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, October 5, 2015

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 29, Number 2

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

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2015

The House met at 1:34 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Madame Speaker: Good afternoon, hon. Members. I am pleased to welcome to the chamber this afternoon a visiting parliamentarian. Brad Battin is the Member of Parliament for Gembrook in the Parliament of Victoria. He also serves as the caucus’s Shadow Minister for Emergency Services and the Shadow Minister for Environment. He’s a two-term MP, first being elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. I’d ask the House to please make him welcome.

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Hon. J. Rustad: It’s a great pleasure today to introduce a few special guests in the gallery. Joining us today are four of the graduates of the provincial aboriginal youth internship program: Krista Alec, Rachelle Trenholm, Matthew Norris and Nicolas Mejia. I hope I have pronounced that correctly.

The aboriginal internship program is the first of its kind in Canada, and each year, we have about 25 young aboriginal British Columbians who have worked as interns within the province. The goal of this program is to help aboriginal youth build skills, learn firsthand about careers in the provincial government and, of course, above all, encourage them to help develop their capacity for leadership. Tonight most of the 20 new graduates will take part in a completion ceremony.

On behalf of all members in the House, I just want to congratulate all of these young people that are interested in the internship program and also ask the House to please make our guests welcome.

Hon. Michelle Stilwell: It’s my pleasure to welcome to British Columbia and to the House, a delegation visiting us from the Flemish Parliament, one of three regional parliaments in Belgium.

The members of the committee on housing, poverty reduction and equal opportunity are joining us in the gallery this afternoon and include Mr. Lorin Parys, the committee chair; Mr. Björn Anseeuw; Mr. Piet De Bruyn; Ms. Katrien Schryvers; Mr. Dirk de Kort; Mrs. Griet Coppé; Mrs. Freya Saeys — forgive me on my pronunciation; Mrs. Mercedes Van Volcem; Mrs. Michèle Hostekint; Mrs. An Moerenhout.

Accompanying as well are the members of the following officials and staff members: Mr. Julien Lecomte, the deputy head of mission from the Embassy of Belgium in Ottawa, and Mr. Dirk Mattens, the Committee Clerk.

The delegation participated in meetings today with staff, as well as members of various ministries and Members of the Legislative Assembly during lunch and are here to enjoy the proceedings of the House. Would the House please make them feel very welcome.

Hon. M. Bernier: The auto industry accounts for approximately 1.9 percent of our provincial GDP and provides 45,000 jobs for British Columbians. Specifically, the New Car Dealers Association of B.C. generates close to $11 billion in economic activity and employ more than 36,000 in high-paying jobs in 55 communities in this beautiful province. This fantastic group is an essential partner in creating a strong, diverse economy for British Columbia.

In the House joining us are Blair Qualey and, from my riding, Jim Inkster and Josh Peters from the New Car Dealers Association of British Columbia. Also with them is Mark Jiles. Will the House please make them most welcome today.

Tributes

GARY TURNER

R. Austin: Hon. Speaker, it is with great sadness today that I would like to share with the House the sudden death of Gary Turner on Friday in Terrace. He was a school trustee. His family, of course, is in complete shock at the suddenness of this. He leaves behind his wife, Lynn, and his two daughters, Heidi and Amy. I would ask, on behalf of all of us here, that you send condolences to the family.

Madame Speaker: It shall be done.

Introductions by Members

Hon. C. Oakes: I wish to acknowledge guests in the gallery who are here to provide support for the proposed new franchises act. We have today a franchisor, Ms. Natacha Beim from Vancouver, who is CEO and founder of Core Education & Fine Arts, an early learning school. We also have two franchisees who operate schools under the Core Education & Fine Arts franchise, Mark Leslie and Jackie Jackson, from Surrey, both who operate early learning schools in Langley, White Rock and are expanding into South Surrey and Richmond.

Here today also is Lorraine McLachlan, president and chief executive officer from the Canadian Franchise Association. As well, we have Jennifer Chow, president of the Canadian Bar Association through the B.C. branch, from Vancouver.

I’m also pleased to welcome Mark Startup, CEO of the Retail Council of Canada, and Greg Wilson, director of government relations for the Retail Council, British Columbia.
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We also would like to acknowledge the countless volunteer hours that several lawyers on our franchise law advisory group contributed: Blair Rebane, Peter Snell, Stuart Rennie. As well, here today are Tony Wilson and Sheena Mitchell, private franchise lawyers from Vancouver, and Greg Blue, QC, a lawyer from the British Columbia Law Institute.

Last but not least acknowledged, several of the staff from the Ministry of Justice who have been working on this franchise legislation: Renee Mulligan, Bruce Macallum, Nancy Carter, Alison Moore, Caitlin Ehmann, co-op students who have helped with the bill. And finally, from our ministry, Jordan Bennett, Christine Little and Tim McEwan.

Would the House please make them all welcome.

L. Throness: I would like to welcome high school teachers Ron Neels and Rita Klop, along with four other adults, who are accompanying 18 grade 11 students from Mount Cheam Christian School today. They come from a beautiful agricultural area of my riding known as Rosedale. It’s a small paradise of cows and greenhouses and shrubbery.

Would the House please make them welcome.

Hon. A. Virk: It’s my honour to introduce some guests that are in the gallery today. First of all is George Cook. George Cook is, like me, an immigrant to Canada and came to Canada from Scotland at age 23. George and a partner established NORAM Engineering whose prime focus would be developing and commercializing new technologies.

The NORAM group includes B.C. Research, a different company in B.C. And under George’s leadership, the companies owned by NORAM continue to grow and employ over 200 people in British Columbia, with projects in China, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Chile, Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. George is a proud Canadian who feels that he continues to owe a debt to Canada and must give back.

Accompanying Mr. Cook is Sergio Berretta, vice-president and chief operating officer of B.C. Research. He’s been with the company for over 20 years, helping Mr. Cook grow this company and grow this company in British Columbia. As a side note, Sergio’s son was the 13-year-old karate champion for Canada, as well, last year.

Would the House please join me in making them both feel very welcome.

M. Hunt: Also visiting us in the House today, from the Khalsa Diwan Society in Surrey, we have Mrs. Jagdish Hallen, Mrs. Surinder Bains, Mrs. Ranjit Kaur, Mr. Sarbjit Singh, Mr. Manjit Singh, Mrs. Sukhwinder Kaur, Azad Singh, Madan Singh, Tejpal Singh and Gian Singh Jandu.

I would ask the House to make them all feel very welcome.

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

BILL 38 — FRANCHISES ACT

Hon. C. Oakes presented a message from Her Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Franchises Act.

Hon. C. Oakes: I move that Bill 38 be introduced and read a first time now.

Motion approved.

Hon. C. Oakes: I am pleased to introduce the Franchises Act. This bill will provide…

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Hon. C. Oakes: …important legal rights and remedies to British Columbia–based small business owners who operate a franchise.

It is modelled on the uniform legislation that is enforced in five other provinces across Canada in order to provide business certainty for franchising in British Columbia. The legislation is designed to strike a balance between protecting vulnerable franchisees and upholding franchisors’ rights to freely contract to allow for the success of the franchise chain.

It will provide franchisees with the same legal protections as those in the five other Canadian provinces with a franchise legislation.

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

Bill 38, Franchises 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.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

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Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

FIRE PREVENTION AND SMOKE DETECTORS

M. Morris: I rise today to speak to the integral safety issue of fire prevention. This week has been nationally designated Fire Prevention Week, and I ask all British Columbians to make this a priority in their homes. The theme this year is “Hear the beep where you sleep.” The
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theme is of the utmost importance, as approximately half of home fire deaths are reported between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. and fatalities rise by 74 percent where there isn’t a working smoke alarm.

There’s a reason this is the longest-running public health and safety observance on record. Continued education on home fire safety is essential for everyone. As a former police officer, I understand the value of prevention. I encourage all British Columbians to add testing smoke alarms into their routine house maintenance. Being mindful of such a simple act as changing the batteries on your smoke detector can save lives. It’s suggested that alarm batteries be tested once a month. Batteries should be replaced every year, and alarms should be replaced every ten years.

Take a moment this week to sit down with your family and create a fire escape plan. On average, one British Columbian is injured by fire every 45 hours in B.C. This small task could prevent you from being part of that statistic.

In closing, I’d like to thank the firefighters who work to protect us from fire, putting their lives in danger every time they respond to an emergency. Make sure that you thank your local firefighters and help make their job easier by practising fire prevention year-round.

ROY HISASHI INOUYE

K. Conroy: Roy Hisashi Inouye of Kamloops passed away on September 8 at 83 years of age. Roy was born in Mission City, B.C., December 25, 1931. During the 1942 evacuation of the Japanese Canadians from the B.C. coast, he and his family moved to Oak Bluff, then Winnipeg, returning eight years later to Vancouver.

Roy worked on the Lower Mainland before attending UBC, where he met Betty Miyazaki, the love of his life. In 1957, he moved to Kamloops to run Ray’s TV Audio with his brother. In 1959, he married Betty. He joined Xerox in 1970 until he retired in 1989.

Roy was an active volunteer in numerous local, provincial and national organizations, often serving on the executives. Over the decades, his dedication to his community was recognized by many awards from the various groups he was involved with and from all levels of government in both Canada and Japan.

His interest in serving the community began with his involvement with the Manitoba Buddhist Society. After that, he continued his connection to the Buddhist Society, which he sustained throughout his life.

I met Roy after the apology to Japanese Canadians was read in this Legislature and got to know him personally when he and other Japanese Canadians met with me to lobby on behalf of a dedicated legacy stemming from the apology.

Roy had a three-point plan: to erect highway signage marking locations of former Japanese-Canadian internment camps and markers where Japanese Canadians were forced to work to upgrade roads; to financially support the upkeep of Japanese-Canadian heritage sites like the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre in New Denver and Miyazaki House in Lillooet; and to include in the social studies curriculum books about the unjust treatment of Japanese Canadians during 1942 to 1949.

He is survived by his daughters and their husbands, Lori and Robert, Adele and Bill, and Teri and Denis; grandsons Brian and Alex; and sisters Margaret Lyons, Kazuko Shimizu and Yoshiko Tanaka.

His family hopes we can all work together to achieve Roy’s dream and vision of a permanent legacy for the Japanese Canadians who were so unjustly treated.

PAUL MYERS AND
LIONS GATE HOSPITAL DONATION

R. Sultan: Last summer I talked to a former school trustee about the government’s plan to train more welders and plumbers. Her lofty reply was: “In our school district, parents expect their kids to be doctors and lawyers.” Maybe so, but they should be mindful of the story of North Vancouver’s Paul Myers.

At age 19, Paul Myers was apprenticed to Keith Plumbing and Heating, which then and now will come and fix your leaky faucet. A dozen years later, he bought the company — then and now a union shop. About 60 years later, the North Shore received a very healthy gift from this quiet and unassuming fellow: $25 million to Judy Savage’s Lions Gate Hospital Foundation — the largest single donation from any citizen to a hospital foundation in the history of this province.

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The money will help finance a new tower on the Lions Gate campus. In the interim, the south acute tower will be named after him.

Paul knows his hospitals, having worked on more hospitals than any other contractor in B.C. He also understands excellence. In 2015, his company was recognized for excellence in plumbing what is now called, by some at least, in the most modern shipyard in the world, Seaspan, in North Vancouver.

Paul Myers didn’t inherent $25 million. He worked hard. He earned it, and he saved it one dollar at a time. He gave it back to our community.

Thank you, Paul.

FOOD BANK AT UBC

D. Eby: It’s very hard to study when you’re hungry, but it’s also really hard to eat if you don’t have enough money for food. Students at universities across British Columbia have to choose too often between paying for school essentials and food. Sometimes the money doesn’t stretch as far as the student first thought, and sometimes the
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money was never there in the first place.

Into this hunger gap have stepped food banks at B.C.’s universities and colleges, including the food bank run by the University of British Columbia AMS. Coordinating the food bank at the Point Grey campus of UBC is Jay Singh, a happy and energetic 20-year-old bachelor of commerce student at the Sauder School of Business.

It’s Jay’s job to coordinate the many volunteers who spend what few hours they have between home, school and studying to staff the food bank. Jay does this job with enthusiasm and a lot of concern. As he told local media this summer: “We’ve seen an increase in demand, but we haven’t seen an increase in supply at all.”

To meet the shortfall, the food bank is introducing a new program called Food for Fines, where students who have to pay library fines can pay with canned food. They’ve also started offering fresh produce sourced through a partnership with a community rooftop garden at the AMS student building.

But it may not be enough. Last year at this time, the UBC food bank had 23 visits from students who needed food. Demand has more than doubled this year. So far this September, 58 students knocked on the AMS food bank door.

The food bank always needs financial and food donations. If you call to donate, wish Jay and the volunteer food bank team luck. They have far too much work to do and not enough food with which to do it.

Congratulations to all of the UBC students volunteering with the UBC food bank. We wish we didn’t need your work feeding hungry students in our community, but we thank you for it.

SMALL BUSINESS AND
BURNABY HEIGHTS NEIGHBOURHOOD

R. Lee: October is Small Business Month, and we have a lot to celebrate in British Columbia. Small business makes up 98 percent of all business in the province and employs over one million people. Small business provides nearly 54 percent of all private sector jobs in British Columbia, the third-highest rate in the country. It’s therefore not surprising that small business accounts for 33 percent of British Columbia’s GDP.

In my own riding, Burnaby Heights has been the local hub of small business for 75 years. The Heights is one of the best-kept secrets in the Lower Mainland. The area is comprised of a vibrant mix of many long-standing, independent businesses, as well as successful franchises and well-known anchor businesses as well. There are many restaurants, hair salons and one-of-a-kind shops.

I’m sure you would enjoy meals at the many Italian, Greek, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian and Chinese restaurants. You may also want to have a piece of cake from the 58-year-old Valley Bakery. Its owner, Jack Kuyer, has done such a good job that he will be formally inducted into the Burnaby Business Hall of Fame this Thursday by the Burnaby Board of Trade.

Promoting this friendly neighbourhood is the Heights Merchants Association, a BIA consisting of more than 250 merchants and over 150 property owners. The HMA actively promotes the Heights by improving its physical attractiveness, organizing events like Hats Off Day and attracting more shoppers and businesses to the area.

The next time you’re in Burnaby, be sure to pay a visit to the Heights. You will be glad you did.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
TO DROUGHTS AND FOREST FIRES

S. Robinson: This past summer parts of British Columbia experienced severe drought and overwhelming forest fires. We topped this summer off with the epic windstorm in the Lower Mainland on that last weekend in August.

When I reflect on these extreme weather events and the impacts they have on the lives of British Columbians, I am struck by the resiliency and the strength of our local governments here in British Columbia.

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I had the chance to speak to mayors, councillors and regional directors who were dealing with water restrictions, forest fire evacuations and road closures. I heard from community leaders who had to deal with neighbour pitted against neighbour when addressing who can water and who can’t water their lawns.

I heard from mayors that had to put their communities on evacuation alert. I heard from mayors who had to host town hall meetings so that everyone could get the same information at the same time so that they could be prepared for what was to come next in their community.

I saw how mayors and councillors and regional directors throughout the Lower Mainland were using social media to advise residents on the activities of city crews so that they would know that their tax dollars were hard at work.

In all of my conversations, I heard community leaders focus first and foremost on the safety of their citizens. I also heard how communicating with residents was a top priority, because local government leaders know that when people are better informed, they are calmer and better prepared for emergencies.

These community leaders are at the forefront of disasters and crises that strike our communities. This past summer they demonstrated excellent creativity, dedication and resilience.

I invite the House to join me in applauding their hard work, their commitments to their communities and the people of British Columbia.

Madame Speaker: The Minister of Technology, I believe, seeks leave to make an introduction.
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Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. A. Virk: It’s indeed my pleasure to introduce, visiting from my hometown in Surrey, a group of seniors — everything from physicians to professors to homemakers to homeopaths.

Today in the House, we have Dr. Bicker Singh Lali. We have Mrs. Jasminder Kaur China. We have Mrs. Surjit Kaur Lali, Mrs. Parmjit Kaur Sihota, Mrs. Preet Pender, Mrs. Indu Parhar, Mrs. Surjit Kaur Gill, Mrs. Mohinder Kaur Sidhu, Dr. Sohan Singh Telin, Mrs. Manjit Kaur Dhillon, Mr. Baldev Singh Virya, Mrs. Pushpindar Kaur Ramgotra, Mrs. Sujinder Kaur Kotli, Mrs. Satwant Kumar, Mrs. Harminder Kaur Batal, Mr. Palminder Singh Batal. We have Mrs. Gurmej Kaur Dhillon, Mrs. Baldev Kaur Bains, Mrs. Santosh Bhushan. We have Mrs. Baljit Kaur Gill.

My colleagues will introduce the rest of them, but will the House please make my guests feel welcome.

Hon. P. Fassbender: I ask for leave to make some introductions.

Leave granted.

Hon. P. Fassbender: Again, as my colleague has stated, these individuals are visiting us from Surrey. I’d like to introduce Mr. Tarsem Singh Atwal, Mr. Jasbalkaur Atwal, Mr. Kulwant Singh Nijjar, Mrs. Parminder Kaur Dhillon, Mr. Avtar Singh Dhol, Mr. Balwant Singh Grewal, Mr. Sham Singh Shahal, Mr. Arun Singh Sandhu, Mr. Surindu Singh Gill and Mrs. Shanti Toman.

I would ask the House to make them all feel welcome.

Madame Speaker: The Minister for Children and Family Development also begs leave to makes an introduction.

Leave granted.

Hon. S. Cadieux: Also visiting from Surrey are Mrs. Parmjit Ahluwalia, Mr. Piara Singh Gill, Mrs. Gurdip Kaur Dhillon, Mrs. Saroj Sood, Mrs. Rajbinder Kaur Sekhon, Mrs. Harjinder Kaur Sanghera, Mrs. Sukhjinder Kaur Basi, Mrs. Jaswinder Kaur Saran, Mrs. Jagir Kaur Brar, Mrs. Gurdev Kaur Samra, Mrs. Swaran Kaur Tatla, Mrs. Ravinderr Uppal, Mrs. Amrit Bhalla and Mr. Surinder Bhalla.

