an interesting answer, because the minister has to confirm or…. Basically, I don’t know whether she’ll deny the reports that South Island Aggregates was shipping contaminated soil on Friday, May 8, from a site on Blanshard Street right here in Victoria to its quarry site in Shawnigan. They were shipping contaminated soil before requirements of its permit had even been met. Will the minister commit to take action to enforce the government’s permit requirements?

Hon. M. Polak: I know the member will be aware that the site involves more than one lot. With respect to lot 21, there is a Mines Act permit. We are all aware now that the Ministry of Energy and Mines has taken action with respect to concerns that they have regarding the permit that has been issued to the company under the Mines Act with respect to permitting under the Ministry of Environment.

The member will also know that there is a sampling plan that has been developed together with the CVRD — that our staff will be engaging in additional testing. If there are any contraventions of permit conditions that are legally binding, then we enforce the conditions of the permit.

CONSERVATION OFFICER SERVICE

S. Chandra Herbert: The Society of B.C. Conservation Officers says: “Inadequate staffing levels is resulting in higher caseloads, slower response times and/or no response at all. Our motto used to be ‘Any time, anywhere.’ Now it is ‘Sometimes, maybe.’ We need more boots on the ground.”

The conservation officers have been speaking out. As we’ve seen, reports of pollution, poaching and environmental violations have shot through the roof. Their numbers have been flatlined. My question to the Minister of Environment, how can she still accept a standard of a “Sometimes, maybe” response to environmental pollution rather than standing up for our conservation officers and our environment?

Hon. M. Polak: The member seems to be aware that staffing levels for the conservation officer service have remained on par with previous years. What the member seems unaware of, though, is that the service has changed over the years. One of those significant changes is that they are now joined on the ground by another 150 natural resource officers.

They coordinate the work that they do in enforcing various pieces of legislation both under the Ministry of Environment as well as the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. We’ve also added technological components to their work that they did not have access to in the past, which now allow them to be a mobile force, to respond in a zone system similar to other first responders in other areas.

I am quite confident that our conservation officer service continues to provide the best in on-the-ground law enforcement in our natural environment of any place in North America.

[1430]

[End of question period.]

Motions Without Notice

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY
TO SIT IN THREE SECTIONS

Hon. M. de Jong: By leave, I move the following motion:

[Further to the motion adopted on February 26, 2015, that this House hereby authorizes the Committee of Supply for this Session to sit in an additional third section designated Section C which will sit in the Birch Committee Room as may be appointed from time to time. All rules and provisions of the motion related to Committee of Supply, Section A shall apply to Section C. The Members of Committee of Supply, Section C shall be identical to the composition of Committee of Supply, Section A.]

Leave granted.

Motion approved.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: In Committee A, Committee of Supply — for the information of members, the ongoing estimates of the Ministry of Justice. In Section C, now the Birch Room, the Committee of Supply estimates of the Ministry of Health. And in this chamber, the ongoing second reading debate of Bill 20, the Election Amendment Act.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 20 — ELECTION AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

(continued)

M. Farnworth: It’s my pleasure to pick up where I left on Thursday on Bill 20, with my remarks around that particular piece of legislation. I know there were a number of issues at that particular time on which I was mak-
[ Page 8253 ]
ing clear that the opposition had considerable concern around this bill.

For the elucidation and the information of members who may not be familiar with the debate up to date, Bill 20 will make significant changes in terms of voting in the province of British Columbia. A number of these changes have been put in place on recommendations on behalf of the Chief Electoral Officer. But others, not so much.

I think I’ve outlined previously my concern around issues regarding the lack of action on the controlling of spending during the pre-election campaign period and how that is leading somewhat to more of an Americanization of politics in British Columbia. It’s interesting to point out that other provinces are taking the opposite road and are looking to ensure that there are some controls in terms of that spending taking place in the pre-election campaign period.

As I said at that time, prior to the adoption of the fixed date you had a 28-day campaign or sometimes six weeks, and it literally was all hands on deck. You had a very heavily focused campaign where the money was all spent during that time period.

One of the significant changes that I outlined with the adoption of the fixed calendar is that now that we know when the election date is going to be, we see a significant extension of, in essence, the campaign period. There is still the formal campaign period, but there is now a very long informal campaign period, which requires money to function. I think that that’s one of the weaknesses, a significant weakness, of this particular piece of legislation.

I want to talk in the time that I have remaining…. I suspect it’s probably somewhere around 15 minutes. If the Clerk gives a nod or something like that, I’d be more than happy. I see 11 minutes. I think that’s what I get in terms of hand signals.

Deputy Speaker: Ten minutes.

[1435]

M. Farnworth: I want to touch on another issue that I think is important and a particular weakness in this particular piece of legislation, and that is around the lack of adoption of the recommendation around allowing young people in grade 12, in that 17-year-old age group, to be able to register to vote while in school, ahead of the election date.

I think that’s particularly unfortunate. I think all of us in this chamber — and in fact, people outside this chamber — have expressed concern about the decline in voter participation over the last few decades. There’s a constant desire to look at how we can increase voter turnout and how we can encourage voter turnout.

Of course, part of that is up to politicians themselves, to be able to excite voters, to engage voters, to encourage them to get involved in the campaign, to be aware of what’s going on. Part of that is also, in today’s society where people are far more mobile than they used to be and with the advances in technology: how do we make it easier for people to vote, more convenient for people to vote?

There have, of course, been changes around that, in terms of increasing the number of advance polling days. Mail-in ballots are also a good way to encourage people to vote. We have seen how people have taken advantage of those. But there are still fundamental problems in terms of the demographics of the population who actually get out to vote.

We know that the older people are, the more likely they are to vote. We know for a fact that the percentage of the population with the highest participation in voting in elections is those people aged 55 and over. The demographic with the lowest participation rates is people under 30, and the sad fact is that that has been declining. It has not been increasing.

I think it’s crucial to the long-term health of our democracy and to the long-term health of our election process that young people are involved. It’s very disheartening when you see in this jurisdiction, nationally and in other jurisdictions around the world, where young people say: “Voting is irrelevant” or “It doesn’t matter.”

There is nothing, I think, that should concern us more when we are debating changes to an election act, than that we recognize the importance of ensuring that young people vote — that it is something that is important, that it is something that matters and that it is something that is incredibly relevant, not just to them today but to the future of our society in the years and decades to come.

A key part of that, as in most things: expose people to something when they’re young, and they’re more likely to adopt it. It doesn’t matter what that is. Whether it is learning a language…. If you learn it young, you’ll learn it over your lifetime. It will stick with you. Good eating habits, exercise, participation — all of those things, the younger you are involving young people, the more likely they are to stay engaged, the more likely they are to be aware of the importance of it and to embrace it.

That’s why in school, in social studies, we teach about how our government works, how our democracy works. We have tour groups that come around to the galleries to watch and see how our system of government works. All of us as MLAs have been into schools to talk to young people about the importance of government and how it affects them.

So I find it unbelievable that we would not want to adopt a recommendation — that we would not want to see in this piece of legislation — making it easier for young people to vote, particularly at that age when they are getting ready to graduate from high school, when they are going to turn that calendar clock, that milestone in their lives when they turn 18, and we wouldn’t want to say, “You know what? You graduate from high school, and you’re already registered to vote and able to par-
[ Page 8254 ]
ticipate at the first opportunity that there is an election,” whether it is a local election or a provincial election or, indeed, a federal election.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why you would not want to encourage that, why you would not want to encourage that by making it easier for young people in this province who are at school to become engaged.

[1440]

We’ve seen it work in other jurisdictions. Last year, for example, in Scotland they had a referendum on the long-term future of Scotland, whether or not to remain part of the United Kingdom, and they lowered the voting age to 16. It engaged people. They realized that they had a stake in government, and it was a very unique opportunity in this sense. It’s not even what we’re talking about here, but they engaged 16-year-olds. They gave them the ability to vote on a fundamental question. That’s an example of how you get young people involved, and it’s important to do that.

What we’re saying…. There was a recommendation. Allow 17-year-olds to register to vote. How is that radical? How is that so problematic? I mean, I know that the Minister of Finance has stated in the past, when he ran for the leadership campaign, that he thought it was a good idea.

Now the government says: “Well, we didn’t have time to get it into the legislation.” Didn’t have time to get it into the legislation? It would be a two-sentence paragraph. We had a piece of legislation tabled in this House that’s probably got at least a dozen amendments to it on the order paper, Bill 5, including one that has to change the title of the piece of legislation.

If the government can find time to introduce an amendment to change the title on a bill because of shoddy drafting, surely one would have expected more thought into a piece of legislation. It would not be that hard to add a section to this Bill 20 to say that students or persons who are in their 17th year of age have the right or the ability to register to vote while in school. It’s not rocket science. It’s really simple, and if the government had really been serious, they would have included that in this particular piece of legislation.

You have to ask yourself why. Why would that not be in here? All I can think of is that it’s designed to discourage turnout, that despite all of the good intentions, despite all of the great words of how we want to encourage voter turnout, want people to come out and vote….

I think one of the sad things about our democratic process is that too much is relied on, in essence, what is voter suppression, which is to encourage people not to vote through particular forms of campaigning, by targeting and understanding that some people…. It’s like, in essence, encouraging them to stay home, not directly.

But it’s also by saying: “You know what? We think young people aren’t necessarily going to be with us. They may be with a different party. Therefore, there’s no real advantage for us to encourage them to get out and vote.” I hope that’s not the reason. I’d like to think that it was just simple oversight.

I think a piece of legislation like this should meet the needs of all British Columbians. It should not just meet the needs of a governing party. It should not just meet the needs of an opposition party. It should not just meet the needs of independents. But it should fundamentally extend rights to all British Columbians and make it as easy as possible to register to vote.

I can see that my time is coming near to an end, and I would suggest that I have only 1½ minutes left. With that, I would like to acknowledge that there are areas of this bill that I think are positive, but there are some areas in this bill that have significant problems. One is on the spending limits. Another is on the registration of young people.

I think that that is something that this government could resolve. It is not too late to add a section in here on that. They could do it at committee stage, and it would have support from all sides of this House.

With that, I know that other colleagues have additional comments on this legislation, addressing some of the topics that I have not been able to touch on. I look forward to their comments and to committee stage debate, where we may see some of the issues dealt with in a way that resolves some of the concerns around this particular piece of legislation.

[1445]

Moira Stilwell: It’s a privilege to rise in this House today to speak to the Election Amendment Act, 2015. Frankly, I cannot think of a more important subject for this House than the state of our democracy and what we can do to improve it. But at least some provisions of this amendment do not improve our democracy and do not improve our ability to increase voter turnout nor produce better oversight of election results.

So I am standing to speak against those provisions in the legislation specifically providing voter information to political parties, not because I’m against improving voter turnout or because I am opposed to making our democracy better. On the contrary.

I stand to speak out against these changes because I know that they do not have anything to do with improving voter turnout or improving our democracy. Quite simply, these changes are in the interests of political parties, not in the interest of individual British Columbian voters.

There are lots of ways to increase voter turnout or increase political awareness or ways to get people more involved in their province’s democracy. But giving political parties more access to information that the voters believe is private, and should be private, and allowing them, in turn, to harass voters is not how we’re going to get more people more engaged in our political process.

I suggest all of us in the House go out and talk to our constituents about this. I invite anyone in this House to
[ Page 8255 ]
go out and really explain this change and what it means in terms of granting political parties more access to personal voter information and what they will do with it. Then ask your constituents: do you think this is a good idea? I believe the answer will be a resounding no — a “hell no,” in fact.

The fact is voters do not want political parties to have more information about them, including whether or not they voted. When asked, people mistrust political parties and politicians and believe, in the majority, that political parties, if they could, would manipulate election results.

I know this because I have been asking. Quite frankly, after I have voted and the ballots have been burned, it is no one’s business whether or not I voted, and it’s certainly no business of political parties on the right, left or centre.

This change of the government providing this access to political parties will only serve to make voters even more cynical, more skeptical and more guarded in their relationship with politics and politicians.

The fact is that if someone wants to vote, great. If someone wants to vote for me, I’ll pick them up and drive them to the polls. If someone doesn’t want to vote, that’s disappointing, but it’s also their right. While the act of voting in itself is public, after the winners are declared, whether or not people vote or not is not the business of political parties.

We all know, as politicians, what will happen to that information. I will not take the time to enter into Hansard the Privacy Commissioner’s comments and concerns about this, which I felt were worthy of consideration. I regret that at the end they deflected into that wide morass known as: “But I trust you’ll use the data wisely.”

Also, when I spoke to my constituents, in fact, zero of my constituents expressed the concern that the information would be used commercially. That did not come up. However, they know that once we get our hands on that information, the first thing we will do is to target those people, particularly those who did not vote.

We will bombard them with e-mails, phone calls, junk mail and more. We will make their dinner hours more miserable as we try to reach them on the phone with automated telephone calls or corner them on the doorstep. Frankly, I believe voters have a right to be left alone between elections.

So providing a list of who voted and who didn’t to political parties is like throwing chum in the water to attract sharks. What makes me even more skeptical about this change is the fact that only political parties will get the information, not independent candidates. These changes are in the interest of political parties, not in the interest of ordinary British Columbians, who have a right to vote or not and to have that information destroyed once that election is over.

The pretext for these changes points to encouraging voter turnout and preventing voter fraud. I asked the legislative librarians, and they could not find any case where so-called voter fraud has overturned a final election result. Now, I know there are many of my learned friends on both sides of the aisle who will be dying to jump up to tell me about a case, but the truth is this. The bar is incredibly high, and I believe for this amendment it is a red herring.

[1450]

The threat is small, and we should keep it small. The idea that knowing who voted after the ballots have been destroyed and the winners have been seated in the Legislature, to me, does not pass muster.

The other reason given for this change is to encourage voter turnout. I am very skeptical. I don’t think there’s any evidence whatsoever of this. I don’t believe these changes will encourage people to get out and vote. Frankly, I think it will make them feel even more vulnerable and cynical about the political system that we, as politicians and political parties, have crafted and built over the years, often seemingly for our own benefit. The changes are for the sole convenience of the political parties and our get-out-the-vote machines. They’re not aimed at helping voters.

Those of us who are elected to office are just the tip of the iceberg. Our election only happens because hundreds and sometimes thousands of engaged and interested citizens get involved in building and running election campaigns. When you’re in the middle of an election and you’re surrounded by like-minded people who are excited and share your interest in campaigns and politics and policy, we sometimes forget that for many and most Canadians, probably, politics is something they see or hear about on TV or in the newspaper and something they may or may not do every few years on voting day.

For a growing number of British Columbians and Canadians, politics and even voting is beginning to look and feel more foreign. For many, particularly the age group that reflects our children, politics and voting and getting involved is, at best, a “hold your nose and vote” chore that rolls around every few years.

To see that happening in our cities, province and country has got to be heartbreaking, particularly for people who lived through the Second World War, many of whom were in the gallery today, or the Great Depression or who are immigrants from countries where voting is something you dream of but never get the chance to actually do. I say that well aware that around the world many people would give anything to be able to stand up in a room like this and speak their mind — to speak their mind and know that they can do it freely without fear of government, without fear of being imprisoned and free of political party harassment.

What we take for granted is not the norm around the world. We only have to look at recent demonstrations calling for democracy in Hong Kong to realize how lucky we are here in British Columbia. In Hong Kong the citizens want to elect leaders they nominate, not individuals handpicked by their government.
[ Page 8256 ]

Can you imagine British Columbians or Canadians being told: “You can vote, but only for the people government selects”? We wouldn’t stand for it. But in many parts of the world handpicked candidates put up by government or monopoly party is the rule and not the exception.

The Hong Kong protests in support of a real democratic election were, as so often happens, led by young people, young men and women, not much older than mere boys and girls, who are connected to the world, a world of ideas, through their smartphones, tablets, Twitter, Facebook and a host of social media tools and technologies. They don’t need a list, and they don’t want to be on our list.

Here in Canada and British Columbia we constantly try to figure out how to get more people engaged in politics and get them to participate in their own democracy, yet we struggle. We struggle to find people who want to put their name forward in elections. We struggle to get people out to vote. Always we wonder why we take democracy for granted. Yet only last fall we saw that when people believe in something and believe it’s worthwhile, they will participate, and they will engage, and they will vote.

Last fall, after a 300-year relationship, the Scots voted, as they did last week as well, on the issue of independence from the United Kingdom. The turnout was a record. Voter turnout was the highest since universal suffrage was introduced in the 1950s — a worthy cause, I might also add. They voted in a record 85 percent turnout.

Because the issue was of such importance to the future of Scots and Scotland, they let the future vote. They allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to vote. And if anyone thinks young people are not interested in politics, just look at the Scottish referendum numbers. Eighty percent of 16- and 17-year-olds stepped up to vote. Why? Because they were asked to be part of something important. So was every Scot, and they turned out in droves.

They turned out because they wanted their voice heard, and they genuinely believed that their vote mattered. Perhaps that is the difference. Too often people feel like their voice, or vote, does not matter. But if you ask those young people in Hong Kong or those voters in Scotland, they will tell you that voices do matter.

Closer to home we saw just last week in Alberta that after 44 years the ruling party was tossed out. Voter turnout was the highest in 22 years — almost 10 percent higher than the average. Why? Quite simply, because Albertans had a big decision to make, and they knew it. That decision engaged them and made them feel they had to step up and speak out and be heard. They knew their vote mattered. Just look at the number of close races, where winners were determined by the slimmest of margins.

[1455]

Frankly, it’s a lesson for all of us in this room, particularly for those of us who sit in the Legislature here in Victoria or in parliament in Ottawa. Our citizens do want to be heard. They want to know their voice and vote actually means something and that it counts for something. Part of our job as elected politicians is to make sure that happens. We sit in this House at the pleasure of the people, and, frankly, I would say to every member in this House that the people of British Columbia do not want this change.

Now, it’s true many are actually not even aware of the provision tucked so neatly into a larger bill. But if you specifically go out and explain it to people, they do not want more of their information in the hands of political parties. When I canvass my constituents, I use those favourite arguments of all adolescents, which we’re going to hear in the House and have heard: other people do it, and we can get the information anyway.

Most of the people I spoke to in my constituency did not know that. They had not participated as scrutineers or participated in election campaigns. But at the end of the explanation that other people are doing it and we can get the information anyway, people still shook their heads and said: “There is no reason for the government,” which is what we are doing, “to give more information about me to political parties.”

They told me they thought it was wrong. They do not want to be singled out or on any list based on whether or not they have voted. They believe that it is their business and not the business of political campaigns and the people who run them. As I said earlier, if you think I’m wrong, just ask your constituents, and they will probably tell you in no uncertain terms, possibly not politely, to keep your hands off their voting records.

Whether we look at the protests for democracy in Hong Kong or record voter turnout in Scotland or Alberta or, for that matter, PEI, where they had an 85 percent turnout in their last provincial election, all of us are reminded that we stand on the shoulders of men and women who got us this far in the pursuit of democracy and who are counting on us to carry on even further.

When you look at those voters in Scotland, the protesters in Hong Kong or those Albertans who spoke up for change after 44 years, they all have one thing in common: they were activated, they were engaged and they cared enough to get involved. Frankly, that’s changing in our society. The fact is that people are becoming less engaged, more cynical and more skeptical, and this kind of legislative change only increases our constituents’ skepticism.

It’s no secret that as individuals most of us in this House are held in some esteem by the people who know us. Then why is it that as politicians we are held in such low esteem as a group? The answer is simple. It is this kind of self-serving legislative change that makes people feel that we are disconnected from them, that we’re not honest with them or that somehow as a self-appointed elite we know best. I say again: ask your constituents if they think their voting information should be turned over to political parties, and you should not be surprised by the answer.
[ Page 8257 ]

When we disregard strong feeling in favour of helping out our political parties, don’t be surprised by voter reaction as we drop a further notch or two in terms of public approval. Every single member in this House knows what our constituents would say about this change if we actually asked them to release the information each election, yet many in this House are prepared to support the change — and we wonder why voters do not trust politicians.

If we want to increase voter turnout, give people something important and worthwhile to vote for. Scotland did it. Alberta did it. You certainly don’t do it by harassing voters after an election because you have some list that divides up British Columbians into those who voted and those who did not.

The changes in front of the House sound reasonable and benign and non-partisan. They are not. They are none of those things, and we know that. They fly in the face of how we know that our fellow citizens feel and vote. The changes do nothing but help political parties, not citizens.

If we are serious about voter engagement and turnout, there are plenty of real tools to help with that, starting with making people feel that politicians and politics are worth caring about and voting for. A vote in favour of these changes does nothing to change the opinion of voters about politicians. It only reinforces their cynicism, and in my opinion, deservedly so.

So as we look at the order paper, which has turned into a veritable amendment-writing workshop, I hope that we will view them through the focus and through the lens of what the Premier herself said last week. She said our focus has always been to think about what’s best for British Columbians.

[1500]

What about British Columbians? What is good for the people of the province? As leaders it is not our job to ask ourselves how circumstances, how our goals, can somehow fit into our personal ambitions. On that note, I will ask you to view this legislation through that lens.

C. Trevena: I take my place to speak on Bill 20, the Election Amendment Act, following the very thoughtful remarks of the member for Vancouver-Langara. It’s very nice to be engaged in a debate. She raises, I think, some very important issues, some very important concerns about trust and about how to reinvigorate our democracy.

This is something that many of us on this side of the House have spoken about quite regularly, the sense that we have a huge privilege here, that we have a need to really engage voters and make sure that what we are doing is relevant to the people whom we represent and also that this institution is relevant to the people whom we represent.

We see time and again the declining voter turnout and ask ourselves: “Why is this?” A lot, as my colleague from Coquitlam said earlier on, is up to us as politicians to inspire the electorate. But we also have to be very aware that the electorate is fully conscious — or one hopes is conscious — of the way that the system works.

The member for Vancouver-Langara has specified a specific section, section 6, of this bill, which will allow parties to get additional information on voters. As she also mentioned, there are many amendments on the order paper which would tighten up that section.

My concern with Bill 20, which has a number of changes…. I’ll go through them very quickly before concentrating on the areas that concern me, but I’ll just highlight it now. It’s the ability for political parties to spend more, more, more money.

While the member for Vancouver-Langara talked about how what information we as politicians have of the electorate will scare people away and will disengage them, I think it’s that use of basically buying the vote — spending and spending and spending — and advertising, often negative advertising, to try to win support. It’s the use, as we have seen both federally at the moment and provincially before every election, of public money for very partisan purposes.

We have seen in other jurisdictions a tightening of this and a much closer lens on how public money is spent to make sure it isn’t used for partisan purposes. But I would say that is one area that causes voter disengagement and public disengagement.

There is also, as has been mentioned before, the issue of trying to engage young people. Again, I’ll be talking about that in my remarks. I think that is something where we have the opportunity here to engage more young people to increase the voter turnout, increase the engagement.

There are bigger problems, I think. The fact is that the system we have, this so-called first-past-the-post — it’s a strange name for it, because that would be a direct horse race — where the winner takes all, doesn’t really reflect the intentions of the voting public.

People make reference to the most recent election. While we on this side of the House are looking very much at what happened in Alberta, I’m also very conscious of what happened in the United Kingdom very recently, where we had very clear incidents where the results of the election with the first-past-the-post system, like we have here, have left many people feeling disenfranchised.

We had a very large proportion that supported one particular party, whether or not you like it, a party called the UK Independence Party. A large proportion of people voted for that, and they ended up with one seat. Far fewer people, at this time around, supported the Scottish National Party. They ended up with 53 seats and nearly swept the country of Scotland because of the system of voting.

I think that addressing the voting system, as we on this side of House have said we will do, will help re-engage people and will show the relevance that their vote really
[ Page 8258 ]
matters, that their vote literally does count. When you move into systems of proportional representation, your vote literally counts.

[1505]

I think there are other ways that we need to engage, and that is some of our ideas. We need to ensure that people understand that and also that, really, people understand the privilege that we in B.C., in Canada and in the western democracies have. We are extraordinarily fortunate to have the freedoms that we have here: the freedom for voting, the freedom for our electorate to decide our government — that we are individually elected in.

I think that everyone in this House — all 85 members of us — is hugely aware of the privilege and the responsibility of being an elected official here. It really is. I don’t diminish that on any side of the House. But how do we make that more relevant? I don’t think Bill 20 really does it. It broadens things out in some ways. It will make some aspects more accessible.

What the bill does — just to run through it, because I’ve sort of skipped right into some of the contentious points. It adds two more days of advance voting. It allows get-out-the-vote messages, which encourage people to come and vote for your candidate on election day using social media. So you can tweet out or Facebook out or whatever it is — Instagram, with pictures, and get them out there — however it’s going to be done.

It eliminates spending restrictions for third parties in the pre-election period. That is very problematic, and I’ll come back to that. As the member for Vancouver-Langaramentioned, it requires the Chief Electoral Officer to provide parties with a list of voters after an election, indicating who voted. That, again, is something that I will be addressing.

It is dealt with if the amendments that…. We have a number of amendments for this section ourselves, the opposition. The two independents have both put forward amendments to this which would change that and tighten it up. Bearing in mind what the member for Vancouver-Langara said, and looking through the lens of what’s best for British Columbians, I think that these amendments would tighten it up and would make it relevant both for the people of British Columbia and the political parties.

The bill also expands the scope of fundraising expenses that don’t count under expense limits. That’s for people who are fundraising because it costs money to run elections whether you’re buying your signs or putting your ads out. It expands the scope of that.

The Chief Electoral Officer. This actually all stems from a report by the Chief Electoral Officer published last October. Some of his recommendations include an exemption for filing expense reports for leadership candidates that are acclaimed and haven’t raised or spent any money. They don’t have to go through the process of filing expense reports.

It permits constituency associations to incur election expenses on behalf of a candidate for the full period of the campaign instead of the first ten days.

It tightens up the identity requirements for vouching. That’s for people who can’t prove that they are who they say they are. This was one of the Chief Electoral Officer’s recommendations.

We have some concerns about that. There are people who may not have the identity, but you’re in a small community or a small polling station and everybody knows that person is who they say they are. So what will this do? We want to make sure that we’re not disenfranchising people, not turning people away. There are people who don’t necessarily have that ID available. So there’s a bit of concern there.

Again, the Chief Electoral Officer wanted to provide election officials with the authority to provide voter turnout information to candidates during advance voting and general voting.

That’s the broad scope of the bill. There are some areas which are of concern to a number of people. It’s interesting what the member for Vancouver-Langara says: “Go and talk to your constituents.” I think we all talk to our constituents about legislation when we have the opportunity. We’re here Monday to Thursday, which gives us Friday, Saturday and Sunday to have a general debate in whatever way we do. Just go and talk with people, as well as using other avenues of how we relate with people in our constituency.

I’ve been raising the discussion about this bill with people, because this is a chance. Let’s start talking about how our democracy works, how our electoral system works. What people have been coming back to me about is the concern about the removal of spending limits on political parties and candidates.

[1510]

They’re not so concerned about the parties finding out who is going to vote or how they’re voting, because as the member said, parties can find out through the scrutineer system, through other systems, in get-out-the-vote on election day, who has voted. Every voter has a number, and we can match them up. That’s why you get that call at five minutes to the close of polls saying: “Have you voted?” There are processes that go on. So that hasn’t been a concern for people.

What has been a real concern is the removing of the spending limits on the parties and candidates. And people really do fear…. They fear two things. They fear that it is going to simply allow those with deep pockets to spend more and buy the election — simply put, like that. People also are concerned that it would Americanize our elections, where we’ve seen in the United States these super PACs come up, where you have fundraising groups being able to fundraise extraordinary amounts of money for a candidate or a party. Really, people are very concerned about that.

We have a democracy that I wouldn’t say is vibrant in
[ Page 8259 ]
Canada at the moment, or in B.C. We’ve had this spur on, yes, a large voter turnout in P.E.I. for their provincial election, a good voter turnout in Alberta, but generally, we don’t see people engaged.

If we start allowing increasing spending, increasing in advertisements, increasing in the selling of a potential government, what we usually see with that…. I think that they are done because people say they work. I think that many people who I do talk to find it offensive. But you see an increase in attack ads, often very nasty attack ads — which work. It either scares people, or it turns people off. They say: “I don’t want to have anything to have to do with anyone.” But all of this comes because parties have money, and they have money to spend.

What this bill does is it does allow the increase in spending. It says that it’s responding to the courts which shot down restrictions on third-party advertising in the pre-campaign period. But the bill also removes the spending limits. It removes the spending limits on political parties and candidates, and by removing the spending limits, you are, by force of nature, giving advantage to those who have more money. So those parties that are able to raise more money can spend a lot more money and can effectively try to buy the election.

It sounds, as I say it, very cynical — that any one party could buy the election. But if you can inundate the air waves, you know, whether it’s during the hockey playoffs…. Our elections are in the spring, so there is a lot of advertising going on in the hockey playoffs. You inundate all the popular times of advertising with your message, time and time again because you’re the ones with the money.

So you’re putting your message out. You’re using, at times, often public money to spin out your message, and you are using the money that you have raised to attack the other parties. You are effectively in a position to buy an election.

What I’ve heard from people when we’ve been having this discussion in my constituency…. It’s very interesting what people say is: “We should just back out of it totally. We should say ‘no spending,’ or we should have it, as was done federally for some time, that each party gets a certain amount of money based on the proportion of the votes gained.” But to have a free-for-all that this bill will allow, is really very, very concerning.

Just to go back a little, back in 2009 there were the third-party election advertising rules, which included a 60-day pre-campaign period, which kicked in before the 28-day election campaign window. That was challenged. It was a Charter challenge. There was huge concern about it, and the court said that spending limits during this extra time was an excessive limit on free speech.

In 2012 the Liberal government brought in a miscellaneous bill — which was one of the omnibus bills, in any other terms — and amended the Election Act to shorten that 60-day period to 40 days for third-party advertisers. These were not brought into force, and the government referred the issue to the Court of Appeal. In October of 2012 the Court of Appeal found the provisions unconstitutional.

[1515]

So it’s dealing with that, but this bill adds this elimination of the 60-day pre-campaign period for third parties as well as removing the pre-campaign period’s spending limit for political parties and candidates. So under the present act, parties are limited to $1.1 million and candidates to $70,000 in the 60-day pre-campaign period. Under this bill all limits on spending by political parties and candidates are eliminated in the lead-up to the drop of the writ. So that’s any time up until the start of the 28-day period, the election period.

It’s of huge concern that it will allow those with money just to bombard people. I mean, I think it’s not what the member for Vancouver-Langara is worried about, the amount of contact with political parties. It’s just this complete blitzing of information, of advertising, that really is a huge worry.

The other area I’d like to talk about…. As I say, this, I think, will jeopardize our democracy. It will increase voter cynicism. People don’t like that sense of being bought. They don’t like the constant advertising. There are people who look at ads as the way to find out just what each party is standing for, but most people want to be treated with respect. They don’t want to have their democracy treated like a package of soap — that is just: how are you best going to sell it, who looks the prettiest, who’s going to smile the most, who’s going to look good in certain situations — and sell it on that.

We shouldn’t be pandering to that either. We should be responsible and ensuring that we are telling people honestly what we are going to do, how we’re going to do it, and making sure that we are engaging people. That’s how we start re-engaging in our democracy.

The other thing in this, the potential we have here — again, we are addressing this in an amendment — is the question of getting young people involved and having youth voter registration. It’s extraordinary; it’s unfortunate that this isn’t in the bill.

We have tabled an amendment, again, which we’ll get to when we get into committee stage, which allows for youth voter registration. The reason for doing this is getting young people engaged will make sure that they…. Basically, once you start voting, you continue voting. It’s been proven — you talk to sociologists, political scientists — that if you first start voting at 18, you’re likely to carry on voting for the rest of your life, once you’ve made that step. But you have to be registered.

Because young people are not given the opportunity to register and many young people don’t know how to…. They don’t know how to go about voting. I think we’ve all been to the different schools and talked to young people, engaging young people at different ages. Under the cur-
[ Page 8260 ]
riculum we have here in B.C., practically…. Social studies, civics, are taught in grade 5 — so you’re about ten or 11 years old — and then in grade 11, in socials 11, which is a huge, all-encompassing course, absolutely extraordinary course, built into one semester. That is, for many young people….

There are, obviously, exceptions to this. There are young people who want to get engaged in other things, get engaged in political parties, get engaged in issues, get engaged in campaigning for whatever cause that they feel moved by. Young people are very engaged in that way. But they don’t get that connect the dots, that to make change, you need to vote; to make change on pretty well anything that young people get engaged in, you need to vote. The next dot is that if you need to vote, you need to register to vote.

If this bill widened the vote, widened the ability for youth voter registration, you would immediately be able to start reinvigorating our democracy, because you’d get young people wanting to vote.

In the Chief Electoral Officer’s recommendations that came in October 2014, he mentions that other jurisdictions have already taken steps to address the issue by allowing the provisional registration of otherwise eligible individuals under the age of 18.

[1520]

Nova Scotia allows the Chief Electoral Officer to collect the registration information of 16- and 17-year-olds. Quebec has a provisional registrar for potential voters who, unless they decline, are automatically added to the voters list. Alberta, in the previous government, had an amendment which hadn’t come into force — but maybe the new government there will bring this in — which enables the Chief Electoral Officer to request directly from school boards the registration information of 16- and 17-year-olds to register them to vote. There are nine U.S. states which have registration for 16- and 17-year-olds. Australia has addressed the issue by provisional voter registration of 17-year-olds.

As the member for Vancouver-Langara and the member for Port Coquitlam mentioned, in the U.K., in Scotland, 16- and 17-year-olds were registered so they could actually vote. Not just that they were registered so they could vote when they’re 18; they took the step that 16-year-olds could vote in the referendum. And you saw huge engagement, huge debate, and that translated into what happened last week in the United Kingdom, when there was a massive swing to the Scottish National Party in Scotland. You had that engagement. You had people who really cared.

That’s what would be healthy for all democracies: to engage young people. Get them involved. Allow them to have that voice. They know that when you want to make change…. Whether it’s about the environment or whether it’s about health issues, whatever it is that young people are engaged in…. You talk to everyone and sort of say, “What do you care about?” and I’ll tell you, you get a whole bunch of really engaged people, and they would come in, and they would vote. It’s a very simple opportunity.

The Chief Electoral Officer in his report recommends that legislatures continue to consider allowing the provisional registration of individuals when they are 16 years of age. Committing to early registration at age 16 “would permit Elections B.C. to work with schools and the driver-licensing program to ensure maximum exposure to the registration process for young voters. Many high school teachers have expressed support for this concept, as it would allow meaningful action by their students in the context of civics education.”

In fact, I knew a high school teacher who, as part of socials 11, encouraged his students and took them down to register to vote. This was just as an on-the-side thing that he did, and it really engaged them. And when you came to the election, and you were talking to those young people, they knew that they had the right to vote. They knew, also, that with it came responsibility — because you have the right to vote and the responsibility about voting.

That’s the other thing. Once you give people the right for registration, people also understand there is a responsibility. There is an acceptance that you’ve got to understand the issues and not to be bombarded with masses of advertising that will, effectively, sway an election — but to start talking about what is concerning people. These are the ways that we can engage our democracy and reinvigorate our democracies, broadening the franchise, ensuring that more and more people can get engaged.

It really is, as I say, an extraordinary privilege that we have to be here and to be representing people and to have the freedom to have the elections as we do. We’ve seen in many places where that doesn’t occur. People have referenced, whether it’s Hong Kong or other areas, you see places where…. I’ve worked in places with first elections, and you see people lining up to vote. You see people really wanting to embrace the democracy, and it is incumbent upon us to ensure that that continues.

I’ll briefly touch, in my closing remarks, on the section where people are concerned about the privacy issues of who is going to find out what information of who has voted. I know that there is a real concern that people are very private. Everybody has the right for their vote to be kept private and a secret ballot.

We know that if you ask people, “Who did you vote for?” they have every right to say: “I’m not going to tell you.” They have every right, when somebody knocks on the door in the campaign period or calls them up and says, “We’d like to talk to you about this. Will you vote for me?” to say no or: “I’m not going to tell you who I’m going to vote for.” There is a secret ballot, so there is that. You can understand people’s concerns about getting bombarded with the phone calls, the e-mails and everything else from political parties.

[1525]

There are two sides of it. There is a need, again, to engage people, ensure that people have as much information as possible. This was a request by a number of the political parties — from ourselves, from, obviously, the governing party and from the Green Party. We’re all engaged in this.

There have been a number of amendments that would make this section acceptable and I think would deal with some of the member for Vancouver-Langara’s concerns in ensuring that this information wouldn’t be misused, that it would be used very cautiously and that we would be able to really, again, encourage people to participate, encourage people to get engaged. I think this is one of the things…. I go back to my opening remarks. This is one of the unfortunate things about this bill. It doesn’t really allow greater engagement. It is using what we already have for the benefit of those who are already there.

We as legislators, I think, have a responsibility of ensuring that more people get engaged, that people understand the importance of this place, of what happens here, that they feel that they are participating in it and they feel that they are part of it, that this is important for them, that it’s important for their families and it’s important for their society. If we end up individualizing it, if we end up just letting a huge amount of money be spent on advertising, if we try and restrict the number of people who are going to get engaged, I think we have problems.

It was mentioned…. I’m not sure who mentioned this, the idea by not allowing this section on youth voter registration, getting 16- and 17-year-olds registered to vote, it’s tantamount to voter suppression, and I think there are arguments for that. It really is. You’re saying: “Well, we’re not going to encourage you to vote. We’re not going to make it easy for you to vote.” If you don’t make it easy for people to vote, you are going to be suppressing the vote. You make it that much harder. That is not healthy for us in our democracy to be doing that.

We know that older people vote. They can make that connection. But will that continue? If people aren’t voting when they’re young, will they continue not voting as they get older? And that then begs the question — every time we look at voter turnout, the legitimacy of every government. If you’re elected with a very small percentage of the population, both in numbers and in demographics, and you are making laws that are to govern, supposedly, for the greater good of society but you don’t have the support of your society, it is questionable.