If the House would please make them welcome.

H. Bains: It’s not too often you see so many of my community representatives all at one time attending the House in this many numbers. It is a very proud moment for me to introduce them to this House, because these are the leaders of our community. Many of them are elders. There are some younger people in the crowd as well, and I welcome them as well. I ask the House to please join with me and give them a warm welcome.

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Oral Questions

CHILDREN AND YOUTH COMMITTEE
MEETING CANCELLATIONS

J. Horgan: Last week we began question period and carried throughout the week questions to the Minister of Children and Family Development around issues that have been canvassed in this House in the past — the tragic case of Isabella Wiens, the continuing nightmare for J.P. and her family and, of course, the death of Alex Gervais.

We also talked about the story of Paige, which was articulated in a report by the children’s representative, a report that was going to be coming before the select standing committee this week. On Friday, the committee cancelled its hearings until after the House rises at the end of November.

My question to the Minister of Children and Family Development is: did she have any role in having the hearings cancelled, which would have led to an opportunity to discuss these very vexing issues and provide some confidence in her and her ministry?

Hon. S. Cadieux: As the member knows, the select standing committees or committees of the Legislature are not committees that answer to the Ministry of Children and Families. As such, no, I had no involvement in the decision by the committee.

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

J. Horgan: As I said last week and I say again today, our objective here is to ask some tough questions of the minister and her staff to ensure that we’re getting the straight goods on the tragedies that have been unfolding on her watch over the past number of months.

To that end, we attempted to have the minister come before the select standing committee last week, and the Liberal majority on that committee denied that opportunity. Then we were told, after having scheduled meetings for October 6 and November 4 to hear evidence from the children’s representative and to discuss the issues that are of public concern…. Clearly, when children in care lose their lives, this is an issue that involves all of us, and it involves accountability.

We had hearings cancelled for no particular reason. I want to know if, perhaps, the House Leader can advise why it is, if it wasn’t the minister. I’m fairly confident
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I won’t be getting an answer from the Premier today. Perhaps the House Leader can advise me why it is that hearings that were prepared, evidence about to be given by the children’s representative, were abruptly cancelled on a Friday afternoon. Is it, as I rather suspect, because the government doesn’t want to talk about this in public?

Madame Speaker: I will caution all members. Questions must relate directly to the purview of ministerial responsibility.

J. Horgan: Well, again, I’ll pose my question to the Government House Leader. The Government House Leader, as you know, hon. Speaker — and the Clerk will, I’m sure, advise — is responsible, with the Opposition House Leader, for constructing committees so that they can do the business of this Legislature.

I can’t ask questions directly of the committee Chair. I’ve just asked the minister responsible if she was involved in cancelling the hearings. I can’t ask the Premier today if she was responsible. So I’m looking to the next logical person. If not he, perhaps the Deputy Premier would like to stand and offer an explanation to the people of British Columbia on why it is that the B.C. Liberals don’t want to talk about these difficult issues.

We’re not going to get resolution unless the government is prepared to open the books, open the doors and answer candid questions about their behaviour over the past number of months.

Hon. M. de Jong: The hon. Leader of the Opposition is a senior member, obviously, and an experienced member of the House and knows the rules around what is and is not in order.

I will say this. First of all, I reject categorically the assertion that somehow the scheduling of committee meetings is the result of direction from the executive council.

I would also say this. If the member examines the breadth of activity that committees have been undertaking over the past number of years, he will, I think, if he is being fair, come to the conclusion that the government has been in no way shy to tap into the talents of members on both sides of the House and avail themselves of the work and the considered questions, opinions and submissions of members of the House via an active and vibrant committee system.

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

J. Horgan: It’s for the very arguments that the House Leader just gave that we would like to see the meetings take place. The children’s representative has cleared her calendar. She was going to be here on Wednesday to take the committee, a bipartisan committee, through the challenges that Paige faced before she lost her life after aging out of the system, dying alone on the streets of Vancouver.

I’ve been a member of the Finance Committee. I know I’ve worked with many members on both sides of the House. Effective work is done in that area. Similarly, again, the work of the committee on children and families has been exemplary. This is about accountability. The rationale given for cancelling the hearings was conflicts with other committees. There are no other committees meeting on the days in question.

Absent a real answer, absent an ability for the minister to say whether she had a role in it or not, absent an opportunity to ask the head of the government, I would again pose my question either to the Deputy Premier or the Government House Leader. If this professed reason for cancelling the hearings is conflict with other meetings, and there aren’t any, what’s the public to draw from that? I would suggest the public will draw the conclusion that I have: that the government doesn’t want to talk about it because they have something to hide.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member has put the question twice and twice received a very specific and very direct answer. He may choose to ignore it. He may not like that answer. But he has received it nonetheless.

The minister and the government, the entire government, take the issues that have been canvassed in this House very, very seriously. They touch on some of the worst types of tragedy. They touch on an area of responsibility that is, first and foremost, for government, on behalf of all citizens, to discharge. There is no hesitation on the part of the minister or the government to confront these issues, to address them in a way that will ensure that where failings have been identified, they are corrected to prevent a similar tragedy as occurred in the past.

I am not in a position to speak to the discussions that may have taken place at the committee, but I am in a position to assure this House that the government’s commitment, the minister’s commitment, the Premier’s commitment, is to ensure that all is being done to attend to the needs of our most vulnerable citizens.

DEATHS OF MOTHER AND SON
IN PRINCE RUPERT AND SERVICES FOR
CHILDREN WITH COMPLEX CARE NEEDS

J. Rice: Last week, I attended the inquest into the deaths of Angie Robinson and Robert Robinson. Angie was a single mom struggling with depression. Her son, Robert, had severe autism, and she struggled to give him the care he needed. Taking care of Robert was a full-time job, so Angie asked the Ministry of Children and Families to help her get child support from her ex-partner. They didn’t help. Angie asked the ministry for respite care assistance. It wasn’t given. Angie’s cries for help were ignored.
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My question is to the Minister of Children and Family Development. How many families have to experience tragedy before changes are made in her ministry?

Hon. S. Cadieux: To the member opposite and all the members opposite: the Coroners Service and the jury had a very difficult job to do, to listen to a great deal of information during their deliberations last week on an event that was incredibly tragic. My heart, at the time and still today, goes out to the family, the friends and the community for the loss.

We will take all of the recommendations of that coroner’s inquest seriously. We will add those recommendations to the practice considerations highlighted by the director’s case review that has been completed on this case. We will fully respond to those recommendations in due course.

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Madame Speaker: The member for North Coast on a supplemental.

J. Rice: Robert’s condition was so severe that he smashed out a truck window with his head. When Robert had an episode in the emergency room, it took three RCMP officers, a doctor, a nurse and his mother, Angie, to help manage him until he calmed down.

The ministry left a single woman alone, a woman fleeing from an abusive relationship, without the supports she needed to care for Robert. She was deeply depressed, but no help was given.

After every tragedy, new recommendations are made, and the children’s minister ignores them. Again to the minister: when will families in crises get the help that they need and they deserve? When?

Hon. S. Cadieux: As I said, there are very fulsome recommendations coming from the coroner’s inquest, and I would thank the coroner and the jurors for their service.

There are a number of issues that have been raised through this — certainly, that the matter of ensuring the status of peace bonds and no-contact orders be known. Actually, we’re in the final stages of working with our justice partners to give social workers the ability in real time to check orders by giving them access to the protection order registry. We think those are incredibly important things.

While we do already have policy on collaboration in the ministry, clearly more needs to be done. We are certainly open to both reviewing and strengthening that work within the ministry.

Those are just two of the recommendations, of course. I can also tell the House that the ministry has provided child protection staff and community partners all with domestic violence training. We amended the child and family service act in June of 2014, as the member will remember, to include domestic violence in the act as a child protection concern and to include support services to children who witness domestic violence.

There is always more to do, and when we receive recommendations, we take them seriously. We look at how that should be integrated or change our practice and our work, and we will continue to do so.

D. Donaldson: In the spirit of collaboration and taking things seriously, I ask that the director’s case review be tabled in this House.

Angie attempted suicide twice in the lead-up to her final attempt. She reached out to the ministry multiple times, and each time, they pushed her away. This government wasn’t there for Angie. If the issue wasn’t a lack of resources, why wasn’t Angie given the help she needed?

Hon. S. Cadieux: I’ll say a number of things in response to the member’s questions. First off, the director’s case review will be made public, as the member knows. We do that consistent with policy, publicly posting the summaries at the end of the year, and that will be done this year as well.

While I can’t speak to the specifics of the case, what I can say is that there are numerous supports and services available in the province — and in Prince Rupert, specifically — for children with autism and their families and for families needing support from the ministry on other matters.

The case review and the coroner’s service work here has led to a number of recommendations. We will be reviewing them and taking them extremely seriously.

D. Donaldson: Robert’s mother did the best she could do for her son, even driving two hours to get respite care in Terrace, until that was cut off. When she lost respite services, Angie asked for help and was told to wait till Robert turned 19, a wait of three years. After hearing that news, four days later, on World Autism Day, she and her son were dead. Everyone knew that Angie was struggling, and nobody knew where to get help.

The minister failed this family. She failed the child, she failed the mother, and she continues to fail the extended family. Does the minister think it’s right to tell a family in crisis to wait three years for services, with horrific consequences?

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Hon. S. Cadieux: What I can tell this House, and have on numerous occasions, is that there are a variety of services available, through the ministry, for families. Those services are available wherever people live. When it comes to autism services, we’re the only province in the country to have a no-wait-list policy for autism supports.

We do provide support for families with children with autism and young adults with autism, in addition to res-
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pite services and in addition to CYSN services and other supports to the family.

I recognize that, at times, finding specialized services in smaller communities is difficult. In many cases, it’s similar to the challenges faced by individuals with health challenges that need to travel for specialized services in larger centres. We are always looking to improve the services that we provide. We will continue to do that.

SERVICES FOR
CHILDREN WITH COMPLEX CARE NEEDS

C. James: Like Alex Gervais, Alex Malamalatabua spent the last months of his life living somewhere no child should live — in a hospital. He was waiting for the ministry to find him a home with the supervision he needed to keep him safe and the supports he needed to get better. After five months of waiting, he took a day pass, and he left the hospital. He never returned. His body was found three days later.

My question is to the children’s ministry. The minister claimed that a variety of services are available. If that’s so, then why didn’t her ministry get Alex into a safe and supported home setting?

Hon. S. Cadieux: As the member knows, I can’t speak to the specifics of any cases. What I can tell the member and ensure the member is aware of are the vast array of services available and, in particular, the work we’ve done to improve the services available for complex care.

In 2013, I made a commitment to strengthen our network of support, and we’ve added six beds in our complex care unit at the Maples. We’ve committed to community beds by the end of this year — four beds in Prince George and four beds in Vernon. Certainly, it takes time — not because of a lack of will, but in fact because each of those beds comes with a team of highly specialized clinicians who are trained in dealing with serious mental health and trauma issues that are coupled with low mental acuity.

There are also other services and supports that we provide. We have programs at Maples — six beds for the Dala program, and the Crossroads program has eight beds — other response beds in the province, as well, and non-residential programs and community mental health programs.

The most important thing for everyone to remember is that each child and youth who presents with mental health issues or special needs is unique. Not all services or supports are right for every child.

Madame Speaker: Victoria–Beacon Hill on a supplemental.

C. James: For the minister to say that there are a vast array of services is an insult to children and families and an insult to the workers in this province. These are workers who spend every day going to work trying to find services, trying to find supports and not finding them because that government has cut supports for children and families in this province.

Robert Robinson should have had access to a therapeutic group home. Alex Gervais should have had access to a therapeutic group home. Alex Malamalatabua should have had access to a therapeutic group home.

The minister refuses to answer why these children didn’t get the services they need. But the children’s representative has an answer. She says this government has “grotesquely underfunded acute care and therapeutic foster care.”

In 2013, after a troubled child was tasered in Prince George, she implored this government to fund supported housing for children with complex needs. In 2013, in this House, I also asked the minister where the supports were for children with complex needs.

[1420]

The minister didn’t act. It’s too late for these families. To the minister: when will these services be put in place?

Hon. S. Cadieux: As I just stated in my last answer, those complex care beds are there now. That was a commitment we made, and they’re in place.

That said, I think the members opposite have difficulty understanding that not every child’s needs are suited to every type of service available. In fact, on many occasions, what is necessary is a customized response, a customized care setting. Those do take time to establish, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t made available.

TRANSIT FARES

C. Trevena: My question is for the Minister of Transportation, the minister responsible for B.C. Transit. B.C. Transit is reviewing its fare strategy for Victoria, the end result of which will be higher costs, especially for seniors and students. Transit is considering three options, all of which increase fares for seniors and students by as much as 50 percent.

In a city already beset by traffic gridlock and at a time when we’re trying to get people out of their cars and into the habit of taking transit, I’d like to ask the minister why his government is planning to make it less affordable to take transit, especially for those seniors and students.

Hon. T. Stone: What a welcome, welcome question from the member opposite about B.C. Transit services. This provides me, on behalf of government, to talk about the fact that here in British Columbia, we actually spend more supporting transit services than any other province in this country — in fact, double the national average.

Because of those record levels of investment, transit service across British Columbia is actually up by 40 percent since 2001. We’re going to continue to work with
[ Page 9401 ]
communities across British Columbia and we’re going to continue to work with B.C. Transit to ensure that the services British Columbians have come to rely upon and the expansion that communities would like to see in their communities will continue to be possible in large part because of a continued support of record levels of operating from this government of British Columbia.

Madame Speaker: The member for North Island on a supplemental.

C. Trevena: I understand from the minister’s response to my question that that’s a yes. Seniors and students will be paying more, thanks to this government’s policy.

Transit riders outside the Lower Mainland and, obviously, around the Island are wondering if this is going to be the thin end of the wedge. There are 49 communities with transit all wondering if they’re going to be targeted for fare hikes.

No matter what the minister may say, this is the minister that has frozen funding for B.C. Transit in communities which wanted to expand already successful systems. That includes his own riding of Kamloops, Prince George and a number of others.

Could the Minister of Transportation assure the House that these places which are not receiving the money that they expected to be able to invest in their systems — Prince George, Kamloops, Chilliwack and Nelson, to name just a few — are not next in line for fare hikes?

Hon. T. Stone: As I mentioned in my previous response, this government is going to continue to lead the country. We will continue to lead the country in our level of support for transit in the Lower Mainland and, indeed, in communities across British Columbia.

When the Evergreen line is completed, British Columbia will have the longest rapid transit line in the country. We are going to continue to support transit services in Cranbrook and Kamloops and Campbell River, communities across this province.

[1425]

There is actually not a reduction in support for transit services in the first year of the three-year service plan. The member has her facts wrong on that point. I would encourage her to look at that service plan. In fact, there’s a modest increase. We’re going to continue to work with communities to provide even more transit service across this province.

HIRING OF LOBBYISTS BY
POST-SECONDARY INSTITUTIONS

K. Corrigan: In the spring, we learned that universities and colleges had wasted more than $290,000 hiring B.C. Liberal insiders to lobby the B.C. government. The minister responded — and I think everyone will remember this — by clucking. But after that, he said: “I’ll be making it clear to them that we do not see the need for them to retain government relations consultants.”

Well, we now know through an FOI request that the minister did send letters on March 16 to 25 post-secondary institutions. But these letters are exactly the opposite of clear. They don’t mention the words “government relations.” They don’t even mention the word “lobbying.” Nowhere in these letters does the minister say: “Hey, stop doing this.”

Can the minister please explain why he has failed to put an end to this wasteful practice?

Hon. A. Wilkinson: I’m always delighted to be able to rise in this House to any question related to advanced education, because it’s such a massively successful program in this province. We have 25 institutions with 430,000 students reaching their goals in life by getting credentials and training so they can improve their lot in life, go out and start businesses, build their families and their careers.

The question that the member asks is redundant. I spoke with all the institutions and told them that this is unnecessary. I communicated with them directly. I prefer to do it, whenever possible, in a collegial fashion directly rather than through the mail.

Madame Speaker: Burnaby–Deer Lake on a supplemental.

K. Corrigan: I read the letter that the minister sent to all these institutions, and it is far from clear and mentions nothing about lobbying. In fact, I don’t even know how they would have figured out that it had to anything do with the subject at all. But apparently, because we got it as an FOI response, that is what the letter was about.

The minister stood up and told this House he would tell post-secondary institutions to stop hiring B.C. Liberal lobbyists, and then he chose not to.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

K. Corrigan: Students deserve better than this. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of student tuition and taxpayer money….

On February 25, Vancouver Island University wrote to government to report that they, too, had used lobbyists. They wrote: “This work has totalled $103,656 during the past three fiscal years. We are currently not using their services but may in the future.”

To the minister, why did he say he was putting a stop to this practice and then continues to turn a blind eye to it? It continues to happen.
[ Page 9402 ]

Hon. A. Wilkinson: Well, we can see that when the opposition has completely run out of steam as they desperately wait for a favourable result in the federal election, they are now reduced to wild allegations, groundless innuendo, reading out letters from four months ago that are utterly redundant with has what has happened since then.

The issue of lobbying by institutions has been dealt with. I’ve just explained how it was dealt with directly rather than indirectly through some kind of correspondence. And so we find the member opposite grasping at straws, desperate to manufacture a crisis, because the opposition is truly lost waiting for the federal result.

[1430]

D. Eby: We’re talking about almost $300,000 in wasted student money and public money on lobbyists. Now, the government had an opportunity to put in writing, to send clear direction to universities, that they should not practise business this way. The minister chose not to do so. He chose to do so orally, and what did he get in response? “We may do this again in the future.”

To the minister: it has obviously failed. Will you put it in writing? But then, maybe even if you do, the Minister of Technology might not have listened to that anyway. Will the minister put it in writing so that universities and boards of governors know that they should not waste student money this way when they have food banks on their campuses?

Hon. A. Wilkinson: Well, it’s sad in the Legislature when two former members of the Law Society, who know how lawyers correspond with each other, who know how agreements are made, who know the structure of correspondence….

Interjections.

Hon. A. Wilkinson: They stand here today, and rather than focus on the benefits for students, they carp on about…

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Hon. A. Wilkinson: …correspondence. It’s truly a sad day when just last week….

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: The members will come to order.

Interjection.

Madame Speaker: Vancouver-Kingsway.

Hon. A. Wilkinson: Just last week I was pleased to be invited to UBC’s 100th anniversary on September 30, where they celebrated going from cowsheds at Fairview Slopes, through the good offices of this government, to being in a fabulous campus at Point Grey. Not a single mention was made in this House of that fact by the member for Point Grey. Instead, we hear carping criticism of our universities when we should be celebrating their success.

[End of question period.]

Tabling Documents

Hon. M. de Jong: In accordance with section 6 of the Balanced Budget and Ministerial Accountability Act, I’m tabling a revised schedule F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2016. The revised schedule F reflects the changes to ministerial accountabilities resulting from a government reorganization that took place on July 30, 2015.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: Continued second reading on Bill 36.

Madame Speaker: We’ll allow members to return to their other duties.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 36 — AUDITOR GENERAL FOR
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

(continued)

M. Farnworth: It’s my pleasure to resume remarks on the Auditor General’s bill.

[1435]

It’s nice to see the minister here. The last time we were talking, I think I was doing some background in terms of the history of how we got to where we are. One of the key issues that arose at that time was the issue of independence. Literally every member on the government side said the Office of the Auditor General was being set up because it was absolutely imperative that this office, this individual, be completely independent of politicians.

The Minister of Energy was emphatic in that. In fact, he said and stated that we cannot have politicians interfering in this — that this position must be completely independent.

At the time, as the opposition we suggested that if that was the government’s concern, there were a number of avenues open to them. One was making the position be a fully independent officer of the Legislature.
[ Page 9403 ]

The other was to roll it into the Auditor General’s office. That’s already a full-standing independent office that has a budget. It has offices, it has the ability, it has the staff, and it would not take much to put additional resources — significantly lower than what the government, in fact, ended up investing — and you could have put a municipal auditor general, a function, in the Auditor General’s office.

Unfortunately, that did not happen. The government, as too often is the case, gets an idea into its head, and that’s it. It will not listen to anybody. It will not listen to UBCM. It will not listen to the opposition. It will not listen to experts outside its head. It is literally: “My way or the highway.”

Invariably, when governments do that, they get into trouble, and that is exactly what happened here. We saw the government spend more than $5 million on an office that produced, at the time that the $5 million figure came out, one audit. It has since produced some additional audits, but the reality is that the government then found itself in a battle with the very individual that it put in there.

The result of that was chaos in the organization, local governments that were extremely dissatisfied with what was taking place in an office that was coming in and was not telling them or that they did not want in the first place. It was, as has been pointed out, a brainchild of the Premier. It was in essence a solution looking for a problem that ended up looking for a fight.

This legislation here today is an attempt by the government to try and resolve the mess that they created. What’s interesting is that in tabling this particular piece of legislation, it’s almost like the previous legislation never happened — that the previous efforts of the municipal auditor general never happened. It was like, “Nothing to see here; move along,” and we have this bill to try and — in the words of some of my colleagues — “put lipstick on a pig.”

Well, the reality is that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. UBCM clearly recognized that when they voted at their recent conference, which the minister used to be a member of and would have been a very vocal, very active member. UBCM voted to tell the government that they were not in favour of what has taken place. They were not in favour of this office.

Clearly, the government with this bill has not listened to local government, has not listened to the UBCM and, more importantly, has turned its back on what it said was one of the key principles and one of the key foundations upon which this office was supposed to have been built — that it was going to be independent.

The fact is, it is not independent. And the fine words of members on the other side to say: “Yes it is….” It’s not. It is a function that has been brought into government, and we know, from time and time again, how this government deals with powers that have been brought into government and how, all too often, they use those powers.

[1440]

One only has to look at the Ministry of Education. For example, when they decide that they don’t like the direction a school board is going or the attitude of a particular school board that maybe wants to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes…. When a school board does that, well, what happens? The government says: “You know what? We’re going to stick an auditor in there to go and audit you and make your life difficult.” That’s what they do.

It is a vindictiveness that we have seen from this government on a number of occasions. When they are questioned…. We have seen — it is still not over, by any means — what happened in the Ministry of Health around the health firings, for example. It’s an issue that is still under investigation. But clearly, for many people, the success of the therapeutics initiative was very much a topic of that and the government’s dislike of that initiative.

What we have seen is, as I said, when it comes to education, government’s willingness to say: “You know what? You are your own duly elected body, but — guess what — we know best. We know best, and we are going to make your life difficult, and we are going to send somebody in.”

I will guarantee that if this bill passes and they bring this office in-house, this government and this Premier will be unable to resist the desire to make it clear that if there is a local government, for example, that they do not like, a local government that is critical of them — and I can think of a number of local governments around the province — this government will go: “You know what? We’re getting a lot of heat from this municipality. Let’s make their life difficult. Let’s go and get the internal auditor general to go in and to cause problems.”

J. Rice: Meddle.

M. Farnworth: Meddle, as my colleague from North Coast says. Unfortunately, that is one of the things that will happen with the passage of this legislation. This is a centralization that happens in this government where….

As we saw earlier today, the children and families committee shut down even though the children’s representative wanted to speak to it. It was shut down until after the session happened. It was shut down until after the session is over. So we’re here in Victoria. All the members are here, and what happens? An issue which the government is highly sensitive about, for which it has faced a lot of criticism….

One of the ways that accountability is in place, for example, is for that committee to hear from the children’s representative, and it shuts it down so that it can’t be used while the House is in session. They say, “Oh, we can meet after session” — meet after session and fly everybody down and all the costs….

But more importantly, it’s to avoid embarrassment, and
[ Page 9404 ]
that’s how this government operates, time and time again. Mechanisms designed for accountability are shut down. Mechanisms designed for accountability have their powers curtailed. They have their independence curtailed. And unfortunately, that is what is going to happen with this particular piece of legislation.

It’s a shame that they would not listen to the opposition. It’s a shame that they will not listen to UBCM. It’s a shame that they would not work with the Auditor General’s office. But that’s what we have come to expect.

The government has a majority. It will pass this bill. We will go through extensive discussion at committee stage on the various clauses of this particular….

[1445]

If the minister is wondering if I’m the last speaker, I can assure him that I am not the last speaker. There will be a number of speakers still to come, because it’s still early in the afternoon. While there is other legislation to do, some not quite as complex as this particular bill…. I see the minister nodding, and I just wanted to let him know — and his staff who are, no doubt, watching.

It’s important that we have that discussion in this chamber, because the idea that the government likes to talk about is: “We’re about local government being able to use its powers and its abilities to exercise the functions that it has.” The reality is that too often, the government wants to say: “No, we’re going to have the last word” or “No, we don’t like what you’re doing, so we’re going to change things.” That, unfortunately, is what is going to happen with this particular piece of legislation.

The government, I know, will say no, that that’s not correct. The government will say: “No, the hon. member is wrong.” But the reality is that we see too many occasions, as I have pointed out, where that is simply not the case and the government feels the need to go in and meddle in areas and jurisdictions that are supposed to be the purview of local government, that are supposed to be the purview of municipalities and that they talk about respecting. The reality is that they don’t, to the degree that they really should.

As I said, there will be lots of questions during the committee stage on the debate on this particular piece of legislation, and I hope that the minister is able to answer those questions.

With that, I know that there are other members of this House who will be rising to speak to the legislation. I am looking forward to hearing what they have to say, as I know the minister is looking forward to hearing what they have to say. I will take my seat and listen to them, and I look forward to the committee stage of the debate when we get to it.

S. Sullivan: I’m very pleased to support Bill 36, the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act. I can tell you that when I was mayor of Vancouver, we discussed having such a position, funded by the property tax. That was an issue for us. We know that there were other cities that had discussed it as well, and it never moved forward.

Why did we want an auditor general? Well, for many of the same reasons that the British Columbia government wants it and has it. And it does a very fine job. This does not detract from the autonomy of local government. In fact, it’s given more information. What it does is it provides more information to local government, information that is independent of municipal bureaucracies, which can be a very valuable service. I don’t believe that the system and the structure that we set up here will be the system and structure we have in the future.

I can only look to the history of auditors general, the office of the auditor general in history. And I’ll just rehearse a little bit of that, going back to 1857, when Sir Francis Baring in London first proposed the concept. He developed a Select Committee on Public Monies, as it was called. But it wasn’t until 1861 that William Gladstone extended this oversight to all departments and created a permanent committee. And in 1866…. It wasn’t until that date that they actually established a staff position for this. They called it the Comptroller and Auditor General.

It’s interesting to note that Britain still has these positions amalgamated, and it’s called the position of Comptroller and Auditor General. It was in 1866 when they started to do the performance audits, as we now understand the Auditor General, these value-for-money audits. The saying at the time was that they not only wanted to look out for traditional accounting expenditures, but they wanted to look at the wisdom, faithfulness and economy of the actions of government.

Now, it was in 1878 when Canada first developed an independent Auditor General, but it wasn’t until 1931 that the Auditor General’s position split from the comptroller general.

[1450]

It’s interesting to note that when Britain received its first Auditor General, it was the same year that British Columbia developed the position — 1861 — although it lacked the independence that we currently appreciate. In 1977, the Auditor General of B.C. was created by Finance Minister Evan Wolfe in a Social Credit government. Since that time, we’ve seen the history of the Auditor General grow in incremental steps.

It has developed bit by bit. As we get more experience, the position gets changed, and I fully expect that this will happen with the Auditor General for Local Government. In fact, it’s what is happening right now.

This is an amendment. It gives us the opportunity to apply what we have learned in the first two years since the Office of the Auditor General for Local Government was launched in January 2013. It amends the Auditor General for Local Government Act by clarifying and enhancing the governance and accountability provisions of the act.
[ Page 9405 ]

We’re only following a very long tradition of incremental changes. I think this is definitely the right way to go. The government is committed to the concept of the AGLG, and the office is already on a stronger footing. We believe the work of the Auditor General for Local Government will result in opportunities for local governments to learn, to improve their operations, to demonstrate accountability to the one taxpayer that we all serve.

What it does is it helps to really define the roles and responsibility and enhance the accountability of the position. It makes sure that, as a provincial appointee, the AGLG is accountable to government and to the audit council. This Auditor General will, in fact, continue to have the independence to select and conduct the performance audit program, and there will be clear responsibility to deliver results.

The authority of the minister and the audit council to review the performance of the office and to the AGLG to accountability…. It will be strengthened. These amendments mean that the audit council will have a clear authority to review the Auditor General for Local Government’s performance and delivery.

The proposed amendments establish clear lines of accountability. For example, the audit council will have the clear authority for reviewing and monitoring the performance of the Auditor General for Local Government as it relates to their purpose and mandate.

Specifically, the amendment strengthens the role of the minister by enabling the minister to initiate a review of the office or the AGLG at any time in addition to the mandated review in 2017. It will enable the minister to directly recommend suspension or removal of the Auditor General for Local Government without waiting for a recommendation from the audit council. It ensures that the minister has a role in the budget and estimates process for the AGLG.

The core mandate of the Auditor General for Local Government is to conduct performance audits. This is the value for money that was established in 1866 — that concept by William Gladstone — and that will focus on the economy, the efficiency and effectiveness of the design and delivery of programs, services and policies.

As the Deputy Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, I got to witness firsthand the importance and the power of this position — how it can deliver better results for the taxpayers. It’s truly a wonderful thing to observe the ministries adopting and changing their performance based on some of the feedback given by the Auditor General.

[1455]

We know that performance auditing is different from financial auditing. Financial statements are audited to ensure they are accurately reporting an entity’s financial position. That’s really not the primary function of the Auditor General. It’s really not to be an auditor to lead or conduct performance audits. Under the circumstances where the AGLG, in this case, is not a certified auditor, the AGLG will have to appoint a Deputy Auditor General who is authorized to be an auditor.

Now, we know that the proposed amendments enhance the relationship between the AGLG, the audit council, the minister, the government and local governments by clarifying and defining roles and responsibilities of those parties and enhancing the accountability framework for the Auditor General. These amendments maintain the functional independence of the Office of the Auditor General for Local Government and protect the independence of the Auditor General in crucial areas.

The Auditor General for Local Government will continue to have the sole discretion to select performance audits to be conducted. I think that must be emphasized: to know that there are two clear lines of authority, but the discretion to select performance audits will be that of the Auditor General for Local Government.

Previously, there was a provision that did not provide a role for the minister in the budget and estimate process for the AGLG. That provision is being removed, and the minister will present the Auditor General for Local Government’s budget estimate for approval by Treasury Board. This makes the office’s budget process more consistent with other government entities and strengthens the role of the minister without compromising the independence of the office’s operations.

The amendments clarify the terms and conditions of employment for the AGLG by doing several things.

It appoints the AGLG under the Public Service Act, which allows the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to set the terms and conditions of employment. This could include the establishment of holdback measurements. The allowing for the removal with or without cause, applying the employment termination standards regulation, provides certainty regarding severance in the event of a termination without cause. And the Auditor General for Local Government will retain the sole discretion to select the performance audits to be undertaken.

By appointing the AGLG under the Public Service Act, the AGLG will be subject to the B.C. Public Service Standards of Conduct, and the AGLG must take the B.C. Public Service oath of employment. The Auditor General for Local Government will be accountable to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council in relation to human resource matters like personal conduct, and the Public Service Agency policies in relation to human resource matters will apply to the Auditor General for Local Government. This allows for holdback measures to be established if desired.

The amendments align fully with the recommendations to clearly define roles, responsibilities and expectations and strengthen the accountability framework. The amendments strengthen the role of the minister. They do provide the audit council with broad authority to request from the AGLG information necessary to carry out its responsibilities, and they prepare a report to the minister at
[ Page 9406 ]
any time on all and any aspects of the AGLG’s performance within its purview.

It also broadens and clarifies the audit council’s authority to review and monitor the Auditor General’s performance, including as it relates to fulfilling the mandate of the office and managing the operations of the audit, including a review undertaken by a contractor. It clarifies that the audit council can recommend the suspension or removal of the AGLG without being invited to do so by the minister.

There was consultation with the UBCM. The Minister for Community, Sport and Cultural Development has had discussions with members of the UBCM executive and indicated that the government is committed to staying the course with the AGLG and believes that the office is already on a stronger footing.

[1500]

The views expressed in UBCM’s report and survey of audited local government helped inform the future direction of the office of the AGLG. In addition, the proposed amendments provide that UCBM must be consulted in regards to themes for performance audits conducted by the AGLG.

We can see that over 150 years or more, this position of Auditor General in Britain and Canada and British Columbia has morphed, evolved and changed, and I fully expect this position, Auditor General for Local Government, to do so.

Remember that the initial concept of auditor general was actually a committee of parliament, and that has changed. The position of auditor general and comptroller has been separated over time, at least in Canada. I fully expect to see other changes as we go and evolve and we look at what’s happened and we review the process.

I’m very pleased to support this bill, and I would also like to commend it to the rest of the members.

G. Holman: I’m very pleased to stand and speak today to the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act.

It’s been interesting listening to other members of the House — particularly the last speaker, the member for Vancouver–False Creek — going through some of the specific provisions in the bill, torturously explaining to us that this amendment will give the minister greater authority over the AGLG, that there will be a number of provisions in the amendments that provide greater oversight over the AGLG.

In effect, we’re creating a watchdog to watch over the watchdog. As the member for Port Coquitlam has succinctly stated, all of this really is about lipstick on a pig. I would like to elaborate on that a little bit further.

Truly, this was a silly idea in the first place, and we’re really just making it worse. In fact, we’re getting further and further away from the original intent, which was to provide independent oversight and advice to local governments.

I’m very pleased to speak to this bill because, as are many in this House, I’m a product of local government. I served two terms as the regional district director for Saltspring Island. I think I understand the key role that local governments play in providing services and infrastructure, but with only very limited resources available to them.

Really, this is the elephant in the room — the fact that local governments are responsible for at least 60 percent of the infrastructure in British Columbia with only a very small proportion of tax revenues to support that. That really, at its root, is the basic problem that local governments face.

This legislation, of course, does nothing. Neither the original legislation nor these amendments do anything to address this fundamental problem.

Most people in Canada, in British Columbia, don’t understand that local governments in British Columbia and Canada are responsible for most of the infrastructure but only have available to them about 8 percent of the tax revenues.

A number of my colleagues have mentioned that Bill 36 is a solution looking for a problem and also that the notion of the local government auditor general seems to have originated as a trial balloon floated by the Premier.

Certainly, local governments have not asked for this legislation. In fact, just recently at UBCM, a strong majority of local governments just reaffirmed at the convention their view that this legislation is not necessary — 55 percent. A strong majority of local governments say this isn’t necessary, and they objected to it in the first place.

This legislation, introduced immediately after local governments collectively made their views known, shows a disregard by this government for their concerns. Local governments are facing fiscal challenges, but there are better ways to help them — for example, by helping them to address the infrastructure deficit that they face.

In Canada, this is estimated at up to $170 billion. Anyone who’s come from local government — and there are many of us here — understand this problem all too well. This legislation does nothing to address that. In fact, it makes it worse.

[1505]

The province could also stop downloading even more responsibilities onto local governments, such as wildlife management or, as we’ve heard many times in this House, mental health services.

For example, in my constituency on Mayne Island, there’s a huge problem with a species called fallow deer, which were escapees from a provincially regulated facility on Mayne Island. These animals have now escaped. They’re eating their way through Mayne Island. This is a provincial responsibility.

Small example. Folks on the other side laughing, it’s not so funny for people on Mayne Island. Perhaps you could come over and talk to them about it — how funny you think that is.
[ Page 9407 ]

It’s just a small example of how the province is, step by step, downloading responsibilities onto local governments and then showing up with an auditor that’s pointing fingers at them when they run into financial difficulties.

Deer and geese on the peninsula. Another similar example where local governments, including the capital regional district, are spending tens of thousands of dollars dealing with an issue that’s a provincial responsibility.