So I think that we on this side of the House have put forward in this session of the Legislature since February…. I think it’s about ten different pieces of legislation which would revitalize our democracy. We have put forward a bill which would allow for youth voter registration. We’ve done so for a number of years. We really need to be encouraging our democracy, revitalizing our democracy, broadening the base, getting people involved and not turning to, effectively: “The lowest common denominator of increased spending is going to be the solution, and let’s keep the doors closed for everybody else.”

I think it’s going to be a very interesting debate. I’m looking forward to hearing other speakers. I think the next stage is going to be very interesting as we get to some of the amendments, and I hope the government looks on them wisely and accepts them.

I think we have, really, a missed opportunity. We could engage people. We could make this a way to reinvigorate our democracy, and Bill 20 doesn’t do that.

A. Weaver: I rise today to speak on Bill 20, the Elections Amendment Act. My speech today will revolve around three key elements of the bill. First, I’d like to discuss government’s apparent decision to give up its fight to better regulate the influence of big money during the pre-campaign period. Second, I’ll outline and speak in support of several aspects of this bill that follow from the recommendations made by the Chief Electoral Officer.

[1530]

Finally, I’ll express my serious reservations about parts of the bill where, under the guise of increasing voter turnout, government has made it easier for political parties to build up their databases. Low voter turnout is a serious issue and deserves far more than a token effort to resolve it, and I’ll touch upon this more later on in the speech.

First to pre-writ spending. I’ll deal with each of these in turn, beginning with the pre-campaign period. This is a complex issue that deserves some context.

In 2001 British Columbia became the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce fixed election dates. Since then we’ve been followed by seven other provinces as well as by the federal government.

With fixed election dates came new concerns about the role of money in politics. Many commentators warned of a free-for-all occurring in the days and even the months before the writ was officially dropped. This turned out to be remarkably accurate. For evidence of this, just turn on Hockey Night in Canada and count the number of political ads that are aimed at the federal election that is still many months away.

In 2008 the province tried to address this new challenge and introduced an Election Amendment Act quite different from the one before us today. That bill set out financing limits for political organizations as well as third parties in the 60 days before the official start of the election.

Spending limits are incredibly important in a vibrant democracy. They work to promote equality in our political discourse. They ensure that wealthy voices don’t drown out the rest and help retain confidence in our electoral system.

An important component of any electoral spending law is a limit on third-party spending. Without these limits, political parties can easily circumvent the rules by creating special interest groups to convey their message for them. The limits also prevent the possibility of wealthy individuals or organizations dictating the terms
[ Page 8262 ]
of public discourse and, by extension, the election itself.

One portion of the previous bill, the pre-writ spending limits for third parties, was struck down by the B.C. appellate courts. Their concerns were not with the principle of pre-campaign spending limits but, rather, with the heavy-handed way government put them into place.

The court ruled that the government’s definition of what constituted election advertising was far too broad. Instead of just stopping campaign advertising, it would have muffled commentary from any third parties regarding the budget, throne speech and government legislation in a pre-campaign period that included the sitting of the Legislature.

Government rewrote their legislation, submitted it to the Court of Appeal and once again faced a ruling that their language was far too broad. It is in response to this history that I presume we see the Election Amendment Act, 2015, repeal the pre-writ spending not just for third parties but, rather, for all political parties as well.

It seems that since government’s attempts to create rules that cover a period before the writ is issued have so far failed the court tests, they are levelling the playing fields to ensure that political parties are not disadvantaged with limits that others do not share.

While I agree wholeheartedly with the government’s early attempts to control spending in the pre-campaign period, I recognize that it has been difficult to properly enforce these regulations, given the court’s ruling, but I would like to quote from the court opinion of Hon. Justice Ryan.

“I am not persuaded that there are not ways of dealing with election advertising that do not interfere with political speech while Legislature is in session. For example, the fixed election date might be changed to a different time of year, the campaign period extended or the definition narrowed. These are matters for the Legislature to determine.”

Government’s attempt to control election spending was an important step on an issue that is pivotal to democracy. I must wonder, however, if we are not walking away from this effort prematurely. I would urge this House to take the advice of Hon. Justice Ryan. With a bill like this, we have an opportunity to tighten their definitions and resubmit legislation. With this bill, we have an opportunity to once again redefine the election process and allow every voice to be heard more clearly.

There are a number of positive elements in this bill. With that said, the elements of the bill that I support are as follows.

In October B.C.’s Chief Electoral Officer released a report on legislative recommendations. These were primarily commonsense measures that could bring about positive change. Government has put many of these into place in the Election Amendment Act before us today.

[1535]

For instance, they have changed the rules surrounding advanced voting. By giving greater flexibility to Elections B.C., this bill would provide more opportunities for rural voters to cast their ballots early.

The government has also loosened the restrictions on leadership races with only one candidate. Before this, a candidate acclaimed with no opposition and therefore no expenses would still have had to fill out an expense report.

Finally, government has fixed inconsistencies in the vouching process. As it stands now, a person vouching for their friend has to prove their identity, while a person claiming to be a relative does not. By changing the vouching process, government has brought more confidence to our electoral process.

However, these were not the only recommendations made by the Chief Electoral Officer. During his consultation, the Chief Electoral Officer discussed solutions to an incredibly important issue facing British Columbians today and, indeed, Canadians as a whole. That is the issue of low voter turnout.

In the last election only 55 percent of eligible British Columbians voted, so 45 percent had a chance to speak, and they stayed silent. Cynicism, apathy, anger, a feeling that there was no one to vote for unless a “none of the above” box was added to the ballot — whatever their reason for silence, it is clear that action must be taken.

With this in mind, the Chief Electoral Officer advised government to take some action. He asked them to authorize Elections B.C. to give candidates a list of voter sequence numbers at the end of each advanced voting day as well as the election itself. The bill before us has followed the Chief Electoral Officer’s recommendation in this regard and codified an already existing practice.

While everyone in this House can recognize the need to address low voter turnout, it’s important to tread carefully. The information citizens give when voting should be used with the greatest care, and this bill must safeguard this responsibility.

These concerns are echoed by the Privacy Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham. I would like to quote Ms. Denham’s letter to the Minister of Justice.

“I fully support the need to address low voter participation, and I recognize that the purpose of sections 96 and 99 amendments is to increase voter turnout in a manner that is controlled by Elections B.C. and fair to all candidates. It’s important to ensure that personal information disclosed to candidates during advanced and general voting is only used for this purpose….

“I would also recommend that Bill 20 require that voter participation information disclosed pursuant to sections 96 and 97 be destroyed following the election.”

It’s with this in mind that I’ve put two amendments on the order paper. Following the advice of the Privacy Commissioner, these amendments would require the voter information gathered by candidates in the new ways laid out in section 96 and 97 to be destroyed following the election.

I recognize the government’s rationale with respect to these sections. I simply urge them to move forward with the utmost caution when it comes to disclosing any voter information.
[ Page 8263 ]

In fact, my own view is that whether a person votes or doesn’t vote is no one else’s business apart from the voter and Elections B.C. There are many ways of improving voter turnout, not the least of which is offering people something to vote for instead of vote against.

Privacy concerns also render section 6 of this bill very worrisome. This section would require Elections B.C. to offer the list of voters to registered political parties. This list would include their name, address and the new addition, advanced under this bill, of whether or not they actually voted. It did not come from the Chief Electoral Officer’s recommendations, and it has faced serious criticisms from the Privacy Commissioner. To quote Ms. Denham once again:

“The original reason the Legislature authorized Elections B.C. to compile a list of voters was for the purpose of administering elections. I am deeply concerned that the proposed amendments allow for other uses and expand the already broad ability of political parties to collect information about voter participation.

“It would also certainly exceed what British Columbians anticipate when they provide their name to Elections B.C. I do not believe there has been any public consultation on this expanded use of the voters list.”

[1540]

I recognize that much of this information is already collected by scrutineers and, as such, available to political parties. I recognize government’s argument that this simply codifies existing practices and is intended to increase voter turnout. However, I feel that these arguments fail to recognize one simple fact: this information is given out after an election.

Hon. Speaker, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it will be very difficult to get people to vote in an election that has already happened. If we generously prescribe government’s motivation to getting out the vote, then it is done in an incredibly inefficient and ineffective manner, one that requires the concomitant creation of a time machine. If, as is far more likely, this information is being gathered to enhance the databases of political parties, then it’s incredibly effective.

Giving voter turnout information to political parties after an election seems to contradict the government’s claims that this has anything to do with increasing voter turnout. One of the reasons cited in discussions of this provision notes that with decreasing engagement, some political parties are facing a shortage of volunteers. This is putting pressure on political parties to find scrutineers and other election day volunteers to help them get out their vote.

I have significant issues with this line of reasoning. In my view, the use of technology in elections should be used to enhance the relationship that a candidate and a political party has with the voters. It can’t help facilitate an ongoing relationship with far more voters than was previously possible.

However, if we allow it — that’s technology — it can also boil the incredibly important human interactions that are essential in a thriving democracy down to data points, and this we must be concerned about.

To maintain a connection to the electorate requires hard work, especially in a time when voter engagement is on the decline. If we truly want to address voter disengagement, let’s do it in a way that offers new engagement opportunities, not by providing political parties with information about the electorate that boils it down to data points so that they don’t have to worry about working hard to gather it themselves.

Furthermore, this provision is especially discriminatory towards independent candidates. Right now only political parties will be able to take advantage of it. There’s no reason for independent candidates, like the esteemed member for Delta South, to be boxed out of the process even further. A variety of voices gives life to debate in the House. This act, whether intentional or not, provides a huge advantage to political parties at the expense of independent voices.

I’d urge government to retract this section entirely. It’s poorly constructed, it did not come through consultation, and it does not serve the interests of British Columbians.

Failing that, I’d urge them to adopt another amendment that I’ve added to the order paper. It would not fix the act entirely, but it could be an important step in the right direction. This amendment would address one of the Privacy Commissioner’s most important concerns and put stringent conditions on the use of voter participation information. It would allow Elections B.C. to regulate the use of information under the definition of electoral purposes and explicitly prohibit the use of information for commercial purposes or the disclosure of information to any organization or public body.

Now let’s turn to voter turnout. Ostensibly, the aforementioned new disclosure is made in order to increase voter turnout. If this really is the case, government has missed its mark entirely, sacrificing privacy without fixing the problem. Government needs to get serious about dealing with low voter turnout and address it in a way that actually has the evidence to back up its claims. It deserves serious discussion and debate, and it deserves to be the very core of this bill.

With that in mind, there are certainly ideas I would love to have seen in this bill that could take practical steps towards increasing voter turnout. One example is an idea that was actually raised by the official opposition in the last election and has been recommended by the chief elections officer: bring in voter register to 16. By lowering registration age, we would empower Elections B.C. to work with driver’s licence programs as well as schools.

Every single high school student in the province of British Columbia is required to take social studies in grade 11, and a large part of that class is learning about democracy and citizenship. This unit could culminate in registering to vote, with the importance of this duty fresh in the minds of the students taking the course.

[1545]

We should have all British Columbians registered by the time they can vote; 18- to 24-year-olds have the lowest voter registration rates, and voting is habit-forming. A generation that votes when they’re young is far more likely to do so when they’re older. If we can impact change at a young age, it will carry forward in the years to come.

In fact, perhaps we should be reducing the voter age to 16. If 16-year-olds are allowed to drive, perhaps we should initiate a conversation concerning whether they should be allowed to vote as well. After all, the youth of today live the consequences of the decisions we make. It’s important that we engage them early in our democratic institutions.

This would be a positive step forward, but alone it is not enough. We need to start a serious conversation on how to rebuild public engagement and convince British Columbians to let their voices be heard. We should have consultation from a wide variety of sources and forums that draw bold legislation that can impact real change. This should start with the introduction of a ban on union and corporate donations, as is the case federally. Neither unions nor corporations vote. People vote.

In conclusion, there are many things that our electoral system requires, many ways to breathe new life into our democracy. We need spending limits in the weeks leading up to a campaign. Groups with the most money should not be able to drown out every other voice. If we’re going to hear the diverse set of voices that make up a dynamic campaign, we need to keep the drone of money down.

At the same time, we need to carefully balance spending limits with people’s right to criticize or compliment government and its actions. In its previous laws on pre-writ spending, the government’s goals may have been noble, but its delivery was flawed. This prognosis rings unfortunately true for the legislation before us.

Getting out the vote is remarkably important to any true democracy, but it cannot come at the expense of the rights democracy is designed to protect. There is no way I can justify trading our privacy for a weak attempt — an unjustified attempt — at increasing engagement. If government is serious about bringing more people to the polls, they should make a concerted effort to do so. They should engage stakeholders, work with experts and build consensus. If they brought forward a bill which promised to effect real and positive change in this area, then I would support it wholeheartedly.

As it stands, I cannot support this token effort when real action is needed. I cannot support an attack on privacy when entrenched political parties are the only ones who will benefit. For these, I cannot support this bill and will be voting against it at second reading.

G. Heyman: It’s important that we give serious consideration to all of the issues entailed in a bill that amends the Election Act. There are a number of reasons I’ll be opposing this bill. I’ll elaborate them over the course of some time in my remarks.

I’d like to start by noting that on one hand you could see an election amendment act as simply meeting the challenges or the requirements placed before us by the courts or by dealing with certain mechanics of voting or the electoral process. It, in fact, does that. But I think it’s also important to look at an amendment to the Election Act, an amendment that we’re not likely to revisit session after session, as an opportunity to deal with the fundamentals of democracy, as the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head has pointed out.

Much of what we need to consider in this Legislature is the nature of our democracy, how it is changing, how participation is changing and what that means not only for today but for the future, what it means to our ability as elected representatives to do a good job if more and more people, particularly young people, are disengaged from the electoral process.

[1550]

We all pay lip service to the fact that we think this is not a good thing. We all say this is not a good thing. We all bemoan declining participation. We all talk about why it’s important to find new ways to engage young people, to inspire people to vote, to bring them into the process. Or sometimes people just say it’s their choice. They don’t want to vote. They don’t have to vote.

As people who actually pass laws that will impact everybody in this province, I think the challenge for us entails a significantly higher responsibility. It’s a responsibility to think long and hard about why people are disengaging, why some demographic groups are overrepresented in both the voting process and often in elected office, and what we can do to change that. That’s precisely what the Chief Electoral Officer attempted to do.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about why young people are less likely to vote than people over the age of 40. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve talked to young people who, when I’ve attempted to urge them to vote, have said they were very…. Not only simply saying, “Oh, is there an election on?” but often saying: “I’m not voting intentionally. I’ve made a conscious decision not to vote.”

They didn’t necessarily elaborate at length what the factors underlining their decision were. But clearly, in one form or another, it’s cynicism about the process, it’s cynicism about elections, it’s cynicism about the laws that govern them, and to some degree, it’s cynicism about how decisions are made in this Legislature that actually achieve results that are important to them.

If we look at the Election Act without thinking about what steps we could take — even tiny steps, even pilot projects — to address that cynicism, to imbue in young people, even people below the current voting age, a habit of respecting the electoral process, a habit of getting engaged in the electoral process, of thinking of themselves as voters, then I think we’ve failed in a great opportunity that was presented to us by the Chief Electoral Officer’s report.
[ Page 8265 ]

He started his report by outlining priority issues. The first priority issue was facilitating youth participation. The Chief Electoral Officer noted that the lowest voter registration rates are for young voters 18 to 24 years of age. He also pointed out that there’s a positive correlation between voting and being registered as a voter before general voting day. That’s clear. He’s studied it. We all know that to be true.

He says that the most effective means of registering youth may be to approach them before they graduate from high school. Currently voter registration is restricted to those at least 18 years of age, an age when many youth have left high school.

He points out that in other jurisdictions, in fact, steps have been taken to address this issue by allowing provisional registration of otherwise eligible individuals who have not yet attained the voting age. Nova Scotia is an example. Quebec is an example. In the U.K. the electoral commission registered 16- and 17-year-olds as part of the referendum in Scotland in order to facilitate their participation in the ultimate 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

This is not new ground. That’s why, in fact, the Chief Electoral Officer commended it to our attention. It’s a serious absence, it’s a serious lapse in this legislation, in my opinion, that the very first priority recommendation put forward by the Chief Electoral Officer was simply ignored. It’s simply absent.

I can’t think of any reason why we in this Legislature should not be considering ways to change the very damaging and alarming trend of more and more young people getting into the habit of not voting, starting with the first election for which they’re eligible. Why would we not do that? Why would we not reach out to young people in high school?

[1555]

Teachers in high school try to engage students in mock elections. They try to engage them in political issues. Many of us are asked to speak to schools, to talk about the job of being an MLA, the process of introducing, debating and ultimately passing legislation. We try to do that. We’re often invited to attend classes of a very young age.

Why would we not take the next step, the logical step? The step that says to young people: “Very soon you will be eligible to vote, so to ensure….” Because as young people preparing to graduate, they may well be moving. “We are going to facilitate this by preregistering you,” telling young people very clearly by that act that we not only want them to vote, we expect that they want to vote as well. We are going to make it easier for them. We are going to treat them like the fully enfranchised adults they will very soon become.

This is a golden opportunity. It’s a golden opportunity that’s been overlooked. It’s a golden opportunity that we shouldn’t overlook. I’m not going to pretend, in talking to members of this Legislature, that this would be a magic bullet, that this act alone would reverse the trend of more and more young people choosing not to vote or forgetting to vote or believing that their vote doesn’t count or believing that other forms of political activity are more valuable. But it’s a clear step we could take.

It’s one tool we could use. It’s one tool we should use. It’s a tool the Chief Electoral Officer commended to our consideration, and it’s simply not here. I don’t know why it’s not here. I’m not sure why the government chose not to include it. I can’t think of an interest that’s in the public interest to not include it.

I do know in other jurisdictions people talk about voter suppression. I hope that that is not the case here. I believe that in British Columbia we want to see people vote. We want to see higher percentages vote. When many of us were growing up, it was not uncommon to see voter turnouts in the 70s and 80s. When we now see voter turnouts of 54 percent called an increase in voter turnout, we should be alarmed.

The process of electing people to this Legislature shouldn’t simply be an exercise in which each party looks for ways to attain a majority without any regard whatsoever for the participation rate of British Columbians, the support for our endeavours in this Legislature by British Columbians, the faith of British Columbians that we’re acting in their best interests in representing them and that they had a say in putting us here. That’s simply not good enough.

We have a different tradition in British Columbia. We have a different tradition in the British parliamentary system. We need to modernize it. We should be entertaining ways in which to modernize it. And the absence of any attention to this very first priority recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer is simply unacceptable in my view.

Even when he was a leadership candidate for the governing party, the Finance Minister indicated that he would support youth voter registration. Now he says: “We’re not ruling out the idea. We’re simply not bringing it into the piece of legislation because there are a lot of variables. There’s a lot of work. We don’t have time to do the work.”

I don’t know how hard it can be. You introduce a section in a bill that provides for advanced registration of otherwise eligible individuals in the school system, working with the school system, doing it in any way that the Chief Electoral Officer chooses to implement, providing power to the Chief Electoral Officer to design the system — but enabling it.

That’s not hard. It doesn’t take a lot of work. It doesn’t take another couple of years of study. Clearly, the Chief Electoral Officer has given a lot of thought to this and likely would have a lot of suggestions that could make this happen.

In 2013 representatives of the opposition brought forward a private member’s bill that would have provided
[ Page 8266 ]
for youth voter registration. There’s a new version before the House in this session.

[1600]

It is a change whose time has come. Unfortunately, it’s not a change whose time has come in this bill. For that reason alone, even if there were not other reasons, it would not be a bill that I or my colleagues could support, in my view. There is still time for the government to give reconsideration to this, but we’ve heard nothing in that regard.

Let me move to sections 12 and 13 — sections that are, in fact, in the bill, but which in my view really change, in a very bad way, the electoral landscape in British Columbia.

Under the guise of responding to court decisions about spending limits for third parties, in which the government was given no choice, Bill 20 takes the opportunity to take a scythe to the whole concept of spending limits in the pre-election period — the 60 days prior to the writ being dropped.

Under the existing act, parties are limited to spending $1.1 million and candidates to $70,000. Many candidates know that it involves a lot of fundraising to raise the money for both the individual campaigns as well as the party to spend that money, but we do it.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

But there are those, and we see this played out in every single election in the United States, including elections as narrow as the election for the mayor of New York, where there is essentially no limit whatsoever on the ability of candidates to raise money from the wealthiest individuals, with a very narrow set of interests, and to spend that money to get the party of their choice elected.

That’s not good enough. It’s not good enough to say to the citizens of British Columbia that there’ll simply be no limit whatsoever to the amount of money that candidates fortunate enough to be backed by very, very deep-pocketed individuals, to spend whatever it takes to say whatever they want, to set the stage for getting themselves elected. That’s not democracy. That’s an act of commerce.

Democracy is fundamental to making this Legislature work in any fashion, to be representative of the aspirations, the goals and the hopes of the people of British Columbia. This absence of any limits in the pre-election period is just fundamentally a bad idea.

We’ve all read of the huge amounts of money that the multi-billionaire Koch brothers have spent in the United States to support and to aid the campaigns of their favoured candidates.

People have a right to be wealthy, but they don’t have a right to use that wealth, without any restriction whatsoever, to dictate entirely the shape and the laws of the community in which we all have to live, in the province in which we all have to live. This removal of spending limits is simply wrong.

I believe that it’s a removal that is not supported and would not be supported by the majority of British Columbians. We do not believe, in my view, in British Columbia in unrestrained spending to promote particular political parties or candidates. In fact, I think many people are appalled by what they see in the United States, are appalled by the amount of resources that are poured into campaigns for particular candidates that can just steamroll over the limited resources of other people.

[1605]

If people are to believe that anyone can run for a nomination, can be nominated and can have a chance to be elected and represent not only their views but the views of like-minded people in their community, they have to believe that there is a chance that there’ll be, in some form, a level playing field for those views to be heard, in comparison with other candidates who have access to unlimited amounts of money.

I wait for the response of the government to concerns that have been raised about the elimination of spending limits, that will be raised about the elimination of spending limits. I hope I don’t wait in vain. I’m sure many British Columbians believe the same.

Going back to my earlier comments. If we want to address the cynicism of many people about the electoral process, and if we want to re-engage people in the electoral process, we need to take actions that do not increase their belief that the electoral process is somehow one that is entirely dependent on who has the most money and the most resources. That’s not the kind of community that we wish to be living in.

Finally, before I entirely lose my voice, let me turn my remarks briefly to the issue of the release of voter information after the election. It’s true that all parties sought this. It’s also true that the Privacy Commissioner has commented on this, has weighed in on this and has asked that legislators consider her concerns about the relationship between voters’ desire for privacy and the privacy laws of British Columbia and the section.

This section needs a hard look. This section should be considered for amendment, because the Privacy Commissioner has given us something to think about. She’s given us concerns. She has asked us to review this section, and we should.

With those remarks, I’ll take my seat.

M. Elmore: I’m very pleased to rise and speak on Bill 20, the Election Amendment Act. Certainly, we’ve heard from many members, and my colleague from Vancouver-Fairview, the importance of ensuring that we take steps as a democracy in British Columbia to put forward thoughtful initiatives to address the important principles shared on both sides of the House in terms of being proactive, to ensure that we have an active and an engaged citizenry.
[ Page 8267 ]

Steps that we take collectively as a government look to facilitate that participation, to build trust and confidence and, certainly, take steps to ensure that we have greater participation and turnout, particularly, in our electoral cycle.

Very pleased to speak and see Bill 20 come forward. I have to mention that we have some…. I want to recognize and acknowledge that we do have some positive initiatives tabled under Bill 20, looking to improving the accessibility for folks to register their democratic right and cast their vote in an election.

We know that in British Columbia, across Canada, certainly western democracies, we’ve seen the trend of declining voter turnout and participation, which is troubling.

[1610]

We know that we have, certainly in Canada, the highest participation and turnout for our federal elections, followed by less turnout provincially and territorially. The lowest level of turnout is at the municipal level. Certainly, more needs to be done. We need to ensure collectively that we take steps to understand some of the reasons, some of these barriers, why we are seeing a declining turnout in terms of voters showing up at the polls and also around: what are the initiatives that we can take forward to address this situation?

When we talk about Bill 20, the Election Amendment Act, it addresses some of the concerns that we hold and are important and underlie our democracy and the health of our democracy and our society and the active participation of citizens in our process. Certainly, it’s an important initiative, and it’s an opportunity here in terms of looking at amending the Election Act. What are some of the initiatives that we can take forward, steps that we can take to ensure that we are encouraging greater participation and turnout?

I want to address a couple of key concerns. I think it’s positive that we’ve seen an expansion of, and extending, the advance voting days. We’re going to see additional advance voting the weekend before the bulk of the advance voting. Certainly, that has been shown to increase voter turnout: having more opportunities, being flexible to people’s schedules for the opportunity to cast their vote. That’s certainly a positive initiative.

One of the key concerns I have, which is a shortcoming and failing of this act…. I think it’s a real shame, and I also urge the government to consider taking steps to address it. I think that with this bill, it’s a missed opportunity in terms of addressing the challenge and the low voter turnout amongst younger voters. Certainly, within the 18-to-24 demographic, compared to the over-55 demographic, we see nearly a 3-to-1 turnout. As we go through, from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, we see the trend line increase in terms of how once individuals start voting, they have the practice of continuing to vote.

The importance is not just in terms of the turnout for young people to vote. The irony, especially, is that for young people expressing their opinion on matters of the day, policies, initiatives, priorities that governments put forward, they’re the ones who will be the most impacted over their lifetimes. They are the ones who have the vested interest, you can argue, in terms of being able to cast their vote.

Now, when we look at the very low turnout amongst that demographic, 18 to 24 and, indeed, under 30, there are initiatives and steps that we can take to address that. We can look to other jurisdictions, to other countries. The recent example is Scotland, which held a vote and enfranchised 16-year-olds to vote and really invigorated the whole process.

This is a missed opportunity to have the ability — and it’s one of the recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer, no less — to prioritize being able to register young people to get them on the voters list as a measure to increase their turnout at the polls. You could say that it’s a minor or a small change to be made, in terms of being able to include youth preregistration in the bill, and an unfortunate oversight.

[1615]

We’ve heard quotes that it wasn’t time to be considered. But considering the importance and the ability to make a very concrete step and change that has been shown to increase turnout in other jurisdictions — which is, namely, to allow high school students in either grade 10 or 11 at 16 or 17 years old…. To register those students en masse in a very systematic way so that they are all included on the voters list.

This is one of the characteristics that has been brought forward and, I think, is a very clear argument and a very compelling argument to enfranchise and encourage young people to vote. The difference is that now, without this mass preregistration of youth, what we have is that once young people turn 18 and they’re eligible to vote, they themselves have to go and register.

Sometimes in a young person’s life, that either may not be clear or may not be a top priority versus if we had the ability to have young people registered in school, they would automatically be on the voters list and would automatically receive their information that they were eligible to vote. They’d get their voter card so that they can proceed to the voting station with the required ID, and they would be able to cast their vote.

This is a very clear step — we can argue a very basic and straightforward step — that we could take and that could be adopted and included in Bill 20 to address the important issue of encouraging more youth to vote. It’s been recommended by the Chief Electoral Officer since 2011, and it’s been the number one priority issue as recently as last year, 2014, in the list of three issues that Elections B.C. considers most worthy of attention. It’s also an issue that is important to me and to constituents that I speak to — and certainly, I think, to a vibrant
[ Page 8268 ]
democracy and concern that British Columbians have.

We’re always talking about ensuring that young people have opportunities, not only in their schooling but in their careers, and we have to take a comprehensive view as well. Adding this amendment and allowing the preregistration of youth, I think, also adds to the respect and the encouragement and the recognition that youth participation and young people voting is an important foundation of our democracy.

This is an area that has been, sadly, neglected, and I’m hoping that the government will reconsider and make changes accordingly so we don’t lose this opportunity at this time.

I also want to address another area of concern that I have with Bill 20, and this is the removing of spending limits on political parties and candidates. This is a very key concern for I think what Canadians and British Columbians value as an equitable political system, a political system that has a level playing field and isn’t overly dominated by big money and big business.

The removal of expense limits on registered political parties and candidates in the pre-election period is problematic. It’s been characterized that British Columbia is the Wild West when it comes to political donation rules, with some of the least restrictive in Canada. When we look to the south, we can see it’s a very stark contrast in terms of just the incredible amounts of money that are required to run for political office, right up from the municipal to the state to the national level.

[1620]

That’s going in the wrong direction. We need to ensure that we have a political system and a political process that is open and cannot be bought. When we contrast that…. The opposition, the NDP, has committed to banning corporate and union donations and to striking an all-party committee to consider other changes to how money is donated to the political process.

This is an area where it’s disappointing that spending limits on political parties and candidates are being lifted. It’s something that undermines our democracy and our election process.

These are the key areas in the bill that I am quite concerned about, that are taking us in the wrong direction. We need to ensure that youth are proactively encouraged to vote, and we also need to ensure that spending limits are put into place and adhered to.

I look forward to the discussion in committee stage. I am shortly going to take my place and look forward to listening to the comments of my colleagues on this bill.

R. Fleming: I appreciate the opportunity to speak at this stage on Bill 20 this afternoon, an act, of course, that amends the Election Act, which is something that in a functioning democracy should not be done very often. One would expect that, over time, our electoral process would have become broadly perfected in and of itself. But there are, of course, from time to time, reasons why the election has to be updated.

There’s an attempt in this bill to look at technology and other concerns around financing. In the comments that others have said…. Because these opportunities, if I can call them opportunities, are so rare — to look at the Election Act in some detail — the debate has to be careful and consistent and broad-ranging and inclusive. I think it’s instructive that the Privacy Commissioner has at least raised a yellow flag of caution on the privacy issues. I don’t think we’ve fully debated it.

We’ve had some acknowledgment from the Attorney General that there are ways that people’s comfort levels can be improved on how voter data might be used in the future. She has heard from the privacy commission and others about their concerns but — importantly, I think, at this stage of debate — offered no changes to the act. She has basically asked the public to “wait for us, the government, to make regulations.”

On something as non-partisan as the Election Act, where legislators should rely almost exclusively, but not entirely, on the Chief Electoral Officer and other non-partisan sources to inform law-making, that’s not good enough — to say: “Wait for the Attorney General and cabinet to make regulations.”

This government has asked British Columbians to trust it an awful lot of times in recent days. We’ve got a bill before the House on education that gives the minister sweeping, broad powers, that says “trust us,” and nobody does. We have to be very cautious on Bill 20 when there are concerns made known publicly by an independent officer.

It’s also of concern — and I’ll probably spend the balance of my comments on this, this afternoon — that the advice of an independent officer, the CEO, the Chief Electoral Officer of Elections B.C., was completely ignored in what I think is the most important respect — the opportunity, namely, to change provisions that would allow and encourage youth voter participation.

[1625]

Again, we have, not for the first time, a bill before the House, a private member’s bill from the opposition, urging government to fulfil a now long-standing recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer of B.C. — that we follow suit with Nova Scotia and Quebec and, I believe, nine other jurisdictions in the United States to allow the pre-registration of voters who are not yet 18 but will be 18 in time for the next election.

That’s just good sense. It’s something that should be in this bill. It would probably be able to arrive at something much closer to a consensus than Bill 20 is able to do at this point in time, if that important provision was in the act. It’s not, and it’s a huge concern for me, because we have such a disparate gap between voter participation rates in British Columbia. The problem, with a couple of exceptions, forms a trend line that is very disturbing.
[ Page 8269 ]

I think, in light of celebrations we recently saw on the liberation of Holland and Europe and the restoration of democracy on that continent, it’s worth noting that the further away from the Second World War you get in Canada, the worse the voter turnout is for young people.

Now, that’s not to say that young people are in some ways ignorant or unappreciative of the rights and freedoms that others have fought for when this country has called people to arms to defend them. It’s just to say that this is a trend. This is a tendency, and the gap has grown very significantly. For example, 18- to 24-year-olds are less likely to vote. I think 35 percent of that demographic is less likely to show up at the polls on the basis of their age than those aged 55 and older. That’s huge.

This is a problem in a lot of respects. I think the first and most easy to grasp that is of public concern is that just as voting is habit-forming for those who turn 18 and become the age of majority and learn and appreciate and respect the vote and exercise their vote…. Just as that can be habit-forming, so can non-voting. Non-voting can become habit-forming in a bad way. You can see people who don’t vote at 18 not vote again well into their adult lives, possibly even entirely. There were needless barriers that existed, and it just didn’t happen.

That’s why it’s important for governments such as ours in British Columbia, legislatures like this one but right across the democratic world, to look at and examine all barriers that hinder people from exercising their franchise in an election. Where they can be identified — this is a big one that has been identified by the Chief Electoral Officer — they should be eradicated and eliminated and replaced with thoughtful practices that do the opposite. Instead of discouraging voter turnout, encourage voter turnout.

It’s indisputably a public good for people to take hold of and participate fully in the democratic life of their society. I wouldn’t have and haven’t heard anyone argue against that. Yet here we have an obvious recommendation, whose time has long since arrived, whose practice has been achieved in other jurisdictions on the continent of North America. It’s a squandered opportunity by this government.

It’s particularly perplexing to me that this bill didn’t include amendments around the pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds to vote by the time they’re 18, because it was advocated by — guess who — the Minister of Finance when he was running for the leadership of the Liberal Party. It was a good idea then. He claimed it as his own.

Now he’s shepherding this bill before the House, and he didn’t think or bother to include it. I think he even said it was premature now. What a climb-down. What a ridiculous reversal of position. The Finance Minister should be ashamed, quite frankly, that when the first legislative opportunity to implement — hey, I don’t care if he calls it his idea — the idea to pre-register 16- and 17-year olds, he fumbled the ball and didn’t do it.

[1630]

Well, we can fix that. We can fix that in Bill 20 debate. Maybe we’ll propose to do that down the road, because we should do it. I’ve made a couple of points in regards to why we should do it. Importantly — and I’ll look forward to hearing this contradicted, perhaps, by government members — we can do it. We can do it in this sitting of the Legislature. It can be in place by the 2017 election. It can be done.

Then the question really becomes: why? Why won’t the government do it? What exactly are they afraid of? Why would a key member of the cabinet, the Finance Minister of the province of British Columbia, break a commitment — a solemn commitment, a sincere commitment, apparently — that he once made to young people in British Columbia, when he has the opportunity right before him right now?

Maybe they’re afraid of the experience in other jurisdictions. Maybe they’re afraid of this element of democracy itself. We do know that in places around the world, whether it be Quebec or whether it be Nova Scotia or whether it be places in the United States or whether it be, as other members have pointed out, in the Scottish referendum in 2014, that if you make it easier and remove registration barriers to voting, you drive up the voter participation rate. That’s what we should all want to do in the 2017 election.

We’ve had a couple of elections in British Columbia recently — 2009 comes to mind — where we had overall voter participation rates not that far over 50 percent. It is absolutely dangerous in terms of a legitimacy crisis for a democracy when you start getting numbers that low. When almost one in two citizens who have the right to vote don’t exercise it, that’s a big, big problem for all of us. We should be taking every step we can to be more inclusive, to provide more opportunities to vote.

I would hate to think that there’s some kind of generational discrimination going on in this missed or skipped opportunity to do everything we can to encourage youth voter participation rates. Nobody would argue against taking the extra steps that we do for special balloting that happens at election time.

You know, there are seniors homes and even hospices where Elections B.C. is given the resources and the ability to set up special polls to allow people literally at the end of their lives or those in their advanced years to vote. That generation, sometimes referred to as the greatest generation, has made an incredible contribution to making B.C. a productive, peaceful, democratic society, and nobody would ever argue against taking additional steps to allow them to exercise their franchise.

The question remains: if we do it for seniors in British Columbia, as we well should, shouldn’t the same respect and resources be put towards encouraging young people to take hold of and take their rightful place in the democratic life of our province? Of course it should. But here it’s being a missed and squandered opportunity. It’s seriously disappointing.
[ Page 8270 ]

It’s asking a lot of legislators to vote for a bill that ultimately doesn’t include those provisions. It’s disrespectful to the Chief Electoral Officer, who has made this recommendation. And it’s problematic, I think, to B.C. to continue to ignore young people and to not do everything we can to get them to encourage their activity and their participation in our society.

There are also some other missed opportunities in here. I know the government side disagrees with this, but if you poll British Columbians, a huge majority of them do agree with the opposition and our contention that one of the things that erodes the credibility of democracy in B.C. is the idea that big money dominates politics in B.C.

[1635]

This is a long-standing contention. If you look at the disclosures after an election, you can see why. There are a relatively small number of donors making significant and, in some cases, huge donations that are unrestricted in this province. It’s unbelievable. I mean, we have fewer constraints than some rather unregulated democracies, if I can put it that way, when it comes to the money in politics. Now this bill actually seeks to make that problem and that perception worse.

The $70,000 per constituency pre-campaign spending limit is a good provision. It’s a provision that this government hasn’t taken issue with since it first created — and I’ll give them credit for this reform — fixed election dates.

We went into a bold new direction, under Gordon Campbell, around having — I think that some people dismissed it at the time, myself included, a little bit — an Americanized fixed calendar election schedule. But at least the government did it somewhat cautiously. By changing what was the Westminster tradition around five-year terms and government having the privilege to call an election, and moving to the fixed system, government recognized that this would do something. It would calendarize the election and, therefore, change the dynamic, in a way.

Now elections wouldn’t be done on a snap within a five-year period. It would be done according to the fixed date. That would change the fundraising dynamic, in particular. I think government recognized what it didn’t want, and I’ll give Gordon Campbell credit for this. It didn’t want an Americanized system of professional year-round fundraising where the election really started not on the 28-day writ period plus a little bit of advance notice; it started one year or more in advance. So there was perpetual campaigning and very little governing on the government side.

On the opposition side there were similar drawbacks. That’s what we wanted to avoid. That’s why there were election spending limits — so that instead of…. As we moved to a May fixed-date election calendar, we didn’t drag the campaign period back into the previous year. It started in the new year — the later, the better in the new year. It concluded in — I hope I get this right — the second Tuesday in May, when people cast their ballots.