Much larger numbers, and more significant — and perhaps members won’t find this quite as funny — are the fact that local police throughout British Columbia are dealing with mental health and addiction issues that are clearly not their responsibility.

All of these are examples of the provincial government downloading additional costs onto local government. Their solution to address these concerns is to create an auditor function that points fingers rather than helps them resolve the issues.

The irony is that this Liberal government is pointing fingers at local governments when they don’t have their own fiscal house in order. So $5.2 million for an office that has delivered only a few audits within two years. And depending on whether you believe it’s two or four or six or whatever, it’s about a million dollars an audit at an average taxpayer cost of about $12,000. This doesn’t include the settlement costs associated with the termination of the first Local Government Auditor General.

But as wasteful as the AGLG has been, it pales in comparison to the other Liberal government boondoggles like the hundreds of millions in failed IT projects that we’re still dealing with today in this House or billions in cost overruns on the Vancouver Convention Centre, the B.C. Place Stadium roof, the northwest transmission line. On and on it goes.

Or a Site C project that, according to B.C. Hydro’s own estimates, will lose, in the first four years of operations, $800 million. That’s not chump change, and it clearly suggests that for this government to lecture local governments about fiscal prudence is a classic case of throwing stones while living in a glass house.

As for Bill 36, it’s bizarre that additional layers of oversight are being laid over a supposedly independent watchdog. This point has been made by my colleagues on this side of the House, and I do want to quote from the minister of the day, March 9, 2015, lecturing this House about the need for an AGLG: “It’s a good opportunity to remind the members opposite that, as we know, for any auditor to be effective, it needs to be independent from politicians.”

As the official opposition has been saying for years, if an oversight function on local governments is required, it would be much more effective and more cost-efficient to include this function as part of an existing independent office of the Legislature — in this case, the Auditor General of British Columbia.

It’s interesting that government is creating a new office, albeit one under control of cabinet, when in other cases, it requires and, in fact, creates legislation to force a shared-service approach — for example, just recently with respect to school boards who, for the most part, go out of their way to share services whenever they can, but government, in fact, felt the need to actually create legislation to force that. So in that case, government was looking at a shared-service approach. In this case, it sets up a separate office with its own separate admin and other overheads.

[1510]

The Finance Committee has just requested — and I sat on the Finance Committee for a couple of years — that independent offices of the Legislature also share services such as administrative overheads in order to reduce costs. Incorporating a local government auditor general within the Auditor General office would reduce costs, be truly independent of political interference and be much more effective. Bill 36, this amendment, would be entirely unnecessary.

Instead, having created a monster…. Rather than slaying it, they’re fiddling with it in a way that negates its original intent of political independence. This government isn’t fixing a problem of its own making. They’re compounding the problem.

In closing, if fiscal oversight for local governments is needed, this can be accomplished more efficiently and more effectively in a truly independent manner by incorporating the function within the Auditor General of British Columbia, an independent office which already has the expertise and administrative capacity to do the job. I urge government to withdraw this bill, bring forward legislation to incorporate a local government audit function within the Auditor General of British Columbia and take real action to help local governments address their fiscal challenges.

It’s time to start working in real partnership with local governments — to address a growing infrastructure deficit and to stop downloading services for which the province is constitutionally responsible onto local governments — rather than pointing fingers and scapegoating.

J. Thornthwaite: I’m speaking on behalf of Bill 36, Auditor General for Local Government
[ Page 9408 ]
Amendment Act, 2015. This act’s amendments apply what we learned in the first two years since the Office of the Auditor General for Local Government was launched in January 2013. It amends the Auditor General for Local Government Act by clarifying and enhancing the governance and accountability provisions of the act.

These amendments align with the recommendations from the audit council’s independent review of the AGLG in 2015. The amendments will strengthen the relationship between the Auditor General for Local Government and the audit council, the minister, government and local governments by more clearly defining the roles and responsibilities and enhancing the accountability framework. They’ll make it clear that as a provincial appointee, the AGLG is accountable to the government and to the audit council.

The AGLG will continue to have the independence to select and conduct the performance audit program, but there will be a clear responsibility to deliver results. The proposed amendments will make it clear that as a provincial appointee, the AGLG is accountable to government and to the audit council. While the AGLG will continue to have the independence to select and conduct the performance audit program, there will be a clear responsibility to deliver results — and consequences, as I said, for non-delivery.

The authority of the minister and the audit council to review the performance of the office and the AGLG and hold the AGLG to account will be strengthened. The proposed amendments establish two clear streams of accountability. The audit council will have clear authority for reviewing and monitoring the performance of the AGLG as it relates to the AGLG’s purpose and mandate, including how it fulfils its mandate. The council will not have the authority over human resources within the office.

Specifically, these amendments strengthen the role of the minister by enabling the minister to initiate a review of the office or AGLG at any time in addition to the mandated review in 2017 and enable the minister to directly recommend suspension or removal of the AGLG without waiting for a recommendation from the audit council. Plus, it ensures that the minister has a role in the budget and estimates process for the AGLG.

The amendments strengthen the role of the audit council by providing the audit council with broad authority to request from the AGLG information necessary to carry out its responsibilities and to prepare a report to the minister at any time on any or all aspects of the AGLG’s performance within its purview.

[1515]

The amendments also broaden and clarify the audit council’s authority to review and monitor the AGLG’s performance. This includes the ability to conduct a review of the auditor general’s performance, including as it relates to fulfilling the mandate of the office and managing the operations of the office, including a review undertaken by a contractor, and clarify that the audit council also can recommend the suspension or removal of the AGLG without being invited to do so by the minister.

The amendments to the act, therefore, clarify the terms and conditions of employment for the AGLG by appointing the AGLG under the Public Service Act, which allows the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to set the terms and conditions of employment. This could also include the establishment of holdback measures. It could allow for removal, with or without cause. It could apply the employment termination standards regulations, which provide certainty regarding severance in the event of a termination without cause. The AGLG will retain the sole discretion to select the performance audits to be undertaken.

I think these amendments do improve the situation — that it was before. The minister has been very clear that there’s more accountability in the relationships with the audit council, as well as government and local governments. In this regard, I will be supporting this act.

J. Rice: I’m pleased to rise today to talk to Bill 36, the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act, 2015. I just wanted to touch on a little bit of my experience in local government. It was limited. I did half a term as a city councillor for the municipality of Prince Rupert before I was elected as MLA. Many people in the House come from local government and so, no doubt, have varied opinions on the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act.

But I wanted to share with you my experience, even though limited, within local government. It has been that local governments are stretched and working very hard to make ends meet with the limited amount of resources that are available to them — a limited tax base. And in Prince Rupert, that’s a really hard tax base to draw upon, considering all major industry is now located on federal port lands. The amount of industrial tax that they are able to gather is limited and has been shrinking, particularly with the loss of our local pulp mill.

The member who spoke before me on this side of the House talked about the fact that local governments only have about 8 percent of the tax base to draw from — revenues from 8 percent — and yet the responsibilities that have been put upon local governments have expanded beyond the roads and sewers and fixing potholes that we’ve known local governments to be responsible for in the past.

In my community, my local government is tackling provincial matters such as a housing shortage — a lack of, and loss of, B.C. Housing and social housing for those with special needs, those for low-income families and on fixed incomes. They’re addressing a tremendous amount of supports needed for mental health services. These are beyond the traditional scope of local governments.

My local government would like to tackle issues such as their aging infrastructure, the fact that we have wooden water pipes still, over 100 years old. Bridges — we have wooden bridges.

So to burden my community with unnecessary audits from the local government auditor general is really unfair, in my opinion. If this is deemed an important piece of needed infrastructure for local governments, I’m not clear on why we cannot use the current provincial Auditor General. The infrastructures are already in
[ Page 9409 ]
place. They have the support staff. It seems ironic to me, with a government that prides itself on cutting red tape, in introducing legislation around cutting red tape, that we would create more red tape. I don’t understand the irony of that.

I think it’s really unfair. And I think it’s particularly insulting, considering that just over two weeks ago now, I attended the UBCM, the Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention, and there was no mention there of introducing these amendments that infringe upon the liberties of local governments.

[1520]

I don’t understand why that wasn’t discussed with mayors, councils, regional districts and members of local government at that time. It demonstrates to me a lack of consultation with local communities. If government was, indeed, listening to the local communities, they’d be well aware that UCBM passed resolutions in regards to abandoning the Auditor General for Local Government.

Instead of adopting our long-standing advice that the work of the AGLG be folded into the provincial Auditor General’s office, this legislation increases ministerial creep. It creates an unprecedented level of government control over “an independent” auditor general. Not only is this a departure from the principle that an auditor general is to be independent from government, it also raises the risk of political interference.

The legislation’s purpose and effect of increasing government control also reflects the Liberals’ lack of confidence in this office. If the problems with this office rested with the original choice of AGLG, why the need for more government control over this so-called independent body? This further reinforces our proposal that the AGLG be disbanded in favour of the provincial Auditor General assuming the work of municipal audits.

I’d just like to reiterate that I don’t think that this is the appropriate legislation — that it’s unfair to local governments and that they are not heeding the wishes of local governments from the UBCM convention that we just attended over two weeks ago. It’s disrespectful to local governments, and I will not be voting in favour.

G. Kyllo: I’m proud to stand in the House today on behalf of my constituents of Shuswap to speak in favour of Bill 36, the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act.

We have a vast array of municipalities, mayors and councillors across this great province that do an amazing job on behalf of citizens of this province. I think having the opportunity to look for best practices, to provide an opportunity for performance evaluations, provide additional input to provide them the opportunity to improve the services they’re providing for taxpayers in this province are extremely important.

We believe that the work of the AGLG will result in opportunities for local governments to learn, to improve their operations and to demonstrate accountability to the one taxpayer that we all serve. These amendments will strengthen the relationships between the Auditor General for Local Government, the audit council, the minister, government and local governments by more clearly defining the roles and responsibilities and enhancing the accountability framework.

This is really important work. I have no idea why the opposition seem to have a concern with providing the opportunity to provide the service for local governments to provide an opportunity to have a look at best services and the opportunity on how they can work amongst themselves to provide opportunities to ensure that the taxpayer, which is most important, is actually being served well in this province.

As well, the authorities of the minister and the audit council to review the performance of the Office of the AGLG and to hold the AGLG to account will be strengthened by this bill.

These amendments mean the audit council will have a clear authority to review the AGLG’s performance and delivery. The audit council will be able to ask the AGLG for information that it feels is needed to carry out its responsibilities and will now be able to provide a report to the minister at any time. As well, the amendments align with the recommendations from the audit council’s independent review of the AGLG in April of 2015.

For those reasons, among many others, I’m very happy to stand in support of Bill 36.

H. Bains: It is always an honour and privilege to stand here and speak on issues that affect our constituents, affect our province.

[1525]

Not too many people get the opportunity that we get as elected representatives of our community. I’m really thankful for that, at least to my constituents for sending me here and giving me the opportunity to represent them and speak on issues that matter to British Columbians and to my constituents.

Bill 36, Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act. I think if you look at the history behind this particular bill, when the AGLG office was originally created and a number of other government actions, it reflects that this government is willing to say one thing and has no intention of complying with what they say. They do quite the opposite. There are examples after examples, and I’ll speak about that in a minute.

When you look at when they established this office, it wasn’t that it was needed. It was a political decision made by this Premier because she was told during her leadership campaign that this would be a good political position to take for her chances — a little better than the others if she took this position — because she couldn’t secure very much support from the then existing caucus, except for one. I don’t know what happened to that per-
[ Page 9410 ]
son. We all know that. So the office was created whether it was needed or not because she made that commitment.

This is a government that talks about cutting red tape. We wasted, last week, a lot of time talking about red-tape day legislation here. All of that can be done with OIC, through regulations. But nonetheless, they wanted to discuss that and waste this House’s time just for that. They just talked about red tape — cut-red-tape day.

The creation of this office is nothing more than red tape. What we’re talking about today, this bill, is adding more red tape to the original red tape. The word that comes to mind is “hypocrisy.” That’s exactly what this government has established themselves with: hypocrisy after hypocrisy. There are numerous examples that I could sit here and read out.

You talk about recall of this House last week. You would think there are some urgent issues that face our constituents in this province and that we would be discussing those last week and this week and going forward. No. We are just looking at dealing with bills that are non-issues.

Imagine…. Remember the first day we came here, Bill 29 was discussed? You know what Bill 29 was? It was telling the municipalities not to do what they have never done. That’s what this government thought was a priority going into this fall session.

Then we had this cut-red-tape day. Was that more important than talking about all of the issues that were brought up in question period by the opposition about so many vulnerable children out there under government care and how we make that system work? No. That didn’t come from the government. Kicking and screaming, they are dragged into discussing that issue by the opposition.

It just shows the priorities of this government and just shows that they are lost in the way. They have run out of ideas on how to run this government. All politics, all the time, rather than sitting down, listening to British Columbians’ issues and dealing with them in a serious manner. That is lacking by this government, and I think that is an insult to all of the constituents, all of the people that elected us. They paid big bucks to send us here, and they expect us to deal with the issues that affect them on a daily basis.

[1530]

[R. Lee in the chair.]

The forest industry is on its knees right now. The softwood lumber dispute is just being discussed, but no discussion by this government on that issue. How do we keep our raw logs that are being exported at a record rate from this province last year, the year before and continuing on today? How do we keep those raw logs, and how do we invite investors to come and invest in British Columbia so that they can utilize those raw logs right here in British Columbia to create jobs for British Columbians in B.C.? That is not being discussed.

How do we add value to the product that we produce here in the British Columbia forest industry? That is not being discussed. How do we learn from Ontario and Quebec, who produce three times more jobs on a unit of lumber that is harvested from their forests than in B.C.? How do we, at least, get close to them? That is not being discussed.

Those are real jobs. This Premier wants to talk about jobs, but when there’s an opportunity, the jobs are for people from Alberta or from China. Or we bring temporary foreign workers here, and they get exploited. They have no protection from this government. British Columbians and their children are not even in the lineup for those jobs. Here we are talking about Bill 36 today, which, again, is adding more red tape to the original red tape that they created.

When are we going to talk about fighting crime in the province — fighting crime and gangs in Surrey? This is the time that we should be talking about those serious issues. People in Surrey and the Lower Mainland and Abbotsford are afraid. They are afraid to leave their homes to take their kids to the neighbourhood park because they’re not sure that they are safe out there. They’re not sure that they are safe in their own homes.

I brought the issue here of one cul-de-sac with 33 homes in the Minister of Technology’s riding, right in his backyard — 17 break-ins in a six-month period. Is the government going to do anything about that? Have they done anything about that? Is the Minister of Technology going to do anything about that? No.

We want to talk about non-issues here, waste our time, waste our taxpayer dollars on bills like this. They should scrap this bill.

Interjections.

H. Bains: I wish she was here when I was talking about jobs in the forest industry. These people don’t even know the trees from the forest, when it comes to jobs — none whatsoever. All talk, no action. That’s the history of this government. All talk, no action.

They like to come here and boast about jobs, but when the real opportunity comes…. HD Mining — do you remember? With HD Mining, the jobs will come from China.

Bill 36 does not talk about….

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member.

H. Bains: Bill 36 does not talk about issues that are relevant to people in Surrey, relevant to the people of the Minister of Technology. They will come here. They think that they represent those people. But what are they
[ Page 9411 ]
talking about cutting crime? Have you heard any one of the ministers…? Has the minister for TransLink talked about cutting crime?

There are three ministers from Surrey — three ministers. You’d think they would have some pull at the cabinet table.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Order, Member.

H. Bains: The point I’m making here they will not get. They are brought in here and given some notes to talk about by the Premier’s office. They have some political agenda, no doubt. But there are some real issues that are missing from these discussions.

[1535]

They like to sit here and yap about something that is a non-issue to the people of the province. Like I said, when are they going to talk about how we deal with prolific and repeat offenders in Surrey? Is there a strategy? No strategy. Do any of the ministers from Surrey talk about that? I have not heard that. The people of Surrey have not heard that. Where is a strategy, if there is one?

They talk about 100 additional police officers. My question to this government is: where were they the last ten years? Why were they not brought in, ten a year? That’s what happened. You know why? They ignored the issue of crime, and finally, it’s catching up. It caught up. And who is paying the price for their neglect and ignorance? The people of Surrey. That’s what’s happening. It’s a sad state of affairs.

You would think that with three ministers in the cabinet, they would actually speak about Surrey and bring some more resources to the city of Surrey. I have not seen that.

When you talk about…. They have 42…. The other day I heard one of the ministers say that there are 42 on the streets today. Guess what. When you really dig through, 30 of them are to replace the existing officers that have already left. We have a net gain of 12 police officers. No wonder gangs and gang members are running around in Surrey, in Delta, in the Lower Mainland with impunity.

Hon. A. Virk: Absolutely wrong.

H. Bains: The Minister of Technology talks about wrong information. He probably has been sleeping for the last four months. That doesn’t surprise me. For the Minister of Technology’s information, 44 shootings in the last four months — the most recent one at an elementary school. Walls were shot at an elementary school.

Deputy Speaker: On Bill 36.

H. Bains: Bill 36 does not talk about any of that. Bill 36 is another waste of time of this House. You know what? Bill 36…. I said hypocrisy, and the hypocritical actions of the government are clearly, clearly illustrated in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, you will remember March of this year, when that issue was brought up, when $5 million was wasted on this office, which produced only one audit. When we brought that issue to this House, what the minister said at that time was this:

“We are always looking for ways that we can support local governments and efficiencies and accountability. Ultimately, all B.C. residents stand to benefit from the work of the Auditor General for Local Government as it identifies ways to help local communities deliver effective, efficient and economical services to the taxpayers.”

She went on to say:

“The AGLG, as I said in the previous, is a functionally independent office with a high degree of autonomy.”

Independent office with a high degree of autonomy. What are we talking about today? Putting controls over that office of this government. The Auditor General of the province is completely independent. That is the office they could use to do the audits that they have created with this Office of the AGLG, wasting taxpayers money. Now we are adding more controls on the office that was supposed to be an independent office — again, hypocrisy at the highest level.

Somebody should stand up and challenge me on that. How is that not hypocrisy? On the one hand, you were telling us only a few months ago in this House that this office is completely independent and has total autonomy. Now we are putting controls on. It will be at the minister’s whim to terminate them, suspend them, fire them. How is that independent?

[1540]

That’s the kind of stuff that people…. When they listen to this House and the speeches and the agenda this government brings in, that’s how you lose faith. That’s how you lose respect for politicians. It’s about time the government started to act on behalf of the people of the province rather than all politics, all the time.

Here’s another example: say one thing one day and do quite the opposite. March 3 was the first. March 9, when we raised issue again, the minister said: “It’s a good opportunity to remind the member opposite again that, as we know, for any auditor to be effective, it needs to be independent from politicians. In this case, it is here as well.” That’s what the minister said March 9.

Now under this bill, the minister has all the controls. Compared to the Auditor General of the province…. The Auditor General of the province reports to this House. You have to have a majority of this House to terminate that office. Here, in this case which is supposed to be independent…. The minister said in order for them to be effective, they must be independent of politicians. But now we are putting controls. The government will control that office. The minister will be determining when to terminate that office. How is that independent? How is that not hypocrisy? Again, say one thing, do another.
[ Page 9412 ]

There are so many other issues that I’ve talked about that we need to talk about in this House. Public transportation, the extension to Surrey. This is the government, again, that made a political decision to put it through a referendum, abrogating their responsibility altogether and showing no leadership. Throw it on the mayors. “You decide how you want to pay for public transportation.”

That’s what we should be talking about rather than Bill 36. We are again talking about Bill 36 here. There’s nothing here that we should be talking about.

Those are important issues. The Minister of Transportation should be talking about some of the serious issues that people of Surrey and south of Fraser are talking about that they need to address. Port Mann was being celebrated as a completed project — on time, on budget, they said. But in fact, it was way over budget almost twice.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Member, second reading of Bill 36.

H. Bains: It’s the second reading, Mr. Speaker. Yes, of course, we can talk about so many different issues in second reading. Like they have not used this opportunity in the past themselves.

The truth hurts. I understand that. That’s why they don’t want me to continue to speak on this, the way the discussion should take place. They think it should be simply, you know, you talk about exactly what they like to hear, and then we…. But that’s not going to happen from this side of the House. We will bring issues that are important to the people of the province because they elected us to hold their feet to the fire and hold them accountable.

Here again is a bill that takes away complete accountability and transparency out of the office, which should be built in. The minister will decide. It will be that all the powers are going to the minister rather than having this office be completely independent. None whatsoever.

When is the minister going to stand up and talk about why we wasted or are losing $100 million on the Port Mann Bridge every year — $100 million last year alone? When is he going to talk about that? It’s the people of south of Fraser paying through tolls. Will they be paying more tolls, a longer time? They should be talking about that, giving some relief to the people of Surrey and south of Fraser.

Interjection.

H. Bains: If the minister and this government is really worried about…. They talk about the traffic and the traffic jams. South of Fraser….

[1545]

Interjections.

H. Bains: They don’t like to hear the truth now. I can see all of them are chirping away over there, making no sense, to deal with issues that we need to talk about.

South of the Fraser gets about half of the service on transportation than the people of Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond have.

Instead of Bill 36, we should be talking about some of those issues. It’s not that Richmond and Vancouver have the perfect situation as far as public transportation. No, they need improvement. We need improvement. That’s how you eliminate traffic jams, for the information of the Minister of Transportation.

Interjection.

H. Bains: I would love to invite the Minister of Transportation to come along with the Minister for TransLink and the Minister of Technology. Let’s go to Surrey Memorial Hospital and see what’s happening there. Let’s go and take a look at how people are made to wait six, seven, eight hours in the emergency ward. Are they going to talk about that? Are they going to bring a bill here on how we eliminate wait times in Surrey Memorial Hospital? No.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member. Member.

Order. Member, on Bill 36.

H. Bains: On Bill 36, Mr. Speaker. I absolutely agree that it is important. It is very, very important.

If they want to challenge me, they should stand up and ask you a question. I am sure they will now. I just encouraged them to do that, and do the right job.

Bill 36 is such a flawed bill. Again, the minister stands up here and says one thing, and then they are doing quite the opposite by bringing this bill in. How is that good governing? How is that representing the people of this province?

I was up to March 9. Now, let’s go to March 10, on Bill 36. The minister responsible, again, said; “I would have hoped that the member opposite…. It’s an independent office. The report by the audit council was put on file in February.”

Setting more government control is somehow more independent? That’s not how you run these independent offices. If they are independent offices, let’s make them independent. Let them perform and be effective by being truly independent. That’s not the case here.

What I’d like to say here is that the UBCM held their convention just recently. Look at the timing of this. They passed a resolution at the UBCM calling on the government to disband this AGLG office. It passed with 55 percent.

It can thus be extrapolated that a slim majority of the B.C. municipalities do not support legislation that retains
[ Page 9413 ]
the office. They’re talking about eliminating this office altogether. But this government is making it more ineffective by taking more control or giving more control to the minister. That’s not good government.

In August, the UBCM issued a survey report criticizing this office. It is unlikely that this legislation that gives sweeping power to the minister is the answer to their concerns. What do they have to say about that? Nothing. They are quiet.

People of the province deserve better from this government when they need them, when they need the Premier, when they need these ministers, when they need this government on their side, whether to deal with the issues in the forest industry, issues about public transportation, fighting crime in their neighbourhoods or making WCB to work better for the injured workers rather than cutting their benefits, cutting their rehab funding and making it difficult for them to get back to work.

[1550]

That’s something that this government needs to do. That would be a good government.

I’m totally disappointed that this government continues to bring political agendas here. Political decisions are being made rather than dealing with all those issues that I just mentioned. I know when people put their names forward to run for these offices…. There are some very good people out there. There are some very good people on that side. I think they do want to do a good job to represent their constituents. As human beings, we all want to do a good job when a job is given to us.

When you have a Premier’s office that is all politics all the time…. When they’re not on your side when we talk about some of these issues, then people start to lose faith in here. They lose faith in the government. Do what you say. Back up what you say with your action. Be on the side of the people that sent you here.

So far, what I’ve seen, whether it’s Bill 36 or Bill 29, which we discussed last week…. The government is not on the side of the people of British Columbia. They are not. They are more interested in politics than real policy matters. Bill 36 says that exactly.

What they need to do is disband this office altogether, save taxpayers money and use the provincial Auditor General to do the job that they want the AGLG to do. Wouldn’t that be more efficient? Would that be less red tape?

You know what? The minister for TransLink…. I had hoped for better from that minister. Listening to him chirping away out here, it doesn’t show that. I’m really disappointed. They can do better. That minister can do better. I know they want to do better. The office of the province has set their agenda totally based on politics rather than real policy matters — many issues that I mentioned.

I think they should show some leadership individually. They could go to the Premier and say: “Look. There are some serious issues in Surrey like crime. There are some more serious issues like building more schools in Surrey for children who are in portables right now — 7,000 students.” We need to pay more attention to that. We need to pay more attention to those people who are made to wait in Surrey Memorial Hospital for six, seven, eight hours to get emergency treatment.

That’s the kind of leadership people are expecting from our representative from Surrey. That’s not what…. They don’t expect us to waste our time and their money debating bills like Bill 36, which should be disbanded altogether and that duty transferred over to the provincial Auditor General. That’s what they should be doing.

With that, I take my seat. I’m disappointed that they keep on bringing non-issues to this House for this fall session.

J. Sturdy: It is a pleasure to stand up on behalf of the constituents of West Vancouver–Sea to Sky and speak to the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act, Bill 36.

This is certainly an act or a piece of legislation that I followed with interest for quite a number of years as someone who has served in local government and, at the time that the original legislation was proclaimed, was serving as the mayor of Pemberton. I recall that my CAO and I had a long conversation about how to approach this and how we could take advantage of the opportunity that this act brought forward.

[1555]

Pemberton, as many of you will know, is a small community. Small communities have all of the same requirements to provide services as larger communities yet without the economies of scale and often without the capacity. Just to list a few: clearly, water and sewer services; recreation services; parks and trails; waste management; building inspections; land use planning; transit; emergency social services; disaster response — all of these services, very small communities and large ones too.

Coming at it from a small, local government perspective, these are tremendously challenging to provide in an effective way, in an efficient way with the tax base and the resources available to those small communities. My CAO and I, as I said, spent some time talking about this, talked to council about it, and felt that there was opportunity here to have the province support audits for performance and ensure that we were providing services at the best cost and in the most efficient way.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

So actually, along with Penticton and another community…. I think there were three communities that put our names forward to volunteer to be amongst the first communities with a performance audit. That unfortunately didn’t happen for us, but it seems to me that
[ Page 9414 ]
there’s still tremendous opportunity here for communities to benefit.

Local government elected officials and local government staff in smaller communities have little time to contemplate changes and to consider how effective they are. It’s really a matter of trying to get the work done as expeditiously as possible. There’s little time to look back and review to ensure that what you’re doing was the best thing to be doing.

Certainly, we all recognize that local government has a requirement to have a balanced budget. Fair enough. That’s what a typical audit would be. It would be to ensure that that budget is, in fact, balanced.

In the case of the Auditor General for Local Government, it’s a completely different type of audit. It’s a performance audit. It’s a value-for-money audit in terms of working with local government to look at some of the services provided and support local government in making good decisions.

I think about work that our community has done both at a regional district level and a municipal level in terms of providing water and sewer services and expansions to sewage treatment plants. These are hugely complex projects where you have a public works staff that may consist of four or six people and a finance department that has two or three people in it. These organizations really just don’t have the capacity to sit down and review and look with a business lens to see that the quality of the service or the decisions that were made were….

All elected officials, I believe…. Maybe not all. Most elected officials are here for the right reason, both at a local government level and a provincial or federal level. They’re here to do the right thing for their community. Sometimes, with capacity limitations, that is a very, very difficult thing to do. I believe that the Auditor General for Local Government can support local government, can back up the limited capacity that local government can have at times.

This is a great opportunity to help develop best practices at a municipal and a regional district level with information and knowledge that can be shared right across the province, with a focus on economy and efficiency and effectiveness.

[1600]

Those are principles, I think, that we all support and embrace. But again, there isn’t necessarily the opportunity and the time and the staffing, the resourcing, to be able to put that into actual practice and to look at the design and delivery of programs, services and policies that any particular local government may have. The AGLG will help local government do just that.

In working with the Union of B.C. Municipalities…. The Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development has worked with them and received a survey and a report from UBCM that informed this future direction and the direction that this initiative is going to continue to progress in.

As well, I understand that UBCM will be consulted with regard to the themes of the performance audits performed by the AGLG. I think this is a spirit of cooperation, with the idea that it’s really there to serve the taxpayer — by serving local government. This is a coordinated and cooperative approach between Community, Sport and Cultural Development, the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the AGLG.

With that, I’m certainly happy to support Bill 36, the AGLG Amendment Act, because I do believe that the AGLG will support local government to learn and improve and to be accountable to all our constituents.

M. Mungall: I rise to speak to Bill 36, the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act. Before I get into my particular comments, I just want to acknowledge the comments of a previous speaker, the member for Surrey-Newton. I think a lot of the things that he was pointing out around things that are not being discussed in this House at length, as opposed to this particular bill or some other bills that seem to be irrelevant to the day-to-day lives of people, such as the Red Tape Reduction Day Act…. It didn’t need to be an act. It could have been an order-in-council, and we could have got on with more appropriate business that needs to be taking place here in this Legislature.

Interjection.

M. Mungall: Now, I hear chirping away from the Minister of Aboriginal Relations. I know that he, obviously, is very passionate about wasting British Columbians’ time, and that’s really unfortunate because what we need to be doing in this place is addressing the day-to-day issues of people around this province rather than taking legislative time, important legislative time, and giving it over to issues that could be dealt with in a more efficient and better manner.

The irony is not lost on me or any British Columbian, I think, when an order-in-council was all that was needed to put forward a red-tape-reduction day, which I think everybody here supports. Nobody here really supports red tape, but the red tape that was used to create legislation for that day is astounding. The irony is not lost on anybody.

The comments from the member for Surrey-Newton about how we conduct business in this place, I think, are very apt, especially when we’re looking at a bill such as this and looking at the issues that local government tackles on a day-to-day basis, such as policing, fighting crime, transportation and so on. These are the issues that they tackle day in and day out, and yet they’re being consumed by the Auditor General for Local Government because this government can’t get the job done right on this particular issue.
[ Page 9415 ]

We all know where this concept came from. It was the Premier’s pet project when she was running for leader of the Liberal Party, and she said that she was going to institute this. You know, good on her that she decides to follow through on something for once. But why she chose to follow through on this and not a variety of other things is interesting — such as adult basic education for refugees. She promises $1 million while stripping them of the very education tools that they need to meet success in this country as they come.

[1605]

So she’s moving forward with the Auditor General for Local Government and brought it forward, and what happened? What happened when she brought it forward? Well, we saw $5.2 million wasted on only one report. One report after $5.2 million.

Interjection.

M. Mungall: Oh, I hear somebody saying that it was several — three. Pardon me. Excuse me.

There was only a minimal amount, when 18 were, in fact, promised. Eighteen were promised, and much less was delivered. And it created quite the havoc. We brought the attention to this issue here in this Legislature, and it created quite a lot of havoc.

Now we’re faced with a former Auditor General of Local Government being let go and there being some discord, in that process of her moving on, with the government here. When I talk about discord, of course, I’m talking about the lawsuits. And we don’t even know how much that is costing British Columbia, because that remains undisclosed.

So here we are. We find ourselves in this situation, this messy situation only created by the Liberals, and they’re trying to fix it with this bill. But they’re not doing that. When I look through this bill, I think of two things specifically. I think of relationships, and I think of the issue of independence. Neither one of those is being respected by this bill.

First off, relationships. What I think is important to recognize is that local government is not its own jurisdiction under the constitution. Local government, rather, is under the purview of provincial governments, according to the constitution in which we all must abide, right? So there’s a relationship dynamic there.

Because of that — because of the constitution and what it sets up — there’s a relationship dynamic that needs to be respected by the provincial government. They need to respect the fact that they’re in a position where they are responsible for what happens in local government, but they must respect that relationship with local government so that they’re not wielding their power willy-nilly, as they will, in a way that is disrespectful of local governments. That does not create partnerships with our local governments.

When I look at this bill, I see a provincial government that is not respecting its relationships with local governments, that is not creating partnerships with local governments. It’s saying to local governments: “This is what we’re going to do. We don’t really care about what you think about it, and we’re going to press forward no matter what, because the Premier made a promise when she was running for leader of the party without talking to any of you.”

So in an effort to save face with the mistakes that they’ve created already with the Auditor General for Local Government, we find ourselves here debating Bill 36. And what we see is that when….

I heard the member from West Vancouver talk about how the Liberals have consulted with local governments. I’m struggling to find a survey equalling full and fulsome consultation on this issue. One survey out to municipalities does not equal a fulsome consultation, and I think everybody here knows that. To characterize a survey as consultation, the consultation required, is doing a real disservice to what people expected and what they should expect from any type of commitment to consult.

So there’s no consultation, no meaningful consultation, conducted with municipalities, so no wonder we find the Union of B.C. Municipalities voting to oppose the Auditor General for Local Government.

[1610]

That’s exactly what they did at this recent convention. They voted to oppose the AGLG. The reason is because the AGLG is such a colossal mess.

One of the things that is a huge problem, as well, that local governments see from a mile away — the Liberals can’t see it, but local governments see this clearly — is the utter lack of independence that was started off with the original bill for the AGLG but made even worse with Bill 36.

I know that members opposite have talked about how consultation is coming. “Don’t worry. It’s coming.” Well, I don’t blame anybody in British Columbia if they don’t trust these types of promises because they’ve been broken so many times over the last 14 years. How can you really trust these types of promises?

“Oh, don’t worry. We’re going to consult you. We’re going to come and talk to you. We will be at a town council chambers near you anytime. Don’t worry. We’re coming.” Then, of course, they never show up. “But fill out this survey, right?”

Of course, local governments are not feeling too good that they’re going to be consulted. But this piece of legislation does say that the AGLG will consult with UBCM regarding the areas to consider for performance audits.

It’s good that they put it into legislation. We don’t necessarily trust that it’s going to happen, but well done. It’s a first for the Liberals to actually come out and say that they’re going to consult people properly. We’ll see if it actually happens. I personally don’t trust that it will.
[ Page 9416 ]

Interjection.

M. Mungall: I hear that it is happening. Yes, we all know that they delivered a survey. A survey is not meaningful consultation. The Minister of Red Tape Reduction should know that.

Going back to independence. Now, for an auditor general to truly conduct their business in a way that is going to deliver informative reports that are truthful in nature and that have the robust facts that we need to correct past wrongs and move forward with solutions, an auditor general needs to be fully independent. The reason is because an auditor general should not fear any reprisals.

For example, if the Auditor General for Local Government found that more needs to be done to combat crime in Surrey than what this provincial government is delivering on, they need to not have any fear of reprisals. They need to be able to deliver that information in truth and in full and not be worried about their job the next day. That’s what independence is.

That is why it is so tantamount to be upheld when we talk about auditors general. Most people expect that an auditor general is independent. That is a term that we all know, and we think independence goes with it. Unfortunately, what’s happening here is that that independence is being eroded.

Like I gave in my example, if the Auditor General for Local Government puts forward recommendations about what to do regarding crime in Surrey and specifically chastises this government for not doing enough, well, that auditor general is there based on the decision of the audit council, which is appointed in full by the minister. So the minister is responsible ultimately for whether that Auditor General for Local Government is there.

That’s not okay. We’re setting up the Auditor General for Local Government to be in a position of conflict, potentially fearing for their job if they speak out against the government of the day. That is not what people in British Columbia expect. That’s not what they want.

You’d think that the Liberals understood that based on comments that we heard earlier in the spring when we first started bringing up this issue of $5.2 million spent for one report from the Auditor General for Local Government.