Now there are no limits. What do you think is going to happen? Well, I think it’s going to be what government once feared — the same government that is now saying: “Rip the lid off it. We’re going to have big money have a further opportunity to dominate B.C. politics.” That’s a shame. It shouldn’t be like that. The public doesn’t want that either. The public does not want that.

There is also the issue around third-party spending. Isn’t it interesting that this government has been kicked around in the courts in a number of changes it’s tried to make on this issue. They’ve lost. They’ve failed to make it right. They’ve tried to bring in gag laws. Those have been rejected on two occasions that I can remember.

Now they propose a fix that I’m not sure the courts, based on legal opinions I’ve seen, will uphold either, on the free speech constitutional rights of third parties. What a dichotomy — for government to, over and over again, drop the ball on getting it right in terms of the balance of third parties’ ability to have voice and influence, as they seek, in an election, to advance public discussion on issues they care about.

I don’t think that it’s dismissive to call them special interests because that’s what the polity is about. It’s about a collection of special interests, and it’s about debate. But they treat them differently, and they treat themselves now in a completely unregulated category. No spending limits in the pre-election period. That is a key flaw in this bill, along with the absence of any encouragement for young voters to get out and vote in our democracy.

This bill is something that could have been useful. It could have been in the public interest. It could have been true to the independent officer of this Legislative Assembly and the thoughtful recommendations that he put forth. On those three scores it wasn’t. I think that those are three serious flaws in the legislation that are, from my perspective, reasons why Bill 20 is not supportable.

[1640]

I wish that government had got it right. I wish they had been balanced. I wish they had listened to voices other than their own. It sure makes you wonder, when cabinet signed off on getting rid of any pre-election spending limits in B.C., who it was who told them that was a good idea. I bet it was just a couple of people in the back room of politics of that party who count the money, who have embraced a system where big money threatens to become out of control, where it threatens to become a feature of our democracy in a way that we don’t want.

When we brought in fixed election dates, I think history has shown that the fear that there’d be an Americanization of our politics by taking that feature of their democracy were unfounded. But I fear in Bill 20 that by getting rid of more limitations…. Just as the debate down south is to add limitations to restore integrity to their democracy, we’re going the other way here under the Liberals. They want less fetters on big money in our politics. To me and to British Columbians, if you were
[ Page 8271 ]
to ask them, that is the wrong direction. That’s a serious flaw that makes Bill 20 unsupportable.

Now, as for the arguments around voters list access and data sets that may or may not be available to political parties, I think this is a tricky section. I appreciate members who have given their thoughts on this, who have looked for middle-ground solutions to some of the privacy concerns that have been advanced.

I haven’t heard anything from government to show that there’s thoughtfulness going on in response to the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s concerns or to others — civil libertarians who have looked at wanting more legislative certainty about how the data is used.

I haven’t seen government, either, respond to the suggestion that, at the very least, anybody, any political party, should this become law — should data about who has voted and voter information become their property…. I haven’t heard government respond to the very thoughtful and introductory concerns that if you do break the law, if you misuse the data under the new system, you should be punished for it — severely punished through fines or other sanctions that could be brought about. Right now minimal, minimal.

What are voters to think, then? This information is not only going to be gathered and disseminated and become the property of political parties, but if it’s abused and used to harangue them, used inappropriately in any conceivable way, you get off almost scot-free. There’s really going to be no sanction against a political party or an individual in a political party that abuses that information.

I think we’ve had enough robocall scandals and concerns about parliament brushing this under the rug in the House of Commons in recent years to know that the warning signs are there. These kinds of amendments need to be done correctly.

What I’ve seen at this stage of debate is that any time any individual, even if they are, again, part of this Legislative Assembly, as the Information and Privacy Commissioner is…. When they are raised, they are not addressed. That’s a big concern, and that’s a big ask for those members who are scrutinizing the bill.

We haven’t had a lot of people on the Liberal side speaking to this. But for those of us that are actually scrutinizing the bill, who are trying to understand how things might work better and be reasonable and be effective, when you have those kinds of authoritative voices being completely ignored here at second reading of debate as we’re about to go to committee stage and this potentially being proclaimed as law in just a few short weeks from now, that’s a huge concern.

[1645]

I will conclude just by saying again how disappointing it is that nobody on that side of the House — nobody in cabinet, even including a once advocate of greater youth voter opportunities in society, of reducing barriers around registration — saw fit to ensure that that was part of this bill. The word “disappointment” doesn’t do it justice. It’s outrageous.

We’re not even being asked to take a risk here — we’re being asked to follow suit on a number of other provinces and states — to have something that is forward-looking, something that is progressive and something that attempts to deal with a known problem, which is low voter participation rates for young people.

Bill 20 could have been so much more. It could have been something useful, exciting and innovative if British Columbia had included that. For the Finance Minister as a once champion of this to not ensure that was in the bill, I think the appropriate word is “disgraceful.” He should have done it. He had the opportunity to do it. It could have been in place by the 2017 election.

Again, the next concern is really around big money. For any Liberal who thinks that the concern about democracy being something that can be influenced by those with deep pockets, by those who represent corporate interests — they’re just plain wrong.

Of course, our side of the House has long advocated a serious campaign finance reform. We have that before the House again. We believe that B.C. should be a jurisdiction that heavily restricts or even bans corporate and union donations to political parties. I don’t expect the government to be there yet, because they’ve resisted it so bitterly, but to rip the lid off pre-election campaign spending limits and make a known problem even worse? It’s disgraceful, another reason why Bill 20 can’t be supported.

Then I think where caution has been urged, where a thoughtful response has been urged from the Attorney General and others in the government, by independent officers and by third parties in civil society, the fact that they have been brushed aside and that at this stage there has been no accommodation for those perspectives also makes Bill 20 a flawed piece of legislation.

I will be voting against it, along with my colleagues, and I hope that some of the Liberal members across the way will listen, participate in the debate and think for themselves, as we saw the member from Vancouver do who is a Liberal member of caucus. We need more of that at this stage in debate.

This is the Election Act. This is not about putting party interests first. This is about putting the democratic interests of B.C. — the legitimacy, the foundational interests in our democracy — first. Legislators should have no self-interest in trying to jig the Election Act in their favour. It should be about democracy. It should be about the people of British Columbia, who we’re all responsible to.

S. Simpson: I’m pleased to get an opportunity to take my place to speak to the Election Amendment Act, Bill 20. What Bill 20 does is make a number, a series, of changes to the Election Act, and as colleagues have said before, legislatures and legislators should be pretty cautious about how they change an election act.
[ Page 8272 ]

It’s the rules that help to frame the democratic process. It’s the rules that are put in place that are to be accountable and transparent to show the balance and the fairness in how we choose the people who come to this place and are elected to this place as representatives of everybody in British Columbia.

We should be very cautious about how we make changes, we should be very thoughtful, and we should not presume that we always get it right the first time that we craft those changes. I think that we have a situation here where we didn’t get it right.

This piece of legislation, Bill 20, has a number of housekeeping pieces in it, but it also has some pieces in it that are pretty fundamental, some changes in it that are pretty critical moving forward as to how the political process will work in this province, how elections will work and how they may affect the outcome of those elections.

There are some serious issues and some serious challenges — I’ll speak about those in a moment — and there are some oversights. There are some areas where there were opportunities. Others have spoken about that; I will speak a little bit to that. But there are oversights in what could have been in this legislation that would have helped, and they would have helped with what is clearly one of the biggest challenges we face, which is voter turnout.

When you have voter turnout in provincial elections of just over 50 percent of the vote, we all have to be concerned. I have to believe that everybody in this room, in this chamber, would like to be seeing 70 percent turnouts in our elections, but we have a long way to go.

[1650]

We all know, of course, that much of that — not all of it, but a significant amount of that challenge — comes from young people making the choice to not vote. The question becomes: are we doing enough to encourage young people to think about voting, to think about that responsibility, to think about the role voting plays and how our society functions and how the democratic process functions?

Bill 20 should be important to everybody in the province. Bill 20 will go a long way in helping to determine how votes are cast and who ends up in this place. And as we obviously all have a keen interest in that, the general public should have that interest as well. And I believe that they do. I don’t think it always shows, it’s always reflected. I think people turn politics off for a good part of the year unless something captures their particular personal or immediate attention. But I do believe that come election time, and as we head up to elections, people get more focused. They get more engaged.

We have heard increasingly, over the past couple of years as polls kind of are right and wrong and questionable, we’ve heard more and more that campaigns matter. And I think that’s true. I think we’re finding out, increasingly, that campaigns matter. Because campaigns are the time when the public starts to pay attention. Campaigns are the time where people put a little bit more of their focus on elections, a little bit more of their focus on the candidates, on the parties, on their records, on their promises, on the promises that they’ve broken, the promises that they’ve kept and the promises that they’re making moving forward.

I think that it does become particularly important. I want to talk a little bit about a couple of issues that are in the legislation, and then I want to talk about some things that are not in the legislation that should have been considered.

We know that the government, I guess it was a couple of years ago, attempted to put third-party spending limits in place. They moved to, in fact, be able to seriously restrict what third parties could say and how they could say it in the 60 days leading up to the election period. And as people know, the election period is essentially 28 days, four weeks. That is the writ period, the period where we all play by the election rules within the context of that 28 days.

But there is another recognized period: the 60 days previous to that, the pre-election period, as it’s called, and there have been a set of rules related to that. The government made the decision to try to halt spending in that period of time.

That decision was overturned in the courts. The courts made the decision that the government didn’t have the authority to do that and that they shouldn’t be able to do that. The government accepted that, and we’ve seen a recognition of that heading forward, that those spending limits are lifted and that they won’t be there.

And generally, I understand that period. You don’t want people spending, in the 28 days, recklessly, for sure. But I think that people have a right of freedom of speech and a right to speak, and that 60 days prior, there is a case to be made for that.

The problem with Bill 20 is that the government decided to take this new-found revelation from the courts and take it a step forward — to essentially remove the spending limits that are in place on political parties and candidates.

Currently, as we know, in that 28-day period, I have the ability to spend $70,000 as a candidate to get myself elected. That $70,000? It’s important. It’s got to be recorded. I’ve got to be accountable for it. I’ve got to be able to demonstrate that I did not overspend that amount of money. And $70,000, for lots of people, may seem like a significant amount of money, but it’s an amount of money that candidates certainly can put together over a period of time.

It’s an amount of money I know that I’ve found — I think most people found — gives me the opportunity to deliver the message that I want to deliver to my voters. To allow them to know a little bit about me, to be able to distribute some material, to be able to call them up and to engage with voters in that election period so they get an opportunity to know a little bit about me.

[1655]

And what those rules say is we’re all equal here. Everybody who runs in that election gets to spend up to that $70,000 limit, and it’s a sufficient enough amount of money that we all get the opportunity to say our piece to the electorate in our respective constituencies.

Now, what the rules have said is that in the 60 days prior, that pre-election period, you get to spend $70,000 too. So if you want, you can spend up to $70,000 in that prior two months getting ready for the election.

We know that with fixed election dates, elections aren’t 28 days anymore. Elections last about a year, but they get pretty focused in those last three or four months. So that 60-day pre-election period really is all about the election. There’s a reason, and a good reason, to have rules that focus on that 60-day period.

What the government is saying now is that they’re going to take those rules away. That’s what the B.C. Liberals are saying. They’re going to take those rules away. If somebody in that 60-day period wants to spend the money, and they want to spend $200,000 or $300,000, presumably they could spend $200,000 or $300,000. They have no limits.

That starts to call into question one of the fundamentals of a successful democracy. A successful democracy is about putting limits on the impact of money in an election and saying: “We’re going to make sure that every candidate has the capacity or the ability to raise enough money to be able to go out and to have their campaign be successful, but we’re going to put some limits on just unregulated spending.”

If there’s a failure in the U.S. system that we see, the failure that I think many people would point at in the U.S. system is the dominant role of money in their electoral system. We have been able to control that provincially and federally to some degree. Federally, they’ve done it. They’ve moved to the place that we have argued for and eliminated union and corporate donations and put limits on what individuals can contribute. They’ve put even greater controls in place, controls that make some sense. But here we’ve now got a situation where Bill 20….

We’re being told that money, all of a sudden, is a critical factor again. The ability to spend whatever you can afford to spend in those 60 days…. You can fill your boots. Go ahead and spend every dime you want to spend if you’ve got it. There’s nothing good about that for the democratic process. There’s nothing good about saying that people have unlimited ability to spend in that 60-day period.

There’s been little or no rationale on the part of the government for doing that, for making that decision, for deciding why to remove that regulation. It would be great to see the minister responsible release all of those briefs and documents that he got from a long list of people saying: “You’ve got to eliminate this restriction on $70,000 that you can spend. It’s undermining the democratic process. Heaven forbid. You should be able to spend $1 million if you’ve got $1 million.” I don’t imagine there were too many briefs to that effect, but we’ll never know.

The problem, though, is that it does create a fundamental issue, and that is a good enough reason by itself to defeat this legislation. That’s a good enough reason to defeat this legislation, this unbridled ability to spend in that period of time. I have sympathy for third parties who have to have their voices heard. I think you have to think about how you limit, but there has to be accountability for those parties — certainly transparency about what they spend and how they spend it. But for politicians and for political parties, the leash has to be shorter than that. We have to be in a more restricted place.

The rule, the $70,000 and $70,000 — $70,000 in pre-election and $70,000 in election period — is not a bad rule, but this legislation, Bill 20, will bring that to an end.

One of the other things that is in this legislation or has been done in the legislation is to add a couple of days to the advance polls. I think that as we struggle with the challenge about how to get people to the polls to vote, encouraging advance polls makes sense. Telling people, “You get to vote more than just on election day, and we’re going to accommodate that,” makes a lot of sense. The problem with this legislation is that the government took a pretty narrow approach and said: “We’re going to add a couple of days.”

[1700]

The Chief Electoral Officer, in their report on the piece of legislation and their recommendations, took a different approach. I think it’s an approach that’s more innovative and more flexible. It was an approach that said that district registrars, the people who are responsible for running the elections in constituencies, be given a greater flexibility to sit down and figure out: how do we accommodate more people in this area voting? How do we make changes that continue to be fair and accountable and transparent but encourage ways for people to vote?

I think providing that flexibility to the people who run those elections every election period — to provide that flexibility for the Chief Electoral Officer, working with their staff come election time — would have been a wise thing to do. Government chose not to do that and said: “We’re adding a couple of days.” Is a couple of days better than nothing? I think it probably is, but is it getting at the problem? I’m not so sure of that at all.

The third thing that’s here that has been controversial, certainly, is the turnout lists. Now, this is a situation where the records of everybody who has voted — not how they voted, but the fact that they cast a ballot — would be made available in electronic form to political parties or to successful candidates. Independents — we would argue it be made available to them in cases where they’ve run.

All the political parties supported this. Our party, the opposition, supported it. The government supported it. The Green Party was at the meetings where that happened. The Conservative Party was at those meetings.
[ Page 8274 ]
There was support for this. But as a result of that, we’ve heard from the Privacy Commissioner, and the Privacy Commissioner has raised some real concerns.

One of the reasons you put the Privacy Commissioner in place as an independent officer is so that you have somebody there who has that responsibility and authority to call us to task when we do things in this place that, in this case, she thinks challenge the rightful protections that people should have. She has raised those issues around the turnout.

The questions are partly around whether that list should be available — whether it fundamentally should be available — and I don’t have a problem with that. But I do agree with her. She has convinced me that we need to have restrictions in place that are strong and that have enforcement and consequences behind them about how you can use that information, about what you can and can’t use it for.

I think that we need to heed Ms. Denham and her concerns. I don’t think that we have the luxury of ignoring the Privacy Commissioner when she says: “I think that there are flaws in this particular piece of the legislation.”

I think that all sides of this House have to be prepared to do that, and we will see. I mean, there will be amendments moved to this. Certainly, from this side of the House, I’m sure. We’ll see whether there are amendments that come from the government side, and we will see what evolves here and how this gets resolved.

But it’s clear that the current language is insufficient to be able to satisfy the person that we all put in place to protect the privacy of British Columbians. I don’t think we have the luxury of simply ignoring the concerns that she has raised. We need to address them. We need to address them either in terms of the clause itself and its existence in the bill or address them in terms of the rules that will be in place around how that turnout list information is used and how it can be made available. We’re going to see over the next period of time, presumably, how that sorts itself out.

Those are some of the key pieces of this legislation, but there are pieces that are not in this legislation. You’ve heard from members on this side time and again about one of the most critical issues, which is the issue of voter turnout and the particularly challenging problems we have with getting young voters, or prospective young voters, out to the polls so that they are participating in the electoral process and helping to make the decision about what this chamber looks like in terms of who is elected here.

[1705]

We have a responsibility to try to engage and encourage young people to vote in greater numbers. It doesn’t matter who they vote for, but they need to be more engaged. I believe the failure on this has largely been our failure as electors and our failure as a legislature.

The gap between what we perceive and what young people perceive, I think, continues to grow. These are not young people who are not necessarily encouraged about public affairs. They are interested. You can talk about the environment, you can talk about other rules, you can talk about international affairs, and you can talk about inequality. These are all issues that when I talk to young people, they are entirely engaged in. They have views about these issues, and they plan to have their voices heard, over time, in whatever role they choose to play.

But in most instances, it is an extraparliamentary role. It’s not a role that’s about how we elect people. It’s not about legislatures or city councils or Houses of Commons. It’s about something else, and that’s good. But we also need to engage them more in this process, because this is a pretty fundamental part of how it all works.

The question becomes: what do we do to encourage young people to vote more? A lot of it is about information. But the idea was put forward by this party — by the official opposition — heading into the election, about early registration in high school, registering young people before they reach the age where they can vote, an idea that certainly is reflected in the work of the Chief Electoral Officer, who has called for that early registration.

The reason for that is because you get a few things that happen. If we start registering grade 11s, grade 12s, there’s going to be a discussion in that social studies class or that class in school where that process happens. There’s a piece of the curriculum that’s going to be about why that’s important and about why, when they fill out those forms and submit those registration forms, it’s important. Hopefully, that stays with people.

We do know that where this has occurred, when people are registered, the likelihood that they will cast a vote is much, much greater than if they’re not registered at all, because they’re going to get information. They’re going to get told that they’re registered to vote. They’re going to get told when election day is. They’re going to hear from people because they’re on an electors list, on a voters list.

All of us, as candidates and prospective members of this place, when we’re going knocking on doors and we’re looking at our list of people, it’s going to have the names of those young people on it as people who are going to be prospective voters. We’re going to want to talk to them, or we’re going to look at other opportunities to talk to them. That’s really important.

If we want to grow that voters list back to the 60 percents and the 70 percents, maybe even more, then a key to that is going to be getting young people to the polls and getting young people to vote.

I guess the thing that most mystifies me about Bill 20 is why the government would have chosen to ignore this issue, why the government chose not to take some steps to encourage young people to be active in the electoral system, to ultimately vote when they reach the age
[ Page 8275 ]
of eligibility. But it has been ignored, even though the Chief Electoral Officer made the case pretty eloquently in his report.

We need to think this through, and we need to think about this. That failure, that omission, is a serious flaw in this legislation, and it’s a flaw that should be corrected.

[1710]

There are other things that are left out of this legislation. This would have been the opportunity for us to follow the federal model, to follow a majority of provinces in this country, and put an end to corporate and union donations and put a cap on what individuals could donate in an election.

Now, there’s a lot of discussion about what that does in terms of money and that — all good questions, I’m sure. But the reality would be that we would start to remove some of the cynicism from the political process.

We all know there’s a level of cynicism out there about politics and about the political process, and a lot of that’s driven by money. It’s by people who point and say: “Well, that party is supported by those folks and the other party by those other folks, and they have undue influence.” People, quite rightly, are pretty frustrated and not happy with the notion that in our democratic process there would be undue influence based on money.

Well, the opportunity was there to remove that potential influence, real or not, and certainly to remove the perception of it by taking union and corporate donations out of the mix. We would all have to adjust, and we would. This place, in the long run, would be a better place for it.

We’re seeing the federal situation where that has now been the rule for a while, and you’re going to see a federal election here where it’s my sense that the major parties are all going to have enough money to run their campaigns pretty successfully with no union and corporate donations in play at all. They’re going to all have sufficient money to run their campaigns. It isn’t about that money having to be there.

The same would happen here if we took that money out of this system. It’s something that we should think about very seriously. But it’s not something that is part of the discussion that we’re having at this point here in British Columbia. It was an opportunity to have done that in this piece of legislation. Chose not to do it.

We have missed opportunities. We know that we missed the opportunity to put more controls on donations, on where the money comes from and on the ability to make massive donations. We had the opportunity to give this back to the people of British Columbia and say: “You will decide where the money comes from for politicians.” We had the opportunity to do something that certainly would have helped.

Would it have been a panacea? Absolutely not. I don’t believe that for a minute. But it would have helped with turnout and particularly helped with turnout among young people, and that would have been to take strategic steps around the youth vote. A very simple one that the Chief Electoral Officer endorsed and understood was registration of high school students before they’re heading to their first election and all of the education and awareness that could have come as a part of that.

On the other side the bill obviously has some real challenges. It has the challenge around lifting those spending limits, probably the most challenging part of this bill, in that 60 days leading up and saying: “We’re changing the rules, and now it’s all about the money. Spend as much as you want. It’s all about the money.” That’s a retrograde step. It’s heading in the wrong direction.

We should be looking to remove the influence of money from elections — still allowing political parties to function and to be able to deliver their message but removing the influence of money. That’s what we’re calling for on this side. Instead, the government has said: “We’re going to increase the influence of money in elections, and we’re going to do it by lifting the caps on spending in that 60-day pre-election period.”

We know that we have challenges around the concerns raised by the Information and Privacy Commissioner around section 6 of this bill and around those lifts. That has to be corrected. How that gets corrected, there’s probably still lots of work to do on that. Quite honestly, the obligation of this piece of legislation to be here right now and the obligation to not have it go away and have some of this corrected and come back next spring, it would be a perfectly fine thing to have happen.

[1715]

I don’t believe that’s going to happen. But there’s the opportunity to go away and try to fix that problem in a way that satisfies the Privacy Commissioner that the protections are in place and the safeguards are in place so that she can be comfortable in saying the concerns that she has expressed to date about section 6 are being addressed by an amendment. We’ll have to see how this plays out over the coming days as this bill comes to closure sometime over the next couple of weeks.

I’m pleased to have had the chance to speak on this bill. It’s a bill that is flawed. It’s a bill that does not deserve support at this point in time. It’s a bill that needs an awful lot of rethinking, and that rethinking should happen before this bill is on the floor for a final vote. I’m sure that’s not going to occur and that, in fact, we are going to deal with this bill. It’s going to get rammed through in some form by the government, as most legislation does, and in due course we will deal with that.

When the time comes for that vote, I will be looking to vote no on this bill.

V. Huntington: I wish I could say I was pleased to rise and speak to the Election Amendment Act, a bill that I believe is an affront not only to the voters of this province but to the electoral process and to any citizen who wishes to run independently of an organized political party.
[ Page 8276 ]

Perhaps, though, I could start with the traditional list of what I do support in the bill. Bill 20 largely implements the recommendations made by the Chief Electoral Officer in his October 2014 report. Some of these changes are a step forward in British Columbia’s occasionally shaky march to democracy. To the government’s credit, while they are relatively minor amendments, most of the additional recommendations of the CEO’s report are being implemented.

Notably, however, the government saw fit to accept only one of the CEO’s priority recommendations, which leaves, I suppose, the more difficult elements of the modernization of our electoral process to another day, such as registering young people when they turn 16 — a simple move to help them realize the importance of that one simple act, putting your name on the voters list, that represents the foundation of democracy: the right to vote.

Strengthening the electoral system would have been fairly straightforward had the government truly been interested in doing so. Heaven forbid, it could even have adopted my previous bills on changing the fixed election date to the fall or banning union and corporate donations. Those would have at least allowed the electorate to have an honest budget in front of them by the time the writ drops — a budget that would have told the true state of the financial affairs of the province.

But no. Documents we obtained through freedom of information tell us that the Attorney General and the Premier met in a hallway and talked about the issue. The Premier said it simply wasn’t going to happen, and — poof! — it’s gone.

No matter that I was told in the last session that my bill was likely to go ahead because it made sense and people realized B.C. was the outsider. No matter that it had wide support from various ministries. No matter that it makes sense and would improve the functioning of the House. One offhand comment in a hallway is all it took — a fairly classic example of how democracy seems to work in this province.

Government could also have included a ban on corporate and union donations to political parties and candidates in the act. Once again, B.C. is the outsider and is one of the few provincial jurisdictions that hasn’t done so. Goodness, even Canada has banned corporate and union donations. What else does the government of B.C. need to follow suit?

But it won’t move to reduce corporate influence on the government. It won’t move to divorce itself from owing particular interests to significant donors. It simply has no interest in removing financial influence from the system, nor is it interested in ensuring a level playing field among candidates as a protected and expected part of the electoral process.

Instead, the government obviously feels the law can be amended in a manner that not only brings the chief elections officer close enough to touch the political process itself but amended in a manner that disenfranchises an independent candidate or member of the Legislative Assembly and amended in a manner which opens up the floodgates to a massive and unequal opportunity to spend money with no limit prior to the election.

By failing to sort out the 60-day writ advertising issue, the government perhaps showed its true intention. The more money that could be spent on advertising, the better off the parties think they will be.

[1720]

Perhaps shutting down third-party advertising was never really what they wanted to do, or else they would not have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. They wouldn’t have lifted spending limits altogether, especially for the political parties.

No, government obviously didn’t want to maintain some measure of fiscal responsibility, wasn’t interested in voter opinion — an opinion that already feels too much money is spent on campaigning. It isn’t fairness government is interested in, nor is it an interest in common sense or propriety. It isn’t an interest in democracy or equality — that’s for certain.

What it is, is the tried-and-true belief that big money wins. All that matters to big money is that it can influence government. All that a mainstream registered party wants is to access big money, which means it owes big money, and owing big money means you are under the influence.

That is what the voter detests — money and influence and favour. The voter knows instinctively that government is not free of influence. It is one of the great reasons for declining voter turnout — cynicism. The voter believes that government views the public interest through a veil, with a dollar sign before its eyes and with an uneven approach to public policy. We have campaign and pre-campaign spending limits because we know it is the only way to ensure some level of equality.

I personally feel the court decision regarding third-party financing pre-writ was disappointing and was actually a blow to democracy. But the government adds insult to that injury when it exempts even political parties and candidates from reasonable pre-writ spending limits.

Equally disturbing, perhaps more so because it is a direct attack on the voters’ privacy itself, is the clarion call from both major parties that they receive the voter turnout list following a general election — not the voters list, mind you, but a list of individuals who actually voted. Casting a ballot is the most critical function of citizenship. It is the foundation of democracy. The ballot is still held by the voter to be a sacred thing, a private action, a secret right to participate in deciding who should govern the people.

Most citizens do not understand the massive election machines that can pinpoint a voter’s issues within a block of a neighbourhood. Unless a voter has participated in an election day effort, they do not understand how the parties use their vast databases.
[ Page 8277 ]

Voters might tell someone on the phone who they support. They might answer a door knock and tell the candidate whether they support them or not. They see scrutineers sitting behind the polls, checking names off a list, but very few will know what that scrutineer is actually doing. They have no idea how sophisticated polling is or how all the door-knocking and phone-calling and fundraising is put together, but we do.

We know that it demands dozens and dozens of volunteers to help identify supporters and get them out on election day. Therein lies the reason for this amendment to require the Chief Electoral Officer to distribute a list of people who actually voted after the general election.

I would like to just provide two or three quotes from constituents that I have spoken to or that have just contacted my office to express their concern about this amendment to the voters act. Interestingly, all three of these individuals are experienced campaigners. They know the system. One has run many political campaigns for the government and for me.

The first comment is: “I certainly support your comments re giving political parties the names of those who vote. I do not want political parties to target me because they know I vote. I value my privacy in this matter. How I vote and even if I vote is my business.”

Another is: “This is my two cents. If this is allowed, I think it may even have the opposite effect of what they say they want it for and may actually decrease voter turnout. Personally, I think it’s an invasion of privacy. It’s no business of anyone if I voted or not, and it may even discourage me to vote.”

A third: “This is yet another example of the growing invasion of our privacy by government.”

[1725]

There are a number of reasons that political parties want this information given to them on a platter. First, they will no longer need volunteers to do the classic get-out-the-vote electioneering. Because they don’t have sufficient volunteers, they need larger, more accurate databases. They can rely almost exclusively on technology and get around the problem of fewer and fewer volunteers.

The lack of volunteers is also a visible sign of lower voter participation, and it shouldn’t be ignored by walking around the problem. Find out what the problem is, and don’t take it out on the privacy of the voter.

Getting the voter turnout list following the election isn’t where the value of the list lies, except for fundraising purposes between writs, and if members of this House thought about it, they would understand it. The value of the list is receiving it before the next election so that voter identification can begin. Mesh it with the supporters list, mesh it with localized polling data, and mesh it with phone call data and fundraising data. Put your best minds on analyzing the outcome, and you could pretty well determine who is voting for whom and even why they vote that way.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner was absolutely right: the voter turnout list in the hands of political machines is a direct invasion of voter privacy. And strangely enough, it isn’t the list of voter turnout that’s really the most important invasion of privacy. What people aren’t talking about in this debate is the fact that the political machines will now know who didn’t vote. Now the invasion of privacy and the ability to maintain a secret ballot is really put at risk.

The merging and cross-referencing is just the beginning, and now the phone calls start, the polling machines. “Why didn’t you vote, Mrs. Jones? Who would you have supported if you’d gone to the polls, Mr. Jones? What didn’t you like about us? What issues are of concern to you? What would urge you to get out and vote? How can we tailor our promises to get your vote, Mrs. Jones?” And thus the pinpointing of voter preference is off to a good start. The ballot is well on its way to being a wide-open secret.

That is what the Information and Privacy Commissioner is concerned about. That is what I have called an assault on the secret ballot, our most important democratic right. Members of both the NDP the B.C. Liberal Party have disagreed with me on that point, but that is exactly what it is — an uncomfortable technological insult on voter privacy.

This isn’t a voter participation tool; it is a voter identification tool, and we all know it. What you are actually saying is that this list will allow us to encourage voter participation if they’re going to vote for us.

Then we come to the other issue that is of such a concern to me and which should be of concern to every member of this House, and that is the deliberate nature of the exclusion of non-aligned candidates. Here I turn especially to the members of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, whom I’ve been unable to make understand why the elimination of the words “candidate” and “Member of the Legislative Assembly” are so critical and unacceptable.

The omission of these words is deliberate and should be an embarrassment to everyone in the House, especially the government side. In every other section you find “registered political party,” “member of the…Assembly, “candidates” and “registered constituency association,” but not in this section. The Chief Electoral Officer is not allowed to give the list to any person other than a registered political party.

During my briefing on the act it became very clear this was a deliberate omission, one which, to my great disappointment, even the official opposition continues to support. Too bad the government doesn’t understand what they’ve done with this one.

The opposition did move to include “registered constituency association,” which went partway to resolving the problem, but they will not include “candidate.” Why? Because, I’m told, it’s an effort to control the use and distribution of the list. What effrontery, a poor and, I daresay, ignorant argument, one that makes it quite clear that
[ Page 8278 ]
either both parties don’t understand the rules surrounding independent candidates, or they are deliberately attempting to create completely unfair election playing fields for the non-aligned candidate.

Until they are elected, an independent candidate does not have a constituency association. Thus, the section discriminates against the independent candidate and forces the Chief Electoral Officer to engage in a biased distribution of voter information. What a terrible thing to force upon our most important independent officer. If I were in the CEO’s position, I would challenge this act. It’s an insult to the role of and the impartial mission statement of Elections B.C.

It is bad enough that the voter turnout list be distributed in the first place, but to say that candidates are not equal and that some are entitled to the list and others aren’t is disreputable. In the most fundamental process of democracy, the election itself, some candidates are more equal than other candidates.

[1730]

Some candidates can receive information; some cannot. To say, as some of my colleagues have, that allowing just any candidate to access the voter turnout data would amount to a data free-for-all is simply a ridiculous notion. All candidates currently have access to the voters list under the existing law, and that information is protected under section 267 of the act. If you misuse the voters list or this new data for a nefarious purpose, then you would be liable for up to a $20,000 fine and imprisonment of up to two years.

I may fundamentally disagree with providing any party or candidate with this new information, but if the bill is to pass, then there needs to be a level playing field for all candidates, including independents.

Independent candidates received over 40,000 votes in the last election. They are a legitimate force in our provincial elections. For context, there were 15 political parties that, combined, only have 9,400 votes. I do not want to diminish those parties’ contribution to our democracy. Every candidate and every party enrich the democratic process.

It is important to note that every registered party would have access to a list of who voted and who didn’t, from the Excalibur Party to the Helping Hand Party to the Advocational Party to the Communist Party. They could disseminate that data to their candidates as they saw fit. The only candidates who wouldn’t have access to this data would be independents.

This bill won’t encourage voter participation. It will do the opposite. It will reinforce voter cynicism. It will, as the member from Langara said, make voters more guarded and less likely to vote. That is not what members of this House were elected to achieve.

N. Macdonald: Thank you for the opportunity. As always, I appreciate the comments from the member for Delta South. I think she brings a unique perspective and one that certainly was informative to me. I appreciate that very much.

There are two elements of Bill 20, which changes the Election Act, that I would like to address. They’ll be familiar to those that are following the debate. The one element that I want to talk about is something that’s missing, actually. The second element, of course, is something that has been added or is going to be added to the Election Act.

Democracy in British Columbia needs to be improved. I think that many who watch this Legislature would quickly reach that conclusion. I certainly think that if you ask most participants in the Legislature, they would agree that there is a tremendous amount of improvement that is needed within our political system to strengthen democracy. This bill misses and, in one part, makes democracy substantially worse, in my view.

The changes that are needed to enhance B.C. democracy have been comprehensively laid out by the opposition and by independent members and by the Green member as well. It’s not as if we have not had discussions here in the Legislature by members about what needs to be changed not only in the Election Act but other elements of our democratic process as well.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

The Election Act, of course, is fundamental to allowing people to participate in government. There have been, in our history, struggles that we teach students about — to get the right to vote, to get the right to a fair election. There are struggles that have taken place over history in many countries, struggles that continue to this day. To get the Election Act right is important. To get basic democratic processes right is important.

What the opposition has done, led by the member for Saanich North and the Islands, they have put on record. The B.C. NDP is on record with a long list of private members’ bills that the B.C. Liberals have chosen to ignore. Fundamental to the conversation we’re having is on this bill is the B.C. NDP commitment to ban corporate and union donations. This bill moves things in completely the opposite direction in one element of the bill.

[1735]

There are more things that I think the public is looking for. They want democracy here in B.C. to be enhanced. They would look to a bill that government puts forward, that this Legislature approves, as a document that, hopefully, would address some of the obvious shortcomings that individuals see, but certainly it would not make things worse.

Some of the elements that have been put forward by members on the opposition side are things like improvements to petitions that come here to the Legislature. We all know that there are people that spend an incredible
[ Page 8279 ]
amount of time putting together petitions that they think are going to move government policy, that a minister is going to read the petition, to look at the individuals that have taken the time to petition government and will respond in some way.

Of course, those of us that are here know that that’s not how the process works. We have put in place ideas around how you would make the petition process more meaningful for the people that we represent.

We’ve talked about fixed sittings of the Legislature so that we actually come to this assembly and do the work that needs to be done for the full year, not just portions of the year, not for…. In some cases, I have, as a member, sat for as little as 40 days in the year. I think most British Columbians do not understand why we would not do the full year’s work that most would expect us to do.

We’ve talked about improvements to the committee system here in the Legislature. I think most would be shocked at how ineffective our committee system is. We have people from a whole host of experiences who are there talking to their constituents.

Surely there should be a place within this Legislature to have those experienced come and participate in discussions and in putting together legislation in a way that’s more meaningful than the debates that we often have. By the way, this one has been more meaningful than normal, but still, if you look at the participation from the government side, it is extremely limited.

There was a first today, in that somebody was slightly off script. That never happens. That never happens on the government side. I just wonder what damage is done to government by having somebody actually speak for the representatives. Shouldn’t that be how it works? Isn’t that the expectation from people who vote for us — that we are going to be their spokespeople? While you represent a common idea within a party, primarily you are speaking for the constituents that have elected you.

We have put forward a package on youth voter registration that this bill ignores. It seems the most obvious thing one would do. We have put it forward as a private member’s bill, and still there is no action from government.

We have suggested changes to elections financing. We have suggested changes to enhance government openness. All of these things ignored: changes to rules on lobbyists, changes to the way we select representatives, moving to proportional representation.

There is much that is needed to strengthen our democracy. Instead, we get Bill 20, which, as I say, not only does not really grab onto the opportunity that is there and the thirst British Columbians have for something better than what we give them, but it also steps and makes certain parts of our electoral system more problematic. It actually is not only not an improvement. It is a bill that’s going to make things worse.

As I said, there is an opportunity to do a great deal. As I also said, there are two weaknesses with Bill 20, primarily. The first is what was recommended by, among others, the province’s Chief Electoral Officer. I’ll just read exactly what is said in the report. The report, by the way, was finished October 2014 — plenty of opportunity for the government to listen to the Chief Electoral Officer of British Columbia.

[1740]

This is somebody who heads up Elections B.C., which is a non-partisan office of the Legislature. This is the individual responsible for our electoral system. He said he had three priorities, three things that he recommended government should do. He gave them plenty of opportunity to do it.

I’ll just read from one paragraph on what he says is an important thing to do for elections in British Columbia. The title is “Facilitating youth participation.” This is from our chief elections officer. “The lowest voter registration rates are for young voters 18 to 24 years of age. There is a positive correlation between voting and being registered as a voter before general voting day. The most effective means of registering youth may be to approach them before they graduate from high school.”

That is the most obvious thing in the world to do. It is what we have put forward as an opposition a number of times as a private member’s bill. We have talked about doing this. We have the chief elections officer for the province of British Columbia saying that this is the direction to go, and there was plenty of time for the government to act. It was identified as one of three priority items. Why it has not shown up here in the legislation is baffling, frankly.