[1615]

The then minister said that “for any auditor to be effective, it needs to be independent from politicians.” She further said: “…any auditor, to be effective, needs to be independent from politicians…On this side of the House we remain committed to this kind of transparency.” Of course, that’s not happening with this bill. That independence is being eroded.

One of the examples in which that independence is being eroded is in sections 9 and 10, where the budget for the auditor general…. What’s clear is that no longer…. If this is not the case, then, I’m looking forward to hearing from members opposite to correct me. But the way I’m reading this bill — which then concerns me, because we shouldn’t leave bills like this open to interpretation — is that the AGLG no longer prepares his or her budget for the Treasury Board and works directly with the Treasury Board but, rather, is having to go through the minister for their budget funding.

Here we have the auditor general, who has the position based on the decision of the minister. The funds necessary to conduct their work will be based on the decision of the minister. That is the antithesis to independence.

The fact that the Liberals, the members opposite, don’t seem to appreciate that what they’re saying is completely different from what they’re doing, is very disheartening. It’s part of the reason why British Columbians don’t trust them when they say: “Oh, we’ll do it. Don’t worry. It’s coming.” This is part of the problem.

As I mentioned, the AGLG…. You’d expect that any time that somebody holding the position of an auditor general, particularly Auditor General for Local Government…. If they were going to leave, there would have to be cause, right? You couldn’t just pull somebody out, for example, if they had delivered a report about crime in Surrey, chastising this government for the lack of supports to address that issue. They would not be fired just because they disagreed with the government of the day. There would actually have to be a real, meaningful cause.

The reason why I was saying that that could happen is because it can, and this bill very much allows that the AGLG, under section 6, could be removed without cause. Again, the Liberals are setting up the Auditor General for Local Government in a way that ignores the importance — the profound, foundational importance — of independence and ignores the importance of working in partnership with local government.

If they believed in independence, if they believed in working in partnership with local government, what we would see is the existing Auditor General’s office taking on this work. It has the capacity to do that. It is more than willing to do that. Many people in local government see that as the appropriate way forward. That is possible.

If it was done, if we did move the work that needs to be done by an Auditor General for Local Government to the existing Auditor General’s office, we would see that independence. We would see that independence, and British Columbians would be able to trust the process going forward. They would be able to trust that the information coming out would be truthful, that it would be robust, that it would be fulsome, and that nobody would fear reprisals from the government of the day for delivering such a report.

That’s not the direction that the Liberals chose. Instead, they chose to run roughshod over principles that have been adhered to time and again by parliaments all over this country, by parliaments throughout the world.

[1620]

They’re running roughshod over it. They’ve chosen not to value independence. They’ve chosen not to value their relationships with local governments, to not work in partnership to get the job done. Instead, they’re steaming ahead with the Premier’s pet project in a way that is only going to have negative consequences and negative results for British Columbians.

I think British Columbians deserve better. They deserve better than that. They deserve a government who actually wants to govern. They deserve a government who actually is going to dot the i’s, cross the t’s and focus on what it means to actually do the job, rather than rush things through, run roughshod over important principles that hold up our democracy. British Columbians deserve better than what they’re getting from this Liberal government, than what they’re getting from Bill 36.

I leave it to my colleagues to continue this debate to point out that we can do better in British Columbia, that we will do better in British Columbia. Unfortunately, the Liberals are just not delivering on that.

D. Bing: I was a member of the council of the city of Pitt Meadows for eight years, so I am familiar with this legislation. It was a subject of discussion when I was part of the local government.

As a member of a small community, like the member for West Vancouver–Sea to Sky, we also had questions that we wanted answered. We were one of the first communities to also volunteer to have a performance audit done. We knew that we were doing a good job, but we had no way of comparing ourselves to other communities. We felt that having a performance audit by an Auditor General for Local Government would be a very useful thing.

I’m very pleased to speak on behalf of my constituents from Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows to Bill 36, the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act. The amendments apply what we have learned in the first two years since the Office of the AGLG was launched in January 2013. It amends the Auditor General for Local Government Act by clarifying and enhancing the governance and accountability provisions of the act. Our government is committed to staying the course with the AGLG, and the office is already on a stronger footing. I believe the work of the AGLG will result in opportunities for local governments to learn, to improve their operations and to demonstrate accountability to the one taxpayer we all serve.

These amendments will strengthen the relationship between the Auditor General for Local Government, the audit council, the minister, government and local governments by more clearly defining roles and responsibilities and enhancing the accountability to deliver results. The authorities of the minister and the audit council to review the performance of the office and the AGLG and hold the AGLG to account will be strengthened.

While the AGLG will continue to have the independence to select and conduct the performance and audit program, there will be clear responsibility to deliver results and consequences for non-delivery. The authority of the minister and the audit council to review the performance will be strengthened.

Specifically, the amendments strengthen the role of the audit council by providing the audit council with broad authority to request from the AGLG information necessary to carry out its responsibilities and to prepare a report to the minister at any time on any or all aspects of the AGLG’s performance within its purview.

Broadening and clarifying the audit council’s authority to review and monitor the AGLG’s performance. This includes the ability to conduct a review of the auditor general’s performance, including as it relates to fulfilling the mandate of the office and managing the operations of the office, including a review undertaken by a contractor.

Clarifying that the audit council can recommend the suspension or removal of the AGLG without being invited to do so by the minister.

[1625]

The core mandate of the AGLG is to conduct performance audits — “value for money”— that focus on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the design and delivery of programs, services and policies. Performance auditing is different from financial auditing, wherein financial statements are audited to ensure they are accurately reporting an entity’s financial position. It is not essential to be an auditor to lead or conduct performance audits. Under circumstances where the AGLG is not a certified auditor, the AGLG will have to appoint a Deputy Auditor General who’s authorized to be an auditor.

The Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development has had discussions with members of the UBCM executive and indicated that government is committed to staying the course and believes the office is already on a stronger footing. The views expressed in the UBCM report and survey of audited local government help to inform the future direction for the Office of the AGLG. In addition, the proposed amendments provide that the UBCM must be consulted in regards to the themes for performance audits conducted by the AGLG.

In closing, the proposed amendments enhance the relationship between the AGLG, the audit council, the minister, government and local governments by clarifying and defining roles and responsibilities of these parties and enhancing the accountability framework for the auditor general. For this reason, I am pleased to support Bill 36, the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act, 2015.

R. Fleming: I want to make a few comments to Bill 36 this afternoon because I, along with a number of members on this side of the House, had some serious reservations about Bill 20 in the year 2012, which was the
[ Page 9418 ]
genesis of the Auditor General for Local Government in our province.

Here we are, three years on, able to evaluate the performance of that audit. We’re in a position to be able to look at some of the critiques of the legislation. There were a number of flaws that members drew the government’s attention to. Not just members of the House, but members of the accounting profession, members of elected office at the local government level, and other opinions, considered opinions, right around British Columbia that told government that the bill they submitted — Bill 20, as it was called then — was not good enough, that it failed on a number of tests and would probably run the government into trouble.

Here we are, three years on, looking at an office that has underperformed by any benchmark, completing just one audit — I know the minister of local government will say that there are plenty on the way — in three years, a budget to start up the entity of $5.2 million wasted, reports from inside this new entity that there’s a seriously bad work culture there that is a poisonous relationship, a dysfunctional office that has already terminated the first municipal auditor general in British Columbia.

I mean, it would be hard to write a worse script for how the Premier’s pet project idea, which was born out of a leadership contest…. I think I’ll go back to that in a minute. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this new institution, the AGLG, could have launched itself and crashed any sooner on the rocks. It’s hard to imagine a more disastrous scenario then what we have. That’s by looking at its record.

Anybody out there who wants to use a search engine, type in B.C. Auditor General for Local Government. Have a look at the press clippings, have a look at the letters to the editors, have a look at the considered opinions of anybody in municipal management or municipal political office, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who has a single good word to say about this failed experiment — three years, millions and millions of dollars.

[1630]

You know what we should be doing this afternoon? We should be hearing some contrition from the government. We should be debating a bill that takes all of the criticisms — and they were pretty obvious criticisms at the time — and incorporates them into a series of amendments that will fix this mess.

Instead, what we get is Bill 36 doubling down on the 2012 bill, Bill 20, and actually making it worse. It’s hard to imagine how you could make the legislation that currently governs this office worse. This government of the B.C. Liberals has succeeded in doing that. Most governments would put their hand up and say, “Yeah, we got it wrong,” when the results are so spectacularly, obviously bad. While most governments would do that, this government won’t. They’re doubling down on a problem they’ve created, which will make matters worse.

I don’t think I have to point out the irony to you, Mr. Speaker, the whole concept of having an auditor general function in government, which goes back hundreds of years in the U.K. Parliament, the House of Commons — having that independent office to scrutinize government spending of tax dollars to find inefficiencies in waste and to be helpful, to help governments get better. These are large bureaucratic entities. Not everything can go right every minute of the day, every day of the year and every month of the calendar.

It’s not a game of gotcha. That’s not what the auditor general is about. It’s to drive improvement in government, but it’s definitely about oversight of government spending. To have an auditor general function that in and of itself is about identifying and reducing wasteful practices…. It is a colossal embarrassment when you create a new so-called auditor general office that is the example of colossal government waste in and of itself.

That’s what we’re dealing with here in the province of British Columbia. Nobody can deny the results. I haven’t heard anybody on the government side — besides the minister, it must said — dare to get up and say with a straight face: “Yeah, things are going great with the AGLG.” Nobody can pull that one off, on the government side.

Look, we should be debating something quite seriously different, based on the results. We’ve had enough results — or lack of results, if you will — on how to fix this. You look at Bill 36, and there is not a single clause that shows any kind of reflection about the experience we’ve been through over the last couple of years. There isn’t a reasoned amendment here that will give any kind of confidence to local government leaders that something that went so hopelessly off the rails from day one has a glimmer of a chance of a successful future. That isn’t in the legislation.

It’s the same bill, in substance. Actually, it’s worse, and I’ll get into why it is worse. That is the problem. This is about government digging a deeper hole. It’s like somebody who buys a sports car that they didn’t need, and it doesn’t run well. It’s a clunker. It’s a lemon. It’s really, really expensive to try and fix it all the time, and you’re not sure if the thing is ever going to run properly. This government keeps feeding our money — dollar after dollar, millions upon millions — into a vehicle that is flawed, a model that doesn’t work.

What they should be doing is showing a modicum of embarrassment. There are thousands of people, literally, around British Columbia with expertise on how these kinds of independent offices ought to be run and ought not to be run, who told the government that this was a risk they were taking. What they should be doing now, at this stage, instead of putting more money into that expensive clunker that’s on blocks and won’t run…. They should be hitching a ride with the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia. That’s what they should have been doing from day one.

[1635]

That’s not only the best option in terms of automatically moving this office into a place of professionalism, with a strong, sound culture of performance auditing and value-for-money auditing and management oversight of government spending; it’s the cheapest place to try and introduce and successfully have more oversight for municipal spending.

Nobody in the chamber on either side disagrees that municipal government, often in partnership with the provincial government and the federal government, ought to have a scrutiny and an audit function that oversees infrastructure projects, shared services and programs, policing, public safety — all of those initiatives where local government and senior levels of government cooperate. Everybody agrees that that should be within the audit scope of the provincial Auditor General.

In fact, for another area of local government, school districts, it already is the responsibility of the Office of the Auditor General for B.C. to provide accounting and financial reporting audits for the 60 school districts in B.C.

This is what we should be doing — seeing the government learn from its mistakes and bringing in expertise to fix those mistakes. It’s readily available, literally just a few blocks from these buildings. It’s a staffed-up office that has received international accolades for many of its innovative reporting practices right here in British Columbia.

We’re part of a parliamentary body, an international association of auditors general and public accounts committees. There are decades of expertise here. That office was created in 1975 in British Columbia. It was a leading reform at the time in how the province of British Columbia operates and gives assurances to taxpayers that its money is spent wisely. Why wouldn’t we call upon that tremendous resource to fix a problem that government has created, to fix an office that was a failure to launch from the very beginning?

That’s a question the government has not answered at this point in the debate, and that’s unacceptable to British Columbians for a number of reasons. The first reason is because the risks that were taken cost us millions of dollars — well over $5 million and climbing — and now there’s even more exposure to millions and millions of dollars for an office that will never work. We don’t need to take that risk.

We have an Office of the Auditor General that has actually, in more years recently than not, underspent its budget. We could accommodate a new Deputy Auditor General responsible for local government. I’m not fixated on what the structure would look like. Members would have suggestions here, and I think members, if they were free and unfettered on the government side, would have some good suggestions over there. I’d love to know what the member for West Vancouver, for example, thinks, because I used to work with him when I was on the Public Accounts Committee.

We can figure those details out. That’s the smallest problem to solve. Instead, what we have is the continuation of a growing and a festering problem, one that has started so abysmally that nobody has confidence in it.

You talk to mayors…. They voted, by the way, at the last Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, just a couple of weeks ago. They had a vote of non-confidence in this office. They voted it down. So there’s another problem about this bill.

It doesn’t matter what local government leaders think. It doesn’t matter what the auditee of this entity foisted upon them by the provincial government…. It’s an entity that has failed and doesn’t work properly. It has failed to provide value for money when the service they were supposed to provide is value-for-money audits.

Apparently, it doesn’t matter what elected councillors and mayors think. It doesn’t matter what administrators at that level of government think either, because government heard their reviews. They had a vote, a fresh vote just a week and a half ago, and government must have had this bill written. They must have basically said: “We don’t care what mayors and councils think. The session is coming back. The legislation has already been drafted. We’re going to ignore what they say one way or another.”

[1640]

That’s another flaw of Bill 36. It completely shuts out the opinions of those who would be subject to this office, who would have to agree and comply with its services. An illegitimacy in an office like this is a recipe for failure. We’ve seen that. It will compound itself, and it will continue.

Now, a number of members and my opposition colleague from Nelson, who just most recently spoke, talked about why this legislation is flawed. Let me go into a couple of observations about why the legislation, when it was Bill 20, failed; why the office, when it was launched, was also a failure; and why I think Bill 36 completely misses the point. It’s about the issue of independence, the issue of who hires and fires, who oversees, who liaises, who sets the workplan for the Auditor General for Local Government.

The problem is that it’s not a bipartisan, independent set of decisions on all of those important key issues that are measurements of how independent an officer is. It’s political all the way down the line. Maybe that’s to be expected, because let’s remember the genesis of the idea of the Auditor General for Local Government. It did not come up organically from grassroots local government officials. It did not come out of think tanks. It did not come out of other jurisdictions.

This is a rare form of audit function. It did not have any inspiration like that. It was actually born of politics itself and remains mired in politics. The idea for the Auditor General for Local Government came out of the leadership contest for the B.C. Liberal Party after former Premier Gordon Campbell resigned and created a va-
[ Page 9420 ]
cancy for the job of Premier. It was only the idea of one candidate, who successfully won that leadership and became the Premier. It was one of….

I can’t recite any other ideas that came out of that leadership campaign of that individual. Therefore, it had additional importance. You couldn’t backtrack on the one big idea — to have a new Auditor General for Local Government sit upon these big-spending municipal governments that need to be reined in, at exactly the same time, I might add, that the Auditor General of B.C. had called into question the $83 billion that the provincial government had racked up.

No, this was a classic distraction. “Don’t look over here. Don’t look at B.C. Hydro. Don’t look at government debt. Don’t look at P3 agreements that are falling apart and are ripping off the taxpayer in British Columbia. Look over here at the people who clean your streets and plan your local government services and deal with your wastewater and your sewage.”

That’s where it came from — a leadership campaign. Now, it’s interesting, because the other candidates had an opportunity at that time to debate it, when other British Columbians didn’t, inside the Liberal Party bubble. I remember Mr. Abbott being rather dismissive of the idea. I remember Mr. Falcon saying it was ill-conceived and destined for failure. How prescient those other leading lights of the Liberal Party were — who, I think, got a significantly greater amount of caucus support. They all thought that this was a harebrained, bad idea.

The Government House Leader who sits here today was a candidate in that leadership race, and he didn’t seem bothered to validate the Premier’s idea for an Auditor General for Local Government. So there was no consensus, no general support for this kooky idea that had very few details and seemed to be rather beside the point in terms of what we needed to be talking about in British Columbia at the time. And what happens, as we know, is that sometimes things can take a wrong turn, and they keep going and going.

Rather than pull back, rather than look in the rearview mirror, this government has decided to keep driving further and further into millions of dollars of costs for an office that has an abysmal record thus far.

[1645]

So file this in the same file as the trillion-dollar impact on GDP that LNG is going to produce, in terms of the Premier’s number of great ideas for British Columbia. That’s where it came from.

Now, I said it was born of politics. I think I’ve outlined where that came from. Let me talk a little bit about how it remains mired in politics and how that’s why this office won’t work.

The principle of independence for an Auditor General is absolutely fundamental for it to be trusted, for it to be credible and for it to be free to seek out and gather information that may otherwise be withheld. That’s why we give special subpoena powers — otherwise, judicial powers — to the Auditor General.

Does the Auditor General for Local Government sit on a par with the Auditor General of British Columbia in this regard? Not at all. The Auditor General must enjoy the 100 percent consensus of members of this House in order to get his or her job. The independence must be so credible that every member, no matter what their party background, must endorse that individual as being completely aboveboard and beyond any political interest.

That gives that person, that individual who becomes the Auditor General for the province of B.C., the ability to have no political interference. They have the trust of the House, they have the independence from the executive branch of government, and they are able to do their jobs because they have the powers to do them in terms of investigation and getting information. Those are all things that are missing from the Auditor General for Local Government.

I would have thought, given the failures, given the credibility crisis of the AGLG thus far, that Bill 36 would have been all about strengthening the autonomy and independence of this individual or of this office. It’s not. In fact, it makes things worse.

I would draw your attention to section 2 around the appointment. These are the so-called hiring-and-firing sections of this bill. Currently, the legislation states that the minister appoints the Auditor General for Local Government. That’s bad enough, but at least it identifies a member who we can blame, if need be, around performance issues for the AGLG.