Now, rhetorically, we even had the Minister of Finance, when he was running for leadership, say that this was an important thing to do. I can’t imagine that there are not more members on the B.C. Liberal benches who don’t agree with the idea that if we are sincere in saying that the electoral process is important and that we need young people to participate, this seems the most obvious thing to do. Yet it’s nowhere in this bill.

There is no opportunity to go and preregister the next generation of voters. We all know that it is a generation that if they get their habits established properly, will participate in elections throughout their lives. This is our future. This is, as I say, the most obvious thing a government would do if they are serious about true democracy, about making sure that the decisions made in an election are decisions that represent the majority of people who live in the province.

Now, I think it’s true that if you believe in voter suppression, if you believe in keeping decision-making behind closed doors with an elite-only participating, then you don’t do things like the chief elections officer is suggesting. But if you truly believe in democracy, then this is an obvious move that we should have seen in Bill 20.

As I said, the B.C. NDP has twice introduced private member’s bills to enable preregistration of young people.
[ Page 8280 ]
As I also said, young people are the future, and a healthy democracy is always represented by higher voter participation. As I said, whether it’s the chief elections officer or the opposition, all others, they would be troubled by the truth that young voters participate the least in elections of any demographic group. I think there’s agreement that preregistration would help, but of course, it is ignored by the government.

The second priority of the Chief Electoral Officer, by the way, is to look at new voter technologies — which, again, was ignored.

What do we have in the bill, then? Well, maybe we’ll look at the other central weakness, in my view, of Bill 20, which is that you have changes that are inevitably going to bring more big money into elections. You have sections 12 and 13 of the Election Act that are going to be changed. They allow unlimited spending in the pre-election period by politicians and political parties.

We have set election dates. We have a predictable period of time before the election period. People will know that for about four weeks there are rules around how the election process is going to work, rules that constrain political parties in terms of how they use certain information, such as that you’re not allowed to use things from the Legislature, videos from the Legislature.

[1745]

We have a set of rules that are there for the election period, and we also have a set of rules around how much money can be spent. I think we understand that there have to be limitations on spending. Because it is a fixed election date, you also need to be careful about the pre-election period.

We are in a place where there are lots of problems already. This government, the B.C. Liberals, uses government ads in a reckless and, I think, inexcusable way pre-election. I think there was one election they spent $17 million on ads that were not based on fact. They were not based on any information that was of public use. It was simply propaganda for the government. That is something that at some point I hope will be addressed.

There were at last some limits on how much money could be spent by the political parties and by candidates for the two months leading up to the beginning of the proper election period. What this bill does is it removes any limitations on spending by political parties and by candidates. What that means, of course, is that there is again going to be an incredible amount of money spent pre-election.

It’s not as if there isn’t already the opportunity to spend money. In that two months, with the law that exists now, a political party is able to spend $1.1 million to put forward whatever they choose. Each candidate, in that two-month period prior to the election, can spend $70,000. But what this bill does is it removes any restriction at all.

It means that more and more, what counts is the ability for a political party to raise money. And most British Columbians would understand that if you are talking about getting $100 from somebody in Revelstoke, it is a donation that comes with a certain obligation to those people. But the obligation likely is that they expect you to be an honest, hard-working representative. I think most would understand that if individuals are putting in a bit of money, that’s their expectation.

But when you start to look at businesses, and there are examples here in British Columbia of businesses that are putting in $1.7 million to a political party, I think most people logically would assume that the interest is different, that there is an expectation of a quid pro quo.

We only have to look across the border and see American politics, which is driven by vast amounts of money. That vast amount of money has a corrupting effect in politics. It drives decisions.

I don’t know how many times in this House when you look at what is going on, you see decisions that are being made, and you ask yourself: how does that make sense in any way?

If you look at it from the filter of the public good, of course it doesn’t make sense. It wouldn’t make sense at all. But if you look at it from the filter of who donated, all of a sudden, you look at the donation, you look at the legislation or the budget or what has taken place — the policy, the regulations — and then it makes complete sense. Part of the cynicism, part of the reason, I think, that young people don’t participate is that they make that connection pretty quickly.

My experience recently with people who have sent me e-mails on Mount Polley: was the government going to investigate Mount Polley? Were they going to hold them to account? I would say there’s a vast number of people who will look at the donations, and they will say that government is not going to touch them.

We’ll wait, and we’ll see what actually comes of it. The minister says something has already happened. Well, there is serious damage that was done, and we’ll wait to see. Of all the ministers, I would put a tremendous faith in what she is going to do, and I hope that that faith will be rewarded. But that is what the public looks at, and that is what many young people will look at.

[1750]

With Jumbo, people look at the donations, and they look at what’s going on, and that’s the explanation for them. They see cronyism. They don’t see good public policy, and that is what we should be addressing. If we want people to have confidence in what we do in this Legislature, if we want to assure people that cronyism is not rife here, then it is important to get big money out of politics. What does this bill do? This bill is deliberately creating a situation where what will win the day in that pre-election period will be the people who can spend the most.

I have been through three elections. I have been outspent in the election period 4 to 1 every time, but I can
[ Page 8281 ]
tell you that’s not something I planned to do. If I had a choice, I know that there are advantages to having more money to spend. It’s just the way we raise money. We’re just asking individuals. Now, after an election — I’d prefer that. But before an election, I can say that, if I had more money, that would, of course, be to the political advantage. You have in most cases the opportunity to do more if you have more money.

Let’s be honest about what’s going to happen in the pre-election period, because this is what it’s setting up for. What is going to happen? Is this going to be reasoned debate on policy? We are going to see what we saw last election and what we see in American elections. We will see vast amounts of money spent on negative ads. That is what people can expect.

We have now in place laws that would limit what happens in that pre-election period — limit the advantages that come with vast amounts of money. That’s being removed. Where did that idea come from? Is it here in Elections B.C.’s report from the Chief Electoral Officer? No. He didn’t recommend it. This isn’t his recommendation.

It didn’t come from people sending e-mails to MLAs, saying: “Here, can you do this? Can you make our system more dependent upon vast amounts of money?” Nobody wrote their MLAs asking for that opportunity. It comes out of a backroom, where the B.C. Liberals think that this is their opportunity. This is their chance to stack the deck in their favour.

There we go. Those are the two elements that are most conspicuous in terms of what I see when I look at this bill. There is no question that it is something that is broadly detrimental to democracy here in British Columbia. I think most people understand that, if they pay attention to these sorts of bills — a missed opportunity to do so many things that would strengthen our democracy, and clearly, decisions on making election spending more and more dependent upon the ability to raise money.

You know, last election the B.C. Liberals held a huge fundraiser in Alberta at the Petroleum Club that raised all sorts of money there. I think, intuitively, people know that donors of significant amounts of money donate for a reason and with expectations. If we want to reduce cynicism and strengthen democracy, we would be removing money from the political system, not adding more.

It is the position of the B.C. NDP to remove corporate and union donations altogether. I think any thinking person would see that that is the direction that most British Columbians would be most comfortable with. Of course, this bill does the opposite. It means money will play a larger not a lesser part in future elections.

One of the reasons that people come to this House, and the expectation that they would participate in debate, is because if you listen to what other members say, you can learn a lot. I have to say that Vancouver-Langara, a Liberal MLA, spoke very convincingly about section 6’s weaknesses. There were elements that, frankly, I had not heard from people e-mailing my office. I mean, there was a lot there that was grounded in her experience.

[1755]

I learned from Delta South things that I had not considered. It simply wasn’t part of my experience, and it was useful.

I don’t see a downside for political parties of any side to having that sort of a debate. You know, I do not see how that hurts the B.C. Liberals, to have a member stand up and represent their area. It’s not to say that there aren’t informed debates at times in this House. But too often, we don’t have the type of debate where, after it, you feel that you have been educated by other members’ experiences, and I think that that’s a shame.

One other thing before I go, just a fun fact. Section 4 of Bill 20 is in response to a bill first brought in by the B.C. Liberals prior to the 2009 provincial election. It’s being removed. The bill created a 100-day — then I think it changed to a 60-day — pre-election period where third parties couldn’t legally be politically active.

I actually remember this debate. I know I voted against it, and I know that at the time we had at least two members who were lawyers laying out how…. They were pretty sure it was unconstitutional. Then, of course, we picked up on that theme, as we often do. If a learned fellow raises a good point, I think we tend to repeat it. So there we were.

Now, as often happens with B.C. Liberal laws, it was ruled unconstitutional. As often happens as well, the fix that the government put in place and had us debate in…. I think it was 2012 where they changed it to a 40-day pre-election gag period. I think that was ruled unconstitutional as well. That’s quite a record for B.C. Liberals to get that many unconstitutional laws.

In the ten years that I’ve been here…. I can hardly count. Now, there were at least two, HEU and teachers, before my time here that were unconstitutional, and then another teachers bill that was unconstitutional. There were certainly some bills ruled unconstitutional around stopping people at the side of the road and imposing justice on them. There is a whole host of these things.

I would have thought it was a difficult process, frankly, for a government to actually break the Constitution of Canada. But in the last two speeches, I think, I’ve been talking about just that event taking place.

There is a fun fact. Bill 20 is the second of the two bills that I’ve talked to in the past couple of weeks where the government did something that was unconstitutional. That’s a record. I’ve never done that. But here I can look across and see government members that vote for things that don’t even pass the muster of the basic founding document of Canada. That’s a hard thing to do, but hardly admirable.

With that, I’m going to finish my comments. There was opportunity to do something real and to do something better. The opposition and independent and Green
[ Page 8282 ]
members have laid that out over the past number of sessions — what one could do if you wanted to truly improve democracy in this province.

Here we’re dealing with something as basic as elections, and the bill, in my view, on several fronts not only misses opportunities but also clearly makes things worse. For that reason, it’s my intention to join my colleagues and vote against this bill.

I hope that at some point other Liberal MLAs will look to the experience that they must have in their constituency offices when they speak to those that they represent and understand that nobody, other than a very small elite that actually spends $1.7 million on a political party, wants big money in the political process. There’s no question that it makes our political process something that people are cynical about. There’s no question, as well, that it distorts the political process.

With that, I’ll take my seat. Thank you, as always, for the opportunity and for listening.

[1800]

S. Hammell: It does give me pleasure to rise to speak on Bill 20, the Election Amendment Act.

To begin with, I would like to echo the comments of the critic from this side of the House. In this act there are some modest improvements to the electoral system, and those are welcome. While we have modest improvements, we do have significant lost opportunities. Those opportunities will be lost to the province, to the political system and to the people of this province.

You know, democracy is a very, very precious commodity. It was fought for, and we often, I think even today in the House, honour and recognize many of the people who fought for the democratic system that we so rightfully enjoy as a consequence of not only their effort but sometimes the loss of life.

Going forward, we have an obligation to protect the democratic system. I do think we have lost some fabulous opportunities to do so in this legislation. Who husbands democracies but those people who the democracy serves and who, in essence, serve the democracy in return?

We in this House have to be seen as the protectors of our democratic system. We are here to protect it from all those who would be inclined to use it in some way that is of special interest to them. There are many, many people who would like to see the system sort of tuned or twisted or turned to their advantage so that they can use that system to further their gains. We’ve seen that in the past, and we have fought wars to protect our system from it.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Governments like the government opposite of us and ourselves as the official opposition have a role to make sure that the democratic system is protected and that we, as instruments in that protection, have a clear and honest debate about changes that are being made.

We in this House need to have confidence that the democratic system that we are playing in on behalf of the people of this province is even-handed, fair and transparent. That, in essence, is why the whole electoral system, the mechanics of electing us in this House, is separated from us by an independent officer of the Legislature.

The machinery of electing the people who will govern the province and make the laws on behalf of the community and spend their tax dollars on behalf of the community, the mechanics of who is elected, needs to be distinct and separate from the interests of any political party inside this House.

We distance ourselves as political parties and individuals because we do have a vested interest. We are in a conflict if we try to influence, in a way that is to our advantage, the electoral system and the system of how we elect governments. We have to look at this legislation, I believe, through that lens. Who does this legislation benefit, and why does it benefit that particular group of people?

[1805]

This legislation is brought in by a government, and I would suggest that government’s own best interest is to protect itself from losing power. When you look at some of the aspects of this legislation, you just have to step back and wonder what purpose it is and whose hand is benefiting.

If any movement in terms of how you elect people ends up being uneven or heavy-handed, then I think it’s for the opposition and for the people of the province to step back and to look at the consequences.

The independent officer of the Legislature, the independent person whose responsibility is to run fair and even-handed elections was in fact hired by a joint committee of both sides of the House, and the agreement on that person had to be unanimous. That is how much stock we put into separating the political mechanism or the mechanics of electing people to this House and the decisions that are made.

We hired an independent officer of the Legislature. He presented to the government three suggestions in terms of how to improve the electoral system in British Columbia. Right off the top the government chose to ignore two out of the three recommendations by the Chief Electoral Officer.

You have to wonder what the motivation is when you have an independent officer who has been assigned by the authority of this House to create an electoral system that’s fair and even-handed, one that is transparent and one that has some notion that the system should be responsible for, in fact, how credible it is to the elector….

Some of this I will quote from the critic. In 1983, 71 percent of the registered voters turned out to the polls. If that happened in 2015, we’d be absolutely delighted. In fact, I do think that even if we got up to 60 percent, we would be delighted, because over the years the electoral
[ Page 8283 ]
turnout, the turnout for elections, has been slowly and steadily dropping.

In some cases, I do think we’ve almost dipped below the American average. Certainly, at least some of the indication is that where we used to be able to brag and say to our fellow friends across the line that we had an electorate that was engaged and participating in our electoral system, and where up in the federal government, when the election was called for the federal government, you had extremely high turnouts, we now barely break 50 percent.

It’s actually shocking to think that you can be elected by 42 percent of the population, which really is 42 percent of those in the population who are eligible to vote who went out to vote, which actually really equates to 21 percent of the eligible electorate. So 21 percent are voting in a government that has immense control over their lives and their families’ lives.

I believe in 2013 there was a slight upward tilt of that — maybe 1 or 2 percent moved up. We’ll see if we don’t plunge down again, maybe even below the 50 percent mark, because truly and clearly there is a disconnect between what we do here and what the electorate thinks is going on.

[1810]

In some ways, you can see it right around us. Here we have a piece of legislation that does really impact on the electoral process. We have limited debate, and we’re just, in many ways, going through the process.

No wonder we have an alienation of the electorate. When half the potential members of the electorate choose not to go out and vote, we have a problem. To deny that that’s a problem is really denying the effort and the commitment to a democracy that not only our fathers and our forefathers had, but we should have also.

I have been to many, many doors in my constituency. I have talked to people about how their vote matters. I have tried to convince people that we do make a difference when we come here. We do listen to their concerns. We do know that we live in a complicated world, but what they think matters. How they behave and how they turn out to vote does, in the end, make a difference.

Lots and lots — I have to suggest, almost half — of our electorate don’t believe that. There is a loss of faith. They believe that all political parties will do anything and say anything, anything to retain their power. In some ways, you can’t blame them. I just sit back and look at the last election and the pixie dust and unicorns that were spread around the province, of which hardly any have come to fruition. The $1 trillion in money, the 18 LNG plants, and on and on it went.

There was no end to what the members of the government would promise just as long as they were voted for. “Just vote for us. We’ll promise you anything. Then, when we get into government, we’ll see what we can do about it.” All that results in is cynicism and a lack of trust on behalf of the electorate to their politicians. That, in the long run, does nobody a service.

What was suggested was that we have to increase the voting, to engage our community again in the electoral system. It was suggested that we preregister 16- and 17-year-olds. My goodness. What a radical, radical idea. You would have thought that that would have had people’s hair stand on edge. What a shocking thing to do, to just preregister 16- and 17-year-olds so that when they became voting age, they were there. They were ready to be engaged.

According to the research, that has increased the number of young people who have participated and got engaged. In fact, there are a number of examples, even from our own country, where this is being done. In fact, in Nova Scotia — I know this has been said in the House before, but I do think it bears repeating — the legislation permits the chief electoral officer to collect registration information of 16- and 17-year-olds who may be eligible to vote.

We have Nova Scotia, and we have Quebec now. Quebec also has a provisional register of potential voters who, unless they explicitly decline, are automatically added to the voters list when they are 18. They’re included. They’re valued. They’re on the list. They are spoken to. They are voters. Their concerns are taken into account. They become part of the process.

[1815]

It’s a coming of age. They are now able to determine and to assist in the decision-making around who makes the laws on their behalf and who spends the tax dollars on their behalf.

I know there are many people in shock over the results of the Alberta election. In fact, I put myself in that category every once in a while. I shake my head and think: “Wow, there has been a rather sudden turnabout in what’s been going on in Alberta.” The classic Albertan, the concept of what is an Albertan, has been completely modified by the breaking out and the wider representation of political thought in that great province.

We’ve got two rather progressive and outstanding mayors in both Edmonton and Calgary, and now we have an amazing progressive government in Alberta. But before that election, although it did not come into force during the election, the Legislature passed laws enabling the Chief Electoral Officer to request directly from school boards the registration information of 16- and 17-year-olds for the purpose of provisionally registering them to vote.

My goodness. We have Nova Scotia, we have Quebec, and we have that formerly right-wing province of Alberta, which has now shown quite a new progressive face. But clearly, many things were happening in Alberta before that election, because this is a very progressive step that says: “We are going to register 16- and 17-year-olds before they’re eligible to vote.”
[ Page 8284 ]

Just again…. I’m quoting much from the critic who spoke previous to me, but I think it all bears repeating. Nine American states have registration for 16- and 17-year-olds. With the Electoral Commission in Scotland, 16- and 17 year-olds were registered so that, in case they turned 18, they were eligible and ready to vote.

There is also evidence that when you do include these young people in the process and you get them engaged prior to becoming eligible, there is more engagement and more participation.

It is beyond me why this government would not embrace the whole notion that we can include young people in this process and have them more engaged. It is beyond me why the government would not embrace this strategy. Instead, the recommendation by the Chief Electoral Officer, the independent officer of this Legislature who’s been assigned this duty of managing and working with the electoral system — his request — was ignored. There was deafening silence — not a word.

You try not to be cynical. You try to think: “Why wouldn’t the government do that?” I have to assume that the government felt it was not in their best interest. In many ways when you’re working in politics, you’re playing on the margins, and every little bit of advantage you can push towards yourself, you take.

I would have to assume that the government saw that this was not in their best interest. In fact, their best interest is to press down the voter participation, particularly the voter participation of young people.

[1820]

I think, in fact, that in another part of this act you see the opposite of that need to engage. You now have a different form of cynicism where, in fact, what you do is enable the political parties and the candidates to spend more money, money that was restricted in the earlier legislation.

Under the cloak of this legislation, under the section where the restrictions around third-party spending have been lifted because of court challenges and the need for third parties — not only corporations and people with big money but public non-profits — to engage in the political system, under the guise of opening the participation through not restraining the money that they could contribute during the pre-election period, we have — tucked right under — that candidates and political parties can now also spend freely in the pre-election period.

Prior to this legislation, the parties and the candidates were restricted in the pre-election period. In the election period you were allowed to spend a certain amount of money. In my constituency I think it was around $70,000. But you were also restricted to $70,000 in a pre-election period. That’s all gone now. Bring in the money. Bring in the barrel. Bring in the pork-barrel. Bring it all in. Don’t restrict anything. Just have the parties and the candidates whoop it up, and may the best person who can raise the most money win.

We know — and it has been proven in all kinds of elections — that money talks. Money can deliver messages. In fact, that’s what’s needed to deliver a message. You have to create the brochures. You have to create the activity that gets the message out through advertising or other methods of engagement. Money talks. It’s been seen over and over again in the United States, where they raise and spend money that we can’t even dream of.

Now what we have in this province is a pre-election period that sees no restrictions at all. Right up to the writ, there is absolutely no restriction on how much a political party can raise or, more importantly, how much it can spend.

If you are in an election area and, previously, you were very careful — you worked very hard and raised a certain amount of money that you knew you could spend over a general period of time in the pre-election and in the election — you were able to contain the amount of spending to those rules. Now anything works. Anything goes.

Seeing the sign that time is moving on, what I’d like to do at this point is adjourn the debate.

S. Hammell moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

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

Hon. M. Polak moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:24 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

(continued)

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

The committee met at 2:36 p.m.

On Vote 32: ministry operations, $1,039,955,000 (continued).
[ Page 8285 ]

B. Ralston: My question is about the charge approval standard. I’m going to begin by reading first from the Crown counsel policy manual, which sets out the policy on charge approval.

It says as follows:

“Under the Crown Council Act, Crown counsel have the responsibility of making a charge assessment decision which determines whether or not a prosecution will proceed. In discharging that charge assessment responsibility, Crown counsel must fairly, independently and objectively examine the available evidence in order to determine (1) whether there is a substantial likelihood of conviction and, if so, (2) whether a prosecution is required in the public interest.”

The manual goes on to say: “A substantial likelihood of conviction exists where Crown counsel is satisfied there is a strong, solid case of substance to present to the court.”

Now, in a series of articles about a year ago Kim Bolan and Mike Hager of the Vancouver Sun examined a number of unsolved murder cases in the Lower Mainland. In particular, the mayors of both Surrey and Vancouver were asked to respond. At that time there were 76 unsolved cases in Surrey and 86 in Vancouver. The discussion arose in one of the articles written by these two leading senior journalists about the charge approval standard. In that article Kim Bolan and Mike Hager set out a quote from Stephen Owen, who was the B.C. Ombudsman.

In 1990 he had recommended “that the government lower the bar to the ‘standard standard’ applied elsewhere.” He went on to explain that there’s a considerable difference between a charge based on a reasonable likelihood and a “comparatively stringent” substantial likelihood of conviction. “Owen estimated a Crown prosecutor would have to be 90 percent sure they would get a conviction under the current B.C. law, compared with the roughly 75 percent needed in jurisdictions with the reasonable standard.”

In that article, as well, she pointed out that the standard…. The tougher rules — that is, the higher standard — “were implemented in 1983 by a cost-cutting Social Credit government, and at that time were rumoured to be a way of reducing the number of prosecutions.”

Certainly, some police authorities and some Crown and certainly the member for Nanaimo and others have raised this issue as being an important consideration in deciding whether to proceed or not, with murder cases in particular. It would seem that this standard being, as Stephen Owen described it, very stringent may well forbid or forestall prosecutions going forward where there might very well be convictions at some point in the process.

I know that the minister responded in writing to the questions of the journalists writing the story. But I’d be interested in her offering her explanation as to why….

[1440]

I understand what the policy is and that the minister is not in favour of changing that policy at this time. Given that position, I’m wondering if the minister could explain why she’s not prepared to consider changing the standard, at least as it applies to murder cases.

Hon. S. Anton: In 2012, I’ll remind the member, Gary McCuaig, QC, reviewed the standard applied by Crown counsel here in British Columbia. He recommended that we not change it. He spoke to police, he spoke to prosecutors, and he conducted a fairly thorough review.

It has long been the position that the current model in British Columbia leads to viable cases going before the court. So we do not intend to change the model. There is a provision for exceptional circumstances in high-risk cases, where it’s appropriate in light of the public interest, that the test may be slightly different: a reasonable likelihood of conviction — I’m just going to double-check on that exact language — but applied in high-risk cases, as I said, and in light of public interest.

Interjection.

Hon. S. Anton: The exact language is “reasonable prospect of conviction.”

B. Ralston: That’s in the Crown counsel policy manual, which I have before me — the first page.

The minister has said she’s not prepared to consider changing the policy, but I don’t detect any reasoning behind that, other than asserting that there was a report done and a recommendation that it not change.

I notice that the former mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts, said…. She has, I think, fairly strongly come out and spoken against crime. That’s a concern in Surrey, as she’s now a Conservative candidate, I suppose, against crime — unless it occurs in the Senate.

What she said was: “When something occurs and there’s no charges laid by the Crown, then that really prohibits witnesses from coming forward as opposed to when charges are laid. Then they’re more apt to be coming forward because there’s less of a threat for them.” So that’s a quote from the former mayor of Surrey, now a Conservative candidate.

[1445]

Can the minister explain whether she agrees with that or not?

Hon. S. Anton: I don’t have any evidence to support the proposition one way or the other that witnesses would be more likely to come forward if they thought a prosecution was indeed going to ensue. I will say, though, in addition, regarding our standard, it has been in place a number of years. It has been reviewed more than once. It’s a workable and appropriate model. As I said, we are intending to stay with it.

B. Ralston: Clearly, Stephen Owen thought otherwise. I think Professor Neil Boyd as well, director of Simon Fraser’s criminology school, was in favour of changing
[ Page 8286 ]
the standard in the case of murder cases.

Has the Attorney General consulted with other Attorneys General across the country where a different standard is in effect and found out what impact that may or may not have upon prosecutions here in British Columbia?

Hon. S. Anton: The McCuaig report did consider comparisons with other jurisdictions in Canada and concluded that the B.C. model remains the right model for British Columbia.

H. Bains: I have a few questions about crime in Surrey. As the Attorney is well aware, in the last ten years, if you look at it year by year, the climb continues to be there.

Mayor Dianne Watts ran on the platform of crime being the major issue and that she would deal with it. They put together a crime reduction strategy. Part of that was dealing with the chronic offenders. Last year in early January and February, myself, my colleagues from Surrey-Whalley and from Surrey–Green Timbers held a number of forums and consultation processes, inviting the community, the stakeholders, the experts. Everyone agreed there has to be a comprehensive approach to dealing with crime.

[1450]

A five-point formula was put together that we called the Surrey accord. One of them was to have enough police force, a different model of policing, more — have a foot and bike patrol. Then we talked about dealing with the chronic offenders, repeat offenders, to have a specialized community type of court. The benefit of that was that the process is more timely. It has an integrated approach to assessing and managing offenders, and it’s connected to the community. Vancouver has seen some successes in that since the inception of that court there.

A number of other people involved in crime reduction have agreed, including, I guess we could now call him ex–Delta police chief Jim Cessford. Mayor Dianne Watts also in 2008 said this: “It is ridiculous to wait for one city to develop their project before other cities are brought on stream. We’re ready to go. I had every indication from the Premier we would be moving forward on this.” This was January 11, 2008.

This was a time when the previous Attorney General in this House promised me and promised the people of Surrey that as soon as they have established a court in Vancouver, Surrey will get one as well. But since that time, every mayor, the community and everyone have been asking: “What is happening with the community court?”

That is one of the formulas that many community activists and the stakeholders think…. Along with more police on the street, community court, regulating the so-called recovery homes and having a comprehensive mental health plan…. All of those are components to deal with crime. But whatever is happening out there is not working.

On top of that, we’re getting conflicting or contradicting statements from people in authority. They say, “The plan is working,” and then they say: “Well, the community isn’t cooperating.” Then they say, “We have enough resources for police,” and then they said: “We will give you 100 additional police officers.”

The community, in the meantime, is held hostage. They don’t feel safe in their own homes — shootings every day and break-ins, sexual assaults. If you look at the RCMP website, they put quarter after quarter statistics. Every Criminal Code area of crime is going up when you compare to the previous quarter of the same period of the year. Whatever they say the plan is, it isn’t working.

Promises were made that the community court type of specialized court is needed to deal with the chronic offenders as one of the components of reducing crime in Surrey. So my question to the Attorney is: where are we at? Is Surrey going to get a community court?

Hon. S. Anton: We have been working closely with the city of Surrey for some time now, starting with a meeting well over a year ago with the mayor and myself and others, including some of my senior staff. We struck the Surrey criminal justice task force to find homegrown solutions to persistent crime problems in Surrey.

One of the questions the task force was raising was whether or not a community court would be one of the solutions. They delivered a final report recommending the development of an integrated services network of social, health and justice service providers in a single location to provide a coordinated, collaborative approach aimed at reducing crime in Surrey.

[1455]

The member will know that that was announced not long ago, at the same time the addition to the Surrey courthouse was announced. The conclusion in the final report was that the community court would not address the particular problems in Surrey, and they recommended enhancements to the service integration — in other words, a new model which would give the kinds of services that are needed by people who are in the criminal justice system.

H. Bains: Again, it is very frustrating to parents and to the general public in Surrey — that task force, more study and more consultations. We need to take a look at what is going on today. Nothing is working. On a daily basis you see out there…. There’s a shooting. There’s a break-in. There’s a sex assault. There’s a purse snatching. There’s a….

I mean, you take a look at any area. The people need to protect themselves, whether it’s a break-in to their house, a break-in to their car, women walking on the street getting assaulted. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but that’s the reality. I don’t have to say these things. People feel it every day in Surrey.

The task force was put together after the high-profile murder of the hockey mom. Here we are, sitting here
[ Page 8287 ]
again, about a year and a half later — almost 30 shootings in the last 30 days on the streets of Surrey, and no end in sight.

Police are saying they’ve got enough resources. So here we go. They cannot answer calls when calls are made to them. They prioritize their calls, and I get that. But many of the calls that they should be answering aren’t getting answered because they don’t have resources. Everyone is busy doing public relations work, and they’re doing probably a pretty good job as far as they think. But talk to people who are living in those communities. It’s not working. They feel actually insulted by some of the media reports that are coming out from these authorities.

Then they go on to say that they feel there are double standards there as well. When something happens in the South Asian community, somehow the parents are to be blamed. These are adult men making their own decisions. Most of them don’t even live in homes. But somehow the parents are not cooperating. The community isn’t cooperating. When the Bacon brothers or an Angels issue is dealt with, it’s an individual issue.

My question to the Attorney is this. This is where the leadership should come from. They are looking up to you. I know you are genuinely trying to deal with this. You feel for that community. But they don’t see any results, any leadership coming to deal with this issue. So I’m asking you again, on behalf of that community: what are you doing? What plans do you have to play a leadership role so that we can deal with this very, very basic issue of public safety? If they don’t feel safe in their own homes, walking their streets, taking a stroll at a park or using public institutions and public facilities, nothing else matters to them. So I think it’s that important.

My question is, again, on behalf of them. They are looking for help. Please tell us. Tell them. They’re listening. They’re watching. What plans do you have to talk to the city and talk to the federal government to make sure that we have a comprehensive plan to deal with the crime in Surrey?

The explanation you get from police is: “Well, there are different groups fighting for turf.” That is public turf. Who is protecting the public’s turf? That’s the question coming from the public. It’s not their turf. It’s our turf. It’s the Attorney General’s responsibility to make sure that that turf is protected for the public’s use.

[1500]

That’s the question. Can you tell them…? What plans do you have to reassure them, so that they, once again, start to feel safe in their own homes, in their own neighbourhoods, in their own communities?

Hon. S. Anton: I absolutely acknowledge the difficult issue that Surrey has been facing with the shootings and with the tragic death. No matter what the circumstances, a death of a young man is absolutely a tragedy. People in Surrey deserve to feel safe there. The shootings that they’ve had are extraordinary in the amount of them and in the uncertainty they create in the local community.

There’s no question that government, along with the mayor of Surrey, along with the police department, are uniting in finding what is a solution that will work with this issue. I’ve spoken with the mayor; have, of course, spoken with the deputy commissioner of the RCMP; spoken with my own police services.

I’ll just let you know some of the things that we are doing. The provincial anti-gang agency, CFSEU, is fully engaged. It works in coordination with the Surrey RCMP, Delta police and IHIT, the integrated homicide investigation team. Surrey has requested 130 officers over the last year or so, and those have been signed off by myself for the federal government. The federal minister, I know, has made a commitment on his part to get officers from Depot into Surrey as quickly as he can. There are demands from across the country, but he’s committed to making sure that they come to Surrey as a priority.

The community is engaged. There were 700 people at the meeting not too long ago. Obviously, those are community members who want to see a solution as well.

The member said…. Blaming parents — that is absolutely not the case. I do have to reject that. The question, of course, has been…. There are resources being put to it. There is determination. There’s determined leadership. But one of the things that would help the police, of course, is if people would come forward, whether they be friends or family or anyone who sees things that are going on. That can help the police. They are thwarted by lack of information.

The CFSEU is working very hard. We give $70 million a year to the RCMP in British Columbia for the CFSEU, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. It supports front-line efforts to keep young people out of gangs and remove gangsters, their associates and weapons from our streets. It’s a very big focus for us. It is the largest integrated joint-forces police unit in Canada. It draws and develops highly specialized officers from federal, provincial and municipal agencies around the province.

[1505]

There’s a great deal of work going on. I can understand where the member’s question is coming from, in terms of the distress the city of Surrey is feeling. I assure the member, the Chair, the House that government is doing…. It’s very focused on the problems that Surrey is facing and determined to end this plague of shootings and gunfire that has been tormenting the city of Surrey.

H. Bains: I just want to remind the Attorney. I mean, the Attorney knows. None of this is working. I just want to remind the Attorney again. None of this is working. Up until two days ago…. There was a shooting.

When you look at the crime statistics put out by the RCMP, the first quarter of this year compared to the previous quarter of last year and the one before that, in every
[ Page 8288 ]
quarter, the Criminal Code offences are going up. And we are No. 32 when it comes to the police force, when you compare it to the population on a per-capita ratio — 32 in B.C. The Attorney put some numbers out. That’s why I feel it’s important.

All the major communities in B.C. — 31 of them have a better ratio than Surrey. Compare it to Vancouver. They have something like 210 police officers per 100,000 population. Surrey has 137 for the same population. Vancouver police officers, on average, have about 35 to 36 cases per officer to deal with at any time. Surrey has 79 cases per officer. Obviously, there’s a need for more resources.

I give full credit to the police. They are doing everything that they can with the very, very limited resources that they have. They are doing everything. But they can do only so much with those resources. They are only reacting to what is going on. They don’t have enough resources to put a real objective and proactive strategy to deal with these gangs. They don’t.

My question to the Attorney is, once again…. They would like to see a real plan that would work, because what she has mentioned isn’t working. I don’t have to give you any evidence of that. It’s there. It’s there every day. People see it. The Attorney sees it. Everyone sees it, and the people of Surrey experience it in their neighbourhoods.

My question is: do you have any different plan that you are offering? Or do you continue to go on with what already is there and say that that is the plan and hopefully that will work?

[1510]

Hon. S. Anton: With regard to the number of police officers, that is up to a city to conclude how many officers they need. Surrey has recently asked for another 130 officers. They have obviously concluded that they don’t have enough.

As I said, there is a commitment by the federal minister to make sure that those 130 start moving into Surrey as quickly as possible. Although the whole 130 — that will take time. There’s no question that it will take time. Cities do need to plan to get the officers that they need.

There are other things that government is doing, of course. Just to reiterate about the CFSEU, they’re an anti-gang unit. They have strategies that they use in British Columbia and, in particular, in Surrey to deal with people who they identify as gang members. I should add that CFSEU is a provincial unit, so it is added on, layered on, to the officers that Surrey itself has. They are, indeed, additional resources.

At the same time, we are working on the prevention side, because it’s very important that we encourage youth not to go into gang life. The CFSEU itself has its End Gang Life campaign, and by the way, there are some new posters and new videos. I don’t know if the member has had the opportunity to have a look at them, but they’re very graphic and compelling. They certainly offer, through the End Gang Life, a way for family members, for loved ones and for gangsters themselves to find a way out of gang life.

We have provided $3.2 million in civil forfeiture grants to help prevent youth involvement in gangs in communities throughout British Columbia and nearly $1.1 million in civil forfeiture grants to local anti-violence and crime prevention programs in Surrey, including over $318,000 this year alone.

The Premier has recently committed a total of $270,000 to support the Wrap program, which serves 60 youth and will now serve an additional 15 or 20. This is a program which has shown to help youth at risk of gang involvement stay out of gangs.

There’s no one answer to this. It needs to be approached from a number of different directions. We are acutely aware of that in government, as is Surrey, as are the police. We are all doing a number of different things, as I said, in terms of prevention and in terms of enforcement to end this problem that Surrey is facing.

M. Karagianis: I’d just like to resume the discussion and questions that I was asking last Thursday with regard to violence-free B.C. and violence against women in British Columbia. Maybe just to refresh both my and the minister’s memory on this, we were discussing a freedom-of-information report that the opposition received in February of 2015 that referred to some information from June of 2014.

At the time, I had asked the minister about the RCMP deputy commissioner Craig Callen’s comments warning the government last year that cuts to the E-PANA budget would mean there would be no further investigations related to the Highway of Tears cases in the foreseeable future. Subsequently, in September of 2014, Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett, who criticized the E-PANA cuts as well, said: “We simply must do better, especially where the commitment to policing is reflected in an 84 percent cut to the budget for the Highway of Tears task force.”

The minister went on to assure me that the RCMP believes, and continues to believe, they have adequate resources to deal with these cases. I had asked whether or not she was, then, refuting the comments made by the RCMP in June — although I erroneously said February — of 2014.

I guess my question at this point is…. These comments took place not quite a year ago, in September…. The comments from Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett were in the early fall of 2014, leading us to 2015.

Is the minister saying that all financial issues have been resolved around the E-PANA or that it’s no longer necessary or that all of this is somehow resolved — around the issues on the Highway of Tears task force and investigations? My concern is: what, in fact, will it take?

[1515]

What kind of impetus would government need to review this, to look at the E-PANA funding in a different light? Presumably not another death. What exactly would
[ Page 8289 ]
it take for the government, at this point, to look at the very clear directive given by the RCMP a year ago — and the court justice and, of course, communities along the highway — and to look at how these cases will be dealt with, rather than just folded into and kind of disappear in the larger body of work for the RCMP?

Hon. S. Anton: The E-PANA investigation is one that has been taken extremely seriously by the police, by the RCMP and, indeed, by the province. Certainly, the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry emphasized the importance of understanding that when people go missing, they must be looked for, and understanding that if people are murdered, you need to resolve what happened to those people.

There are some great tragedies, many of them stemming from northern highways — not just Highway 16, but a number of the northern highways where women were murdered and the matters remain unresolved.

In terms of the E-PANA, let me just describe for the member how that played out over time. There was an account created to support E-PANA in 2005-2006. The investigation team went up to 70 people at that time. However, the costs have now reduced as the number of investigators and tasks have reduced. The RCMP is now in a place where those temporary investigators are moved to permanent positions in major crimes. So they are not showing up in the E-PANA account.

However, there’s no question that the files are still outstanding and that the investigations are being pursued. The investigations are continuing in the special projects unit within the B.C. RCMP major crimes section.

I just would mention, as well, that the funding in the E-PANA account was used in support of the special projects unit but also in building capacity and oversight in high-risk missing persons and homicide investigations. This was achieved, in part, by the enhancement over the last four years of the B.C. Police Missing Persons Centre — something that we did not have before — and the implementation of new district senior investigators who have oversight over the highest-risk offences to persons in their respective areas.

They’re also able to provide the oversight at an officer level. They are permanent and, going forward, provide the type of oversight that has resulted in success of investigations — for example, the Legebokoff investigation in Prince George.

The E-PANA forms one part of the E division major crimes section, dedicated towards solving missing persons and unsolved homicides within the province. There are 350 personnel in the major crimes section, so the section does have the ability to respond to information and move forward with investigations. As I said, they take the E-PANA investigations extremely seriously and continue to pursue them.

[1520]

M. Karagianis: Well, I hope so. The minister is just as acquainted as I am with the outcry from the community, the ongoing concerns that the community has voiced, the families of murdered and missing women and the general dissatisfaction not just with cuts to E-PANA but generally the whole issue of missing and murdered women here and across the country. British Columbia has a disproportionate number of women that are missing.

I guess related to that, I’d like to move on to a topic that I know has been canvassed somewhat in question period. I want to talk about the transportation challenges along Highway 16 from the very perspective of safety for women and just canvass the minister’s views on hitchhiking along the Highway of Tears.

Now, we have canvassed this in question period, generally, with the Minister of Transportation. A July 9 briefing note to the Minister of Transportation last year said that hitchhiking was not an issue. So I’d like to ask the minister whether she believes that hitchhiking is an ongoing issue along Highway 16.

Hon. S. Anton: There’s no question that safety concerns along Highway 16 are of great importance to the neighbouring communities. In terms of the details around transportation, I expect those questions have been canvassed with the Minister of Transportation. The member’s questions are around safety, so I’ll provide some additional information about things that we are doing.

I would like to mention again PRIME, which is the police information system. This is a system that every officer has in his or her vehicle. Our officers in British Columbia have better up-to-the moment information than officers anywhere in North America.

At the same time, we are building the Real Time Intelligence Centre, which gives immediate analysis. It is not yet available on Highway 16 and in the north, because it’s starting in the Lower Mainland and branching outwards. Over the next couple of years it will cover much more of the province.

[1525]

At the same time, we’ve been looking at other ways of addressing safety. As with many of these issues, there is no one answer.

In 2014 we gave the Carrier-Sekani Family Services $100,000 to expand safety training workshops for communities near Highway 16, including discussions on safe transportation options. We’ve given the Prince George New Hope Recovery Society drop-in centre $100,000 in civil forfeiture grant to help women and youth be safe from violence.

There is a hitchhiking study underway by UNBC and the RCMP, and if I can get an answer in the next few moments, I will let the member know where that study is. We don’t have the information right at hand as to how far along it is, but I’ll get that information.
[ Page 8290 ]

Those are the kinds of things that are underway, as I said, responding to this issue on a number of different fronts.

M. Karagianis: Well, actually my question was very specific about hitchhiking along Highway 16, and yes, there is a study being done by Jacqueline Holler, a professor at UNBC. I am familiar with and have worked with Dr. Holler on the project that I undertook last year.

But I’m asking very specifically…. The Transportation Minister stated that in the study that was done — or the report, the consultation — that hitchhiking was not an issue along the highway. So my question very specifically to the minister is: does she believe or consider that hitchhiking is not an issue along that highway?

Certainly, referring to Dr. Holler’s work, who does believe very sincerely and has great documentation about the prevalence of hitchhiking along that highway, I’m curious as to whether or not the Justice Minister agrees with the Transportation Minister’s summation that hitchhiking is not an issue and, therefore, some of these other solutions are a better substitute.

Safe transportation, we all know…. We’ve canvassed that as well, that safe transportation is not an option for many of these people in these more remote communities. They don’t have cars. They live in poverty, and in order to just do the day-to-day business…. We’ve canvassed this so many times in this House.

I’d just like to hear the minister on whether or not she agrees with the Transportation Minister that hitchhiking is not an issue along this route and that all the other options that have been listed here have resolved issues there for people living in these remote communities — to be able to get out of their community to buy groceries, take their kids to the doctor, see their social worker or go about their daily business.

Hon. S. Anton: As to the extent of people hitchhiking and so on, I think that that is better asked and responded to through Transportation. But what I can say is that we, in Justice and Transportation and across government, are concerned about people’s safety. Certainly people hitchhiking — women, in particular, hitchhiking — can put themselves at risk, in fact do put themselves at risk.

So the RCMP, for example, engage with hitchhikers they see while on duty and give them safety information kits and, I think, help them to see that that may not be a terribly good option for transportation. The study I’ve confirmed is still underway, and we will await its results with interest.

M. Karagianis: Well, I certainly did ask the Minister of Transportation these questions and did not get a satisfactory answer about the government’s concerns around hitchhiking.

[1530]

Maybe the government doesn’t want to answer this question about hitchhiking because then it would point very directly to the fact that there have been no adequate responses to the issue of people along this Highway 16 and their options.

[J. Martin in the chair.]

I know that the government has cited dollars given for driver training, which, of course, is kind of absurd when you live in a community that’s impoverished and you don’t own a vehicle. Why would driver training be of any help to anyone who has no vehicle?

It is about the safety of women. I’m disappointed that the minister didn’t answer my question. Hopefully, we’ll see what Jacqueline Holler’s report has to say, because I don’t think the government will be able to escape the facts that Dr. Holler is finding.

The Transportation Ministry under….

Interjection.

M. Karagianis: Please let me just ask. The consultations that took place by the Transportation Ministry along that route — the minister herself has often alluded to it in answers in question period. The consultation process of the 76 people consulted only had four aboriginal women in that group. I’m curious as to whether or not the minister feels that that’s an adequate representation of the population along this highway and those who have experienced the most significant issues along the highway, murdered and missing women. Yet only four women of 80 people were consulted.

Can the minister address in any way how the government can address these issues of missing and murdered women and what actions they might be taking if they’re not actually talking to women along this corridor?

Hon. S. Anton: It’s really for Transportation to be able to help the member with an answer to that question because they will know who they invited, who came and what representatives of communities were there. I think it’s better to get that answer from them.

M. Karagianis: Well, interesting that the minister disavows any connection to any of this as part of her ministry.

I know she heckled me earlier in my comments about hitchhiking. I’d just like to read into the record that Dr. Jacqueline Holler has already been on record in the media saying some of the following things. “Everyone seems to be saying we need this affordable alternative to hitchhiking done, and we need it done yesterday.” That was in the Globe and Mail.

“Hitchhiking takes on a particular importance in the Highway of Tears discussion because there are serious transportation needs that aren’t being met in the north. The easy solution is to say, ‘Don’t ever hitchhike, and
[ Page 8291 ]
you’re much less likely to become a victim,’ but it’s just not that simple. For many people, hitchhiking is an absolute necessity.” That was on CBC.

She went on to say: “Some are travelling. Some are going tree planting. Some are just coming into Prince George to do some shopping. I don’t see that changing, especially with diminishing transportation options in the north.” Again, on CBC.

My comments about what this report might reveal, I think, are founded in Dr. Holler’s own comments here around this. She says in the Globe and Mail: “Early findings indicate that people hitchhike because they have no car, no money and, in some cases, are running away from home.”

[1535]

I think it’s clear that Dr. Holler will have some things to say about hitchhiking and perhaps will show that the government is wrong when they say hitchhiking is not an issue. I think she’s going to prove it is an issue.

Now, the Minister of Transportation also refused to answer that question. Again, the government really does seem to want to be shunning this whole topic of women hitchhiking along this corridor. But the minister did say that during this consultation, adequate or inadequate…. You can be the judge; certainly the communities along the corridor will be the judges of that. But the minister stated that participants were told that the Minister of Transportation would be creating a summary and further discussions with ministry partners and other related stakeholders would be held.

Now, when I canvassed the Minister of Transportation on this, he identified this minister as a partner, both in the briefing notes and in estimates when he spoke with me. My question is: has the minister received such a summary?

Hon. S. Anton: Government is extremely concerned about the safety of vulnerable women on all highway corridors — northern highways and highways on Vancouver Island and highways throughout British Columbia. We want women to be safe, and there’s a commitment — an anti-violence strategy by government, out of the missing-women report — to looking after safety for vulnerable women.

That’s why there are a number of facets of this from a Highways perspective, prime which I described earlier — the vastly increased amount of cell phone coverage on our highways in British Columbia, public transportation in urban centres around British Columbia. Some of these may be rather small urban centres, but B.C. Transit is there.

Yes, indeed, driver education. There are many facets to these issues, and to belittle one of them, driver education…. When I’ve visited some of these remote communities, that’s one of the first things people start talking to me about. They want their kids to be able to know how to drive. It’s important for our youth, indeed everyone, to know how to drive in British Columbia. It’s an opportunity for transportation, and it’s an opportunity to get a job, so it is very important that there be driver education where you have people who are willing and able to take it.

Government has shown its commitment on the issue of hitchhiking by putting the money into the hitchhiking study and working with the RCMP, having the RCMP interested in helping hitchhiking women. We want women to be safe in British Columbia.

M. Karagianis: Well, in fact, I wasn’t belittling driver’s education, but as a replacement for a shuttle bus system, I was certainly saying it was an inadequate response to the need for a bus. When people don’t have cars, driver’s education is no help to them. Driver’s education is wonderful, and I’m glad that it’s available all across British Columbia, but it’s not a replacement for a public transportation system for remote communities along Highway 16.

The minister did not answer the question — that the Transportation Minister said very specifically that this Justice Minister is identified as a ministry partner — of whether or not she has received a summary yet. According to what the Minister of Transportation has told us — that he’d be creating a summary and further discussions around the consultations that were done — has the minister received that summary?

[1540]

Hon. S. Anton: My staff does work closely with Transportation staff on this issue and are kept apprised of the work that Transportation is doing.

In terms of a formal summary, there may not be a formal summary, but there’s certainly passage of information back and forth constantly — including, for example, the summary of how many meetings were held; the 80 leaders representing communities, First Nations, local governments and municipalities, to find ways to help people; and the work that they’re doing, including the web portal, the driver’s licence and the other work that they’re doing in Transportation to help improve transportation options on our highways in British Columbia.

M. Karagianis: Well, this is very curious, because the Minister of Transportation was very specific in the briefing notes that we obtained, which were hard enough to come by in the first place. The Minister of Transportation stated there and in estimates only just a short time ago that the Minister of Justice had worked closely with Transportation around the consultations. The briefing notes state that the ministry would be discussing, with its ministry partners, the consultations.

What kind of discussions has the Minister of Transportation had with the Justice Minister since the consultation, and what were the topics that were discussed?

Hon. S. Anton: One of our goals in government is to not have silos and to have our teams working together.

[1545]

This is a Transportation lead, this particular issue that the member is discussing, but they have talked with my staff — an exchange of information regarding their plans, keeping us apprised of what they are doing. It’s relatively informal, but it is communication between the ministries. As I said a moment ago, we are aiming to get rid of silos and make sure that we all know what we’re up to.

M. Karagianis: Now, the Minister of Transportation very specifically said a summary was coming. The minister says no summary yet. Do we know when it’s going to be distributed? The Minister of Transportation was very specific that he had identified the Minister of Justice as a partner in this and that a summary was going to come out of these consultations and, presumably, out of these conversations that the minister has just referred to. So when is the summary going to be distributed?

Hon. S. Anton: I think you would have to take the answer from the Transportation Minister on that one.

M. Karagianis: I did take my answer. The minister said there would be a summary coming. I’m just asking, because the Minister of Justice is a partner: when is that summary coming? There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer. Is the Justice Minister saying that there is no summary or she’s not aware of it?

I thought that this partnership between the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Transportation was a functioning actuality. Is there no summary coming? Is the minister not aware of any kind of summary, per the very direct statements made by the Minister of Transportation just a few days ago in those estimates?

Hon. S. Anton: I view the information that I’ve been provided by Transportation as a summary. I’m not necessarily expecting anything more formal than that. Perhaps it will come. But we’ve had a summary of the information of the meetings and of the initiatives that Transportation is taking.

M. Karagianis: Well, I can’t go back and ask the Minister of Transportation again what he meant by that, but perhaps we’ll canvass it some other way, at some other time.

In December of 2014 the minister released the final status update report on the 56 recommendations from the Missing Women Inquiry. The update admits that, basically, government is shelving the original report, is not going to replace Stephen Point and has abandoned many of the recommendations.

The update claims that 75 percent of the recommendations are work underway or complete but only claims that four have been completed in total: a compensation fund for children; cultural awareness training for the justice system personnel; more safe spaces for aboriginal women, with the purchase of the Astoria hotel in Prince George; and implementation of the Real Time Intelligence Centre, which I know that the minister has alluded to.

[1550]

Can I just ask: how was the decision made that the December update would be the final update when so many key recommendations seem to still either be in progress or have not had any action taken?

Hon. S. Anton: There were five main themes in the report: compensation, improvements to policing, support for vulnerable women, supports for missing persons, and increasing safety along northern highways. We’ve canvassed the highways theme just now.

The missing-persons theme. We have now formed a missing-persons unit. We have missing-persons legislation, and underway is development of the regulations around that legislation.

Support for vulnerable women. The member says: when are things going to be complete? I don’t think we will ever be complete in supporting vulnerable women. We will always be working to support vulnerable persons in British Columbia.

Improvements to policing. Again, they’re ongoing. We are building policing standards, and we are always working on improvements to policing.

Yes, on compensation. Indeed, we are very pleased that that compensation settlement was able to be reached between the city of Vancouver, the federal government and the provincial government. That was $50,000 each for every child of the identified missing women. I’ll get an update in a moment as to how many people have received that compensation, but it has been very well received, and it is, in our view, a very appropriate settlement. Nothing can compensate a child for losing their mother, but it can help these children in moving forward in their lives.

In terms of whose decision it was that this would be the final report, that was my decision, because it is a final report on the work that we’re doing. But as I said, some of this work will never end.

I’ve just had confirmation on that one number. We have 69 completed application packages from the Public Guardian and Trustee. And 77 of the 85 identified eligible individuals have worked through the Public Guardian and Trustee to receive their payments. Sixty have been processed, and the remainder are in final process for payment approval.

M. Karagianis: If the minister says that the final status report is out but the work is not done and will continue, how is the minister planning to keep British Columbians — and families, especially, and the communities that are most concerned about this — updated on further progress? It does seem to me that there are a great number of recommendations that have not been completed, safer transportation along the highway be-
[ Page 8293 ]
ing a primary one. How does the minister plan to update British Columbians if in fact the status update is done and finished and the topic is closed?

Hon. S. Anton: Addressing violence against aboriginal women is one of the five key strategic priorities in A Vision for a Violence-Free British Columbia, so there are many things that are underway.

In terms of ongoing reporting, we work closely with our stakeholders. There are a number of individual initiatives underway — improvements to policing, for example, the police standards and so on. We work closely with the police. We work with interested stakeholders on the missing-persons legislation, in terms of the regulations.

Again, we work with our stakeholders — stakeholders in the communities who are affected by these different pieces of work that we’re doing. They are aware of the work that we’re doing. We work closely with them so that we get the best outcome.

[1555]

M. Karagianis: Well, the minister will probably know that last year the West Coast LEAF released a report that gave the government a failing grade on the progress around missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls.

I think that generally there is a great concern out in the community about the fact that if the reporting is done and if, as the minister says, the further correspondence or updates or progress reports are going to be done with specific stakeholders, where’s the public component of this? Not every family, not any of these people living in remote communities are plugged into what progress reports the minister might make to the police or others.

It’s a concern. What happens to this? Is this now just buried? This report is closed. This topic is discussed among police circles. But generally, British Columbians and the families along the Highway of Tears, the families who are concerned about the lack of action in many respects — what happens to them? Where is the public accountability on this?

When the missing and murdered women inquiry came out and the recommendations were made by Justice Wally Oppal, the government rushed very quickly to say: “We’re going to implement all the recommendations. We embrace this report.” Yet since that initial excitement over the report and enthusiasm to assure the communities involved that all the recommendations would be taken, that action would be taken on all of those, it’s diminished year over year to such a point that I think the communities are greatly disappointed.

Those observers who are concerned about violence along this highway are very concerned, and it just seems to me now that we’re closing the door on it and there’s going to be no more public accountability. I don’t think we’ve resolved enough issues on this. The fact that there is not safe public transportation there, I think, is a key factor.

What is the government’s intention on public accountability around this? At least at some point is the government going to say: “We’re not going to do any more. Many of the outstanding issues here, like safer transportation, just aren’t going to get dealt with. We’re going to say that cell phones are good enough or drivers education is good enough or that the ongoing police investigations are good enough and somewhere buried in the files, and we’re not going to dedicate any more energy to this”?

Is that the message that this government has given to the community? It’s the message that’s played back from this community, that this is what they’ve heard. Every single step of the way, every question that’s asked here, the evidence mounts up further and further that the government is…. “We’re closing the book. That’s over. It’s done with. We took care of that or brushed it aside, or it will be dealt with in some other vague part of our responsibility.”

What is the public accountability on this from the minister?

Hon. S. Anton: I think I could just repeat what I said earlier, which is that the work is not done, and we are working with communities as we develop that work. The improvements to policing, the police standards, the bias-free policing — all that work is underway. The real-time policing centre — that work is underway. Support for vulnerable women — that is a very major focus of government. The missing persons regulation. On all of these things, we work very closely with the impacted communities. There are ongoing, direct relationships between Justice staff and government and stakeholders in these different communities.

While there is not going to be another report, this work is ongoing, and people will see it as it continues along and as the different pieces of it are rolled out.

With that, I wonder if I might suggest a short recess and come back in ten minutes.

The Chair: We will take a ten-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 3:59 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

[J. Martin in the chair.]

M. Karagianis: I would like to move on to a few questions on human trafficking. I don’t know if that requires any kind of shift in staff complement. We’re all good?

I’ve just got a couple of questions here. Does the minister or her ministry have information on how big an issue human trafficking is in British Columbia? Perhaps they could provide me with some numbers on how many potential trafficking cases occur in British Columbia every year and how many potential victims there are on an annual basis.
[ Page 8294 ]

Hon. S. Anton: British Columbia is a national leader in the fight against human trafficking. We do take our commitment to considering human trafficking, combatting human trafficking, extremely seriously. In 2013 we launched the action plan to combat human trafficking, which set the priorities. We intend to release a status update before too long.

In terms of statistics, would that it were so easy. The thing about human trafficking is that it is a hidden crime, so it’s very hard to quantify how many people may be being trafficked. We’ve certainly seen some recent cases and different kinds of allegations, but how do you count those up? It’s hard to do that until people report or find some ways of getting themselves out of it.

Certainly, we have assisted in more than 200 cases involving potentially trafficked persons in the last eight years — for example, providing information about temporary residence permits, coordinating shelter and medical care, and liaising with the RCMP’s human trafficking coordinator. As I said, it is something that we take very seriously in government, both by trying to help and, indeed, in terms of prosecutions in cases when appropriate.

M. Karagianis: Certainly, finding hard numbers is very difficult. The minister mentioned a status update before too long. I’d be interested in hearing some more about that.

There’s only been one sort of highly publicized case where there was a conviction for human trafficking. That was the Reza Moazami case in 2014. But I think the minister just alluded to the fact that of these 200 cases, there may be others where there was a conviction or some kind of prosecution. Maybe she could elaborate on that a little bit as well.

[1620]

Also, the status update on human trafficking. Are there any details available on demographics, forms of trafficking, the types of movement in these cases? I would assume, with 200 cases, that you must have some body of data and demographics at this point?

Hon. S. Anton: I’ll give an answer, but there may be a follow-up question because I’m not sure if I’m covering everything in the question here. The question was: do we have demographic information? The answer is no. We do not have demographic information. Again, due to the hidden nature of the crime, it’s hard to make generalizations as to where and how the crime is being committed.

The question was asked about prosecutions. Again, I don’t have…. We don’t count these kinds of cases, but what I can say with certainty is that they are taken extremely seriously by the Crown. There is a very strong public interest factor. We canvassed earlier the dual test for Crown: public interest and substantial likelihood of conviction. These cases generally have a strong public interest in pursuing them, and they are treated extremely seriously by our prosecution services.

M. Karagianis: The couple of other pieces of that question. I would think, based on even the 200 cases you stated, that although it is a long time period, there should be a bit more data. I asked about the forms of trafficking and the movement in these types of cases. Is there a specific kind of profile, or several profiles, that have emerged?

[1625]

Hon. S. Anton: Human trafficking is premised on there being some form of control and vulnerable people falling under the control of others. The question was: what forms of trafficking are there? Generally, they fall into either labour or sexual exploitation, two broad categories.

The question was: does it involve movement of people? It is an element of trafficking. There are different ways that people can be moved, whether they are from rural to urban and the geographic movements. Sometimes people are brought in from other countries and sometimes from within our country.

M. Karagianis: Is the office to combat trafficking in persons still in existence? What’s the current budget for that office? How many employees are there, both full- and part-time?

Hon. S. Anton: The office is contained in the community safety and crime prevention group.
[ Page 8295 ]
There are two FTEs there and other trained staff.

At the same time, there’s a very strong focus on training people and building awareness around British Columbia. We have now nearly 5,000 people who have trained on the new national on-line training course “Human Trafficking: Canada is Not Immune.” We have trained a number of community safety and crime prevention branch staff, including front-line service providers. And 150 service providers in seven B.C. communities have been trained to respond to situations of human trafficking over the past three years through the train-the-trainer project. That would include Williams Lake, Prince George, Prince Rupert, Quesnel, Saulteau First Nations, Nisga’a First Nation and Kamloops.

M. Karagianis: Is there a director in the office? I believe that the minister said two FTEs in there. Is there a director?

Hon. S. Anton: One of the two is a director.

M. Karagianis: It’s a separate office; it’s own entity. It’s still under the name of the office to combat trafficking in persons, or has it been absorbed into another function?

[1630]

Hon. S. Anton: They are a distinct office. They are in the community safety and crime prevention group.

M. Karagianis: To what extent are trafficked victims involved with that office?

[J. Thornthwaite in the chair.]

Hon. S. Anton: The office of community safety and crime prevention is more of a coordinating office, and they rely on the service providers around British Columbia to provide the kind of service that the member is mentioning.

M. Karagianis: Perhaps the minister can elaborate on what kind of service providers. And I don’t believe I actually heard what the current funding for that office is.

Hon. S. Anton: The budget is part of the overall budget of the community safety and crime prevention branch, so it’s not a marked off piece, but there are two people in that branch who do this work.

In terms of the agencies that handle human trafficking, I’ll give you a couple of examples. The civil forfeiture grants this year, the ones recently announced — we gave 22 to groups doing sexual exploitation and human trafficking…. I can, just if you’re interested, name a few of those groups: University of the Fraser Valley centre, St. Leonard’s Youth and Family Services Society in Burnaby, Société Place Mallairdville and Coquitlam Children of the Street Society. I could go through and read 22 names, but I think the member will have an idea. If she would like the full list, I can provide it.

At the same time, we have a budget of $28 million for victim services providers all around British Columbia. It is part of their obligation to provide, and they are expected to provide, services to people who are in need of services through their becoming victims of human trafficking.

M. Karagianis: How much funding does the government provide to initiatives on an annual basis? More specifically, how much of the funding goes directly to those who have been or are at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking?

[1635]

Hon. S. Anton: We don’t separate out by individuals. I did mention a moment ago that there’s $28 million for non-profit organizations which receive grants to help with victim services around British Columbia, and they are expected to help victims of human trafficking.

Overall, government spends $70 million, including…. That $28 million is part of a $70 million package which is spent to help vulnerable persons. In addition to the $28 million, there are transition houses and services such as that.

We don’t count for individuals, but an individual might receive a service from one of the victim services group providers. They might be in a transition house. They might be there for a week; they might be there for longer. It’s hard to count up individual costs, but there are definitely services provided around British Columbia for victims of human trafficking.

M. Karagianis: Well, we know transition houses and other things in the province are also for women fleeing domestic violence and other forms of violence and sexual assault. It seems to me that there is very little that’s specifically dedicated towards this issue of human trafficking if the office is part of a larger community safety function and there are no specific services around human trafficking, which of course is different than other forms of violence.

The minister alluded earlier to the status update — said it’s going to be ready before long. When do you think this report might be available? Is it going to be made public? And is it going to encompass the 2014-15 year and the period preceding that?

Hon. S. Anton: I want to clear up one number that I said a moment ago. It’s 5,000 people across Canada who have taken this training — not in British Columbia. We don’t have a count of people who have taken it in British Columbia.

However, what I will say…. When the member said there were no specific services, I do have to respectfully disagree with that. We have trained many people in British Columbia, and all of our victim services providers are expected as part of their contract to provide services to victims of human trafficking. So there is awareness of it and training of it around British Columbia.

The question was: when will the status update be available? It is being worked on. It’ll be available later this year.

B. Routley: I’d like to first give you a little bit of background. I think it’s a good thing that you have some history in the Cowichan Valley. I’m sure you’ve got many fond memories, as do I, of the pristine region around Cowichan Valley.

[1640]

When I was canvassing my questions originally with the Minister of Environment, she eventually referred me to you. To give you a little bit of a background, the CVRD, Cowichan Valley regional district, has spent $460,000 so far on their legal defence regarding the Shawnigan issue and the contaminated soil dump. The community has spent way more than $500,000. They’ve got lawyers working for the Shawnigan Lake Residents Association. As a result of all of these bills piling up, it’s reported to me that it’s $1.2 million that the community has spent in defence of the community.

The minister said, on March 3, 2015, that the way the whole money issue works…. I asked the question, “Could you inform us where that money would be paid out from,
[ Page 8296 ]
for the lawyers for the Ministry of Environment?” — defending the Ministry of Environment.

She explained: “The way this operates: any time that we hire legal counsel, unless we hire external legal counsel, it is an internal transfer. We hire them, if you will, from the department of Justice, so it would be the department of Justice that would have an accounting of specific cases and what they have billed. We don’t track that. We don’t even have within our budget framework a specific amount that’s dedicated to legal because it is an internal transfer in government. But the Ministry of Justice, Attorney General should have that amount.”

I came here today confident that I was finally going to get to the bottom of this. We’re going to get real answers on exactly what it is that’s going on and exactly how much money your ministry is spending that’s basically the flip side of this whole issue about Shawnigan Lake and that region. So I’m looking forward to hearing this amount.

The Chair: Just a reminder, Member, to go through the Chair.

Hon. S. Anton: The good news is that the number is and will be known. Perhaps the slightly more disappointing news may be that it’s not available until the litigation is over. I sense that some of this litigation is underway.

What my team will do is provide that information, when appropriate, to the member on the cases that we believe fit the description. If the member believes that there are cases missing, that more information should be provided, he could ask my staff for that.

B. Routley: Okay. Well, I guess that’s a partial answer. We’re going to find out in due course, when the litigation is over.

Maybe the minister and her group could look deep into their budget and tell us how much was spent in the Shawnigan region — or maybe south Vancouver Island, if Shawnigan region is too complicated. Can you tell us how much you spent in south Vancouver Island or maybe even Vancouver Island? Surely, somebody has to address, out of your budget, how much money is put aside to deal with issues such as these, and I think the public has a right to have some idea. They certainly know what they’re spending.

[1645]

In fact, the good people of Cowichan Valley…. And I’m one of them, a taxpayer from North Cowichan. All of the good people in the Cowichan Valley are contributing — in one way or the other, through the CVRD — to the cost of defending the Shawnigan Lake region in this current situation in a dispute with government, defending a community against what they feel is clearly a wrong in terms of site selection, etc.

The community is pretty well unanimous. For the life of me, I don’t understand why we are in the spot we’re in. However, we’re in it. It does require the expenditure of public dollars. It had to come out of the budget, and there must be reporting somewhere for legal expenses, if not in a specific way. I get that. I’m going to get that later.

Surely there’s some idea in protecting communities. Maybe it’s not just Shawnigan, but you can give us some idea, somehow, of…. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe you just shovel money out the door. I have no idea. But we’d sure like an answer to the question.

Hon. S. Anton: The lawyers are Justice lawyers. The member is correct that the money is…. We charge back to Environment, in this case, for the legal fees of the litigation.

We don’t group it geographically. It is more by the piece of litigation that the funds are known. So for each specific piece of litigation, at the end of the litigation we will know how much was spent by government on that piece of litigation, and that’s the information that can become available to the member.

But I’m guessing that these matters may be ongoing. They may be underway right now, so that information may not be currently available. The member may have to wait until all the proceedings are concluded.

B. Routley: Would there be any interim billing that you could tell us about, or is it all only billed at the end?

Hon. S. Anton: The ongoing fees are subject to solicitor-client privilege, so they are not provided while the litigation is ongoing. It is only when the matter is concluded.

B. Routley: The public wants to know that you would be acting in the public interest when it comes to matters of concern, like the situation that we have in Shawnigan.

This whole thing hangs together on a decision by a statutory decision-maker who decides whether a permit is going to be granted or not. That decision comes about through relying on professional reliance.

The government’s philosophy is that we’ve got people that are put in place, professionals hired by the proponent — in this case, a company called Active Earth that has geologists, and they have hydrologists.

Interestingly, the minister should know that whether you’re a geologist or a hydrologist, you might think that the science is very specific. But I’ve found, in reading all of the documentation from the Environmental Appeal Board, that the science seems to be more like the science of discussing climate change. There are all these different versions.

[1650]

There were scientists — hydrologists and geologists — who were brought forward by the community with the $1.2 million that was spent to outline the concerns. Everything from the fact that the statutory decision-maker….

This should alarm the minister, if you’re concerned at all about shovelling money out the door. As a trustee of
[ Page 8297 ]
the public purse, you ought to be concerned about making sure you’ve done some kind of due diligence when it comes to: is this money being spent wisely? I would hope that somebody in government is paying attention to that. Is this money spent wisely?

So my question, I guess, comes down to: is there any due diligence at all by the minister? Or is your job just to shovel money out the door on an as-needed basis by whatever ministry feels like doing whatever they feel like?

Hon. S. Anton: I’m just going to speak in a general way. I’m not going to talk about ongoing cases. Indeed, some of these cases that the member is referring to may not even involve government.

In a general way, if there’s a statutory decision-maker, they do act independently. We can provide legal advice to the statutory decision-maker if it’s required and requested. If it’s judicially reviewed, which it can be, then legal services will, again, step in and defend the decision-maker. But I have to emphasize that we don’t control the statutory decision-maker.

In terms of the specific kinds of cases that the member is raising, these are cases that involve the Ministry of Environment. We, in this case, for example, would work closely with the client ministry to make sure that any litigation, whatever it was, was being handled in a cost-effective way and was being properly managed on behalf of the taxpayers.

[1655]

B. Routley: Well, that leads me to the question: has your ministry ever disciplined any government ministry whatsoever? Do they just go out and blow the public’s cash? There’s no oversight by your ministry at all.

Ultimately, all these ministers are saying, “You’ve got to go see the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General when it comes to these issues.” So here we are, and we can’t get an answer about what’s going on in the public purse until we get to the end of this decision. It’s all fine and well that the community has to go out and collect the money by the thousands, have fundraisers to try and defend the community and their environment, defend the pristine Shawnigan Lake from what is viewed as an attack on their water, an attack on the environment of Shawnigan Lake.

It has affected land values. It has affected real estate values. It has affected businesses. By the way, all of those folks have come down and lobbied Ministers of Environment, even the Premier. I’m sure they’re getting hundreds of letters. There are petitions being signed as we speak.

Clearly, the statutory decision-maker ought to have followed his statutory decision-maker handbook. I don’t know. It’s probably not your job to read any of the material of what came out of the decision, but I was shocked. I spent the time to go through the hundreds of pages of the decision. At the end of the day, what you come to is a conclusion that it’s really stunning that the statutory decision-maker admitted on the stand he didn’t follow the Ministry of Environment’s statutory handbook, the handbook that he’s required, as part of his job….

The lawyers wanted to take him through the handbook. Some of the things in that handbook would be: did you consult the public? Surely, this could have been stopped by any proper listening to the community. But oh no, that doesn’t happen. So the community has to go out and spend $1.2 million to defend themselves. There’s no listening to the community. The statutory decision-maker just flips through the job of stamping, getting to yes.

I know that your government is really high on getting to yes and really focused on getting permits out the door, but I want to know who is going to be accountable within government for spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money, public money, to fight with the good people in Shawnigan Lake. It just makes no sense to me.

This whole thing makes no sense to me. It’s crazy. And this crosses the political spectrum, hon. Speaker, with respect. This crosses through all of the political boundaries. Everyone is in agreement that this makes no sense, yet we have it. This ministry basically admits: “Well, we’ll get the bill at the end of the day, and it will all be good. We’ll find out how many millions have been spent.”

Sadly, this is…. You know, I’m hearing that there are 60 days for the appeal. So now the community is gearing up for what they can do to appeal and go to the Supreme Court. That means more public money for the community and the people of the Cowichan Valley and more money for this government, more money that could be better used on things that we really need — children with autism or the seniors that can’t pay their hydro bills or the people living with disabilities. On and on it goes.

The things that I know…. I’ve even heard members in this House speak about the critical importance of a whole range of subjects. But no. We’re paying millions of dollars out because a statutory decision-maker didn’t think it was important to listen to the community.

One of the fundamental principles is you’re supposed to go and listen to the community. You’re supposed to do an economic impact statement. What about an environmental…? Basic, basic stuff would tell you that everybody was against it on the principles of the environment and the risk that this places on the community.

Back to the professionals. One of the professionals…. It may be surprising to learn that at first the community was told there is 100 years of granite before any water could possibly leech to an aquifer or into the lake or anything — at least 100 years, solid granite rock.

[1700]

Then it comes out in the hearing: “Well, we’re 20 percent of the way through the blasting, and oh, by the way, there’s limestone nearby, and there could be limestone and fractured rock leading to an aquifer.” What? We were
[ Page 8298 ]
told there’s no aquifer within at least a kilometre or a mile. Four miles or four kilometres — I forget which but a long way away. That’s what we were told. That’s what the community was told.

Then it comes out in the decision: “Oh, well, there might be an aquifer right underneath.” The statutory decision-maker — oh my goodness; I couldn’t believe it, reading this thing — says: “Well, I’ve thought all along, right from the beginning….” Right from the beginning he thought there was an aquifer right underneath.

Wait a minute. They’re supposed to view this as a site decision, a place that they’re going to choose to put a contaminated soil dump site with carcinogens, dioxins, lead — all of this stuff. There’s a long list of all of these terrible things that they’re able to dump up there. And it’s downhill to a creek right nearby. Right nearby is a creek, and then there’s possibly an aquifer, but all of it’s going to be okay.

It’s all going to be okay. We’re supposed to trust that there’s a plastic bag the diameter of a loonie or a toonie that’s supposed to protect us. We’re going to have plastic bags. But will the geology protect us for sure? Well, not for sure, no — not when you’ve got competing experts saying different things, not when the geology is not settled. And they say that in the decision. They actually say in the decision: “Well, it’s uncertain about the geology. It could be. There are a lot of questions about the hydrology, too, but the design…. Oh, well, we’ve got a design.”

Then I’m hearing, as recently as this weekend, that we’ve got concerns about the design. They haven’t even met the requirements of the statutory decision-maker. It’s not even all finished. There is supposed to be a truck tire wash. There are supposed to be things that are in place. They are supposed to have a community representative, a stakeholder to help inform them and to discuss things with — not done. There is a whole list of issues that have not been addressed. The settling ponds are supposed to be all designed.

I don’t know whether the ministry has a checklist or not that they go through. I guess my question is: do you even care? Do you have any concern at all? Do you have any plan to deal with this, or is it just an exercise in shovelling money out the door? Do you stop and question once in a while: “Wait a minute. This is costing us millions of dollars. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this”?

Maybe somebody should wake up and smell the roses and say: “This is a very bad plan for the government to be fighting the good people of Shawnigan Lake and the Cowichan Valley.” All of the mayors are unanimous. Everybody in the CVRD vote, and they say this is crazy. It can’t be done. The Liberal candidate writes a piece in the local paper about what a tragedy this is, how outrageous it is. But here we are.

We don’t even have…. I was trained as a trustee for a pension plan. And we’re only talking small change compared to the money that you’re looking at in your ministry. We had a couple of billion dollars that we were looking at. As a pension trustee, we were told: “Your job is to act as a prudent person would with other peoples’ money.” I took that as important.

We didn’t go out…. I remember fighting with Jack Munro, who thought it was a good idea to plant trees with the money. We said: “No, no, no. We’re not going to….” Jack is a good guy, a wonderful guy. Bless his memory. But it was a bad idea to plant trees, and we told him so. We said: “No, Jack. What we’ve got to do is make sure that we’re investing this money as a prudent person would and using our due diligence in an appropriate way.” And we did.

I’m alarmed today to hear that basically the plan is that we’re going to tally it all up. They’re going to tell the good people of the Cowichan Valley and Shawnigan, after they’ve spent the millions…. There’s no number yet available.

[1705]

We’re just going to keep shovelling it out the door so that people can show up from the Ministry of Environment and maybe even Mines. Mines are now involved. Are we going to have the Ministry of Mines next spending money, lining up with lawyers to fight the good people of Shawnigan? I don’t know.

I guess I just want to wrap this part up and basically say: do you have any idea at all how we could reduce the money that is going out the door from communities like Cowichan Valley and Shawnigan? Again, I’m sure you care about the good people of Cowichan Valley. You may even have some friends or relatives up there. Can you help us out with a plan to do something? Or is there no plan, no ideas at all?