Although it’s not good enough to have the minister solely…. To go from having all 85 members of the House having confidence in the Auditor General to having one political cabinet minister being responsible for the hiring — that is a practice that you wouldn’t even see in countries that can’t even be called democracies, and it exists right here in British Columbia, in this legislation.

The change, such that it is, is that they will go from the ministerial hiring or appointment of the AGLG to an order-in-council process. So now it’s just shrouded in general cabinet secrecy.

Instead of being somewhat, slightly, in a hazy way the accountability of the minister, it now goes into a mysterious process known as the order-in-council. That includes everything in terms of the terms of employment, the remuneration. It’s all done via regulation. It never ever goes through a democratic chamber like this one. It’s completely political. That is the origin, I would suggest, of the problems of this office in its lacklustre performance.

[R. Lee in the chair.]

I’ve criticized the hiring as not being independent. Let’s look at the firing. This is perhaps even worse. Section 6 of the existing act is amended so that the minister can
[ Page 9421 ]
now explicitly remove the AGLG with or without cause. They just rescind the order-in-council. The OIC is cancelled. It can be unilateral, in terms of the termination of the AGLG.

[1650]

What does this mean? This means that the person who is the AGLG always has a sword of Damocles hanging over his or her head that means they can lose their job if they speak truth to power. You cannot exercise your independence if you can lose your job on any whim by the minister. It’s impossible. Yet that is what is written in this legislation.

Compare the original Auditor General Act of British Columbia in 1975 to the AGLG Amendment Act here in 2015. In 40 years, we have gone from democratic practices of eras gone by to a complete lack of transparency and lack of democratic input in the 21st century here in 2015. It’s unbelievable that we’re actually rolling the clock back in terms of practices of an auditor general more than 40 years this afternoon, if the government gets its way and advances this bill to the next stage of debate. That’s what’s happening.

Now, I used to chair the Public Accounts Committee a few years ago, and I enjoyed meeting colleagues who were legislators from different parts of the country. There were even some international guests right here in this chamber who visited us. It’s interesting, because they published a number of books, and one of them is very helpful. It’s called The Overseers, which is about best practices. This was conducted with the help of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and a number of other organizations.

They wanted to gather and look around the world and see: what are some of the practices that strengthen, for example, public accounts committees; that guarantee that auditors general are free and unfettered in doing their work; and that help drive improvements in government? That’s because government should always seek to improve itself in its accountability and responsibility to taxpayers.

Now, that only happens if there’s a risk of getting caught doing bad things. That’s why we have an Auditor General. That’s why we have an opposition. That’s why we have things like the Public Accounts Committee. There is no such oversight for the AGLG. But one of the documents they produced highlights the principle of independence. Let me just quote it: “Particularly for auditors general, it is essential that they be free from political or legal constraints that could inhibit them from carrying out their duties diligently and impartially.”

Now, do you think having to go on the carpet on bended knee whenever the minister wants you to, having fear that your job could be taken away from you, demonstrates a freedom from political or legal constraints? No, this is the worst sort of international practices that is being imported right here in British Columbia in Bill 36.

The auditor general should be independent of the executive — another best practice. This auditor general, if we can use that name, is in a direct reporting relationship with the executive, as I’ve said, and is solely hired and fired by the executive — again, the worst sort of international practices around what an auditor general ought to be and ought not to be, in British Columbia by the B.C. Liberals’ legislation.

Another principle: “An auditor general should only be removed from office on limited grounds that are specified in advance by law.” There should be an act, in other words, that says: if you’re convicted of a crime or there are reasons to doubt your sanity or those sorts of very narrow but specific types of problems, and it’s laid down in law in advance, those are the only reasons why an auditor general should be dismissed. Here we have an act that says they can be dismissed at any time with or without cause for any reason that the political minister in charge deems necessary. Ridiculous.

You know, I’m not even sure Zimbabwe is structured that way. I haven’t looked at the entire Commonwealth jurisdictions, but if Robert Mugabe hasn’t thought of it, he probably likes Bill 36. This is the worst practice one can imagine, one that has been rejected by members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association the world over throughout that association.

Now, let me go into the removal-of-office clause. I’ve looked at section 6. I’ve spoken to it in this bill. Let me go back to this document, this best-practices compendium.

[1655]

“A common removal method” — this is for an auditor general that does need to be removed from office, not on a whim but for considered reasons — “is by parliament on certain stated grounds. This method often corresponds to the procedure for the removal of a judge. The study group saw it as being essential that removal only be possible on grounds that are defined in advance by law.” I’ve made that point.

That’s not what exists in this law here in British Columbia. We have it solely as the purview of the minister. They don’t even have to explain the reasons. They don’t have to be accountable to anybody for hiring and firing the Auditor General for Local Government.

Now, look at the other one. My colleagues have talked about the area of budget-setting. Here in British Columbia, the Public Accounts Committee — and the Finance Committee has a certain role in this as well — sets the budgets for all of the independent officers, including the Auditor General. They do it on the basis of submissions, of a workplan, of a number of audits that are to be conducted. It’s the subject of debate and the subject of negotiation. It’s arrived at by consensus and approved by this chamber. So it is above politics, because it is agreed upon by everybody, regardless of what party they may or may not come from.

This is a civilized practice that we have here in British
[ Page 9422 ]
Columbia, in Canada and in many, many countries in the world. But I’m afraid to say it’s not a universal practice. Where government corruption is greatest and where oversight is weakest is in countries where budget-setting is politically held, not done by the cabinet, and that’s what British Columbia is adopting under Bill 36.

Hon. C. Oakes: It is truly my pleasure to speak to the House about this important bill today: Bill 36, the Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act, 2015.

The Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act is going to apply what we’ve learned in the first two years since the Office of the Auditor General for Local Government was launched. It amends the Auditor General for Local Government Act by clarifying and enhancing the governance and accountability provisions of this act. The proposed amendment will make it clear. It will provide on the recommendations that the Chris Trumpy report provided to us by amending and establishing two clear streams of accountability.

The audit council will have clear authority for reviewing and monitoring the performance of the AGLG as it relates to the AGLG’s purpose and mandate. We heard this loud and clear in consultations. We heard this loud and clear from both sides of the House, while it was canvassed in the spring. The council will not have authority over the human resource matters within the office.

The amendments strengthen the role of the minister by initiating reviews of the Office of the AGLG at any time. We heard that when it was canvassed in the spring — that we needed an opportunity to look at ways that we can improve upon legislation and make sure that things work efficiently.

I would like to talk about the important work that the Auditor General for Local Government does on ensuring that we are providing value for taxpayers and that we have accountability. When you look at the executive summary on the corporation of Delta, it was about staff achieving best value through a competitive procurement.

Folks at home may be asking how, moving forward, this will support other local governments. Well, many members of us on both sides of the House come from local government. We understand the significant strength of always looking at sharing and looking at best practices. When I look and review the reports that have come out — we’ve had six reports today from the Auditor General for Local Government — we see ideas on sharing best practices and on how you look at operational procurement.

[1700]

Delta’s operational procurement accounted for significant expenditures. But if you review the report, it talks about best practices. It talks about…. The Delta staff told us they tried to look at opportunities, and this report provided them the ability to have that dialogue. The corporation set forward things on: how is a local government…? What are the roles and procedures that are put in place so that we ensure that we always have a commitment to competitive procurement? This is about ensuring that we are providing taxpayers accountability, ensuring that we have high-level council involvement.

Some of the items that we’ve seen in some of the reports that have come forward. Saltspring Island had a report that has significant importance to other local governments when we look at ensuring that there are efficiencies and best practices that are happening within local government. This is what this legislation is about.

This legislation is about ensuring that we are providing the best possible support for local governments by sharing best practices, by ensuring that we engage with our local governments from across British Columbia and, at the same time, ensuring that taxpayers across British Columbia know that they can rely on and trust, ensuring that there is best value for their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. There is only one taxpayer dollar in British Columbia.

We would like to recognize the hard work of the acting Auditor General for Local Government who stepped in. Arn van Iersel did a significant job of ensuring that the recommendations that our government committed to say…. We said that we are looking, that we are focused, that we are determined to ensure that the Auditor General for Local Government meets the needs of British Columbians. That’s why we had an independent review with Chris Trumpy. That’s why we brought forward the recommendations that Chris Trumpy made: to ensure that we were able to deliver on this important service for both citizens and local governments alike.

That’s why I am proud and pleased to be able to stand today on behalf of taxpayers across British Columbia on this important legislation.

C. Trevena: I would say that there may be 40-odd people who think this is an important piece of legislation, as the former minister of community services, who saw this through, said was for the taxpayers’ accountability. I think many of my colleagues have been talking about this. We’ve had quite a lengthy debate about it, so I’m not going to belabour the point.

We on this side of the House have not supported the Auditor General for Local Government. We think that it is an unnecessary level of bureaucracy. It very clearly came from the Premier’s office, from her initial campaign to be the leader. She pulled this one out of thin air, didn’t consult with anybody, and brought it in at great expense to the public purse — and huge problems.

What we now have is an attempt to fix it, but by fixing it, you’re making matters even worse. Instead of having an independent body, as is the Auditor General for B.C., and rolling that responsibility into the Auditor General for B.C.’s remit, which they have the right to do…. They can audit local government at the moment. Instead, we
[ Page 9423 ]
get this new body, which is going to be under the minister’s control. I’ve got to say that we’ve had this argument for independence, but once it’s under the minister’s control, you’ve got to ask: how’s that for independence?

Looking back, we’ve had $5.2 million spent for one audit, when there were going to be 18. That led to the dismissal of the first Auditor General for Local Government. We now have a case about the potential wrongful dismissal, on how that’s working, and the costs that that’s going to bring. But I would just like to quote.

Campbell River was one of the victims of the Auditor General for Local Government. I say “victims” because the response from the council…. They were absolutely appalled by what this is about. This council is responsible, is working on behalf of the citizens of Campbell River and is really determined to make sure that they do best value for money. They are absolutely accountable.

I think that people in municipal office…. I know that a number of people in this Legislature have been councillors and have been school trustees and are supremely aware of value for money and accountability. They are the closest to the electorate, and they hear it daily from their neighbours if they are doing things wrong.

[1705]

Campbell River had an audit, which began in June 2013 and was still going on in the summer. The city felt that the audit staff didn’t understand local government. This is the audit staff which was supposed to be auditing a local government. The staff at Campbell River said that the audit staff just didn’t understand local government.

A couple of quotes. Coun. Larry Samson, one of the councillors in Campbell River, said: “This, to me” — the audit and the audit process — “has been a complete failure by the provincial government. We spent countless staff time with the auditors going over our procurement, and then there was a staff change. They came back a year later and did it all over again — again, more staff time and more costs to the city.”

Where’s the value for money in that? This is supposed to be making sure that there is a good use of the public purse, whether it’s the local government public purse or the Auditor General more broadly, and clearly, this is not the case here — that they were really just inefficient, slow and unnecessary.

If I might quote another councillor, one of the former mayors of Campbell River — his response to the Auditor General for Local Government coming into Campbell River. Charlie Cornfield said, of how redundant the role is: “The inspector of municipalities for local government deals with us. They’re the appropriate area to look after local government. There just need to be some tweaks. They…need to scrap the whole thing as a failed attempt and a waste of money.” But instead of scrapping it, as Campbell River, who went through an audit, would like to see….

The Strathcona regional district, the overarching regional district, has also written asking for it to be scrapped. The UBCM is not supportive of it. But instead of listening to the people on the ground, the elected officials, the ones who have undergone the audit from this failed office, what does this government do? This government consolidates it in the minister’s office — consolidates it with a lack of independence, consolidates it with, obviously, more money going into it, and consolidates it just days after the Union of British Columbia Municipalities met and said once again that they did not want an auditor general for local government.

We do, as previous speakers have spoken…. My colleague from Victoria–Swan Lake very eloquently spoke just before me about the fact that we have a highly respected system for an auditor general. An auditor general has a very important role in the way that our governments work in our province. They are completely independent, and they have the trust of not just the government and the opposition, but they have the trust of the people of B.C.

If we need to be auditing local government, which…. Of course there are going to be times when you’re going to need to audit local government, but if you’re going to be doing it, let’s use the office that you’ve got. Let’s not be creating new offices directly under ministerial control — more centralization just to make sure that the Premier’s ego isn’t smashed.

I hope that the government does take its next stage. You know, we’ve seen it going from having this independent office to the office now under the minister. The next stage, if we’re going to have yet another bill, which, knowing this government, we’re very likely to have — the next one would be to simply abolish this office. It is unnecessary, it is expensive and it’s been shown time and again, with Campbell River as one of the examples, to be a complete waste of time and money.

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

Hon. P. Fassbender: There’s a lot of temptation I have to refute some of the comments made by the members opposite, most of which were misguided and somewhat not the reality of where we are today and where we came from.

But I will do this. I said clearly when I introduced the bill that when this office was formed, it was formed…. I happen to have been at UBCM on the executive at the time, and there was a lot of debate by local governments about this office. There were those people in local government who were in favour and those who were opposed.

[1710]

I remember meeting with the minister at the time as a member of the UBCM executive and having some very far-reaching discussions. At the end of that, I stood up publicly as a locally elected official and a member of
[ Page 9424 ]
UBCM executive and said that I believed the office would provide a valuable function for local governments; that this was different than the Auditor General, which is a statutory office of this Legislature and reports to the Legislature; that this office intent was quite different than the Auditor General and, therefore, was being developed to work differently than the Auditor General did.

I stand here today with a sincere recognition of the challenges that the office had from the day it started, the challenges in performing the functions that it was intended to do. While I accept the challenge and I accept the issues that the office faced, what we have done, because this was the first office of its kind in the country….

British Columbia is known for being a leader in looking at issues of transparency and accountability and working with our local governments to find more efficient, more effective ways for them to meet the needs of the taxpayers in their community, as we do in the province of British Columbia. That’s why government has had core review. That’s why the provincial government has made changes. That’s why the provincial government is looking at eliminating red tape in as many areas as we possibly can.

At the heart of this office was the intent, and it remains the intent, to work with local governments in a supportive fashion, not in an oversight role where it’s seen to be draconian but truly a relationship where we work together on finding efficiencies and best practices and help local governments to achieve that. Some of them have more resources than others and are able to do that, and I applaud the work being done by many local governments in the areas we’re talking about.

The most recent report that came out, done for the city of Surrey, one of the larger and the fastest-growing communities in this country, with significant financial resources…. The comment from the mayor and from the people in Surrey was that the review that was done by the Auditor General for Local Government on policing was valuable to them as they move forward in that community to meet the needs as it relates to the policing function and so on.

Since the change was made in the leadership at the office — I mentioned Mr. Arn van Iersel, who came in and set up new procedures and policies — we have had positive feedback from most of the communities where reports have been done. They have said they have found them to be of value.

I clearly as minister recognize the concerns that were raised by UBCM. That’s why this legislation clearly provides for better accountability, for more transparency. Before I took on this responsibility, I heard the questions to the former minister and the Premier. Where is leadership on an office that is not functioning the way it was intended to do? Why is the minister not doing anything to change that? Where is the leadership?

Well, this bill and the amendments is the leadership that the very members opposite asked for. It puts transparency. It puts accountability. It ensures that the relationship between the audit council, the Auditor General for Local Government and, yes, the minister and government is very clearly there so we can ensure that the office delivers the service that is required.

[1715]

I also read the report and the survey that was done by UBCM. The issues that were raised in that survey and that report…. There was a strong feeling — because of some of the things that I’ve heard in this House about the office and the way it operated in the past — that it needed to be fixed. More sensitivity to local government — that is now in there, in terms of its functioning.

Additionally, at UBCM in my keynote address, I clearly stated that I will be appointing two previously local-government-elected officials to be on the audit council so that sensitivity will be heightened even more than the audit council may have been able to do up to this point.

I have listened as minister, the government has listened to UBCM, to their concerns. I clearly said to the new incoming president, prior to him taking office, and to the outgoing that the issue with the Auditor General for Local Government, in my view, was the lack of collaboration and accountability back to UBCM and local governments.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

That is why the legislation is structured the way it is — to provide the assurance to UBCM and every local government that that office will work with them in defining the scope of the reviews, in defining how the office is doing, providing feedback and giving immediate opportunity to modify how that office and its relationships are with local government, to meet the needs of the local governments and to be supportive.

It is very clear to me — I’m assuming the members opposite wouldn’t expect me to say anything else — that changes are being made to ensure that the taxpayers of this province, in every community, understand the principle on which the provincial government and the local government auditor general operate.

It is that there is only one taxpayer, who deserves accountability and transparency, who wants a government that works with local governments to find opportunities for efficiencies and to find new and creative ways, as we move forward in this province, to meet the needs of every single taxpayer. I believe that we have done that in this act.

When I made my speech at UBCM, I said clearly to local governments: “We’ve learned. We have made recommendations. Legislation will be coming forward that deals with what we’ve learned. The essence of this office is as valid today as it was when it was first being considered and enacted.”
[ Page 9425 ]

Did we have problems? Absolutely. I make no excuses for that. Government moved. We made changes. We put someone in there that changed procedures. We looked at what we needed to do. We listened to UBCM. We listened to the local governments.

We’ve made legislative amendments that ensure that at the end of the day, we will all look back on this process — government, local governments and, most importantly, the taxpayers. We have worked hard to make sure that the interests of local governments are paramount in this, but we are willing to look at some of those new ideas and new opportunities. That’s what this office is going to do. That is what the new Auditor General for Local Government is going to do with his team.

I again want to thank Mr. Arn van Iersel for the work that he did in his acting capacity to change procedures, to have reports come out in a timely fashion and to have local governments stand up and say: “Thank you. We think this has been a valuable process.” I believe that as we move forward, every local government that participates in a collaborative and a cooperative way, which I believe they all will do, will benefit at the end of the day.

[1720]

I know the resolution that was put into UBCM long before I was appointed minister and long before UBCM. I appreciate, and said at the time, that I understand that the vote to abolish the office, in my view, was based on the performance prior to Mr. van Iersel and prior to the legislative changes that are now on the floor of this House. I appreciate that it was a vote out of frustration. I accept that, as I accept the fact that the office did not function the way it was intended.