Hon. S. Anton: The money for legal services does come, in this case, if there is ongoing litigation…. Again, I’m not even sure how much there may be that the province is involved in. But if there is litigation that the province is involved in and our legal services staff are providing that legal service, that is paid for by Environment’s budget. As a general proposition, that applies for all kinds of litigation all across government.

The ministry which has the file takes the services from legal services, but they pay for them. They have to manage within their own budget, so they do have an incentive to be prudent in their use of legal services. It’s not a blank cheque. None of us have blank cheques in our budgets.

In terms of the question of whether or not we discipline other ministries, we do not. We provide legal advice, but the bigger policy issues do belong to the ministry in question — in this case, the Ministry of Environment.

L. Krog: It seems some time ago that we actually were dealing with the courts, so I want to go back, having reread the Blues. The minister at that time confirmed that I had their numbers correct — that we had 126 full-time-equivalent Provincial Court judges in 2010. They generated 113,000 judicial hours. We have 122½ full-
[ Page 8299 ]
time-equivalent Provincial Court judges now, and they generated 101,000 judicial hours.

The Attorney General commented earlier that she thought that was a decline of about 5 percent. In fact, I’m sure the minister has reconsidered her math, and she will determine that 10 percent of 113,000 hours would be 11,300 hours, which, deducted from that total, would take you down to 102,700 hours. So, in fact, it’s a 10 percent decline in judicial hours. Yet a decline of 4 percent equivalent Provincial Court judges would amount to roughly something in the range of 3½ percent, without putting too fine a number on it.

I think the obvious question is: that, contrasted with the fact that the budget this year for the judiciary is up 4.4 percent, or $3,009,000…. Has the Attorney General or anyone in her ministry raised this issue with the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court and asked why, when we have a greater than 10 percent reduction in judicial hours and we’ve only got a 3½ percent reduction, roughly speaking, in the judiciary itself…? What’s the explanation for that rather significant disparity?

[1710]

We’re not talking chicken feed here. We’re talking millions and millions of dollars — all at the same time, as I pointed out on Wednesday last week, that the time in family court to get justice is, frankly, increasing.

Hon. S. Anton: There are a number of things contributing to the numbers that the member is noticing. One of them is that we had a very concerted effort to deal with court backlogs, and so now most of our criminal cases — I’m going to get the number in a moment — fall within the chief judge’s guideline as to the time to trial for those cases. Our stays of proceedings due to delay are now the lowest in six years, so the court backlog project has been fairly successful.

The second thing is why the funding is going up. There is an increase in compensation to the Provincial Court judges, and some of the increased funding does also go to the superior courts.

[1715]

L. Krog: I appreciate the Attorney General’s answer. Quite candidly, her answer has absolutely nothing to do with the question.

If you have 113,000 judicial hours and now it’s down to 101,000 hours being delivered by the judiciary, that is a 12,000-hour difference. Yet the provincial court judges, who have to be there in order to constitute a judicial hour…. The total full-time-equivalent judges has dropped from 126 to 122.5. It’s basically 3½ judges less, yet we’re getting out of those judges better than 10 percent fewer hours.

I think the Attorney General understands my point. She has a degree in math, as I recall. So having heard that….

Hon. S. Anton: This is arithmetic.

L. Krog: Ah, this is just arithmetic, not nearly as sophisticated as math. I’m sure an answer will be forthcoming that will explain to me in my own simplistic way why, when you have an over 10 percent reduction in the amount of production, if you will, from judges and a reduction of 3½ percent in the judges available, we have the significant difference.

Again, has she, or has someone in her ministry, asked of the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court or other judicial officials: “What’s the explanation for this?” Why are we getting so much less — with great respect — of what a manufacturer would say is productivity out of essentially a similar number of people? It’s very close in difference — 3½ percent, as I say, versus a 10 percent reduction in judicial hours.

[1720]

Hon. S. Anton: The member is referring to the sitting hours. I would just remind the members, as I know that he will know, that they are not the only indication of productivity.

There’s no question that litigation is more complex than it used to be. There are other factors in there. The question was: do we consult with the courts? We consult with the courts regularly. In fact, I would venture to say that we have a very good relationship with the chief judge. I know that my deputy is in touch with him on a regular basis, and I am in touch with him myself, perhaps not quite as frequently but certainly from time to time. We do work very closely together on matters of administration. They obviously have their independence as courts, but there are administrative matters which are of common interest.

There’s no question, though, that the court backlog project has been important. I think we must not lose sight of that, which is that our criminal cases now are generally falling within the chief judge’s guideline and that our stay of proceedings delays are the lowest that they’ve been in six years. These are very big transformations in justice, and they have been achieved through a number of efforts, including having more provincial court judge time.

L. Krog: I appreciate the comments about the reduction in the number of cases that are dismissed because of delays, and all of the other comments. But it doesn’t get past the simple arithmetic — I stand corrected; not the math of this situation — that says you’ve got an 11 percent reduction in the amount of judicial hours, which means the time that judges are in the courtroom dealing with the cases so that people can actually have their cases resolved, yet you’ve only got a roughly 3½ percent reduction in the number of judges delivering those hours.

That is a significant arithmetic difference. I’m sure the chartered accountants in the room, and there may be a couple, would understand and appreciate that that is a fairly significant number. So far, I haven’t heard the Attorney General say: “Gee, my deputy has been on the phone to the
[ Page 8300 ]
provincial court judiciary and said: ‘Yes, we appreciate all the good work you’re doing, and we understand that. But you know what? Here’s what the arithmetic says. The arithmetic says that we’re getting a great deal less out of a hardly significant, statistically speaking, less number of judges.’”

Again, what’s the explanation? Has anyone from the Attorney General’s office raised this specifically? The minister has a ministry at her fingertips. You know, it’s not quite thousands that are “bidding speed and post o’er land and ocean without rest.” It’s not Milton. Nevertheless, she has significant staff and people with ability who I’m sure must look at these numbers once in a while. Surely, somebody must have said: “Oh my goodness. If these are the numbers, there must be some kind of an issue. Or what’s the explanation?”

So I’m asking: has anyone asked anyone in the judiciary what the explanation is as to where these numbers, the arithmetic numbers which speak to me fairly simply, come from?

[1725]

Hon. S. Anton: While arithmetic may be an exercise that produces a known result, the question of judicial time is less precise and more a factor of the kinds of things that I have been talking about already, which is improved time to trial, reduced delay, increased complexity of cases. We’re now distributing court hours around British Columbia, so if a judge is down in one jurisdiction, he or she may take a case or take a sentencing or take a matter from another jurisdiction. Our court time is more productive — less churn, more productivity.

We work, as I said, very closely with the court on considering these issues so that we can maximize the effectiveness of the courts in terms of their efficiency — again, staying out of their independence as judges. I think we’ve had very good results in the last few years with less stays, less delays.

L. Krog: Well, again, I always appreciate the Attorney General’s answer. I just don’t think I actually heard an answer to my question in those last remarks.

[M. Bernier in the chair.]

What appears to me to be a fairly simple proposition is that…. In terms of judicial time — the time that judges are in the courtroom providing service and we’re paying for courthouses, whether they’re running or not, and time that court clerks are available and a sheriff in place and all of those costs that go with keeping the courthouse open — the reality is there is an 11-plus percent difference in those hours being delivered by 126 judges and what is now being delivered by 122.5 judges. That difference is over 11 percent. It’s a significant number.

I’m surprised that the ministry itself doesn’t have more curiosity and wouldn’t be raising this. I believe that in one of these other estimates in a past life, and it seems to have gone on forever, as critic, I raised the possibility of conveniencing the general public, as opposed to the people who work in the system, and considering the possibility of night courts or evening sittings of court, particularly for family matters, particularly given the lack and unavailability of legal aid to assist people who are poor — those people for whom taking a day off in court to go in, lose their paycheque for the day, so to speak, and then be told: “Oh, sorry. Things are busy, and you’re bumped over to another week down the road.”

I would have thought that one of the innovations that the government might be considering is the possibility of courts in the evening so that people who actually have employment and find it difficult to get to court might be able to attend. I’m not even talking about conveniencing the criminal element of society — or those who are alleged to be criminals, in any event.

Perhaps small claims — the same kind of thing. I appreciate that the civil tribunal, to some extent — if the Attorney General is correct in her incredible optimism around that — might solve that issue.

[1730]

Around specifically the issue of family court, where the vast majority of people are representing themselves — let alone the Court of Appeal, and we’ll get to that in a bit — has the ministry or the government considered setting up, at least, a trial evening court somewhere in the province so that people would have the convenience, potentially, of not having to give up pay? It takes into account, frankly, the modern working hours of most families. Has the ministry considered that?

Hon. S. Anton: On the question of evening court, the court hours are within the purview, of course, of the chief judge. However, it is something that he is certainly willing to discuss, as are we.

I would observe that we do have evening court for small claims matters right now at Robson Square. One of our emphases is taking things out of courtrooms unless they really need to be there — hence, the civil resolution tribunal. In family matters, the emphasis is on solving issues without them having to go to court at all. In the new Family Law Act, the emphasis is on mediation and, as I said, keeping things out of court, finding resolution to issues which help families, help children, without going through having a third party — namely, the court — adjudicate the issues.

L. Krog: Certainly, it’s far preferable in a perfect world that people mediate their differences or arbitrate them, whatever the case may be, and resolve them without the necessity of having some third party, a judge, make the decision that governs what happens by way of a solution of their issues.

[1735]

Having said that, however, it doesn’t get past the mod-
[ Page 8301 ]
ern reality of family life and the fact that relationships continue to break down, that there are still all kinds of issues. I would have thought…. Regardless of the independence of the judiciary, the fact is that it’s the people in British Columbia who are footing the bill for the whole system. It wouldn’t have been untoward to consider what is done in other jurisdictions, in the United States, where there is access to the courts outside of the basic business hours.

Virtually no one works on basic business hours anymore. That’s the modern world. If you live and work in that kind of, what I will call, semi-privileged position, more power to you. But the reality is that many working families are working different shifts and different hours. They’re working evenings, whether that be in a factory or a restaurant or a bar or whatever the case may be.

I’m wondering: is the Auditor General or the ministry prepared to discuss this as even an experiment for major centres and busy centres like Surrey? The fact is the courthouse is there. The electricity, the heat bill, is still being paid. So it’s talking about simply shifting the staff and giving that opportunity for people to have their matters adjudicated.

The reality is there are still lots of people going to court, notwithstanding all the emphasis on mediation. I’m just wondering, again: is the Attorney General prepared to discuss that with the judiciary with a view to actually serving the public, who ultimately are our masters and to whom we owe our greatest obligation?

Hon. S. Anton: It is a question that has been raised. I’m sure it’s probably been raised for generations. But I don’t know if there has been a discussion of it recently, although my deputy has had sort of a preliminary discussion with the chief judge as to whether or not it might be feasible. I’m certainly prepared to raise it with him again and discuss with him again.

[1740]

I understand the point the member is making, which is that it may be easier for some people’s schedules to go to a hearing at night. There would be very significant staffing implications — sheriffs, court staff and so on. Maybe those could be overcome fairly easily, but I think all of those are things that would have to be looked at.

L. Krog: I appreciate the Attorney General’s willingness.

In her complimentary mandate letter of last year, the Premier complimented the ministry on the work of opening the Victoria Justice Access Centre. I’m just wondering how that’s going, if I can have a general report. What sort of efficiencies have been achieved? Is the Attorney General happy with what has happened? Is the province prepared to commit to opening others around the province, or is this going to go by the wayside with the whole concept of more electronic access to justice?

Hon. S. Anton: The Victoria Justice Access Centre opened in October 2013 and is being staffed up as resources permit. The initial phase has ten employees and an operating budget of $728,000, including staff, travel, interpreter services, IT, office expenses, centralized costs. We in the province put in $1.259 million in capital, and the University of Victoria $477,000 in capital, to convert the former land title office to this new JAC space. The Law Foundation assisted the university.

It hasn’t been open for two years yet. We usually do an evaluation after a couple of years, so we do not have an evaluation of it yet. However, I can report that at the Vancouver Justice Access Centre, 77 percent of those who were followed up on said they found it helpful, 73 percent said they followed up on referral to resources located in the community, 66 percent of those found those resources were helpful, and 90 percent said they would recommend JAC services.

I think it’s safe to say that people do appreciate the justice access centres. They like them. They are extremely helpful to people.

To the member’s question of will we be opening more: possibly, as funding becomes available, because we do view them as being extremely helpful to citizens who need legal advice and who can use sort of a one-stop shop for various services. The justice access centres are very, very good at doing that.

L. Krog: I’m wondering what the Attorney General meant when she indicated that it’s staffed up but not staffed up fully. In other words, where are we in terms of that? Is it 50 percent operational? Is it 60 percent operational?

Also, how does it compare, in terms of staffing, to Vancouver and Nanaimo? Do we have some statistics out of either of those that would indicate what they are putting through — in relation to the amount of staff available — as compared to Victoria?

[1745]

Hon. S. Anton: One of the factors here which makes a difference in the justice access centres is whether or not they are a rule 5 site under the Family Law Act. The member will know that rule 5 requires you to meet with a family justice counsellor for mediation before you go into court. We cannot implement that rule unless we can deliver on the service, and in order to deliver on the service, we would need about two more full-time-equivalents. Ideally, we would probably have about three more staff in the centre — two for the rule 5 and one for other matters.

I’ll just give the member one more statistic, which is that in the Vancouver Justice Access Centre we did a study of use of court by the people who had come in as clients to the JAC, and 67 percent of the JAC clients did not file applications and had zero court appearances.
[ Page 8302 ]

L. Krog: I think I heard the Attorney General say that in fact if she coughed up two more staff for Victoria, they would see a significant reduction in the numbers of people who are actually filing court claims. Is that what I interpret from her answer?

Hon. S. Anton: Two different things. One is the rule 5, and the two extra staff would allow it to become a rule 5 site. The other was a general proposition for people in the Vancouver JAC, who are there for all manner of matters.

L. Krog: Does the Attorney General agree that a modest increase in staffing at Victoria and allowing it to become rule 5 would in fact be more effective and mean a significant reduction in the number of applications that actually go to court or would need to be filed and, therefore, potentially, of course, a further reduction in the need for judicial hours, which we’ve had a great deal of discussion about earlier today?

[1750]

Hon. S. Anton: I think what the member is in fact asking is: what do we know about rule 5 anyway and how productive is it? The answer to that is we are doing some analysis right now to establish that. I actually think that the member’s question is a very good question. If two people actually free up a lot of time and that has a net beneficial effect, then why wouldn’t we go ahead and do it? We’re having a look at the analysis right now on rule 5, and we’ll be able to answer that question better as time goes on.

L. Krog: With respect to the potential of increasing the number of justice access centres and given the present locations, what would be the next logical location, from the ministry’s perspective, based on court use, population?

Hon. S. Anton: The trouble with answering a question like this is that you can lead yourself into trouble.

Interjection.

Hon. S. Anton: That’s the whole idea, says the member. Yes.

In any event, I would think that if we were to go ahead with one more at the moment, it would likely be in Surrey. The member will know we had a justice task force there. We had a two-day working session with many stakeholders to figure out what the best delivery of justice services would be.

We concluded that it would not be a community court and that that actually wasn’t what was needed but that what was more helpful was having a grouping of services to help persons who are in the justice system. It would seem logical that a justice access centre might be a useful addition to that. Again, it’s not something that we’re able to fund at the moment, but it is definitely something that we would be looking at as time goes on.

L. Krog: Given that the Attorney General has raised the issue of community courts, which I was going to come to at some further point — I believe the member for Surrey-Newton has already asked some questions that I didn’t have the chance to hear today — any particular reason…? Perhaps the Attorney General can briefly explain to me why, when the concept of community courts has been so touted over the last few years, we’re not proceeding in Surrey specifically? Is it Surrey-specific, or is it the concept in general?

[1755]

Hon. S. Anton: The important thing with decisions of this nature is that they go forward on an informed basis. Over a year ago we began the justice task force in Surrey, led jointly by ministry staff and Surrey staff. They did the two-day workshop, and the conclusion at the end of that workshop was that what was important was the grouping of services. The conclusion was that a community court was not what was needed, but actually, it was the grouping of services.

I think it would be rather contrary to that whole process to suddenly say: “Oh, actually, we’re going to do what you didn’t want us to do. We’re going to do something entirely different.” We are proposing to proceed on the basis of that consultation and the conclusions that were reached.

L. Krog: But in reference to my question, I asked whether it was specific to Surrey. Is the concept of community courts, then, off the agenda for the ministry in general? In other words, are other communities that may want or believe in community courts…? Are they under consideration, or is it simply not part of the ministry’s philosophy or view anymore?

Hon. S. Anton: We’ve been working on a specialized court strategy, and that will be coming forward before too long. It’s been an ongoing piece of work, and that will be able to answer some of those questions.

L. Krog: I’m sorry, but I thought I heard the Attorney General just say a “special ed” court. No, that couldn’t be what you said.

Hon. S. Anton: Specialized.

L. Krog: Specialized court. Thank you. And what’s the concept behind the specialized court? Is it just a classier version of the community court? Is it a new buzzword? Or what specifically will it entail?

The community courts, as the Attorney General will know, have been touted. You know, we’ve had downtown
[ Page 8303 ]
Vancouver. This has been going on for years. Many people have looked forward to this. Mental health is still a huge issue in the justice system around the criminal courts. So I’m curious to know: where in fact are we headed, or do we know where we’re going? And what do these specialized courts actually mean?

Hon. S. Anton: On specialized courts, in the white paper, part 2, we committed to work with the judiciary and other justice partners to develop an evidence-based, integrated and strategic approach for specialized courts. In other words, we’re going into it with our eyes open and not our eyes closed. The strategy is nearing completion and will outline an approach to ensure that specialized courts are effective and that decision-making about whether to establish or continue a specialized court is evidence-based and transparent.

We do have a number of courts around the province, some that deal with family matters and domestic violence matters, some that deal with First Nations matters, the downtown community court in Vancouver. We are looking at all of these to consider what the best model is going forward and what the strategy is for determining what the best model would be. That’s what our specialized court strategy is doing.

L. Krog: The Attorney General — I don’t mean this in an accusatory way — was a little vague on the timeline involved in this. What are we looking at? Are we talking six months, a year, two years, three years?

[1800]

Do we have some idea when this consultation and consideration will be complete and, therefore, the ministry will presumably be in a position, with the approval of the judiciary and others — presumably the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Society and others after, I’m sure, a thorough consultation — to make a recommendation to government, or cabinet, properly speaking?

Hon. S. Anton: The study itself is nearing completion. I don’t want to give a date, but it will not be too long from now.

L. Krog: I suppose if you’re five years old, Christmas seems an awfully long way off, now that we’re in May. But perhaps the Attorney General could indicate whether we’re talking months or years?

Hon. S. Anton: That would be months.

L. Krog: I can barely wait to unwrap the present.

In the same letter, the mandate for the following year, which we’re in the middle of, includes: “(4) Continue our justice reform agenda, including integration and court efficiencies as envisioned in the Cowper report.” What do those words mean to the Attorney General, and what in fact has happened in response to the Premier’s mandate?

Hon. S. Anton: There are many different ways in which we are looking at efficiencies, and I’ll mention a few of them here. We’ve got the Court Clerk Desktop, which is new technology to allow court clerks to move the records more effectively. We’ve got civil e-documents, electronic creation and distribution of documents in the civil tracking system, allowing the protection order registry to immediately receive a court order.

We’ve got the Provincial Court scheduling system; Crown digital workshop, which is a partnership between the criminal justice branch and the court services branch; Crown file ownership; Crown counsel scheduling system — just a whole plethora of interesting things that are going on in terms of efficiency — court services digital platform; e-filing in the Court of Appeal; and, of course, very extensive use of video technology for hearings of one nature or another around the province of British Columbia.

L. Krog: Have there been any indicators that the implementation of these has in fact resulted in the court efficiencies as envisioned in the Cowper report?

[1805]

Hon. S. Anton: Well, I think one example is…. I think the member has been reminding us quite often this session about the reduction in court hours, so I think we could include that as efficiencies.

Along the same lines is the fact that we’ve had early resolution of criminal matters so that, in fact, in 2014 there was a 3 percent higher number of early resolution of criminal files, which is believed to be due, in part, to the Crown counsel efficiencies.

L. Krog: I’m just wondering if some of the efficiencies in the court system aren’t due to the fact that we have, in large measure, decriminalized drinking and driving in this province. The number of cases that are prosecuted under the Criminal Code is down substantially. Therefore, court hours, in theory, should be down significantly in terms of judicial hours and therefore a corresponding reduction, which we tried to probe and find earlier today but couldn’t, obviously.

I’m concerned that we have a number of British Columbians — and I raise this example very specifically because they come into my constituency office; I don’t know if they come into the Attorney General’s office — who are saying: “Look, if you charge me under the Criminal Code, I’d at least be prosecuted on the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.”

But now — no offence, and I mean this somewhat cheekily — the dark side of the ministry gets to come after me, the superintendent of motor vehicles, on the basis of the balance of probabilities, etc. So I don’t even get the benefit of the criminal standard. Yet the penalty
[ Page 8304 ]
I’m stuck with may include the interlock device and programs and this and this and this and the inefficiencies that go with that, as opposed to my day in court. Find me guilty, find me not guilty and let me get on with my life and take my sentence.

I’d be interested to hear what the Attorney General has to say in response to those many British Columbians who are raising that very issue quite specifically. They don’t believe that they’re getting justice in the same way they did before, while the government can then, in turn, turn around and crow that in fact we’re reducing the number of cases in the criminal system, but we’re doing so because we’re providing an administrative penalty, which in many respects, is essentially something that the average person can’t defend themselves against.

[1810]

Hon. S. Anton: In terms of the number of cases that are kept out of the courtrooms each year because of the administrative penalties for the immediate roadside prohibition program, we calculate it to be about 8,000 per year. The program itself and the question about the program…. It is an administrative penalty, as is observed, and of course, it’s because what the person is carrying is a licence, a licence to drive, that they need to comply with the terms of their licence. If they do not, and they are pulled over and a driver has alcohol in his or her blood, then there will be an administrative penalty according to whatever the measurement is.

L. Krog: I’m sure the statistics are readily available. So perhaps the Attorney General could…. Let’s use 2010. In 2010 how many impaired driving charges and driving over .08 were laid in the province of British Columbia, and how many were laid last year in 2014?

Hon. S. Anton: I don’t have that number here today, but I gather that we are going to be continuing this tomorrow, and I should have it by tomorrow morning.

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

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:13 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
BIRCH ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH

The House in Committee of Supply (Section C); D. McRae in the chair.

The committee met at 2:43 p.m.

On Vote 29: ministry operations, $17,297,183,000.

The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen and viewers at home, welcome to the not-very-used Birch Room in the Victoria Legislature.

At this time I’d like to call the Committee of Supply, Section C, to order and recognize the Minister of Health.

Hon. T. Lake: Hon. Chair, with your patience, I would like to first introduce my staff that are with me today. Stephen Brown is my deputy minister. Manjit Sidhu is an assistant deputy minister who deals with finance and capital. Lynn Stevenson is our associate deputy minister. She’s accompanied by Doug Hughes and Ted Patterson, both assistant deputy ministers. We have a virtual army of people helping us throughout these estimates over the next little while.

I look forward to questions from the official opposition on the estimates. As mentioned, the estimates include…. The total for the ministry is $17.444 billion, which is almost 42 percent of the entire provincial budget. Obviously, Health is a big spender of the taxpayers’ dollars here in British Columbia.

[1445]

We are very proud of the service that is rendered to the citizens of British Columbia. The delivery of health care is through regional health authorities and the Provincial Health Services Authority as well. The strategic priorities are managed by the Ministry of Health.

I look forward to our discussions over the next few days, and as we all know, from a prevention and health promotion point of view, sitting is considered the new smoking. So I’m sure the estimates can be done in probably just a couple of hours so that we can all get out there and enjoy the fresh air and get some exercise.

The Chair: At this time I’d like to recognize the member for New Westminster and invite her to make an opening comment, followed by her first question.

J. Darcy: Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the minister. Two hours? I think it’s a bit of wishful thinking. I think we’ve actually been allocated six days. It is, as you mentioned, the single biggest chunk of the provincial budget, and certainly it’s deserving of that time.

I would like to begin…. I’m not in a position to thank the armies of staff who have assisted me today. I will, however, offer great thanks to the small group of staff that have been working with me to prepare for estimates: Derrick Harder, who is our health researcher for the official opposition; my legislative assistant, Chelsea Williams; and Kristine Parker, our legislative intern, who has been assigned to us for this session. I certainly want to thank the minister and thank his staff, the legions of them who
[ Page 8305 ]
wait for the various sets of questions and the various topics that we’ll be discussing over the coming days.

As we always do in estimates, I also want to acknowledge all of those health care workers, those health care providers, all of the various health care professions and front-line folks who work very, very hard every day and who can’t get enough recognition for working the way they do to serve British Columbians in every corner of this province.

Shall I get right to the first question? Okay. Let me thank the minister and his staff, first of all, for the briefing that we had last week. I’m not going to go over a lot of the big-picture numbers, because they’re in the documents, and we’ve been briefed on them. I want to really zero in on some of the most important questions, I think, facing health care in British Columbia, all of which of course have a major impact on the budget.

I’d indicated I was going to start with the issue of health care providers, delivery of care. I’d like to begin with the issue of A GP for Me. This is an issue we have canvassed at great length already in question period on many occasions. It’s a topic of considerable discussion. It’s probably the issue about which I hear most from people across B.C. in my role as the opposition spokesperson on Health.

As the minister knows, this commitment of A GP for Me by 2015 was first announced in the year 2010. It was reaffirmed in 2013. In fact, it was a central commitment of the minister and of the government as they campaigned for office — that this commitment would be met in 2015. We now are in 2015, and clearly we have not achieved that goal. We’re far from it. The minister has as much as acknowledged that in recent weeks in the media and in the Legislature.

I understand that the minister has said that some important progress has been made, that it’s valuable. I would like to begin by asking if the minister could please explain, for the record, what went wrong and why the government has failed to meet the target, the very clear commitment that they made to British Columbians in 2010 and in 2013.

Hon. T. Lake: Thank you to the member for the question. We’ve canvassed this a lot, but I’d like to go through it for the record. It’s an opportunity, I think, to discuss an important topic.

The member said that constituents in her riding are concerned about this. I would say the same is true for my constituency as well. People come in, and they’re having difficulty finding a family doctor.

This is an issue that’s not confined to British Columbia. It is a North America–wide and, in fact in many cases, a worldwide phenomenon. Disease and demands on the health care system are complex. There’s changing technology.

Also, at the same time, demographics are changing. If you look at the population throughout Canada, particularly in British Columbia, the population is aging as the baby boomer segment of our population moves through into the seniors population, and we know that health care for seniors is….

[1450]

Well, seniors will have more need for health care services, and the cost to deliver those services for seniors is much higher than it is for younger people. Having said that, it is clear that we are not alone in addressing this problem. We look at the Canadian community health survey that was put out and at data that goes from 2003 to 2013, and in Canada, if you average all the provinces, there are about 15.5 percent of people without a regular medical doctor. That takes all the territories and provinces and averages 15.5 percent.

In British Columbia we are right at that average of 15.5 percent. If we look to our neighbours in Alberta, who actually spend quite a bit more per person on health care than we do here in British Columbia, 20 percent of people there are without a regular doctor. In Saskatchewan, 19.7 percent; Manitoba, 16.4 percent; Quebec, 25.1 percent; in the Yukon it’s 26.7 percent; Northwest Territories, 58.1 percent. We can see that we’re not alone in this challenge in finding primary health care.

What have we done? We have created incentive programs to help with recruitment and retention through Health Match B.C. We have a practice readiness assessment tool for international medical graduates seeking to work in British Columbia to make sure that they can be licensed. In return, they will go into an underserviced area of the province for three years.

The GP for Me program, specifically, provides funding to divisions of family practice throughout British Columbia. I believe there are 33 divisions now throughout B.C. The initial pilot communities that the GP for Me program was rolled out in — Prince George, Cowichan and White Rock — have had tremendous success.

In fact, they’ve been able to attach patients to physicians. They have been able to support physicians and make sure that people that need a family doctor find one. We’ve had great success in those pilot communities, and then it was rolled out throughout the province.

I can tell the member that the 2015 target was certainly optimistic, and we will not be able to meet that target in 2015. But there has been great progress made, and we won’t just walk away from this. We will continue to do what is necessary to provide primary care for people around British Columbia.

I was at a GP for Me meeting in the Thompson Division of Family Practice on Friday. I spent a hour and a half on that committee, working with the doctors and the support staff that they have, and learned of many of the good things that they are doing that are attaching patients to physicians, looking at the needs in terms of retiring physicians and what the needs will be into the future, and also the recruitment programs that are there.
[ Page 8306 ]

We have incentive programs throughout rural British Columbia, and we have other programs that actually will pay doctors more to see those complex patients that, before, were treated in the same way a normal, healthy patient, if you like, was, in terms of remuneration to the physician.

Again, we know that this is a daunting challenge, but we’ve made some great progress. I am optimistic that we will continue to be able to attach patients to physicians because proper longitudinal care is one of the single biggest ways to achieve good health. We recognize that, and the divisions of family practice around the province are working hard to do that.

J. Darcy: The minister referred to people in my constituency raising the issue, but it is certainly the issue that I’ve heard about most from people living in all corners of British Columbia, about what an enormous problem it is for them.

I think we all understand that lack of access to primary care has an impact in many different ways and that it certainly increases costs in the health care system. It means more emergency room visits; it means more challenges with getting diagnostic tests and so on.

I want to come back to some of those issues, including the numbers. But I was looking back on the minister’s mandate letter from June 2013. I noticed that, in fact, there isn’t anything in the mandate letter of June 2013 from the Premier to the Health Minister about meeting the target of A GP for Me by 2015 — nothing at all.

[1455]

A number of other things are listed — lab reform, addiction spaces and so on. Nothing on A GP for Me. In the June 10, 2014, mandate letter there is a reference to GP for Me, but it says, specifically: “Publicly report on the status of the GP for Me program in preparation for the commitment to ensure every British Columbian who wants a GP has access to one.”

It says prepare to report publicly. Nowhere does it say: “I am mandating you. I am giving direction to meet this goal by 2015.”

Now, I don’t know what the 2015 mandate letter says yet. I guess it comes out after the House…. Has it…? I looked for it.

Interjection.

J. Darcy: No? I looked for it the other day — couldn’t find it. I think it gets issued after the House rises, which is unfortunate because I would dearly love to see what it says in it. I know that this is a letter from the Premier, not from the Health Minister, but I wonder if the minister has an explanation for why there was not, in the mandate letter, a specific expectation — nothing set out in 2013, and not an expectation set out in 2013 to actually meet the target in 2015, as had been promised.

Hon. T. Lake: I think, from my point of view, when we look at the mandate letter it says: “Publicly report on the status of the GP for Me program in preparation for the commitment to ensure every British Columbian who wants a GP has access to one.” That’s a statement that says that we need to tell people how we’re going. What are the challenges? What will we continue to do to ensure that people are attached to primary care?

I think that’s a reasonable approach to take. I can’t snap my fingers and create another 1,000 doctors in the province of British Columbia. I have said this before, but I think it’s worth repeating. When we became government we increased the number of medical school spaces in the province of British Columbia — almost two and a half times as many spaces now as in 2001. If that had been done in the 1990s, we’d have a thousand more physicians today.

Now, that’s the past, and you know, we can only deal with today and tomorrow. We have taken the steps to increase the number of medical students, and we have also taken medical training out to different parts of the province. We train medical students in Vancouver and Victoria but also, importantly, in Kelowna and in Prince George.

The distributed UBC medical program is a unique program. It has had accolades from around the world. What we see happening is that students that get their medical degree in Kelowna, in Prince George are more likely to stay in those areas of the province than to return to the Lower Mainland or go to another urban area somewhere else in Canada to practise.

We also have family residency training programs throughout the province. We have six family residents in Kamloops. I’ve met them on a number of occasions. We have six more, I believe, coming this summer. Again, training family doctors in all parts of the province is more likely to result in attachment.

On top of that, we started licensing nurse practitioners, I believe in 2006, and we have almost 300 licensed nurse practitioners throughout the province, which also provide primary health care to British Columbians. Many of those, through the NP forB.C. program, are hired by health authorities to work in integrated health care, community health centres, with other health care professionals to meet the primary health care needs of British Columbians.

We are working hard. I should mention that we’ve increased the number of residency spaces for international medical graduates as well. Those who get their training in other parts of the world and want to come back into British Columbia now have more opportunities. I believe that has gone up to — I’ll check on the number — 34, up from six in 2003. Over five times as many than we had 12 years ago.

I mentioned the practice readiness assessment tool. We’re doing a lot of different things to try and bring physicians to the province of British Columbia, knowing that we are competing with every other jurisdiction in North
[ Page 8307 ]
America. But when you look at the data that I mentioned from the community health survey we actually are doing quite well compared to many other provinces in Canada.

[1500]

J. Darcy: I’m certainly well aware of the challenges that the minister refers to, and he’s spoken about a growing population, aging population and so on. But I need to come back to this issue of the target that was set, because the target was set in 2010.

It’s one thing to miss the target from 2010 if it were just a couple of years after that, but the government recommitted to it in 2013 — recommitted to it, restated it in the election platform. Yet I’ve seen no analysis, no evaluation, no figures that indicated what was achieved between 2010 and 2013 that meant that the government clearly felt it was in a position in 2013 to recommit, very, very forcefully, that it would be met by 2015.

Hon. T. Lake: Was there a question? I didn’t hear a question.

J. Darcy: The government recommitted to this in 2013. Was that based on an evaluation of what had happened between 2010 and 2013 that indicated it was within reach? Was that evaluation done? Where is that analysis? Surely, the minister and the Premier based a 2013 commitment on being able to meet this by 2015 on an analysis of what was possible based on what had happened between 2010 and 2013.

Hon. T. Lake: I just have a chronology of the program from 2010 to 2016. I’m happy to provide it to the member. Essentially, the commitment was made in June 2010. We started those three prototype communities that I mentioned — Prince George, Cowichan and White Rock. They began their work.

In April of 2013 the actual GP for Me program was announced. So in 2013 the program to take the prototype out to the rest of the province was announced — so the recommitment made, in 2013, that the member refers to — and the first divisions, other than the initial pilot communities, started their work.

I know, from sitting on the Thompson Division of Family Practice, that it has taken longer than some people envisioned to get the planning phase done for these divisions. They are all moving into their implementation phase now, so it is taking longer than everyone initially thought.

As I mentioned, there is some really good work going on, and I can see the fruit of their labours starting to flourish now. But we realize at this point in time, from 2013 to 2015, that the job isn’t finished. We’re not giving up on it. We’re going to continue to do the work. Our goal is make sure that people in British Columbia have access to primary health care.

J. Darcy: Perhaps I should rephrase the question. The minister has referred to those pilot projects that began. But the fact still remains that three years after the government committed to A GP for Me by 2015 — three years afterwards — the government recommitted to it. Does the minister have the numbers to indicate how many people were without family doctors in 2010? What was the status in 2013, three years into the program?

Surely, if the government committed to it in 2013, on a short time frame then, two more years…. The government surely believed at that time it was possible. Where are the numbers that indicate where we were at? Why was it realistic to assume at that point that the government would get there by 2015?

[1505]

Hon. T. Lake: I just want to make sure that I’m answering the member’s inquiry. The recommitment in 2013 was based on expanding the program throughout the province of British Columbia. In 2013, as I mentioned, there was about 15.5 percent of the population without a regular physician.

Now, that doesn’t mean to say that every one of those people was actively looking for a physician. We know that there are parts of your life — in your early adulthood, for instance — where the use of medical services is quite sparse. Having said that, we recommitted in 2013. We are going to…. In fact, all the divisions, as part of their implementation plans, have an evaluation process incorporated into their plan.

Those evaluations will be done. I mentioned that it is taking longer to get to the implementation phase than we had envisioned. But all of the divisions will have an evaluation built into their plan.

The interim division reports on evaluation occur in June 2015. Some divisions will be far enough along to be able to provide that interim evaluation. We’ll have an interim provincial report in August 2015. That’s what the mandate letter is referring to. It’s reporting out how we’re doing on the program.

The program end date is March 2016, so the GP for Me program formally comes to an end in March 2016. Obviously, as we go through this process, we may want to continue some aspects of that program. That remains to be seen as we move through the evaluation process.

The final division of family practice reports will be in June 2016, and the final provincial report will be in August of 2016.

J. Darcy: Can the minister make available to us evaluations or the reports that were done every year between 2010 and 2015? Were there evaluations done each year? Surely there must have been, if the government recommitted to it in 2013.

[1510]

Hon. T. Lake: There were annual reports on each of the three prototype communities from 2011, 2012 and 2013 before the program was broadened out across the province. We can certainly make those available to the member.

J. Darcy: I think this is the difficulty I’m having with understanding what the minister is saying. I don’t think I’m alone in this. I know that the minister has referred to this as an aspirational goal very recently. The Premier last week referred to it, and the head of Doctors of B.C. called it an aspirational goal. I believe the minister did a few months ago. The Premier last week referred to it as an ambitious goal.

But in 2010 and in 2013 it wasn’t referred to as an ambitious goal or aspirational. It was a commitment — a clear commitment — that was given. Surely, if there was a commitment given five years ago and then repeated again in 2013, there would be a clear plan — analysis of where we are every step along the way and a clear plan to meet those objectives. The difficulty is we’re seeing no evidence of that. So now the language has changed.

Now it’s no longer a commitment. Now the minister is saying: “March 2016 is the end of this program. We’re going to keep working at it.”

But is there a commitment to try and achieve the target that was set in 2010 and 2013 of A GP for Me? Is that still a target that is being set by this government? How does the government plan to realize it and when?

Hon. T. Lake: The commitment was to put in a program to make available a family physician to those who required a family physician, so the three pilot communities started: Prince George, Cowichan and White Rock. We saw tremendous success, and I said I would provide the annual reports to the member.

The program was seen to be one that had success in attaching patients to physicians to acquire primary care. It was taken out over the province of British Columbia through the formation of divisions of family practice, with a suite of incentives through the GPSC committee of the Doctors of B.C. and the Ministry of Health.

I’ve explained that it has taken longer than envisioned for those over 30 divisions of family practice to get to the implementation stage of the GP for Me program.

We are committed to a program that increases the availability of primary care to residents of British Columbia. We will continue to do the work that’s necessary. As I mentioned, it’s a challenge faced by every jurisdiction. So it was an ambitious goal. I’m not going to stand here today and say that we will accomplish this by a certain date, because we realize that despite tremendous efforts, this remains a challenge, as it is a challenge in other jurisdictions across Canada.

[1515]

That doesn’t mean that we’re going to give up on it. We are going to continue working hard, and we will see the fruits of the work of the divisions, I think, start to flourish over the next number of years.

Meanwhile, we will evaluate the program as we go. The formal GP for Me program is scheduled to go until March of 2016. We will evaluate the program, and we will decide if the program should continue on as is or what we can take from the experience we’ve had over the last number of years and look at ways of targeting resources to have a greater effect.

This isn’t something that someone can snap their fingers and cure overnight. We understand that; the member understands that. She’s worked in health care for a long period of time, and she understands the challenge.

We will continue to work hard, and physicians — not just physicians — nurse practitioners, health care professionals and their support that are working with the divisions of family practice, health authorities, are all working extremely hard on this challenge, as they are in other jurisdictions across Canada. We’ll continue to try to meet the challenge of making sure that primary health care is available for all British Columbians.

J. Darcy: I’m certainly aware and applaud the efforts of the divisions of family practice — I know that they’re working very hard to attach patients and taking on more patients with complex care needs and so on — and certainly fully support the expanded scope of practice for nurse practitioners and the expanded use of nurse practitioners in meeting primary care needs.

My questions have been directed at what was a very clear promise that was not about nurse practitioners. It was a very clear promise about a GP for every British Columbian by 2015.

Let me continue. There have been many different numbers cited when we refer to how many British Columbians are without a family doctor. Martin Dawes, head of the department of family practice at UBC, was quoted just last week, saying that the backlog of British Columbians looking for a family physician in 2010 was 176,000 British Columbians — had grown to more than 200,000. It’s actually got worse, he says.

I wonder if the minister could please comment on what the actual numbers are today of people in British Columbia without a family doctor and whether than number has, in fact, gotten worse.

Hon. T. Lake: According to the Canadian community health survey, approximately 4.6 percent of British Columbians were actively looking for a regular family practitioner. That’s 209,000 patients. As a result of the GP for Me program, as of December 31 over 54,600 previously unattached complex patients received care from almost 1,900 family practitioners.

I think Dr. Dawes was saying, in terms of the percentage of British Columbians without a regular family physician — they may not be actively looking for one,
[ Page 8309 ]
but it’s an estimate based on the community health survey — has gone up over the years, as it has in most every other province.

Just to quote Dr. Dawes as well. He said: “I think what the government has done here is saying that it really is essential for every person to have a family physician, because a family physician is so important to the health of the province.” He says: “I think it actually has addressed a lot of the problem. It’s difficult to suddenly produce a lot of doctors who can look after patients in primary care.”

[1520]

He recognizes that and also points to the fact that UBC is now training 50 percent more family physicians than it did in 2010. UBC has played a big role in this as well. There used to be more physicians going into specialties, although family practice is a type of specialty as well, but more people were going into subspecialties. Now people are going into family practice. A far greater percentage today of the UBC graduates are, in fact, going into family practice.

Dr. Dawes recognizes that the province was right to aim high, and it’s actually having some success. I, with him, will hope that success continues.

J. Darcy: The fact is, in that time period, British Columbia’s population also grew significantly. I think we’re talking an increase of 220,000 people. Surely that is something, when the government makes commitments, when it makes promises…. It’s well aware of the factors about an aging population, the factors about many patients who have chronic conditions that need adequate attention and need a continuity of care from a primary care practitioner, have not changed.

Population projections. Government knows those, surely, and plans for those in advance. Aging population. This is something we’ve been talking about for a long time. I need to revisit this issue. Those factors haven’t changed, Minister. The factors that are given as to why the goal was not met haven’t changed. They were known in 2013.

I come back to: was it a commitment? Was it a promise that was made for the purposes of an election, for political purposes, or was there a realistic expectation that the goal would be met?

Hon. T. Lake: I think it’s safe to say that it didn’t just occur to people in 2013 that the population was aging. In fact, I would say that people have known about the demographic bubble of baby boomers probably as far back as the 1990s, when medical spaces were frozen, when an attempt to limit access by limiting billing numbers took place as well — tried to limit the supply of physicians to try to control health care costs.

That was the thinking at the time. You know, governments try to manage and make the health care system sustainable. But as we’ve seen with things like tuition freezes, freezing spaces in medical school isn’t going to get you out of a problem, when you knew back in the 1990s that the aging population was coming at us. It’s not a revelation that occurred in 2013.

The fact is that the number of physicians has increased by 32 percent since 2001-2002, at which time there were 8,234 physicians. Today there are 10,833, outpacing the 12.8 percent growth in B.C.’s population over the same time. The population has increased less than 13 percent. The number of physicians has increased 32 percent.

What’s true is that the demographics of health professionals has changed as well. If you look at the graduates of medical school today, they look much different than they did 30 years ago. Far more women are going into medical school. I have three daughters. I think it’s a great thing that they have an opportunity to have a tremendous career in health care.

That certainly changes the way physicians practise. I’ve had discussions with my daughters as they’re going into a career that it is often the case that they may decide to have families, take time out from their career, so they’re not available to give access to the public, which is perfectly understandable and something that we all accept and, in fact, encourage. But it does serve to reduce the accessibility of the number of physician hours that are out there.

Even male graduates today work differently than they did 30 years ago, which is also a good thing, because we know that work burnout is a problem in many professions. The sort of stereotypical, single practitioner working in an office 60 or 70 hours a week, doing deliveries at night and being on call on the weekend, led to a lot of burnout, a lot of emotional and mental challenges. That doesn’t do anyone any good.

[1525]

We know that lifestyles are different. It’s important to have that work-life balance. But those factors, coming together with an aging population, simply mean that even though we have more physicians, there is still a challenge in accessibility to physicians. It’s a challenge everywhere, not just in the province of British Columbia. It’s one that we will continue to work hard to resolve.

J. Darcy: Yes, I’ve certainly spoken with many family practitioners and read the studies that indicate that people are choosing different ways of practicing and different lifestyles, that the trend of more women graduating has been in place for some time. That’s also not something new in the last few years. There have been more women graduating from medical school for some considerable period of time.

The issue of lifestyle choices is one that both women and men are choosing to make. I think it’s important to note. I want to return to that issue because one of the issues, clearly, is what kinds of options and choices are available for people who choose family practice, besides the predominant model that exists today.

I want to come back to this issue of tracking progress, though, on the commitment of A GP for Me. The Auditor
[ Page 8310 ]
General report — and we canvassed this last year in estimates — in 2014 was very clear. It stated, “We found that the ministry is not actively tracking its progress in meeting this goal,” that goal being the GP for Me by 2015. “The ministry has only estimated the number of unattached patients prior to the initiative’s launch and plans to use the same estimation process in 2015 to look at the change.”

I wonder if the minister can respond to the concerns that were raised by the Auditor General last year on this point. Does the minister disagree with the assessment that the Auditor General made at the time? What has changed since this report to ensure that the ministry is actually working with accurate information, which the Auditor General said last year that the ministry was not doing?

[P. Pimm in the chair.]

The Chair: Minister.

Hon. T. Lake: Thank you, hon. Chair. Welcome to the debate.

The question about monitoring the progress of attachment. This was discussed at Public Accounts, and it’s a combination of three factors to track the success of the attachment initiative.

One is Stats Canada data. This is reported by Canadians across the country.

Also, we use the billing of incentive fees, so there’s an attachment fee that has to be…. Essentially, when a physician is seeing an unattached patient, they can put a zero dollar fee in place, which allows them to access the incentive program. That’s run through the General Practice Services Committee, which is a committee of the Ministry of Health and the Doctors of B.C. Through that, we see that 54,600 of those billing codes have been utilized, so that is put into the data as well.

[1530]

Also, MSP billings, which are separate from the GPSC incentives…. These are billings that are made to the Medical Services Plan for specific encounters with patients. That data is incorporated in an algorithm with the billing of the GPSC incentive fees and with the StatsCan data to come up with numbers that indicate the attachment success of these programs.

J. Darcy: I wonder: Minister, can you just explain again what the 54,600 figure refers to?

Hon. T. Lake: First of all, the physician registers to be able to get these incentive fees. The incentive fee I’m talking about is the unattached complex patient needs. These are high-needs patients. My dad would be a very good example — I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being used as an example — of someone that’s in their 80s that has multiple medical conditions that are being managed. These are frail patients in residential care or in the community. They may have cancer. They may have high-need chronic conditions — for instance, diabetics, a severe disability, mental illness, substance use. Maternity patients, as well, can be considered complex patients.

Physicians can bill $200 per patient. As of December 31, 2014, 54,600 previously unattached complex patients received care from almost 1,900 family practitioners.

J. Darcy: The figure for how many people were without a family doctor in 2010 — the StatsCan figure, I believe, for that was 176,000. Is that correct?

Hon. T. Lake: In 2010 the number of people in B.C. looking for a family doctor was approximated to be, because it is a model, 176,000 people.

J. Darcy: Then the figure that the minister referred to a few minutes ago is a comparable 2013 figure? I don’t know if the 2014 figures are in yet. The figure was 206,000. Was that the 2013 or 2014 number, and is it the comparable number?

Hon. T. Lake: The comparable number for 2013 — we don’t have the 2014 numbers yet — is approximately 209,000.

J. Darcy: So there are more people without a family doctor today than there were in 2010, when this commitment was first made. Is that correct?

Hon. T. Lake: Well, 2013 was when the program was initiated throughout the province. Just to remind the member, there were only three prototype communities from 2011 to 2013. We really don’t have a number to say how effective the program is generally once it’s been implemented throughout the province of British Columbia because we don’t have up-to-the-minute data. We don’t have 2014 data yet.

With 2013 being the baseline for when it was implemented provincewide, it is that number, 209,000. It will be interesting to see what the 2014 numbers are — I believe they come out in June — and how they relate to population growth as well. The member pointed out that that’s important. The population is growing, so we have a large commitment.

[1535]

We have influx from other provinces. We know that the province to the east of us likes to come to British Columbia in their retirement years and spend their time in retirement in British Columbia. That’s something that we’ll see, in terms of population growth and the number of people actively looking for a physician.

We will be able, I think, in June to have our first ability to evaluate the real baseline, which is when this program was spread across British Columbia, which was 2013.
[ Page 8311 ]

J. Darcy: The minister keeps coming back to the pilot projects, which were important — and some significant successes there, absolutely. But the commitment was made in 2010, not in 2013, Minister. The minister is giving the impression, maybe not intentionally, that the commitment was only made in 2013 to have A GP for Me by 2015, but the commitment was actually made in 2010.

I wonder if the minister could please clarify that. I don’t know if we have a misunderstanding or what. But the program did not begin in 2013; it began in 2010. That’s when the minister’s predecessor said that there was going to be A GP for Me for every British Columbian.

Hon. T. Lake: Well, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t know how many ways I can say it. The commitment was made in 2010 that by the end of 2015 any British Columbian looking for a family practitioner would be able to find one.

We’re not there. Well, it’s not the end of 2015, but I think it’s clear that we’re not going to get there by the end of 2015. It was an ambitious goal, and we are not there. We won’t be there at the end of 2015.

The program itself, the GP for Me program, was prototyped in three different communities, and then the GP for Me actual program provincewide was announced in 2013. So I think that is the real base that we can use for evaluation, now that it is broadcast throughout the province of British Columbia.

I’ve said that divisions have taken longer than necessary — not “necessary,” longer than anticipated; I better be careful, because I know how hard they’re working — or longer than anticipated to get to the implementation phase. Having sat through four, I think, meetings of the Thompson Division of Family Practice — I sit on that committee as an MLA — I understand the challenges that they have.

I also understand the great work that they’ve all done. It’s going out to the community, understanding the needs of the community, talking to all the physicians, understanding their challenges, trying to understand how many physicians will be retiring in the community over the next number of years, looking at the new graduates and where they might be going, looking at the influx of graduates from elsewhere. We didn’t have the practice readiness assessment tool until just this past year.

There’s a lot of work that has gone into the planning phase of the GP for Me programs that just started in 2013. At this stage most of those divisions are moving into the implementation phase. We’ve got 33 of 34 divisions that are formally participating in the initiative. Ten divisions are still in the assessment and planning phase — this is as of January 2015 — 20 are implementing their local attachment strategies, and three attachment prototype divisions are in the sustainability phase. I mentioned those.

If you were in Prince George before this initiative occurred, it was sometimes difficult to get a family practitioner. The success of the program there has resulted in a completely different picture now by all accounts. It’s not going to happen every time that someone will have a doctor instantly, but by every account, in cities like Prince George and in White Rock and in Cowichan there are family physicians available to those who need them.

We hope that the other divisions throughout the province, which really started their work in 2013, half of which are moving now into the implementation phase, will have that same success. But clearly, they won’t be there by the end of 2015. It will take a little longer than we anticipated. We’re going to continue to do the work.

The member may keep asking questions about this commitment. I’ve said we are not going to be able to reach that ambitious goal by the end of 2015. I recognize that. I acknowledge that. The Premier has acknowledged that. It doesn’t mean that we are giving up on this effort, and the work continues.

[1540]

J. Darcy: Well, I have been pressing the issue, and I will continue to because, as the minister agrees, this is a critical question. People access the health care system through primary care.

The minister refers to progress that has been made in some areas. The minister is also, I’m sure, very well aware of the other communities, both urban and rural, that are in very desperate straits. I’m not going to detail all of them. We have a crisis situation developing very quickly in Richmond. We know about Chetwynd. We know about Fort St. John — many doctors who are scheduled to retire and a looming crisis that’s coming in that community, as it is in many others.

I guess I’ll just ask…. The minister says: “We’re going keep working on this goal.” Does the minister plan to set a new date and say: “We are now planning to realize this goal by a certain date — A GP for Me for every British Columbian by a certain date”?

Hon. T. Lake: I’ve already said I’m not going to set a date. So, again, I can only answer the question so many times, but I’m happy to stand up every time and give the same answer.

It’s an ambitious target. We haven’t given up on our efforts, and we’ll continue to work hard.

J. Darcy: The Fraser Health review that was completed last year focused on a wide variety of issues. One of the significant things that was referenced was the very high number of people without a family doctor. The figure, I believe, was 27 percent of people in Fraser Health without a family doctor.

That was also — as the minister will well know from the report that resulted from the Fraser Health review — a health authority that saw a significantly higher usage of emergency rooms for purposes that weren’t necessarily
[ Page 8312 ]
requiring visits to an emergency room, longer wait-lists for surgeries. I could go on.

There were a number of issues — overuse of acute care, underuse of residential care and home support and community care. But it was very striking, I think, that the number of people without a family doctor was referred to as being as high as 27 percent.

Is there particular work that’s being done in Fraser Health to meet the goal of A GP for Me program?

[1545]

Hon. T. Lake: Fraser Health is working very hard on some of the challenges that were identified in the review that we conducted. They submit reports to us on a regular basis. In fact, all of the divisions in the divisions of family practice in Fraser Health are in the implementation stage. So the work continues on.

[1550]

I know that the CEO of Fraser Health met with the Inter-Divisional Strategic Council just last Friday to make sure that their efforts and the health authority’s efforts are being integrated. I can give the member some examples.

For instance, in Chilliwack the division there has set up a hotline to assess patients in urgent need of a family doctor. They’ve expanded the Hope clinic and the Fraser Canyon outreach program to provide care to more aboriginals, seniors and expecting mothers. They’re doing education throughout the community on how to use and access primary care, as well as a coordinated recruitment strategy.

Fraser Northwest Division is identifying and connecting high-need patients with a family doctor and developing a mentoring program for new family doctors in partnership with UBC. They’re providing in-home, team-based care for frail homebound patients and looking to integrate with other health care practitioners, as well as a recruitment program for new family doctors.

In Langley the goals are improving care for frail and elderly patients by integrating community supports and also strengthening recruitment strategies to bring more family doctors and other primary care providers to Langley.

In Ridge Meadows they’re focusing on improving services at the maternity clinic, increasing support for homeless and mentally ill patients by adding more nurse practitioners, establishing multidisciplinary team care in the region and bringing new family doctors and locums to the region.

In Surrey–North Delta: improvement of patient care through the development of new models of practice, expansion of multidisciplinary care programs, implementation of a recruitment and retention strategy, as well as providing health education to the community.

You will see some common themes in divisions across the province. Many of those themes I have seen at the Thompson Division of Family Practice table. In Fraser Health they are working hard to do that. Also, Fraser is planning on opening more residential care spaces to take pressure off of acute care so that patients are in the appropriate setting for their needs.

Throughout the province what we’re also doing with the General Practice Services Committee is to attach those patients in residential care to family practitioners. Starting in June of this year, there is another incentive program for family practitioners to take on patients in residential care that will, again, make sure that those patients in residential care are getting access to a family practitioner.

Again, a lot of different things happening in Fraser and throughout the province as we try to increase attachment of patients.

J. Darcy: The figure in Fraser Health is very striking. I was struck with it when I read the report. I’m struck by it over and over again, because it was 27 percent. The figure the minister has referred to just a little earlier, I believe, for the province was 15.5 percent.

Can the minister explain why he believes the situation is so much worse in Fraser Health, or are we counting different things?

[1555]

Hon. T. Lake: What we have done over the last couple of years, since I came into the portfolio and my deputy, Stephen Brown, took over the deputy position, was to look at the system generally, the needs of the population, trying to understand where the pressures were in the health care system so that we could redirect resources into those areas that had the highest need.

What we found across the province…. And this is not limited to British Columbia. Others have been doing this same work. In fact, others are coming to us to learn from this. We had the executive team from Ontario Ministry of Health with us a couple of weeks ago, and Quebec is coming out soon to learn what we’re doing and how we arrived at the strategic priorities that we have. What we found was there’s an overreliance on the acute care system throughout British Columbia — and, in fact, throughout Canada, I don’t hesitate to say.

In Fraser Health that problem was more acute than in other areas of the province, when we looked at the general practitioners. These are family practitioners out in the community. You look at Interior Health Authority. We saw that there were 141.3 GPs per 100,000 people. Look at Vancouver Coastal, 142 per 100,000; Island Health, 158.5; and Northern Health, 123.1. So across British Columbia the average was 127.3, but in Fraser Health the number was only 86.1.

What happened over the years, what we saw from our review, was there was an influx of family practitioners into the hospital system. They have the largest hospital-
[ Page 8313 ]
ist program in the province. These are physicians working in the hospital. In the old model physicians would take on patients, and then they would do their rounds in the hospital to visit the patients that they had that were hospitalized.

In Fraser Health there was an overreliance on the hospital. People who were going into the hospital needed to have physicians there, so the hospitalist program was expanded. That had the consequence of draining physicians from the community.

That has been recognized now, and that’s why divisions are working hard and Fraser Health is working hard to ensure that there are more physicians in the community — also, some specialized clinics, like the South Asian Health Centre, which ensures that a large part of the community understands that health care actually is in the community as well as at the hospital.

[1600]

It’s really important that the health authority recognize the cultures of the patients that they are serving in a patient-centred system. That is an attempt to assure a large segment of the community in Fraser Health that health care can be obtained in a primary care setting outside of the hospital.

Initiatives like that, we hope, will take the pressure off the hospital and result in more primary care in the community.

J. Darcy: I appreciate the explanation. I mean, 27 percent of residents in Fraser Health without a family doctor is pretty shocking. There are all kinds of health implications that flow from that.

One of the particular questions that I’d like to ask the minister.… This comes from the Fraser Health review, where it also talked about a higher-than-average incidence of diabetes amongst the population.

Then we saw a report from Providence Health two or three months ago that spoke about the increased incidence of type 2 diabetes amongst youth in general and an incidence about three times higher than the youth population in general amongst South Asian youth.

We’re, I think, well aware that Fraser Health is where the largest concentration of British Columbians of South Asians origin reside. We have, clearly, significant, significant concern in the South Asian community there. We should all be very concerned about it, about the impact on health outcomes for those young people, many of whom are walking around not knowing that they have diabetes, as this report said very clearly.

One of the reasons for that is they’re not attached to a family doctor. Many young people are not considered in that category of people who are looking for a family doctor.

My question to the minister is: are there any particular initiatives underway to ensure that some of those most at-risk populations…. In this case, it’s youth of South Asian origin who have type 2 diabetes at a rate three times that of youth in general. Are there particular initiatives underway to try and attach those young people to a family doctor to deal with prevention issues as well as to catch this disease in its early stages and to prevent the later very severe complications that can develop?

[1605]

Hon. T. Lake: I just would like some clarification from the member on the question. We know that diabetes is more prevalent in the South Asian population. I’ve talked about the South Asian Health Centre that has been developed and that part of their programming is to educate people about chronic diseases, like diabetes.

There also is the iCON program, Dr. Kendall Ho’s program through UBC, which is a public awareness campaign around chronic disease, diabetes being a focus as well. We know that the South Asian population is more likely to have diabetes. I have seen reports that young people today have a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes than previously.

I’m just trying to link the two — if the member has seen reports that specifically say young South Asians, or if she’s just putting the two things together: young people, higher prevalence; South Asians, higher prevalence. I just need some clarification and where that data came from so that we can get the appropriate answer.

J. Darcy: Yes, it was a particular…. I don’t recall the author. I think there were three authors of the report. It was issued by Providence Health, I would say two months ago, perhaps three months ago. I did a private member’s statement on it on a Monday morning a couple of months ago. It’s there on the record.

It was publicly released. It received considerable media attention in provincial media as well as in the South Asian media. It showed that the incidence of diabetes amongst South Asian youth was particularly high. I believe the figure was three times higher than the incidence for youth in general.

It also indicated that, as the minister says, the percentage of young people who have type 2 diabetes is overtaking the number of young people who have type 1 diabetes, for the first time, and it indicated that there were an awful lot of young people walking around not being aware that they have diabetes. Therefore my question…. This is why I’m tying it back to the issue of access to family doctors, because we know that many young people are not attached to family doctors.

Hon. T. Lake: I don’t have that report in front of me. There’s no question that we know young people have a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes today than they did in the past, and we know that people of South Asian background are up to four times as likely to have diabetes.

I don’t know if there are specific programs targeted to young South Asian members of the community. But as I
[ Page 8314 ]
mentioned, the South Asian Health Centre is a cooperation between the Surrey–North Delta Division of Family Practice, together with Fraser Health, and it opened in November of 2013.

It recognizes the demographic differences and the different prevalence of some chronic diseases — cardiac disease, diabetes — in the South Asian population. The centre is focusing on primary care and chronic disease management, so patients will have access to a team of care providers, which include nurse practitioners, registered diabetes nurses and dietitians, with a focus on delivering care that respects culture and builds a treatment plan around individual needs and values.

This is an initiative that’s funded by a joint committee of the B.C. Ministry of Health and the B.C. Medical Association, as I mentioned earlier. That is a definite initiative targeted at the South Asian population, which, of course, would be open to all ages of the South Asian population in Surrey–North Delta.

I will endeavour to find out if there are specific programs that Fraser Health has targeted to the younger South Asian population, whether it’s in school programs or others, and certainly provide that information to the member.

[1610]

J. Darcy: I would certainly appreciate that. I raise this issue because we know that the segments of the population…. There are particular demographics who have less attachment to primary care and to family doctors, in particular, than other segments of the population. That includes probably the biggest percentage of people who don’t have…. The highest proportion are found amongst young people, who believe that they’re invincible.

When we have as serious a problem as this kind of incidence of disease, of diabetes, it would seem that we need a pretty targeted strategy in order to reach those young people and to try and address that challenge.

The minister has given a percentage breakdown by health authority about…. The figures the minister gave earlier when he ran through them were the number of general practitioners per 100,000 population. Is that correct? I just want to clarify that’s what the minister was…. The minister gave me some figures a few minutes ago. That was the number of general practitioners per 100,000 population, health authority by health authority.

Hon. T. Lake: Yes, that’s correct.

J. Darcy: Does the minister have a breakdown within those health authorities about where the lack of attachment to a family doctor or primary care practitioner is most acute? Are you able to break it down further? I’m not suggesting that you’re able to produce that right here and now. But is the minister able to do a further breakdown by communities within each of those health authorities? Does that kind of tracking and knowledge exist about where the problem is the most acute?

Hon. T. Lake: That information is being collected as the divisions of family practice go through their planning and implementation stage. Part of the evaluation process that we will see from each division is the estimate of the number of unattached patients in each division of family practice. Within Fraser Health I believe there are five or six divisions of family practice, so we….

Interjection.

Hon. T. Lake: Ten? Thank you.

There are ten divisions of family practice in Fraser Health. Once they move into the next stage and we can see all their numbers, we’ll have a better idea, on a more granular level, of the unattached patient demand.

J. Darcy: How is it that the minister is able to say that it’s 141.3 per 100,000? There we’re dealing strictly with numbers of general practitioners. Do you have the numbers of unattached patients for the entire health authority, or do you not have those figures yet? So I’d ask: can you break it down further? But do you have the overall figures for that? In Fraser Health we know it’s 27 percent. It said so in the Fraser Health review.

[1615]

Hon. T. Lake: We have a good idea of how many family physicians there are per 100,000 people in each of the health authorities. So we can certainly extrapolate from that that where there are fewer physicians per 100,000 people, there will be more of an unattached patient population. We don’t have the specific numbers of unattached patients per health authority.

That information is coming up through the divisions’ work. We will be collating all of that information into a comprehensive piece of data so that we can then say that in the ten divisions in Fraser Health the estimate of unattached patients is X. Then we can line that up with the number of doctors per 100,000. I’m pretty confident there’ll be a correlation between the number of family physicians per 100,000 and the number of unattached patients.

We don’t have all of that information collated yet. As I mentioned, the divisions are moving through that process now, and we hope to have that data at a later date.

J. Darcy: The reference…. That report is in Diabetic Medicine, a study by Dr. Joe Hall, Dr. Khan, Dr. Kwan and Dr. Ke in January, I believe it is — January 28, 2015.

I’m a little puzzled by the minister’s answer, and I’m going to go back, at the risk of repeating myself. How could the ministry, the government, possibly set a goal of meeting these targets by 2015 if we don’t actually know
[ Page 8315 ]
where it is and who it is that doesn’t have a family doctor in British Columbia?

I completely understand and respect the work that the divisions of family practice are doing now in order to try and evaluate that and in order to work with government to try and move forward on it. But it’s 2015 already. How can it be that government does not have those figures already?

Surely, a plan was put in place based on an evaluation and an analysis of real need. Otherwise, was it a slogan, a promise but not an actual commitment?

[1620]

Hon. T. Lake: Let me counter the member’s assertion this way. There were estimated to be 176,000 people in British Columbia looking for a family doctor in 2010, when the idea was put forward and the commitment made to, within five years, have everyone who’s looking for a family doctor have a family doctor.

We’ve said that it’s an ambitious target, so we looked for a vehicle to operationalize that commitment. The minister of the day, the bureaucracy of the day, worked extremely hard.

The member well knows, having worked in health care for many years, that the system suffers from inertia. The way things have been done for many years tends to stay the same. A number of years ago physicians were not used to practising or working in collaboration like they are today.

The vehicle used to operationalize this commitment was the GP for Me program, prototyped initially in three different communities. Those communities of Prince George, White Rock and Cowichan were different communities. That was important, to prototype them in different communities where they had different challenges — differences in terms of the population demographics; in terms of the number of people coming into the region, the influx of new residents; in terms of the health needs of the population; and importantly, in terms of the physician community.

What demographic of physician community that was in the particular community and looking at expected retirements would, of course, add to the challenge.

The division of family practice, the GP for Me program, was the vehicle, and then they started to do their work. We had this overall number of 176,000 patients, but then each of the divisions had to look at their own communities.

When it was operationalized across the province, then each division — over 30 divisions — had to do the work locally, to look at their physician population. What was the demographic of their physician population? What was the estimated number that would be retiring over the next five to ten years? What was the influx of new people in the community? What was the cultural makeup of the community and the prevalence of different complex diseases in the community?

From that work, they’re developing implementation plans. I guess the government of the day could have said in 2010, “We’re going to do this by 2020,” but the government wanted to see action. When you put a timeline on something, it serves to move it up in terms of the amount of resources that are put into any government program. We know that if it’s a high priority and there’s a tight timeline set, you’re more likely to make progress.

We’ve made some exceptional progress. We haven’t met the target of 2015, but that work is ongoing and will continue. Not to say that there won’t be problems. There are some communities that had 100 percent attachment. Fort St. John is a good example of a community with a new hospital and a high level of patient attachment. Then, within a very short period of time, with physicians leaving the community for one reason or another, they found themselves in an acute shortage of family practitioners.

Northern Health worked very closely with the local MLA and with the division of family practice with the Ministry of Health to come up with a strategic plan to address the problem of unattached patients. There are international medical graduates going to Prince George. There’s an unattached patient clinic that has been set up through Northern Health, continuing to work with local physicians and the health authority to meet that challenge in Fort St. John.

It is inevitable that because of the demographics of the population, the number of health care practitioners that we have, there will be challenges, community by community. I think the member would like me to say that this program has not been successful, but it has been successful. We are seeing the success in the numbers that we see today and in the plans that we see coming forward.

Is it taking longer than we anticipated? Yes, it is. But we are going to continue to do the hard work to ensure that people have access to a family practice here in British Columbia.

If I might beg the indulgence of the Chair and the other members, if we could take a short break.

The Chair: The chamber will go into a short break.

A Voice: How long?

The Chair: Five minutes.

The committee recessed from 4:25 p.m. to 4:36 p.m.

[P. Pimm in the chair.]

The Chair: I would like to make one quick clarification on a point that was brought up earlier. You are allowed to use your BlackBerrys in this committee room. However, you’re not allowed to use them when you have the floor.

Hon. T. Lake: Hon. Chair, thank you for that clarifica-
[ Page 8316 ]
tion. It seems a bit strange in this day of technology, but I guess those are the rules.

We’ve been talking a lot about the divisions of family practice. As I mentioned, as an MLA, I sit on the division’s GP for Me committee for the Thompson Division of Family Practice. I have with me an executive summary of the work they’re doing. I just thought this would be helpful to the discussion.

“The assessment and planning phase of the GP for Me, January through June 2014, provided the data and a road map to frame our local reality. This proposal describes how the Thompson Region Division of Family Practice, with support from the Interior Health Authority and our community partners, will begin to implement projects that, by March 31, 2016, will result in 3,790 newly attached patients and continuity of care for 7,800 patients.”

So looking at people retiring and making sure they have continuity of care as new physicians take over their patients.

That gives a flavour of the work that’s going on at the divisions. There’s lots more information here that I’d love to elaborate on, but I think the member appreciates that each of the divisions are working on local strategies, based on their population of physicians and residents — working on specific strategies to attach patients to physicians.

J. Darcy: Thank you to the minister. I certainly do appreciate the work that the divisions of family practice are doing in this regard. I know many of them, have spoken with many of them and met with them about some of the really important initiatives.

I think that I just want to go back to the comment the minister made before the break, when he talked about inertia in health care. I would say it is, as we all know, a very big ship. It takes a long time, and it takes very concerted strategies and action in order to change direction in health care.

I would think that recognizing that, as the minister does, and as the government surely does, would be all the more reason why the minister and the government should exercise considerably more caution — not setting ambitious goals — before making clear election promises to the effect that every British Columbian would have a general practitioner by 2015.

Carrying on, one of the most challenging aspects of the numbers, when we’re talking about access to family doctors, is what it is we’re measuring, what it is we are analyzing.

[1640]

The minister uses the expression people “looking for a family doctor.” But we know that there are considerably more British Columbians than that who are without a family doctor, without any attachment to primary care.

Can the minister speak to what those figures actually are — that is, the number of British Columbians who don’t have a family doctor, as distinct from the question of people who are actively looking for a family doctor?

Hon. T. Lake: In 2003 the population of B.C. was 4,123,937. The population estimated to not have a regular medical doctor — this isn’t people looking; this is the number of people without a family physician: 437,137. That represented 10.6 percent of the population. In 2013 with 4,581,978 people in British Columbia — 710,207 without a regular family doctor. That’s 15.5 percent of the population.

Now, let’s think about graduating from high school. You go and get your undergraduate degree. You apply for medical school. You have four years in undergraduate degree, four years of medical school, at least two years of family practice residency. So we’re looking at ten years after high school, post-secondary education, to train a family physician.

In 2003, 10.6 percent of the population were without a medical doctor. Could you imagine if in the 1990s we had doubled the number of people being trained as family physicians? By 2003 that number would have been lower, and it would be lower today.

So yes, it is a big ship, which is why we need to take action. And if action had been taken in the 1990s, we wouldn’t be as challenged as we are today. I’m not saying all problems would have been solved, that everyone would have a family physician. We’ve done a lot of other things besides increase the number of people that are practising medicine to attach patients.

But it’s a little disingenuous, I think, for the member opposite, who worked in health care in the 1990s, to say: “Oh, you haven’t done enough.” We have been working very, very hard since 2001. If that same effort had been put in, in the 1990s, the situation today would be very different.

J. Darcy: Just for clarity’s sake, the figures that the minister gave for 2003 and for 2013 are British Columbians without a family doctor or British Columbians seeking a family doctor?

Hon. T. Lake: I said without a family doctor.

J. Darcy: Can the minister explain how that is tracked?

Hon. T. Lake: This is the Stats Canada community health survey that I mentioned earlier. The population, of course, is through B.C. Stats.

J. Darcy: Then, how does the government track people who are actively looking for a family doctor?

Hon. T. Lake: It is the same community health survey done by StatsCan. People are asked two questions, essentially: “Do you have a family doctor? Are you looking for a family doctor?” The answers to those two questions may be different. If I’m a 25-year-old person that has no health issues, I may not have a family doctor, but I may not be looking for one.
[ Page 8317 ]

I just want to make the point that’s important too. We do know that attachment and continuity of care are important, but that doesn’t mean that unattached patients don’t have options. We have a large number of walk-in clinics where people do access a family practitioner. For those unattached patients, there are options for walk-in clinics.

[1645]

Now, some people don’t find that, obviously, as satisfying in terms of having a relationship with the same physician all the time. But for many conditions that are not ongoing, walk-in clinics provide a valuable service. We have to keep in mind that these numbers don’t reflect the fact that in many communities walk-in clinics are available for people for ailments to be dealt with right away.

J. Darcy: Certainly, most of the literature that I’ve read on this subject says that often those people who are not considered to be actively looking for a family doctor are, in fact, some of the folks in our province who are most in need. The figures from the Fraser Health review, when it talked about people who weren’t attached to family doctors…. Lots of the surveys on this subject indicate that there is a higher, disproportionate number of people who are living in poverty who don’t have family doctors, a disproportionate number of First Nations people, of new Canadians.

We’ve already discussed that there is a very, very high percentage of young people who don’t have a family doctor and, in some cases, are living with conditions that they are not aware that they have — the example being type 2 diabetes amongst youth, which is certainly on the increase.

Does the ministry have a breakdown or a demographic analysis of who it is in British Columbia that is without a family doctor?

Hon. T. Lake: No. Again, we don’t have the information to that granularity. But the member is making an important point. Equity of access to health care is really important. People that are vulnerable, people that are living in poverty, people that have different physical, mental and substance-use challenges often do have difficulty accessing primary care. Dedicating resources to that vulnerable population is extremely important.

I mentioned some of the ways in which we’re doing that. We have a complex care attachment incentive, so that physicians are reimbursed at a higher rate for someone that has complex chronic conditions. Health authorities around the province have dedicated resources specifically to that vulnerable population. I’d like to give some examples.

In Kamloops, not far from my constituency office and a centre that I have toured several times now, is the King Street centre. At King Street they have psychiatrists and family physicians co-located with IH — Interior Health — mental health and substance-use staff, registered nurses, outreach nurses, dieticians and a pharmacy service. There is a suite of services available. Nurses come in to do wound care, for instance. There’s an example of a clinic that provides integrated team care to a vulnerable population.

I can give other examples. The Prince George Blue Pine Clinic provides primary care to some of the most vulnerable patients in the community and any unattached patients. They have a team of health professionals. Again, I have visited the Blue Pine Clinic in Prince George. There are family physicians, nurse practitioners, a mental health clinician and a social worker who work together to support the diverse care needs of patients.

The Raven Song clinic in Vancouver. It’s a primary care, high needs and stabilization clinic with clients of complex care needs, such as addiction and chronic disease. There are doctors, nurse practitioners, social workers and nurses all available for clients.

We recently opened the Granville Street Youth Health Centre, which is a very low-barrier environment for youth to access a whole suite of not just health care but social care as well.

The Central Interior Native Health Society clinic in Prince George takes a holistic approach to health care that promotes physical, spiritual, emotional and cultural harmony with aboriginal peoples who reside in north central British Columbia.

I’ve visited the native health centre on the Downtown Eastside and seen the tremendous work they do with the aboriginal population, part of the most vulnerable population in all of British Columbia.

Lots of focused, integrated team care to the most vulnerable people in British Columbia. Equity of access to health care is extremely important, and all health authorities are putting tremendous effort into meeting that challenge.

[1650]

J. Darcy: The minister said he doesn’t have that kind of analysis at this time. Is the ministry striving to have an analysis about demographics in the province and who has access to primary care and who does not?

Hon. T. Lake: The document I have in my hand is the result of about a year and a half of really incredible work by the team at the Ministry of Health along with our stakeholders and patients throughout the province of British Columbia. Setting Priorities for the B.C. Health System was posted on the Ministry of Health website in February 2014. As I mentioned, other provinces are coming to see this document, to look at it and understand how we are trying to move that very big ship of health care to address the needs of the population.