To close debate on this, I can very clearly say that the changes in this legislation will ensure that we meet the needs of the people of British Columbia and the taxpayers. I also believe that we will serve local government in a positive and supportive way through these legislative amendments and through the Office of the Auditor General for Local Government.

Therefore, I move second reading of Bill 36.

[1725]

Second reading of Bill 36 approved on the following division:

Bill 36, Auditor General for Local Government Amendment Act, 2015, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

[1730]

Hon. M. de Jong: Committee stage on Bill 33, Motion Picture Amendment Act.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 33 — MOTION PICTURE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2015

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 33; R. Lee in the chair.

The committee met at 5:34 p.m.

On section 1.

Hon. S. Anton: I’ll just introduce staff. I have Judy Klima, director of corporate policy and planning, Ministry of Justice; Tayt Winnitoy, VP, operations and chief operating officer, Consumer Protection B.C.; and Steve Pelton, director of film classification, Consumer Protection B.C.

[1735]

G. Heyman: Thank you to the minister, and thank you to the staff, for being here to help address some of the questions. As I noted in second reading, in many ways the bill seems straightforward, but there are some issues that I’d like to clarify. It’s always fun jumping back and forth between the existing act, this bill and trying to make the pieces fit together.

Let me start by going to section 1(b), which repeals
[ Page 9426 ]
the definition of “adult motion picture” and substitutes a new definition, which appears to be significantly streamlined. I’m wondering if the minister can tell us what the significant differences in the definitions are and why they were made.

Hon. S. Anton: The previous version of the definition, which we are proposing to leave behind, is being replaced by a more general version of the definition of adult motion picture.

The intent, though, is the same. The intent is to capture sexually explicit scenes, scenes of brutality or torture to persons or animals or scenes prescribed by regulation and define them as adult motion picture. The standard will be the same. The director of film classification is using a standard of community values and the standards that he or she — he in this case — will use after this act is passed, should it be passed and before will be the same.

G. Heyman: So just for clarity, while there are a number of very specific definitions in the existing act, none of them would be excluded by this change.

Hon. S. Anton: That’s correct. They are all captured in the new wording.

G. Heyman: I note as well that video games have been excluded from the definition, which currently exists in the Motion Picture Act. I would be correct in assuming that is because they are currently captured under a different act or a set of regulations?

[1740]

Hon. S. Anton: The Motion Picture Act in the current form contains definitions that were actually put in there in case they were to be used in the future. That was one of them, around video games. In fact, there never has been classification of video games, and there is no intention to start a classification of video games.

G. Heyman: Just to follow through, could the minister say why there is no intention to consider classification in the future? Is it a jurisdictional issue? It is a content issue?

Hon. S. Anton: The intention of the act is to classify and make regulations around motion pictures which are shown in public theatres. The act is not intended to regulate what comes into people’s homes — although I will add that in terms of video games, there is a voluntary industry classification.

But as I said, that’s not done by Consumer Protection B.C., by our film classification branch, and we don’t plan to go there. The intention is to keep this act and this form of classification for what is shown in theatres.

G. Heyman: Well, I am a little confused, because (g) within section 1 defines motion picture as “a moving visual image that may be generated for viewing from (a) any thing, including film, videotape, videodisc or an electronic or digital storage device, or (b) any source, including electronic, wire, fibre optic cable, telecommunication, digital or satellite sources” and then goes on to exclude video games.

I am confused, because clearly, it does contemplate classifying motion pictures that aren’t strictly limited to those shown in theatres. Could the Attorney General elaborate, please?

[1745]

Hon. S. Anton: The classification is intended for movies, motion pictures publicly exhibited in theatres, so it is not including the things that come into the home. There is a distinction around the adult motion pictures, which we will come to in section 5. There is a bit of a distinction there.

Generally, in terms of the other things that seem to be captured in “motion picture,” you need to read that in conjunction with the rest of the act. The rest of the act makes it clear that we’re talking about things shown in theatres.

G. Heyman: I’m going to pursue this in a moment because I am quite confused, but my colleague from Stikine wishes to rise for a moment. I’ll just take my seat.

Personal Statement

CLARIFICATION OF COMMENTS
MADE IN THE HOUSE

D. Donaldson: I understand, through the Speaker, that some of my comments this morning during private members’ time were construed as a personal attack on the Premier. They were not meant as such, and I regret that this is the impression that was left with some members of the chamber.

Debate Continued

G. Heyman: I’m simply going to confess that I don’t understand the minister’s answer in the context of the language that appears to me to be fairly plain on its face. Section (g) talks about a definition of motion picture. There is also a definition of adult motion picture that is quite separate and that occurs earlier in (b).

The definition in (g) of motion picture clearly refers to videotape, videodisc, electronic or digital storage, satellite sources, telecommunication, digital, fibre optic cables. I have a hard time understanding the connection between this definition, which is separate from the definition of adult motion picture, and what the Attorney General says is clear later on in the act. I’m not trying to be disputa-
[ Page 9427 ]
tious, but I don’t see the connection. Maybe there’s an issue of drafting that needs to be considered here.

It’s not apparent to me that, in and of itself, this definition is intended to only cover what’s shown in motion pictures, given that the listing of issues in (a) and (b) should therefore be the pretext or the reason why video games are excluded from the definition.

Hon. S. Anton: A motion picture can be distributed to a theatre in any number of different ways. That’s what’s intended to be captured in part (a) and part (b).

We just want to make it really clear that we’re not talking about a video game, because without excluding it specifically, it might seem that it was also included under motion picture. The classification scheme will then apply to anything which fits within the definition of motion picture and is shown in a public theatre.

G. Heyman: If that’s the case, why would the definition not also exclude DVDs?

[1750]

Hon. S. Anton: It’s not whether it’s on a DVD or not; it’s how the DVD is used. If the DVD is shown in a public theatre, then it needs to be classified. If it’s purchased for home use, then it is not classified.

G. Heyman: Could the minister, then, explain to me where in the bill a DVD that is not intended for use in a theatre, or a moving visual image that’s distributed by satellite source in some viewing venue other than a theatre, is excluded from this definition?

Hon. S. Anton: In my previous answer, I did not add the exception for adult motion pictures, which we will come to in section 3. The answer to the member’s question is found in section 2, which says: “If a motion picture or a copy of it is intended to be exhibited in a theatre, the motion picture distributor must submit the motion picture to the director for review under section 5.” So it’s section 2 that determines that the motion picture…. No matter what the medium is — whether it’s by some kind of streaming service or DVD or whatever the form of it is — if you are intending to show it in a public theatre, you need to have it classified.

G. Heyman: For clarity, is the minister referring to section 2 of the bill or section 2 of the existing act?

Hon. S. Anton: Sorry. Yes, the member is right. That’s section 3 of the existing act, which amends section 2 of the bill.

G. Heyman: If I could just take a moment to read and ensure that I understand this and decide whether or not I have further questions or whether the question has been answered.

For the moment…. I think there’ll be an opportunity to revisit it when we get to that section of the act, if I find that I’m not satisfied that the words are precisely the same.

Let me go on to note that the definition of a “restricted motion picture” within this bill is exactly the same as the definition of “adult motion picture,” with the exception that the definition of “restricted motion picture” contains the words “but does not include an adult motion picture.”

I think I know the reason for this, and I think the reason is that there was previously no clear distinction between a restricted motion picture and an adult motion picture. But perhaps the Attorney General could walk us through the thinking of this change, so I’m clear on exactly why things are worded this way and why the definition was added separately.

[1755]

Hon. S. Anton: The two definitions are, indeed, different. An adult motion picture is “a motion picture that has, as its main object,” the depiction of the things noted there — sexually explicit scenes, scenes of brutality or torture, scenes prescribed by regulation. Whereas a “restricted motion picture” may contain those things, but they are not the main object of the film.

G. Heyman: I thank the minister for catching what I missed on my first readthrough. She is, of course, quite correct.

I’d like to go back to (g) and the definitions in section 1 that we’ve noted exclude video games and also exclude “a prescribed type or class of moving visual image.” My assumption is that the intention is certain things could be excluded by regulation. But I wonder if the Attorney General could elaborate on (a) whether that’s the intent and (b), while I’m sure she won’t want to be too speculative, if there is any specific thinking about types of moving visual images or classes of moving visual images that might need to be excluded or considered for exclusion in the future.

Hon. S. Anton: The member is correct that this is intended to be for regulation.

This is the general section. There are actually…. We don’t actually have proposals at the moment for (d). Sometimes I can make a list that may be a partial list with more to be added later, but this is actually a list of zero things at the moment. It’s left as a placeholder in case there are new technologies and new things that come along that would fall within (d) and could be put in there to be excluded by regulation.

L. Krog: On section 1. I’m just curious. The existing act describes that: “‘adult motion picture’ means any of the following: (a) a motion picture that was submitted for review under the former Act…and that, following the review, (i) was not approved…; (b) a motion picture that
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has not been reviewed under section 5 that depicts….” Then it goes through a very long list of things, including “explicit sexual scenes,” “incest or necrophilia,” “bondage in a sexual context,” etc.

I’m just curious to know…. We’re repealing that definition of “adult motion picture” and substituting now a much briefer: “‘adult motion picture’ means a motion picture that has, as its main object, the depiction of (a) sexually explicit scenes, (b) scenes, depicted in a realistic and explicit manner, of brutality or torture to persons or animals, or (c) scenes prescribed by regulation.”

I’m going to assume that the purpose of deleting all those specific things — anyone would understand why you would want to, perhaps, regulate them — is now it’s expected to be covered by regulation. Is that the intent of the changing of the definition?

[1800]

Hon. S. Anton: The more general definition contains the pieces that were in the previous definition. The standards that will be applied by the director of film classification will be the same, because they’re meant to reflect the community standard. The current proposed definition, which is indeed much shorter, is more consistent with the Criminal Code obscenity provisions. When you read forward in the act to section 6 of the bill, which proposes amending section 5 of the act, it actually contains additional protections for children under 18.

L. Krog: I think I understand what the Attorney General is trying to say, but it just strikes me that this is another example of having explicit legislation which gets reviewed by the House, all the members, passed by the Legislature, being replaced by “scenes prescribed by regulation.” I mean, is there some reason that we’ve dropped all these explicit descriptions?

I appreciate it is to align with the Criminal Code, but I don’t think it’s necessary that the Motion Picture Act comply somehow with the Criminal Code in terms of how you’re regulating these types of films and defining and classifying them. Isn’t, in fact, one of the real purposes of this to again take away this chamber’s job, if you will, and give it to cabinet, who will then be able to decide what scenes should be prescribed by regulation?

Hon. S. Anton: First of all, the new definition does encompass the terms that were in the previous definition. Second of all, the concern around part (c), “scenes prescribed by regulation” — there is no proposal for that regulation at the moment. It really is a placeholder, in case something new comes up that needs to be dealt with. There is no proposal at the moment.

This definition section does need to be read in conjunction with the proposed amendments to section 5 which are found in section 6 of the bill. Under (5.1), there is protection against “(a) sexually explicit scenes involving violence; (b) sexually explicit scenes that are degrading or dehumanizing” and then some others for persons who are under the age of 18 or are intended to represent somebody under the age of 18.

L. Krog: With great respect to the Attorney General, and appreciating and looking through section 6 of the bill, which includes some reference to persons under 18, as opposed to the existing section, in terms of definition, which says “a motion picture that has not been reviewed under section 5” that depicts “persons who are or who appear to be under the age of 14 involved in sexually suggestive scenes, whether or not they appear nude or partially nude.”

I assume the 18 has something to do with — how shall I say it? — bringing it into line with the Criminal Code. But, for instance, incest or necrophilia, coercing through threats of violence or physical force or by other means, of a person to engage in a sexual act — it’s fairly explicit, is what I’m getting at, the existing definition.

[1805]

With great respect, now saying its the “main object, the depiction of (a) sexually explicit scenes….” and then “(b) scenes, depicted in a realistic and explicit manner, of brutality or torture to persons or animals….” I don’t care how you cut it. When I read all of the descriptive language of the existing definition of an “adult motion picture,” it just seems to me that it’s far more explicit. This is a far more general description.

Surely, the conclusion that I have to draw is that it seems to be prescribed by regulation. Even when you take into account proposed section 6, it doesn’t seem to be as broad-ranging or as descriptive. I’m just wondering why — the reason for the dropping of the description. I’m just curious to know, unless the intent is, as I suggest, to give the power to cabinet once again by regulation as opposed to dealing with it specifically in the legislation.

Hon. S. Anton: The act is reconfigured. The definition of “adult motion picture” in its current iteration, which we’re proposing to change, actually seems to contain the test right within the definition, whereas that’s not really where you want the test. You really want the test inside your legislation rather than in the definition.

The test now is contained in the proposed section 5, which is section 6 in the bill. In terms of drafting, it’s more appropriate to have it contain the test within the body of the bill itself rather than proposing to put it somehow in the definitions.

G. Heyman: I had one more question on section 1, and the question was: could the Attorney General just specify exactly what the practical effect will be of a separate definition for restricted movies that is not present in the existing act?

[1810]

Hon. S. Anton: They are two separate classifications, and again, the detail around that is in the proposed changes to section 5.

A practical result of the change and one of the results that we were aiming to achieve here is that if you showed restricted movies before, you needed a separate licence to show the adult motion pictures, but now you do not need the two licences. If you’re showing adult motion pictures, you can show restricted and vice versa. It simplifies the licensing procedure, and, as I said, the actual, practical application, again, is in the proposed new section 5.

G. Heyman: I certainly understand that one of the intents of the bill is to not require two separate licences, and I support that, but it’s just not clear to me how this does that. I may be missing something here, but under the current system there’s a definition of “motion pictures” and there’s a definition of “adult motion pictures.” The definition of “restricted motion pictures” is new. How does that, in and of itself, remove the requirement for dual licensing?

Perhaps there’s a reference. I thought I’d read through this pretty carefully. It may be clear in a reference in a future section of the act, so maybe that’s my question.

Then the second part of my question is: is there any other reason to have a separate definition for “restricted motion picture,” or is that the sole reason?

Hon. S. Anton: The restricted motion picture. There’s a series, as the member will know — I’ll get Mr. Pelton to give me the list — ranging from “family” all the way up. “Restricted” is one of that series of definitions. A movie theatre can show a children’s movie at four o’clock and a restricted movie at 11 o’clock at night. They don’t need a separate licence.

[1815]

It used to be that if you were showing a restricted film, you had to have an adult licence to show the restricted film. Now you don’t. A theatre can simply show and properly describe that it’s a restricted movie but can show a restricted movie just within its general licensing.

Section 1 approved.

On section 2.

G. Heyman: Section 2 specifies how the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act applies with respect to this act. I think I understand this is to simply bring some consistency to the way in which this act is applied, along with other acts that would be covered by the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act.

Perhaps the Attorney General could just go into a bit more detail about how, if at all, this changes current practice once this bill becomes an act — if, in fact, it does.

Hon. S. Anton: The goal here is to bring provisions of the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act into use in the Motion Picture Act. That is what the interpretation section here is for. It will be referred to again, later on, under section 13.

Section 2 approved.

On section 3.

G. Heyman: At this point, I’m not sure that my question relates to section 3, but it’s the only place that I could find to ask the question, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to ask it.

When a bill to amend the Motion Picture Act was introduced originally, in 2012, my predecessor as critic, the MLA from West End–Coal Harbour, did some consultation with a number of independent theatre owners, including the then owner of the Fifth Avenue Cinemas and, I believe, the Park cinema. There was a concern about films that had been classified and had not changed in any way; although, they may have changed in format.

I’ll use as an example a film that is not being shown in a film festival but is actually quite old and is being reissued or redistributed. No change to the film and had been classified once, but there was a requirement and some dispute about whether the film needed to be reclassified at the expense of the theatre owner — actually, in some ways, a classic example of red tape that needs to be cut through.

[1820]

When I referred back to some debate on the bill that was introduced at that time, the then minister responsible, who is now the Minister of Jobs, said, as reported in Hansard:

“In relation to terminology in the act, I would like to advise that after recent consultations on this bill with industry stakeholders, I will be making a minor amendment to section 12 of the act to clarify the requirements relating to proof of classification for movies shown in theatres. As we move towards the digital age, we want to be clear that it is proof of classification, rather than a physical attachment to the movie, that is required. I will bring forward that amendment and request that it be placed on the orders of the day.”

Now, I don’t believe that amendment was introduced at that time because the bill never proceeded and never became an act. I’m not clear what amendment, if any, was brought forward at the time or if such an amendment has been introduced to this bill at this time.

It’s possible that it’s contained in section 3 of this bill, which amends section 2, including substituting new sections (2) and (3). So (3) says, in (b): “in the case of any other motion picture, the motion picture has been reviewed by the director under section 5.” And (a) talks about adult motion pictures. For the purposes of this question, that’s not at issue.

I’m wondering if the Attorney General can talk about this new subsection (3) and clarify for me whether it is
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here and, if it is, exactly how this addresses the issue of the requirement to spend money to reclassify a film that has, in fact, already been classified. I think part of the issue was simply a change of distributor. If not, is this issue addressed in some other section of the bill? And if not, is the Attorney General aware of the concern that the previous Attorney General was committed to dealing with in 2012?

I think it is an important issue. It is an unnecessary and unfair burden on, particularly, small independent theatre owners. I think that at the time the issue came up in 2012, it was sort of resolved by agreement that wasn’t really contemplated by legislation. It’s important that if we’re dealing with amendments to this act, that this issue is addressed. It will mean a lot to people who might in the future be caught by red tape.

[1825]

Hon. S. Anton: The issue around the classification was resolved a couple of years ago. As long as there’s a record of classification of the movie and the theatre owner can say, “Yes, indeed this is the same film,” then they can go with the previous classification. It does not have to be reclassified.

There was an issue around what kind of display of classification they had to make, and they used to have to physically go to the film and put it on the film and so on. They don’t need to do that anymore. They simply display it in various ways as the person goes into the theatre as to what the classification is. The issue, I think, that the member is referring to has also gone away — both of those with fairly extensive consultation with the industry.

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

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:26 p.m.

The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.

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

Hon. B. Bennett moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:27 p.m.

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