In that work we did an analysis. It’s called “Health system matrix 5.0,” which sounds very technical. It really looks at what parts of the population have needs. If the
[ Page 8318 ]
committee will indulge me, I’d just like to point out a few things here.

Healthy non-users we estimate to be 14 percent of the population; maternity and healthy newborns, about 2 percent; healthy with minor episodic health needs, 35 percent. So those were younger people, perhaps, and people that are served well by walk-in clinics. Major or significant time-limited health needs, adults, about 3 percent of the population. Then we go to low complex chronic conditions, 28 percent of the population, and high complex chronic conditions, 4 percent of the population. So we have a good estimate of the different needs of the population.

We will be able to match that against the data that the divisions of family practice are putting together and the unattached patient profiles in their community and be able to more closely, I think, reflect what the member is inquiring about, which is: of the unattached patients, how many are complex chronic patients that are in high need of a physician versus the lower-needs patient? The healthy 25-year-old is an example of that.

J. Darcy: Does the minister have a figure for the number of general practitioners working in walk-in clinics? Is he able to break that down by region, by community? Does the minister know how many British Columbians now rely on walk-in clinics for primary care?

The minister has spoken about walk-in clinics as if they are — how shall I put it? — an excellent alternative, when I think it is generally accepted that while they are filling a need at the present time, patients who go there are not all young and healthy. Certainly, the issue of continuity of care in walk-in clinics is not what anyone would recommend as being optimal for any segment of the population.

[1655]

Hon. T. Lake: I want to ensure that I’m very clear. When we’re talking about equity of access to health care, that’s a really important concept. I said that for some members of the population, a walk-in clinic provides a great alternative or meets the needs that they have. If you have a short, intermittent problem, a walk-in clinic with a highly trained physician may meet the needs. I certainly did not imply that walk-in clinics would suffice for people that have complex, chronic diseases or conditions that require continuity of care.

However, they do provide a very valuable service. I don’t want to denigrate physicians who work in walk-in clinics. They provide a very valuable service. But it is very hard to give you a definition of what a walk-in clinic is.

I’ll give you an example. There’s a clinic in Kamloops that is essentially referred to as a walk-in clinic, but you actually can make appointments ahead of time. They’ll take some people by appointment and set aside some time for non-appointments, where it’s first come, first served. Certainly, people are triaged and, if necessary, sent to the emergency department, if warranted.

There is no sort of one model of a walk-in clinic versus a family practice. But through the College of Physicians and Surgeons, there is a code of conduct that says that if you have seen a patient three times, then that essentially means that you are attached to that patient and you are the most responsible physician. There are obligations that come with being the most responsible physician for a patient. So there are walk-in clinics that see people by appointment, that do see people on multiple visits and do provide continuity of care. It’s not this or that in many instances.

I think, when you’re looking at the health care system and at scarce resources and how best to deploy those resources and looking at the needs of the patients, the model that meets their needs is the most efficient model, which is why, for vulnerable populations, an integrated team approach is the best model. For relatively healthy people to have access to health care, it’s not necessarily that sort of model that they require.

I think it’s important for decision-makers, policy-makers, to look at equity and look at scarce resources and where best to invest those resources. That’s ongoing work that needs to be done. We work with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, with the Doctors of B.C.and with health authorities to try to get the right mix that gives taxpayers the best value for money yet meets the needs of each of those segments of the population.

J. Darcy: Certainly, I had no intention of denigrating doctors who work in walk-in clinics. I’ve spoken with many of them, and we were recently visited by medical undergraduates from UBC. I’m sure the minister spoke with them as well. We spoke earlier about choices that doctors make when they graduate from medical school. The reality is that there are very limited choices available to doctors who want to practise in family medicine.

Many of them do not want to go into the traditional fee-for-service system or hang out a shingle in private practice — would prefer to be in team-based care. But there are still very, very limited options available for doctors to be able to practise in team-based care as part of multidisciplinary teams. There are more and more opportunities in walk-in clinics, and they often go there, not necessarily as a first choice.

One last question on this subject. We have a number of doctors…. We’re experiencing, I gather, a bit of a demographic bulge as far as retirements that are coming up for family doctors, which means that situations in some communities that are already bad are predicted to become worse. Does the ministry track retirements? Is the ministry tracking retirements of doctors — or impending retirements, predicted retirements — by region and by community, in order to plan how to best address the needs of those communities?

[1700]

Hon. T. Lake: Before I get to that question, I just want to provide more information on the obligations of physicians working in a so-called walk-in clinic. Each patient charge should clarify whether the patient has a regular attending family physician outside the clinic. Each patient who does not identify a regular attending family physician and who attends the same clinic on three or more occasions is assumed to be receiving longitudinal care from the clinic.

Each of these orphan patients must be offered the opportunity to become a regular clinic patient and be assigned to an acceptable most responsible physician if the patient requests this option. The medical director of the clinic is responsible for ensuring that this practice occurs and for ensuring that a most responsible physician is assigned to patients who choose to become regular clinic patients and who request a most responsible physician.

In such circumstances, a longitudinal patient medical record must be created, detailing all patient-physician interactions, so that the treating physician and other physicians working at the same clinic may access and benefit from the information documented in the record.

That’s essentially the College of Physicians and Surgeons’ professional standards and guidelines.

Back to the question, which was retirements. The member says you have to have a plan before you make a commitment, and that’s part of the plan. The GP for Me work that each of the divisions of family practice is working on at the moment is looking at the number of physicians who are retiring in each of their areas.

Each of the divisions looks at the physicians that are likely to retire. Don’t forget that it’s not a highly predictable number. I mean, you can get an estimate, but as I say to my physician friends in Kamloops, they better not retire on my watch.

You can’t control that. Some will have health issues. I’ve seen that happen with physicians in my community, where they unexpectedly have to give up their practice. They may move to another community when opportunities for their spouse arise. There are conditions that occur that are unpredictable and that result in retirements. But the divisions are doing an estimate, looking at the age of physicians and contacting them each individually to ask them if they have retirement plans. That is the information that will be collated as part of the division work and as part of the ministry’s coordination of that work.

J. Darcy: I’d like to move to the issue of physician compensation, if I could. The Auditor General’s report in 2014, which we discussed in Health estimates last year, said that there was no way of tracking value for money in physician compensation. A number of recommendations were made at that time. We discussed those recommendations a year ago, when the report was new.

The minister was quoted after that report was released last year as saying: “I think some of the recommendations there are just not based on reality.” That, as I pointed out at the time, conflicted with what the representative of the doctors in B.C. had said when he was quoted as saying: “We agree many of these things not measured should be measured, and that we’re being challenged by the Auditor General to break down silos and work together in the same sandbox.”

My question to the minister. There has now been an opportunity…. The minister said after the AG’s report was released last year that there was an opportunity to look at some of these recommendations, see if we can work towards implementing them. Where is the government on following up on this report a year later? What changes have been made? What recommendations have been pursued, and which ones have not?

[1705]

[M. Hunt in the chair.]

Hon. T. Lake: Thank you, hon. Chair, and welcome to the debates.

The Auditor General’s report. I should just preface my comments by saying that the system of health care that we have in most provinces in Canada is a result of adoption of a hospital and physician model from the 1950s and ’60s.

Essentially, when medicare came into effect — in Saskatchewan initially, then across the rest of the provinces — there was simply an adoption of the hospital system and a guarantee, by Saskatchewan, initially, that the fee-for-service model would remain in place. The physicians in Saskatchewan were adamant that they would continue on a fee-for-service basis.

That became ingrained in the health care system in Canada. It, in very many ways, still exists today, although we’ve made a lot of progress moving away from fee-for-service to alternative payments programs. Physicians are, in many cases, hired on a salaried basis. Hospitalists would be a good example of that, where they’re paid a salary, essentially, to provide primary care to people that are in hospital, or the needs of the patients in the hospital at the time.

The Auditor General’s report did not really acknowledge, in my view, the historic nature of the Canadian health care system. But it was really a sharp view of today’s health care, and is that really the type of model that we should have in 2015 versus 1965?

I think they did us a lot of good in the health system, generally. It shook up our notions of how health care should be delivered — primary care, particularly — and how physicians are compensated, and accountabilities, in terms of their quality.

We took the recommendations seriously, and there’s some important work that’s going on. The first recommendation was to implement a mandatory performance
[ Page 8320 ]
review process for physicians, with defined measures and targets and reporting of aggregate results to the Legislature and to the public.

[1710]

We have formed the Provincial Physician Quality Assurance Steering Committee. That is chaired by a Ministry of Health assistant deputy minister and includes the Doctors of B.C. organization, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, all health authorities and a variety of other stakeholders, importantly including the B.C. Patient Safety and Quality Council. That steering committee is making improvements both in terms of quality assurance and quality improvement for physicians.

We are also in the process of implementing a provincial credentialing and privileging system that will ensure a consistent, standardized approach to the privileging across health authorities. This is the method whereby health authorities give hospital privileges to physicians. We also are creating a set of privileging dictionaries which define those standards for various medical procedures, and that will take place over the next three years. So that’s about physician performance management.

In terms of roles and responsibilities and accountabilities, which the Auditor General spoke to, we are actively engaged with Doctors of B.C., health authorities and other stakeholders to clarify the performance management accountability framework. That framework will be built on public reporting and grounded in a clear understanding of roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of the various individuals and organizations involved in the delivery of health services.

My first meeting with health authority board chairs and CEOs…. I have three to four of those meetings a year. At the first meeting one of the common themes I heard was there’s not enough integration between physicians in community and the health authority in the acute care sector.

That is one that we are really trying to work on through the divisions of family practice, knitting together primary and community care with the care provided in the hospital. For a patient, they want seamless care. They don’t want to be going from pillar to post through the health care system. That was recognized early, it is recognized by the Auditor General, and we are working hard on that.

Recommendation 3 is compensation models. Here we get back to the fee-for-service. The recommendation was to “rebuild physician compensation models to align with delivery of high-quality, cost-effective physician services.” That is not something that can happen overnight. You could imagine the chaos that would be created in the system if we were to say that, you know, in six months we will no longer have a fee-for-service model. We will have a salaried model, we will have a capitation model, or we will have a pay-for-performance model. It would throw the system into chaos.

You have to make that change gradually, and already we have started to make that change. I’ve mentioned some of the fees that we have created through the General Practice Services Committee for unattached patients, for complex patients. We have telephone consultation visits now so that people can do their follow-up by phone. There are more and more physicians that are going into a non-fee-for-service model. They’re in an alternative payment plan that is outside of the fee-for-service model.

We are undertaking a strategic review of what compensation models appear to work most effectively in a whole different variety of different situations in which physicians deliver service. We can look at other models throughout Canada. Everyone is working on this issue of physician compensation to make sure that we’re getting value for money and efficient and effective care for patients.

The fourth recommendation was on fee-for-service and alternative payments: to revise the fees and contracts on a regular basis to account for changes in practice. We are doing a large scale review of the payments schedule. Sorry. To do a whole scale review immediately would be very disruptive, so what we have done is look at sections of the payments schedule that we will review on an ongoing basis — so take it off in smaller chunks that can be reviewed and changes made along the way. That is ongoing at the moment. We also are doing a comprehensive review of the alternative payments program as well.

Recommendation 5 was around physician engagement — to improve physician engagement. Now, we’ve done a lot of that work through the divisions of family practice. There is far more engagement of physicians. I sat with a physician friend of mine who has been part of the committee in the Thompson Division of Family Practice, and he told me it’s night and day in terms of the way physicians are engaging with the health authority and the Ministry of Health today versus what they used to do only a few short years ago.

[1715]

So physician engagement. We are doing a lot of work in that area with the Specialist Services Committee, which is, again, another joint committee of the Doctors of B.C. and the ministry under the physician master agreement. The General Practice Services Committee is the one that we’re working through with A GP for Me.

Recommendation 6 was around barriers to regulation and oversight: to address barriers in the regulatory framework, to facilitate collaboration between system partners, to enable patient care of the highest quality and cost-effectiveness.

Again, the physician assurance steering committee conducted a review of the legislative and regulatory framework. They’ve identified a number of gaps, and we’ll continue to review the findings and develop options for changing the regulatory framework as we move forward.

J. Darcy: Is the minister able to provide documents that detail what he’s just outlined?
[ Page 8321 ]

Hon. T. Lake: This was all detailed at Public Accounts in September, I believe, of last year, so it’s on the record.

J. Darcy: I certainly welcome any of the minister’s comments. I must say that I find it quite ironic that the minister speaks eloquently about looking at alternatives to fee-for-service and exploring more options of team-based care and alternate payment plan when in this past year many community health centres…. In Vancouver the doctors had no choice but to go from being on salary, being on alternate payment plan, and going in fact to a fee-for-service system — an issue that I think we will canvass at another time.

Last year in estimates I asked for a breakdown of physicians that were working on fee-for-service and alternate payment plan. I appreciate the numbers that the minister shared after the fact, after estimates. Could we please get an update on the breakdown of that spending, on fee-for-service as opposed to alternate payment plan, in the past year?

Hon. T. Lake: Fee-for-service makes up about 70 percent of physician compensation. That leaves 30 percent in other types of contracts — so APP, alternative payment plan, and sessional budgets.

I can tell the member that in 2014-15 the APP contract…. There were a total of 212.46 physician positions that were in APP. We can break that down into different types of services and different health authorities. But essentially, again, it’s about 30 percent of the physician compensation that goes against APP and sessional.

Now, I don’t have the numbers this year compared to last year. We certainly can do that A-B comparison and provide that to the member.

J. Darcy: I’m just looking at the letter that the minister sent July 24, 2014, following up on our discussion in estimates.

[1720]

One of the questions that I’d asked, in particular, was about the number of physicians on alternate payment plan when it came to primary care services, as distinct from other parts of health care delivery. I wonder if the minister can provide that figure.

Hon. T. Lake: We don’t have a specific breakdown of primary care versus secondary and tertiary care, but we can provide that. We can find that information and provide it to the member at a later date. Only to say at this point that APP is less common in primary care than it is in specialized care.

J. Darcy: Just by way of reference, the letter that the minister sent to follow up on our discussion was July 24, 2014. There was a calculation of alternate payment contract funding on a full-time-equivalent basis: 106.5. Two FTEs were committed to primary care, which was 11 percent of total funded FTEs. Then alternate payment sessional funding for 2013-14: it was 8,419 sessions committed to primary care, which equated to 5 percent of the total funded sessions. I’m interested in those same figures, going forward, in order to understand what the trend is.

Hon. T. Lake: I’d be happy to get them.

J. Darcy: Just one further question in that regard. I know that there are different models within the alternate payment plan. Can the minister provide a breakdown, either now or at a future time, about how those APP payments for physicians are broken down? How many on salary? How many are using a capitation model, blended model and so on?

[1725]

Hon. T. Lake: I may not have the exact answer that the member is seeking, but let me see if I can give it a shot.

The alternative payment plan program is basically two types of funding models: contract, where a physician is paid, essentially, a salary for providing services; and then sessional, which is three-hour blocks of service.

In ’14-15 there was $363.04 million attributed to contracts and $83.78 million attributed to sessional. There is new funding in ’15-16 of $980,000. So in this year we will be spending, on the two types of APP programs, $447.8 million.

There is a third type of model that is called population-based funding. This is a little bit different in that a practice will register patients and an annual amount is paid to the practice based on the illness burden of each patient as opposed to fee-for-service. This is used by a number of sites around the province.

Interestingly, because that sounds like a really good way to address some vulnerable populations, for instance, it is something that we have actually evaluated a number of times. Multiple evaluations have yet to come to clear conclusions about that model. A 2004 paper showed some evidence of lower use of acute care. A 2008 review of the Fraser Health sites concluded that the model provided a more suitable foundation for delivering team-based care.

[M. Morris in the chair.]

An internal ministry study in 2012 showed that patients stay more persistently attached at population-based funding sites, though not statistically significant, and that may be due to an inadequate sample size.

There are some challenges with it. It seems like the right thing to do in many cases, but…. This is where we get back to the Auditor General’s report on metrics and looking at the value of physician services — the quality and the outcomes.
[ Page 8322 ]

It’s not clear. It’s not black and white that one model is better than another model. We all need to do more work on that evaluation. I think it is probably correct to say that some models work really well for some population types and some demographics, whereas it’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach.

We’ve seen in Ontario, where they had a large expansion of family health centres, that they’re actually doing a large review of that model to make sure that is…. It’s an expensive model of delivering primary care, and they are fiscally challenged in the province of Ontario. My understanding is that they’re looking at whether or not they can continue to expand that model. They’re looking at it to see if it is the most effective use of resources.

We all have a lot to learn, and there’s not, I don’t think, a one-size-fits-all approach that we could say works in every instance across the province.

J. Darcy: The minister references Ontario. I’m familiar with what he’s referring to about family practice teams.

[1730]

There is also a further survey and evaluation in Ontario of community health centres that shows that for a specific patient population served by the community health centres, there’s in fact a 22 percent reduction in use of emergency rooms. Is the minister also familiar with that model? Is he considering expanding that model of care in British Columbia?

Hon. T. Lake: I mentioned this earlier. That community health centre has proven extremely valuable for vulnerable populations, particularly, where you have integrated teams that address all aspects of health care. It may not be a physician that the patient needs to see every time. It may be a counsellor on mental health and substance use. It may be a wound care nurse. It may be a psychiatrist.

I mentioned some examples. Let me just go through…. Sparwood Health Centre in the Interior. Kamloops — the King Street centre, which I mentioned. Rutland Aurora Health Centre. Enderby primary care centre. In Prince George the Blue Pine Clinic. Fort St. John, the Northern Health community primary care clinic. Prince Rupert prenatal clinic. Prince George, the Central Interior Native Health Society clinic. In Surrey the Jim Pattison primary care clinic. The New Canadian primary care clinic. The White Rock primary care clinic partnership. Mission Community Health Centre. The Raven Song clinic. The Gibsons community health centre. The Central Community Health Centre in North Vancouver. The Richmond Community Health Centre. The Granville Youth Health Centre.

Here on the Island: UVic student health services, the Cool Aid clinic in Victoria, Ladysmith Community Health Centre.

There are a number, and there are more. These are just examples. But the community health centre model is recognized as being a really great model for vulnerable populations. That, I believe, is a tremendous investment in resources to help that vulnerable population with a whole, wide variety of health care needs. Certainly, we are looking at what is happening in these clinics, looking at what’s happening in Ontario and where we feel that more of those need to be placed in the community.

In fact, we’re working with Interior Health, looking at communities in the Interior to see where we can expand the use of community health centres, where that would make the most sense.

I had a meeting in my constituency office on Friday with the aboriginal friendship centre and Interior Health Authority. There are three different aboriginal community organizations — Métis, aboriginal friendship centre and another organization — that are each doing their own separate thing. We talked about doing a process where we look at the needs and the gaps and have a vision of bringing them all together with IHA into a consolidated, integrated primary health care centre for aboriginal and vulnerable populations.

They work extremely well, particularly when targeted to vulnerable populations.

J. Darcy: I was going to pursue this issue later, but when I listen to the minister speak eloquently about community health centres and team-based care, I can’t help but take this opportunity to question why, then, would the government, last year, have moved in the opposite direction when it comes to a number of community health centres in Vancouver?

Hon. T. Lake: Precisely for the reason I outlined, Vancouver Coastal looked at their primary care services and redesigned them to more closely fit the vulnerable population.

Populations change over the years. What might have been a neighbourhood with a vulnerable population in 1975 or 1985…. The demographics of the community change, and the needs of the community change. A review was done. There was no decrease — in fact, there was an increase — in resources for primary care, but the model changed.

I’ll give some examples. Vancouver Coastal looked at Pine Clinic, Evergreen Community Health Centre, South Community Health Centre, Pacific Spirit Community Centre, and they made some changes. Importantly, I’ll give some examples of changes that benefit patients.

[1735]

Raven Song serves about 3,500 vulnerable clients and now has the capacity to serve an additional 2,500 people because of the changes, after three more physicians were hired. It’s now open seven days a week, 12 hours a day, Monday to Friday, and on weekends 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with 24-hour on-call services available to a medical doctor or a nurse practitioner. Primary care is provided by an
[ Page 8323 ]
inter-disciplinary team — doctors, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, psychologists. For those that have difficulty accessing the clinic, Raven Song doctors and nurse practitioners also do outreach and home visits.

That is a change that was made, and early stats show that both adults and youth are transitioning very well to Raven Song. There are almost double the number of adult visits from November 1 to December 31, 2014 than the previous year. A fourfold increase in the number of youth who have visited in that same time period. There were 449, compared to 91 in the previous year.

These changes were made — not just at Raven Song — throughout the community to put the resources where they are needed, where they would best serve the most number of people and the people who needed the services the most.

The member’s point is that community health centres should be targeted particularly at vulnerable populations. But vulnerable populations change with time and the demographics of the community. Vancouver Coastal recognized that, did a lot of work with the community and, I think, has made important changes that better serve the vulnerable population in Vancouver Coastal.

J. Darcy: Did the ministry track what happened to all of the patients at the community health centres whose doctors went on fee-for-service or left the practice?

Hon. T. Lake: Vancouver Coastal worked really, really hard to ensure that patients were not left without services. The redesign allowed former Vancouver Coastal Health–contracted physicians to move to new practices and take on patients under a fee-for-service model, which actually increased access to family doctors in Vancouver as a whole. But many more patients, vulnerable patients, now have access to community health centres. Those are the Raven Song Community Health Centre, Three Bridges Community Health Centre, South Community Health Centre, Pacific Spirit Community Health Centre and East Van public health youth clinic, and I mentioned the Granville youth clinic that we just opened.

About 45,000, or 70 percent, of patients remained with their primary care physician under a fee-for-service model. Those patients that were able to be transitioned over to a fee-for-service model — 70 percent made that transition with no problem. So 940 clients have moved to Raven Song for primary care services.

Some 370 clients who were identified as not being vulnerable were sent letters regarding fee-for-service primary care options, and the health authority has yet to hear from them. Recently we discovered that about 92 primary care clients at Pacific Spirit Community Health Centre had not received those letters, so a nurse practitioner is contacting each and every one of those patients to support their transition to care options.

Our deputy visited at Mid-Main clinic, I believe, recently — one of the clinics affected — and worked with them to talk about moving to a population-based funding model, which actually may work very well for them.

The ministry, but particularly Vancouver Coastal, are working very closely with the clinics and with the patients to make sure that no one is left without the type of service that best meets their needs.

J. Darcy: Thank you to the minister, and yes, I’m aware that the deputy minister has visited Mid-Main recently. Certainly, the folks there are quite encouraged by that.

[1740]

It’s unfortunate that they had to go through the process that they’ve gone through in the past year, which has been quite a wrenching one for the care providers, the physicians, the nurse practitioners, the pharmacists, not to mention the patients, because the system that they’re working under now is certainly not working for those patients.

I’d like to shift and spend some time, now that we’re talking about team-based care, on nurse practitioners. In the ministry’s policy paper on primary and community care there’s a statement that says: “The Ministry of Health of will explore with Doctors of B.C. refreshing the mandate of the GPSC and expanding its membership to include representatives of community health services.”

Can the minister explain what’s the…?

Interjection.

J. Darcy: I’m reading a quote from it: “to include representatives of community health services.” What is the intention of government around expanding the GPSC, when will we see this occur, and what other health professions will be included?

Hon. T. Lake: I’m really happy the member has been through the priorities document. My staff are excited to know that all of their work has been noticed.

I can tell you that across the province….

J. Darcy: Are you surprised, Minister?

Hon. T. Lake: No, the member is very thorough in her work. I’m not surprised. I’m delighted that she knows that document so well.

The recognition of that document actually — the literacy on that document — is huge across the province. Wherever I go, people talk about it. It could be at chambers of commerce, health authorities, talking to physicians, nurses. Everyone involved in health care or impacted by health care, it seems, has read that document really well.

What we have done is break down that document into different areas. Primary and community care is another paper that went out, in January, based on that initial pri-
[ Page 8324 ]
orities document. And then saying, “Okay, let’s break down primary and community care some more, put out some ideas” — some of which are quite disruptive.

That’s the idea that we put forward in the priorities document about the General Practice Services Committee that essentially said: “Let’s change that committee and have more aspects of primary care and community care on that committee.” So that’s a disruptive idea that’s been thrown out there. We’ve met with associations — including nurses associations, doctors associations, college of nurses, College of Physicians, health authorities, patient groups — to get their feedback on the primary community care paper.

[1745]

We are collecting that information now, and we’re actually going to hold a workshop June 1 and 2 in Vancouver with residential care providers, with community nursing, with family practitioners, with health authorities, with patients and workshop a lot of these ideas and information and feedback that we have got from that primary and community care paper that we put out January of this year. It was just under a year after the priorities document was released in February of 2014.

We’re going to workshop that. Then we’re going to go away over the summer. I’m going to take a nice holiday while my staff work really, really hard over the summer and put together some policies that we can implement starting in the fall.

Now, some of those ideas that we have put forward may not see the light of day after the input that we have through the process of consultation and workshopping that we’re undergoing now. But we want to throw sometimes disruptive ideas out there and see what kind of reaction we get. It may result in some of the changes we’ve proposed. We may come up with other things from the consultation that we hadn’t thought of that would be effective in improving primary and community care.

J. Darcy: I just want to be clear: does the government envision adding other health professionals to the General Practice Services Committee? And if so, which ones?

Hon. T. Lake: We envision it. We’re not sure if that will happen. That’s why we’re doing this consultation on the primary and community care paper to get feedback. It may not withstand the rigour of the consultation-workshopping process. It may be that that concept will actually grow through the consultation process.

I can’t answer the member’s question because we haven’t decided what the result of this process is yet. It truly is a consultative process, saying: “Here’s what we think. What do you think?” We want to hear from health authorities and physicians and nurses, unions, associations — patients, importantly — and then take all that information, go away, and then come back in the fall with a plan that we can implement based on that consultation.

J. Darcy: The quote that I was referencing in particular said that the Ministry of Health will explore with the Doctors of B.C. refreshing the mandate of the GPSC and expanding its membership. Will the minister also be consulting with other health professionals about that same issue?

Hon. T. Lake: Sorry if I wasn’t clear. We are doing that at the moment. We’re talking to nurses. We’re talking to health authorities. We’re talking to nurse practitioners, patients. We are talking to all stakeholders in that process to invite comment on both the priorities document and the primary and community care document that we have put out there.

J. Darcy: Certainly, there are many references in the discussion papers and in other government documents to interprofessional teams and multidisciplinary practice, but I think the minister will probably agree that that is not reflected within government structure itself.

Most of the structures that have influence and funding continue to be — with the greatest of respect to physicians who are absolutely critical of our health care system — physician-centric, I think it can be said. The terms “interprofessional” and “multidisciplinary” are certainly in great popular usage these days — something that I certainly welcome, and my colleagues do, as do people who make up that broad interprofessional team.

I guess my question to the minister is: when will government structures and committees actually start reflecting the value of the other professions in the interdisciplinary team?

Hon. T. Lake: I just wanted to make sure, so that it’s on Hansard. The member said doctors are critical of the health care system. I think you meant critical to the health care system, so I just wanted to make sure that appears the correct way in Hansard.

J. Darcy: Absolutely.

Hon. T. Lake: I hope the hon. member doesn’t mind me doing that.

J. Darcy: I really appreciate the minister setting the record straight and being clear about what I’ve said and what I’ve not said.

Hon. T. Lake: I knew what the member meant, so I wanted to make sure that the Hansard did not misrepresent it.

We are broadening the team. I’ve given examples of interdisciplinary health centres, where we have broadened the team. Nurse practitioners, I think, 2006 — first time that they had their scope of practice in British Columbia. So again, we’ve broadened out the health care
[ Page 8325 ]
team. The growth in nurse practitioners — I think we are training 45 every year in the province of British Columbia.

[1750]

We have broadened out the team, and we’ve said, through the paper, that that broadening should continue. Not everyone needs to see, necessarily, a physician for every health-related problem.

Now, physicians are…. I think they will say — and I have a hard time arguing — that they are really integral in being the leadership of the health care team in many ways. But that doesn’t mean…. I think in the old days — and I better be careful; my physician friends may quibble with this — the physician was seen as godlike, that they controlled all access to health care and they were the only voice. That has changed. It’s not just changed because of government or the population but because physicians themselves recognize that an interdisciplinary team is critical. Physician input into that team is very critical, so I think there is definitely a movement throughout the country and around the world to have team-based care.

If you talk to young physicians…. And the member does, and I do. They will tell you graduating today isn’t the same as graduating in 1985 or in 1986. The typical was: you came out, you set up your practice or you joined another practice, and you saw patients. That’s the way it worked. Today a lot of physicians like to come out into a team-based setting, where they are part of that health care team and provide valuable leadership to that team, but they’re not the only part of the team. Integration of care, to make sure that people get the care they need for their particular problem is, I think, a growing realization not just among policy-makers but among physicians themselves.

J. Darcy: A wonderful speech, but my question was actually quite specific. It was about: when will the structures within government and within the ministry begin to reflect the importance of other health care professionals and health care providers in the health care team?

Hon. T. Lake: I gave a wonderful speech because I had already answered the question previously, which is the process we are undergoing right now, which is consultation on both the priorities document and the primary community care document. We are reaching out to all stakeholders. We will be workshopping that. We will go away over the summer, and in the fall we will start with implementation of the changes that we have consensus around and that we feel will improve primary health and community health care.

J. Darcy: I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in discussions with nurse practitioners in different parts of the province. Most of the nurse practitioners I’ve spoken with consider that the nurse practitioners for B.C., the NP for B.C., program was in fact a rather poorly run program and one that was…. Some nurse practitioners have referred to it as not a sustainable long-term plan but more like…. A “one-off, drive-by funding” is an expression that some have used.

My question is: what is the future for funding of nurse practitioners in British Columbia? And what is the government’s intention for developing a sustainable and suitable fee structure for nurse practitioners?

[1755]

Hon. T. Lake: I’m happy to talk about the NP for B.C. program. In May 2012 we announced funding to support the integration of nurse practitioners into the B.C. health care system through this program. It committed to funding 135 new positions.

Throughout health authorities, actually, we have a total 136.5 FTEs. So health authorities now have nurse practitioner positions throughout the province.

Fraser Health, for instance, has 29.5 that are available to them. They have filled 18.5 of those so still looking to fill 11 positions. Interior Health Authority, 21.4. They have filled 14.4 and are looking for seven vacancies there. Island Health — 27 were awarded. They have filled 26, looking for six. Northern Health, 20 FTEs were awarded. They have filled 11, looking for eight. Providence Health Care had eight, which have all been filled. Provincial Health Services Authority, 11, which have all been filled. Vancouver Coastal, 19.6 — 17.6 of which have been filled.

Out of the 136.5 positions that were made available, 101.5 have been filled with 31 vacancies that are there. That’s the NP for B.C. program. But health authorities are also expected to create 56 new nurse practitioner positions in acute care settings over 20 years. This is a tacit agreement that we have with health authorities.

When you look at our priorities document, it is clear that we need to move resources away from acute care, as much as possible, into primary and community care. Nurse practitioners will be an important part of that.

There are other ways of allowing local needs to be met in the integrated, team-based model that the member and I have been discussing for a while now. We’d talked about population-based funding earlier. That’s essentially looking at the vulnerability of the patients you have, the complexity of the patients you have, and then allowing a block of funding to go to that primary health care centre.

They can decide, based on the needs of their clients, whether they need more family physicians, whether they need more nurse practitioners. Or maybe they need more psychologists or counsellors for mental health and substance use. Maybe they need more nursing care.

[1800]

There’s an ability, though different models, to allow local conditions, local needs to be met. Nurse practitioners are a big part of that. I would say that it’s been extremely successful. As any program occurs…. The member mentioned that change is hard on people. Any kind of change to the system is hard on people.
[ Page 8326 ]

Now that we’re into this program and we’re seeing the takeup in health authorities, including the First Nations Health Authority, we are starting to see, I think, some momentum building around nurse practitioners. People that I talk with that have been to nurse practitioners remark on the quality of care they receive.

We need to make sure that whatever the system is, it’s meeting the needs of patients. Sometimes that’s a general practitioner, sometimes that’s a nurse practitioner, sometimes that’s a counsellor, and sometimes that’s a pharmacist. I think that team-based model is representative of recognizing the needs of individuals and populations of patients.

J. Darcy: How many nurse practitioners do we have in British Columbia today? And the NP for B.C. program finishes when?

Hon. T. Lake: There are three categories of nurse practitioners recognized in B.C. — family, adult and pediatric. Currently there are 317 practising nurse practitioners in the province. There are 31 non-practising nurse practitioners.

As I mentioned, the NP for B.C. program has a total of 136.5. More than one-third of nurse practitioners in the province would fit under the NP for B.C. program. The program has its third and final intake this year, but that funding continues on. The positions will be funded into the future.

Health authorities are individually expected to look at adding nurse practitioners as the population of their communities dictates, as I mentioned, on that sort of nimble integrated care primary care system.

J. Darcy: Thank you to the minister for that response.

Ontario began the nurse practitioner program seven years earlier. They now have 2,300 nurse practitioners. I haven’t done the quick calculations, but it’s certainly a significantly greater proportion.

What are the government’s plans to significantly increase the number of nurse practitioner positions in B.C.?

Hon. T. Lake: We currently have 45 spaces for nurse practitioner training — 15 in each of Vancouver, Victoria and Prince George. There are currently no plans to expand that. Of course, we work with Advanced Education and the health care community to look at the needs of the population and whether expansion is necessary or not. We are committed, certainly, to the profession.

[1805]

In the fall of 2011 we introduced Bill 10, the Nurse Practitioners Statutes Amendment Act. Twelve acts were amended, and 11 were brought into force at that time. That bill removed a number of legislative barriers to NP practice and facilitated the use of a full nurse practitioner scope of practice.

We are working with the regulatory college, and they are doing work across Canada to come up with a Canadian standard so that nurse practitioners can move between provinces. Again, that would allow nurse practitioners from other provinces who want to locate into B.C. the ability to do that. So that work is ongoing.

J. Darcy: We’ve discussed earlier the lack of attachment to a primary care provider for a significant part of the population. The minister has said that he believes very strongly in access to a full team of health care providers and that nurse practitioners have a critical role to play there. Most nurse practitioners in British Columbia have been hired to support a very specific population: patients with chronic disease, seniors, marginalized individuals. But very few healthy British Columbians have the option today, still, to choose a nurse practitioner as their primary care provider.

What steps is the government taking to make it possible for healthy British Columbians, in addition to vulnerable and marginalized populations, to choose a nurse practitioner as their primary care provider?

Hon. T. Lake: I wanted to answer the member’s question but also add some other things that we’ve done to demonstrate, I guess, our commitment and agreement to working with nurse practitioners to make sure that they are used to the full scope of their practice and that British Columbians have the opportunity to benefit from their work.

In March of this year the ministry contracted a consultant to draft a nurse practitioner action plan, and that will provide recommendations to the ministry with options for moving forward with integration and sustainability of nurse practitioners in the province. We expect that project to be completed at the end of June of this year. There will be valuable information coming out of that report.

The member may know that NPs were recently included in the new classes of practitioners regulation under the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Until now they have not had the opportunity to prescribe narcotics, for instance, and for pain management, that’s an important service that patients require.

We have revised the nurses and nurse practitioners regulation, which includes the authority for nurse practitioners to order controlled drugs and substances. Those regulations have been posted for a three-month public consultation period. They haven’t been passed yet. They’re out for consultation.

We’re also expanding their ability to access PharmaNet. That’s an important service, if you’re a nurse practitioner for primary care, that you would do.

Already there are opportunities for the general public, not just vulnerable parts of the population, to access a nurse practitioner’s services. Many of them are working
[ Page 8327 ]
with divisions of family practice. For instance, the Surrey–North Delta Division of Family Practice has two nurse practitioner positions. The Langley Division of Family Practice has one. The Hope family practice physicians group has one. Burnaby Division of Family Practice. There are a number. I could go through all the different health authorities. There are many divisions that are employing nurse practitioners to provide primary care to the general population.

[1810]

J. Darcy: It’s my understanding that the government has committed approximately $130 million to supporting nurse practitioners in the province, and that does not include the recent NP for B.C. program.

Can the minister explain where that funding has gone, how that funding has been allocated? I understand that the ministry says it has dedicated nurse practitioner funding through the health authorities, but it’s difficult to account for where it goes, through the health authorities. And calculations I’ve been given….

If you take that total amount of money, it would allocate approximately $200,000 per nurse practitioner in the province. If that were the case, each health authority would have in the range of 200 nurse practitioners, and we’re in fact nowhere near that.

Can the minister explain how those funds have been allocated? And if they’re not being used, if they’re not being dedicated to hiring more nurse practitioners or to support nurse practitioners, how is that money being spent?

Hon. T. Lake: The estimate of the funding for each FTE for a nurse practitioner is about $116,000 a year — salary and benefits. In the first tranche of the NP for B.C. program there was additional money that was available to health authorities for infrastructure that would be necessary.

On top of that, and outside of the NP for B.C. program, health authorities have been funding nurse practitioners from their global budget amounts, and we can break that down by health authority. There’s a total of 188.06 FTEs, which is equivalent to just under $23 million, which is an average of $122,000 per nurse practitioner. So the health authorities are taking into account, I surmise from this, some of the infrastructure to support each NP position.

[1815]

So VIHA has, in addition to the NP for B.C. program, an additional 21.7 FTEs; IHA, 21.5; Northern Health Authority, 12.25; Fraser Health, 55.5 — a significant number of nurse practitioners in Fraser Health; Providence Health Care, 8.2; Vancouver Coastal, 34.2; and the Provincial Health Services Authority, 34.7.

J. Darcy: Noting the time, this will be my last question for this afternoon.

Can the minister clarify…. So $116,000 for salary and benefits. Is the minister saying that the additional funding for infrastructure takes us up to $200,000?

Hon. T. Lake: I’m not sure where the member is getting the figure $200,000. When I take the $23 million that health authorities are spending on nurse practitioners and divide it by the number of FTEs — that’s 188 — it comes to just about $122,000 per FTE.

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

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:16 p.m.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

Copyright © 2015: British Columbia Hansard Services, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada