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)

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 29, Number 10

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

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2015

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Prayers.

Introductions by Members

Hon. P. Fassbender: I have the great honour today to introduce to the House Mr. Arjan Singh Bhullar, who is also joined by his fiancée, Neenu Dhalliwal.

Mr. Bhullar is an accomplished Olympic freestyle wrestler from Vancouver. Wrestling has a strong history in the Bhullar family. His father, Avtar, was the first in the family to master both traditional Indian-style Kushti wrestling as well as Olympic-style wrestling.

All ten of the Bhullar brothers went through rigorous training regimens at the akhara gym that was built by the family farm.

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Arjan went on to win numerous provincial, national and high school championships. From there, he went to Simon Fraser University on a wrestling scholarship, while studying political science, where he went on to win multiple national titles for SFU.

As the first wrestler of Indian heritage to represent Canada at the Olympic Games in freestyle wrestling, Mr. Bhullar has enjoyed many athletic highlights, including a gold-medal win at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the only gold medallist on Team Canada; the 2011 Sport B.C. University Athlete of the Year; and the 2009 Canadian wrestler of the year. Also of note, Mr. Bhullar is also a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Will the House please join me in welcoming Arjan and his fiancée to the House.

Hon. N. Letnick: Joining us in the House today is Ms. Kleo Landucci, vice-president, projects and development, at Ashcroft Terminal. Kleo is one of those rare leaders in our province. She’s visionary, she’s capable, and she’s taken the Ashcroft Terminal to new heights.

Ashcroft Terminal is a 320-acre, privately owned, inland transload and storage terminal with 350 acres of surrounding buffer land. It provides direct access to major highways and both the CPR and CNR rail lines, while providing competitive pricing to customers while they can streamline their logistics operations.

Would the House please make this leader very welcome.

Hon. M. Bernier: I’m fortunate enough today to make a couple of introductions. First of all, I’d like to let the House know that my administrative coordinator, Lara O’Connor-Dixon, is in the House today, as well as my constituency assistant, Cindy Fisher, if the House could please make them welcome.

Also in the House today, I’m pleased to welcome 18 teachers from across British Columbia and one from Washington state who have been selected to participate in the B.C. Teachers Institute on Parliamentary Democracy. Joining them are also two observers from our neighbouring jurisdiction, Joan Fitzpatrick and Brooke Stuckey from the Alberta Legislative Assembly. They will be with us for the remainder of this week expanding their knowledge of our parliamentary system.

They are also joined by three of their peers who are returning alumni acting in the role of facilitators: Ms. Sarah van Neus, Mr. Jonathan Boone and Mrs. Yvonne DeWith. I hope that all members of the House will take the opportunity tomorrow to meet with all of them up in the Ned DeBeck Lounge for lunch.

Would the House please make all of them welcome here today.

Hon. A. Virk: It’s my great honour to introduce today in the House individuals from the B.C. Bioenergy Network. With us today in the House, we have Dr. Bryan Imber, president and CEO of the ICC Group; Michael Weedon, executive director of the Bioenergy Network. We have Brent Sauder, chair of the B.C. Bioenergy Network board, and Marnie Plant, strategic adviser to the Bioenergy Network.

Bioenergy does not often receive the recognition it deserves in keeping forests healthy and in generating renewable energy. A recent Canadian clean energy technology report forecasts that the global market for clean technology and services is to grow to $3 trillion by year 2020.

These individuals are positioning B.C. to be on the cutting edge of clean tech. May I ask my colleagues to join me in welcoming the B.C. Bioenergy Network to the House.

Hon. S. Thomson: Joining us today are two representatives from the from the Nature Trust of B.C. — their CEO, Dr. Jasper Lament, and their leadership-giving manager, Steve Housser.

As members know, the Nature Trust is a leading land conservation organization. It acquires ecologically significant land through purchase, donation, covenant and lease. They care for that land and protect the natural diversity of wildlife, plants and critical habitats. Government has been able to partner with them in managing a number of wildlife management areas in the province.

I’d ask all members of the House to make them welcome today.

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D. Donaldson: I have a couple of introductions today. Irene Ronalds, Miller Kriese and Kevin Kriese will
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be in the precinct today. They’re from Smithers. Miller is a grade 8 student. He’s very interested in politics and has come to question period today. His father, Kevin, is down with his family because he’s being honoured with his 25 years of public service tomorrow. He’s an assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, based in Smithers. We like that decentralized model up north.

I would also like to introduce Jonathan Boone, who’s a teacher at Bulkley Valley Christian School. He’s here for the B.C. teachers institute. I’ve been to his class, discussing civics and how the provincial Legislature works. He organizes debates at the school, as well, for the provincial and federal campaigns.

I’d like to ask the members to join me in welcoming Jonathan and Irene, Miller and Kevin to the precinct.

Tributes

JANN BAILEY

Hon. T. Stone: On behalf of the Minister of Health, I would like to inform the House of the sad news of the passing of a renowned community leader in Kamloops. Jann Bailey’s passing on October 9 is a blow not just for the Kamloops Art Gallery but for the entire arts community in Kamloops. As its executive director, Jann was, in so many ways, not just the face of the gallery but, indeed, the entire arts community.

Bailey earned her share of honours in recognition for her work, including the Governor General’s Canada 125 award in 1993, the Y’s Women Of Distinction Award in 1995, the Queen’s Jubilee Medals in 2002 and 2012, and also an honorary doctorate from Thompson Rivers University in 2008.

She was instrumental in creating and organizing the annual Mayor’s Gala for the Arts and was an outspoken advocate for arts funding. Her passion for the arts was truly inspiring. When you think of builders and community leaders who have left a hugely positive legacy for their community, you think of people like Jann. She indeed will be greatly missed.

Hon. Speaker, I would ask that the House please join the Minister of Health and me in sending our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends, who are in our thoughts and prayers today.

CLARENCE JULES

Hon. T. Lake: It is for another sad reason that I stand — to report the passing of another notable member of our community of Kamloops, who passed away this September. Clarence Jules was a husband, a father, a leader and member of the B.C. Cowboy Hall of Fame.

During his decade as chief of the Tk’emlúps Indian Band and as a councillor, Chief Jules oversaw the transformation of his community, improving infrastructure, creating opportunities for skill development and helping oversee the historic purchase of the Harper Ranch.

He played a vital role in forming the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, and he was a firm believer in, in his words, “moving at the speed of business” to achieve prosperity and opportunity on reserve.

His son, Chief Manny Jules, has followed in his footsteps as chief of one of British Columbia’s most forward-looking and innovative First Nations communities. He continues his father’s important work of ensuring that First Nations share in the benefits of economic development. Chief Clarence Jules left his mark on the Tk’emlúps community, on the wider Kamloops community and on our province.

The Minister of Transportation, the Premier and I have all expressed our condolences to the Jules family and hope, hon. Speaker, you would do so on behalf of all members.

Introductions by Members

Hon. S. Anton: This past Saturday, government proclaimed Conflict Resolution Week in British Columbia. The week is raising awareness about the benefits of mediation as both an affordable and an effective alternative to going to court.

Joining us today are representatives from the Ministry of Justice, who play a vital role in our public mediation service and in improving access to justice for British Columbians.

I’d like to introduce James Deitch, acting assistant deputy minister, justice services branch; Dan VanderSluis, executive director, family justice services division; Lisa Nakamura, acting executive director, dispute resolution office; Ruth Greig, child protection mediation program, family justice services division; Peter Sperling, local manager, Victoria Justice Access Centre; and Kathyrn Platt, senior policy analyst, dispute resolution office. Kathyrn is, in fact, watching the proceedings from Vancouver but played an important part in realizing Conflict Resolution Week.

I’d like to recognize the hard work of these individuals, both for the ministry and for the people of British Columbia. Would the House please make them very welcome.

R. Fleming: I would like to just follow on the Minister of Education’s introduction of the number of teachers who’ve joined us here for the B.C. parliamentary institute for teachers. I look forward to speaking to them in more depth this afternoon, participating with three other colleagues from this House in an MLA panel.

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I’m very pleased to see that there are observers from Washington and Alberta to come and learn here about
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what has really become a very valuable institution in our province. It’s wonderful to see teachers from the Okanagan, the Interior, the Lower Mainland and, particularly — not particularly, but self-interestedly — from the Victoria school district in Saanich right here closer to home.

Thank you very much and welcome to the Legislative Assembly.

D. Bing: I have four visitors to the House today, two of them from Vancouver. Joining us are my cousin Shirley Marr and her son Clifford Marr.

Also, from Victoria, I have my cousin Beverly Hea and her niece Kristen Low. Kristen is with the B.C. Teachers Institute on Parliamentary Democracy program. She is a second-year teacher at the Pacific Christian institute, and she teaches grade five. Also, she has a sideline. She teaches tap, jazz and hip-hop dance three times a week at local studios.

Would the House please make them welcome.

Madame Speaker: Hon. Members, as a former teacher, I’m always delighted to welcome young people to this assembly, and today, visiting from my riding, are 76 grade 11 students from Richmond Christian School with their teachers, Sigfried Ong, Angela Wilson, Deanna Smith, Brad Martens, Leanna Leong and Anthony Beutel.

I’d ask the House to please joining me in welcoming, perhaps, the best school.

Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

55-PLUS B.C. GAMES

R. Sultan: In late August, I attended the opening ceremonies of the 55-Plus B.C. Games, previously known as the Seniors Games, in North Vancouver.

They turned out over 2,000 volunteers and about 3,000 competitors in 24 different sports, ranging alphabetically from archery to whist. Under the “s” alone, we have slo-pitch, swimming and soccer. While I did not feel quite up to pole vaulting that day, I did consider competing in darts.

B.C. Seniors Games Society is organized into zones, and they hand out lots of medals. This year, Peace River–Liard zone went home with nine gold, five silver and four bronze, and Fraser Valley zone won 199 golds, 145 silver and 131 bronze.

Among my constituents, Gail Gladwell won four silver medals, one bronze and one fourth in breast stroke and freestyle swimming. Peter Lazenby won a bronze in cycling; David Howe, two silvers in javelin and discus. Patrick Downey placed fourth, sixth and ninth in the cycling time trials, road racing and uphill. Bill Mustaklim placed fifth in the 100-metre track for men 70 to 74. Sally Spires won three gold medals in time trials, road racing and uphill cycling for women 65 to 69.

Do the contestants take all of this seriously? They certainly do. They also have a good time, and their higher level of fitness warms the Health Minister’s heart. Next year, it’s Coquitlam’s turn. Seniors, polish your horseshoes.

MARTIN MARS WATERBOMBER

S. Fraser: So 2015 was a bad fire year in B.C., with wildfires consuming more than 300,000 hectares of forests, and more than 50 structures burned down, the highest number since 2003.

There are many tools in the provincial tool chest to deal with this reality, and we may need all of them as climate change increases the odds that this year was more the norm than the exception. Small, nimble aircraft are certainly part of that tool chest, but they are not the only tool in the chest.

The Martin Mars water bomber station at Sproat Lake, near Port Alberni, is in a class by itself. Built in 1945, at the time, it was the largest aircraft in the world, and it remains the second-largest air tanker that there is.

Let’s put that into perspective. The Mars can fill up within 32 seconds by skimming across a lake’s surface, not even landing, and boy, does it pack a punch. Four acres of water or Thermo-Gel mix in one drop, and that drop amounts to 2,000 gallons per second.

The beauty of this massive capacity is that it can knock out a fire in its inception. A wildfire typically grows very fast — three acres per hour — and the Martin Mars’ claim to fame is that it can be airborne, loaded and hitting a fire in less than one hour, before it can get out of control.

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Arguably, if it had been on contract and on standby this year at its home base in Sproat Lake, the Mars would have knocked down the fires near Port Hardy and Sechelt and, ironically, Sproat Lake before they became big, costly, dangerous problems.

Let’s learn from our mistakes and ensure that we don’t overlook this incredible firefighting tool ever again.

STORIES AND IMAGINATION

G. Hogg: By age nine, my dog Rusty and I had saved our family and our community from many untold and unknown threats. We protected everyone as we travelled to our secret forts and plotted ways to keep the world safe. Sadly, very few such forts exist today.

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor told us about the constructive role of imagination in shaping our sense of how things are — our grasp of the world as an integrated, imaginative act involving our practices as much as our theories, our feelings as much as our ideas and our common fund of stories as much as our learned discourses.

Our understanding of our family’s tradition and our society’s culture is passed on through stories, stories augmented by our imagination. They are how we make sense
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of our lives. Without stories, we have no way to discern patterns in time, no way to find meaning or direction or joy. Stories help us to understand. They help to connect us, to make us human.

All cultures tend to teach their values, their mores and their beliefs through their stories and their processes of play, and at their very best, they ignite the spontaneous sense of joy. But much play has now become more structured, sanitized and adult-monitored. We have lost many of the ways that allowed us to explore and to learn and to experiment.

Henry David Thoreau preferred the miracles of nature to the problems of humanity, but not many places like Walden Pond are left in our modern world. I think Thoreau would now say that the miracles of nature and the problems of humanity can no longer remain separate, that we must find balance if we’re going to survive.

If, as Dan Quinn believes, what mother culture whispers in your ear is what you become, then we must ensure that the stories that we hear, the stories that we whisper, inspire us and others to imagine in a way that will bring about a new reality grounded in the traditions of the past — traditions of spontaneity, games and unstructured play; traditions found in our experiences with nature and with dogs like Rusty.

HUNTING IN NORTHWEST B.C.

D. Donaldson: In the northwest, the leaves are off the trees, the steelhead season is coming to a close, and if you go out into the woods, you might hear a long, strange bellowing noise. That’s because hunting season is upon us, and that strange sound you hear could be a hunter trying to get a bull moose’s attention by imitating the call of another bull in the first guy’s backyard.

People hunt for many reasons in the northwest. Most of the people I know, First Nations and non–First Nations, hunt in order to put good-quality meat in the freezer or in canning jars. This is especially important in many remote rural communities where the cost of food is high. Imported food tends to be less nutritious, and having moose and other wild meat in the freezer or jars in the pantry is essential for healthy living and is truly a definition of what it means to be wealthy.

Hunters that I know recognize it’s a means of being out on the land and in the mountains, of reconnecting with the natural environment and keeping track of changes in prey, predators and habitat — truly boots on the ground, with an eye to conservation.

I also know father-son and father-daughter combinations hunting in the forests and on the mountains this fall, so it’s also about creating stronger family bonds and connecting with friends.

The land provides sustenance for the body and the soul, and also economically. Hunters pay over $7 million in fees and permits each year in B.C., but what they spend at the retail level in small towns in the north is even more significant when it comes to the local economy. The guiding business in B.C. brings in $120 million annually, most of which goes to support people in rural areas wanting to stay local, to work on the land and in close connection with nature.

If we take care of the animal populations based on science, put the right amount of government resources into conservation, and ensure the land and water is properly taken care of, then hunting will be a sustainable activity for generations to come.

CLEAN ENERGY INDUSTRY

J. Sturdy: Today in Vancouver, the provincial government and B.C. Hydro have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Clean Energy Association of British Columbia that supports continued collaboration to deliver clean, reliable and affordable electricity to British Columbians.

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The private renewable power industry has grown into an essential part of B.C.’s reliable electricity network. Since 2001, the industry has expanded from supplying 4 percent to nearly 25 percent of B.C. Hydro’s total supplied energy.

Investments in independent power projects are spread throughout the province. They create jobs, often in remote areas and in many First Nations communities. It’s our goal to maintain and grow the IPP industry in British Columbia and to maintain affordable electricity rates and good management of our highly regarded system.

The MOU sets out goals and understandings that will strengthen our competitive advantage of reliable and affordable clean electricity and will support continued investment and growth in the independent power sector. I want to commend B.C. Hydro and CEBC for working together with the government on this MOU, and I want to acknowledge their contribution to making the clean energy sector a vital part of our electrical system.

Clean Energy B.C. has represented the independent power sector for 25 years and has 160 members across a wide range of clean energy technologies. It is a strong and visionary advocate for clean energy in British Columbia and for engineering, financial, environmental and legal firms that support this sector.

Given the scope of B.C.’s energy needs, B.C. Hydro needs a partner to develop the electricity generation projects. The independent power industry has delivered, and we’re going to work together to build upon our partnership in this important sector.

VOLUNTEERISM IN BURNABY

R. Chouhan: Every year, the city of Burnaby has identified and recognized local heroes. These individuals are of diverse interests and backgrounds who give back to
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their community in a wide variety of ways. Examples of activities include volunteering for a local agency or a community school, coaching a local sports team or helping recent immigrants settle into the community. Their contribution to the community is over five years through a minimum of two activities.

This year, the award recipients were George Doering, Janice Froese, Aliya Jiwa, Maureen Kirk, Lindy McQueen, Heather Podrow, Claire Stegen and Tony Wong. I am pleased to say that I had the honour to nominate two of these recipients, George and Lindy.

George Doering is an 84-year-old young man. He teaches workshops through the Council of Senior Citizens Organizations of B.C., was a member of the New Vista Society executive for 18 years and has volunteered at my office for a decade. George has been a tireless advocate and volunteer all his life. He has been an instrumental member of the Burnaby-Edmonds community.

Lindy McQueen was nominated for her work in the community at Gordon Presbyterian Church. She recently founded an organization called Edmonds People in Community. In short, it’s known as EPIC. She has organized events like the Music in the Park and has been helping seniors to get community services when they need it.

I want to say thank you to all of them for their dedication, commitment and passion for keeping our community vibrant, safe and enjoyable for all.

Oral Questions

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO DEATHS OF
YOUTH IN CARE AND AGING OUT OF CARE

J. Horgan: Yesterday we asked the Minister of Children and Family Development about the death of yet another child in care.

Last spring, Peter Lang and his spouse put their son Nick into the care of the ministry to address his serious addiction issues. They did so with some comfort that the ministry and the government would be there for Nick, as they were not able to do so. Regrettably, there were tragic consequences. Six days after going into care, Nick took his life.

We asked the minister yesterday if she would be accountable for her decisions — her decisions with respect to policy, her decisions with respect to funding. She refused to do so.

My question today is to the Premier. Will she take responsibility for funding decisions in the Ministry of Children and Family Development, and will she take responsibility for the tragic death of Nick Lang and the consequences for his family?

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Hon. C. Clark: This is just a tragic loss for Nick’s family, for everybody who loved him, for his foster parents, for the community and for all of us in British Columbia who are concerned about the safety of children in government care.

The ministry works very hard. Social workers put their hearts and souls into this work every single day. It’s the most difficult work that government does. Everybody tries to do their best, but I certainly acknowledge that we have to do better. We have to continue to strive to make sure that the Ministry of Children and Families is meeting current, present-day challenges as the demographics that we serve change, as the needs change. We need to recognize that the work of social workers also changes. We are ensuring that we do that.

There are a number of reviews underway in the ministry. We’re very much looking forward to those reports. We were also happy to receive the representative’s report and have been able to respond to that.

We are learning every day from the things that go well and the things that don’t go well in the ministry. Our challenge, which we are taking up, is to make sure that we take that learning and turn it into action.

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

J. Horgan: It seems to be a continued refrain from the government, talking about yet another review, upon another review, upon another review. But within that rhetoric, there is never accountability — never accountability.

With the case of Nick Lang, it gets worse. Nick Lang’s father, Peter, spoke out because he learned that Carly Fraser, after she lost her life, would not get a review because she had aged out 20 hours and 35 minutes after her 19th birthday. Pete Lang spoke out because of Alex Gervais being left alone in a hotel room without any supports.

What was the response from the government? What was the response of the Ministry of Children and Family Development? They didn’t advise the Lang family of the passing of their child, but they were quick to write a letter. A lawyer wrote to the family and said they were violating the privacy of their dead son. If that’s not the most heartless thing you’ve ever heard…. I would be quite challenged to hear something worse.

My question, again, to the Premier. If we have enough resources to send lawyers’ letters to stifle families looking for answers, why in goodness’ name can we not get resources so that social workers, overburdened, can respond when children die?

Hon. C. Clark: I understand that lawyers at the Ministry of Attorney General have their jobs to do. They follow policy, and they’re working hard as well. But I think it is the obligation of everyone to make sure that when we’re working with the citizens who elect us and who we work for, we respond to them as sensitively as we can.
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Frankly, that letter that came from the Attorney General’s ministry didn’t represent that kind of kindness, that kind of compassion and the kind of thoughtfulness that was required. I cannot imagine how much pain that family was in, learning of the death of their son. Exactly the wrong time to receive a scolding from government about responding, about the way you respond.

That family wanted to talk about their loss. They needed to talk about it. I think what government should have done — and would have done better — would have been to, rather than send a letter on policy asking them not to speak about it, instead, reach out, welcome the family’s comments and criticisms, and figure out how we could best support them in doing that.

I regret that that letter ever went out. It shouldn’t have. I think we have a greater duty to our citizens than that. As part of the work that the Minister of Children and Families is undertaking now, we intend to make sure that we continue to strive to ensure that the ministry is doing the best that it can, to do better in supporting children who are in our care.

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

J. Horgan: The Premier’s regret at the actions of her government seems to be a weekly occurrence. In this instance, the most heartless of activities took place. A government employee, under the watch of the Ministry of Attorney General or the Ministry of Children and Family Development, tried to stifle a family that was grieving.

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Why did they speak out? Because they had seen death after death after death under the care of the Ministry of Children and Families go without accountability.

It’s all well and good for the Premier to stand today and say: “That’s a shame.” Why not, instead, stand today and say, “We will review the loss of Carly Fraser’s life,” which we are apparently not going to do because she aged out 20 hours and 35 minutes after her 19th birthday, before she leapt to her death off the Lions Gate bridge?

Rather than saying, “I’m sorry for the actions of the Ministry of Attorney General or the Ministry of Children and Families,” why not stand and say: “We have 200 fewer social workers now in the Ministry of Children and Family Development than we did in 2002”?

Address the issues. Be accountable. The decisions made by the Premier are directly affecting the lives of children in B.C. Wake up, Premier. Do something about it.

Hon. C. Clark: The number of children who are in the care of the government has dropped to the lowest rate it has been since 1995, and the minister herself, on her watch, has added to the number of front-line workers working in the ministry. She has been working hard, as has the government and as have all of the people who represent the ministry, to make sure that we are doing the best that we can to support the number of children who remain in government care.

There is more, though, as I said, that we can do: the rapid response team model; making sure that service providers are clearly and regularly reminded of their duty to report when someone is at risk of harm; reviewing all of the youth who are in care who live in or are frequently in the Downtown Eastside; a revised policy that is going to allow us to review the fatalities of former youth in care who were up to 20 years of age and who were in care up until they were 19 years of age; and, of course, a cross-jurisdictional look across Canada at how other provinces are dealing with the issues of adults who are transitioning into adulthood from government care. We believe that there is a lot to be learned from that.

As I said, we are working hard to make sure that we learn all of the lessons that we need to in order to make sure that we are doing the best job we can to protect children in care. This is a very difficult job. It’s one that the people who deliver these services deliver with passion and compassion. But it’s always something that we must strive to do better, and it is something that we are striving to do better.

CHILD PROTECTION SYSTEM
FUNDING AND STAFFING

D. Donaldson: Well, Premier, your government has been in power for 14 years. I would think the list of things you just addressed there would have been addressed by now with a government who cared about children in this province.

Madame Speaker: All remarks through the Chair.

D. Donaldson: The representative’s latest report makes it clear that resources are needed to save the lives of children in this ministry.

I’ll quote from that report: “Many social workers are unable to assess children and their families in a timely manner. These children may be left in risky situations.”

Another quote: “Workers’ inabilities to address incoming reports in a timely manner can leave children at risk of future abuse, neglect and maltreatment” — abuse, neglect and maltreatment. B.C. Liberal cuts to this ministry have resulted in tragic consequences.

Why does the Premier continue to starve this ministry?

Hon. C. Clark: As I said in my previous answers, there are 7,200 children in care today, which is the lowest number of children in care that we’ve served in the last 15 years. That’s a significant change and an important one.

We recognize it is much better for children to be supported in their families than to go into government care, wherever possible. That has been a concerted and purpose-
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ful effort on the part of the ministry and social workers over the last decade — to reduce the number of children who are taken from their roots, who are taken from their families, which happened in record numbers throughout the 1990s, and supported by their families instead.

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For those children who are in care, though, we recognize that we continue to have a fundamental duty, and that’s to make sure that they are looked after — increasing front-line staff by 21 percent; another 110 child care workers added this year, which is an increase of 11 percent; 273 youth placed for adoption this year, an increase of 21 percent; permanent homes for young people, who, in some cases, have never known where they were going to be celebrating their next birthday. Those are significant changes.

We have much more to do, though. We are striving to make sure…. We’ve set that roadmap to ensure that we are doing those things and making those changes in the right way. We want to make sure that we are protecting the children who are remaining in our care, because we have a fundamental duty to do that.

Madame Speaker: I would caution all members to direct their remarks through the Chair.

D. Donaldson: Well, perhaps the Premier doesn’t keep track of the budget for the Ministry of Children and Family Development. One hundred million dollars, in real dollars, was lost between 2008 and 2013. I don’t understand how she can stand and say — the Premier, that is — that they support families when that’s the kind of action this government has taken to support families. That’s a cut of $100 million — real dollars.

Every single office the representative visited said that short-staffing has left them unable to protect children. This began when the Premier was Deputy Premier in 2002, when massive cuts were made to this ministry. It continued in 2013, when the Premier and her government slashed the number of child protection workers.

The Premier knows that children are in danger because of these cuts, so why does she continue to starve this ministry?

Hon. C. Clark: Well, I think it’s important to correct the record in this chamber, where I know it’s possible for members to say anything that they want. But I’d like to correct the record based on the budget.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members will come to order.

Hon. C. Clark: The Ministry of Children and Families, it’s important to note, is one of the very few ministries that has received a budget increase over the last few years. Despite what this member just said, the budget for the ministry has increased by $338 million since 2004-2005, and in this last year, we added another $39 million to the budget. Ninety percent of that goes to support clients in communities. That’s work that is important. That’s why we are continuing to invest in it.

Can we make sure that those resources are deployed better? I’m sure we can. Can we make sure that we are doing more to protect young people? I am sure we can. But the member should not leave anyone with the impression that this is a result of the fact that the government has cut money to the Ministry of Children and Families.

The opposite is true. The budget has grown. The budget has grown in previous years, and the budget has grown this year — proof of our commitment to make sure that we continue to do everything we can, and strive to do better, in protecting the children who depend on us to look after them.

C. James: I’d remind the Premier to go back and look at what happened to the Ministry of Children and Families in 2002 and 2003 and 2004, when the budget was cut, when this government reduced it, and when they got rid of the independent voice so that they wouldn’t have anybody speaking out about the awful things that they were doing against children and families.

I heard this Premier speaking about fewer children in care. Well, when the Premier is speaking about fewer children in care, she’s completely ignoring how Carly Fraser was actually pushed out of care when she was 16. The Premier is ignoring offices so overwhelmed that they don’t even have time to pick up the phones. The Premier is ignoring the fact that during the review of front-line workers, the children’s representative found six cases where children were in danger. Those children weren’t in care before the representative reported them in danger, and that’s nothing to be proud of.

As the Premier said when she was on this side of the House: “It’s not the number of children coming into care. Whether ministry funding is keeping up with the needs that are out there is the fundamental question.”

[1415]

My question is to the Premier. Does she really believe that the children’s ministry has kept up with the needs of children like Paige, like Alex, like Nick?

Hon. S. Cadieux: I think it’s important for the members opposite to remember that the safety and the protection of vulnerable children in this province is and will always remain the top priority of this ministry.

It is evident, I believe, through the work that we’ve done over the last number of years — especially with the addition of 110 new front-line workers and the promise and the commitment to another 90 by the end of this year — that we are meeting that commitment. We are absolutely, steadfastly committed to the children of this province and to ensuring their safety and that our front-
[ Page 9628 ]
line workers have the tools and resources they need to do that work.

Madame Speaker: Member for Victoria–Beacon Hill on a supplemental.

C. James: The Premier knows that care standards aren’t being met. The Premier knows that they can’t be met without additional resources, and it’s not simply just a lack of social workers. It’s also a lack of appropriate care facilities. It’s a lack of mental health resources, and it’s a lack of leadership in this ministry and from this Premier.

What will it take for this Premier to admit that her choices have left children in this province in danger?

Hon. S. Cadieux: The improvements in the Ministry of Children and Families continue, with the addition of front-line workers; with changes in how we do business to reflect the changing times, taking administrative duties away from the front line so they can spend more time working directly with families; with changes to how we do social work to ensure that we put in place family development response, providing supports to families so children aren’t taken into care.

There are substantial improvements on an ongoing basis. We’re leading Canada in our youth justice outcomes in British Columbia. We are up in the number of children being placed for adoption, which is finding permanent homes for children and youth. The ministry provides supports to families in the way of child care. That spending is up. The number of children in care turning 19 with a Dogwood diploma has increased from 22 percent to 27 percent in just a couple of years.

These are improvements that are examples of the hard work of the front line of the Ministry of Children and Families on an ongoing basis — the continual improvements and the continual hard work and efforts that are put into protecting children in this province.

CALL FOR INQUIRY INTO
DEATH OF ALEX GERVAIS

S. Fraser: The Premier appointed Grand Chief Ed John as her adviser on aboriginal children in care. He is a man well known to British Columbians and respected by all in this House.

On October 6, Grand Chief Ed John and the First Nations Leadership Council called on the Premier to launch an independent investigation and inquiry into the death of Alex Gervais. It’s pretty clear that the Premier has stopped listening, certainly, to the families of children like Nick and Carly who are asking for investigations. Will the Premier…? How is she going to respond to that same request from her own respected adviser?

Hon. S. Cadieux: As the member knows, this ministry has a number of processes and policies and external mechanisms in place to provide scrutiny and oversight. That is essential in a ministry that is doing the work with vulnerable children in the province. We welcome that oversight, and it is vast.

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The appointment of Grand Chief Ed John as a special adviser to me is an example of our commitment to working with First Nations peoples to improve the outcomes for children and youth in this province. Chief Ed John and I share a commitment to that work. We share an understanding that that work can only be successful when we work directly with First Nations communities and hear from them about how best to achieve that work, and that is what we’re going to do together.

Madame Speaker: Alberni–Pacific Rim on a supplemental.

S. Fraser: I’m not questioning Grand Chief Ed John’s commitment.

I’d like to quote from his letter, as a matter of fact. “We are extremely concerned that the Premier’s inflammatory comments to the media blaming a delegated agency have negatively impacted the whole bureaucracy’s ability to assess Alex Gervais’ death.” Further, he says: “When the ministry fails to protect children from harm, the Premier defends social workers in superior courts. When a delegated agency fails to protect children from harm, she vows consequences.”

Given these comments from her own adviser, will the Premier call for an independent inquiry?

Hon. S. Cadieux: As we’ve spoken about numerous times in this House, there are policies in place when there is a death of a child in care.

In the case of a tragedy like this, the provincial director of child welfare has the authority and responsibility to conduct a review. A review is underway into the case specified. When that review is complete, it is forwarded to the independent Representative for Children and Youth, at which point, if the representative feels it is required, she can launch an investigation of her own.

MOUNTAIN VIEW FACILITY CLOSING AND
MENTAL HEALTH BEDS IN FRASER VALLEY

S. Hammell: My question is to the Minister of Health.

J.K. was referred to Mountain View Home from a psychiatric ward in Abbotsford Regional Hospital for care and treatment. He was doing well and was safely housed there for four years.

Then Fraser Health Authority moved him to a more independent setting in the city of Abbotsford. Shortly after, he ended up back in the Abbotsford Regional psychiatric ward for months, then to Cypress Lodge at Riverview in
[ Page 9629 ]
tertiary care. He wanted to go back to Mountain View, but he did not have a referral.

Now there’s a Canada-wide warrant out for his arrest. A Corrections bed costs $74,000 a year. An acute care bed costs over $1,000 a day.

My question to the minister is: why close a cost-effective facility like Mountain View that can support people like J.K. to live a satisfied and meaningful life?

Hon. T. Lake: We canvassed the issue of Mountain View yesterday extensively, but I’m happy to repeat the fact that Fraser Health is designing a model of care that increases the number of spaces available for mental health patients and, also, the flexibility to continue 24-7 residential care at a new Marshall Road facility one year from now.

In addition, there will be assisted living and more independent living for those patients and families that feel that they would like a different approach and a continuum of care that takes them back to community on their journey with their mental health issues. That, I believe, is the right thing to do.

What also is the right thing to do is ensure that Fraser Health works with each and every family to help them understand the transition and to make sure they are comfortable with that transition. That is what Fraser Health is going to do.

[1425]

Madame Speaker: Surrey–Green Timbers on a supplemental.

S. Hammell: On October 8, the Health Minister released a discussion paper on mental health to 180 stakeholders that stated our province’s mental health system is founded on the principle of recovery, and recovery “refers to living a satisfied, hopeful and meaningful life as defined by the individual.”

The minister proudly releases a discussion paper stating the mental health system will be based on the principle of recovery and, on the other hand, closes a facility with an excellent record of supporting recovery for people with severe and persistent mental illnesses like J.K.

My question to the minister is: why are you closing 25 desperately needed licensed care beds when the evidence is clear that the region needs the beds at Mountain View as well as the new beds promised in 2016?

Hon. T. Lake: As I said to the member yesterday, the closure in one year of Mountain View, of 25 beds, will be replaced with 50 beds at the Marshall Road facility — 50 beds.

The member mentioned that every patient, and their families, should be treated individually for the kind of recovery that they are seeking to have and have comfort with their pathway to recovery. That is why Fraser Health is working with each and every one of these families to ensure that they get the kind of treatment that their families and the patients involved require at the new facility that will open one year from now. This is an increase of services to the people of the Fraser Valley, and that is something that we’re very proud of.

BY-ELECTIONS FOR
VACANT SEATS IN LEGISLATURE

S. Simpson: It’s been over 100 days since Jenny Kwan resigned her seat as the MLA for Mount Pleasant on July 8. It’s been two months since Doug Horne resigned as the MLA for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain on August 14. Yet no by-elections have been called to ensure that the constituents in those two areas have the elected representation they deserve. Contrast this with West Kelowna, where it took the Premier seven days to call a by-election for herself after Ben Stewart announced his resignation.

Will the Premier allow the citizens of Mount Pleasant and Coquitlam–Burke Mountain the same rights to representation as the people of West Kelowna and finally call these by-elections?

Hon. C. Clark: I mean, what the member doesn’t point out is that, you know, there’s been the longest federal election in Canadian history underway since the member for Disneyland headed off to Ottawa to get on the rides out there. But the….

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members will come to order. Members.

Hon. C. Clark: Let me say this. Certainly, we want to make sure that the people in those communities are represented in this Legislature as soon as possible and very much looking forward to the chance of getting a campaign underway, because when we get that campaign underway, we can get a chance to talk about the difference between what the NDP candidates stand for and what the B.C. Liberal candidates stand for.

While on that that side of the House, those folks spend all of their time thinking about just simply how they can make living in poverty easier, on this side of the House, we are thinking about how we can lift thousands of people out of poverty. They want to make the services that we provide more expensive. We want to make the services we provide better and higher quality. They believe that shutting our doors to the world is the way to create jobs. We believe that opening them up and welcoming the world in is the way to create jobs.

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I’ll finish with this. The difference between us and them is ultimately this. They are afraid of change. We
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welcome it. They look at the future, and they fear it. We look at the future, and we feel hope.

[End of question period.]

Madame Speaker: The member for Surrey-Newton seeks leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

H. Bains: In the gallery, I just noticed the pride of B.C. — pride of Canada, I could say — who, with his wrestling skills, made us nationally and internationally proud. I can’t forget the moment when, one evening, I turned the TV on. Here he was, Arjan Bhullar, winning a gold medal for Canada at the Commonwealth Games.

He has decided to settle down. I think the biggest medal that he won is when Nina Dhaliwal, one of my favourites, said yes to him — to get married. Please help me welcome both to this House.

Tabling Documents

Hon. P. Fassbender: I have the honour to present the 2014-2015 annual report of the Islands Trust.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members. Order.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: The business of the day. I call committee stage on Bill 34.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 34 — RED TAPE REDUCTION DAY ACT

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 34; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 2:35 p.m.

On section 1 (continued).

A. Dix: We’re going to bring the debate on this legislation to an end. I just wanted to briefly summarize the debate from our perspective.

The Red Tape Reduction Act was brought into this Legislature without due consultation, without anything like the consultation on any of the other days we’ve legislated in the House. It was, unlike all those days, a reflection of the government’s attempt to create wedge issues rather than to take seriously the issues facing British Columbia. It diminished, I would argue, other days that have, I think, a more solemn and collective purpose.

We asked the minister repeatedly why red-tape-reduction day met the standard of Terry Fox Day, Holocaust Memorial Day, B.C. Day, Douglas Day and Family Day. The minister was completely unable to answer this question, refused to answer the question and simply failed to provide any explanation as to why we would take a measure that has engendered serious debate in this House and brought people together and use it as a technique to divide people.

The minister was asked about other days that are proclaimed by cabinet, because red-tape reduction had already been proclaimed this year by cabinet — all those days from Child and Youth Day to World Pancreatic Cancer Day, to National UNICEF Day, to Every Girl Matters Day. The minister was unable to explain why this measure was more important than those measures and required legislative action. The minister was unable to cite any other jurisdiction that has done this, and the ones that she attempted to cite were proposed legislation that did very different things and that had specific measures.

The minister repeatedly claimed there were things in the legislation that aren’t in the legislation, including requirements for government action. All this bill does is proclaim a day, and, given the fact that all it does is legislate a day, and given that the government had already proclaimed a day, it failed to deliver in that sense.

If you look at what every jurisdiction in Canada does, this kind of behaviour is really an insult. It’s not serious. It’s not a serious reflection of support for small business, which I think has the support of everybody in this House. Instead, it’s an effort by the government to take something real and important, something that we’ve used to memorialize the Holocaust and recognize our collective success as a province, and turn it into a cheap trick by the Liberal Party.

In short, is this an irrelevant measure? Yes. Is this the government wasting our time? Yes. Is it harmless? I suppose so, since it doesn’t do anything, as we’ve established in this committee stage debate.

In short, what we have is an effort by the government that has consequences. Those consequences have been to show that this government, unlike all the previous governments of all the different partisan stripes, and this minister, unlike all the other ministers, think that anything goes and that if you can play tricks and divide, parliamentary tricks are what we do.

Well, that’s not what any party has done in the past. That’s not what Premier Bennett did. That’s not what Premier Barrett did. That’s not what Premier Harcourt did or Premier Clark did. That’s not what Premier Campbell did. None of them used these measures. Until now, that’s not what this Premier has done either. After
[ Page 9631 ]
all, we came together to establish Terry Fox Day in this session of this parliament.

I think, to summarize the debate, there has been no defence by the government to the questions we’ve asked. No answers to those questions. An attempt to claim things that are in the bill that aren’t in the bill. How do we know this? Because we can read the bill in about three seconds. We have, I suppose, a reflection of tactics at work in politics.

I think all of us oppose unnecessary regulation. Sometimes, in society, we have a debate about what is necessary and what isn’t.

[1440]

That is a good debate and a hopeful debate. Government and oppositions in this Legislature should be working on that every day.

What we have here, instead, is a new law, an increase in the legislative and regulatory burden, designed simply for the Liberal Party to acquire what belongs to the people of British Columbia — namely, the right to celebrate and to recognize special moments in our future, in our life today and in our past.

Hon. C. Oakes: This is an ongoing strategy that we have, to support small businesses in British Columbia. The test we have is that small businesses across British Columbia have continued to tell us that reducing red tape and ensuring that we have that top of mind is important, to ensure that we are creating jobs in British Columbia and that we retain our commitment to growing our economy.

The member opposite mentioned that no other jurisdiction in Canada has similar legislation. Well, we believe, in this House, that we should be looking at best practices that exist around the globe. We know firsthand that jurisdictions such as what we had recognized in Australia do in fact have legislation that has a regulatory-reduction day. It’s twice a year in Australia. When you are able to measure performance, it ensures that we are able to see significant things happen.

That is why the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has graded British Columbia with a grade A — because of the continued effort, the continued leadership, the continued vision that this government has towards ensuring that we have successful small businesses in British Columbia.

We also recognize that this is an opportunity for us to look at the success we’ve had with the small business community to enhance it, to ensure that we are looking at the same types of efficiencies that we’ve seen in the small business sector and to move it cross-ministry to every single ministry. We’ve defined clearly the purpose of this bill as part of our ongoing strategy to ensuring we have success in British Columbia.

A. Weaver: I do have a final question on section 1. But before I start, I would like to address that comment, because it is relevant.

Frankly, this government does not have a vision. The vision they sold British Columbians on was one of wealth and prosperity for one and all from a vibrant LNG industry, this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that they are continually chasing. The reality is that this misled British Columbians because it was never in the cards, because the economic reality was that LNG was not coming to British Columbia soon or anytime soon.

In a desperate attempt to divert British Columbians’ attention away from their disastrous policies — yes, disastrous policies — on LNG, they bring us red-tape-reduction day. And in doing so, they’re trying to repurpose their campaign for 2017 to try to rebrand themselves as the party of small business. But they are not the party of small business. A party of small business would not throw small business under the bus and, in a desperate attempt to try to bring LNG here, send a signal to the clean-tech sector that they’re not welcome in B.C. — desperately trying to bring them back.

This is a cynical bill. It is a bill that will do nothing for the betterment of British Columbia. My question to the minister is this. It’s a question that is also in the mind of the member for Delta South. How much of the B.C. taxpayers’ money is the government going to waste to promote this bill, to create staff to administer it, to actually promote this day across schools? How much money? And how much red tape is being introduced in B.C. through the passage of this bill?

The Chair: Can I call the question on section 1?

[1445]

A. Dix: A point of order. The member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head asked how much the minister expected the bill to cost B.C. taxpayers, in terms of all the things she claims are happening with respect to it. We’d be very interested in the answer.

Interjections.

A. Dix: No, no. I get to stand up in my place and speak. I say to the Minister of Jobs — which I’m doing right now. Under the rules of the House….

Interjections.

A. Dix: I’m just saying that the member asked the most basic question you can ask: how much does it cost? The minister, I was about to say — before I started getting heckled by the Minister of Health, who must be embarrassed about this — has every right not to answer, of course — stay in her seat and not answer how much it costs. But the record will show that she was unable to answer that question.
[ Page 9632 ]

Hon. C. Oakes: We are using existing government staff in my ministry and the government’s citizen engagement team to support this initiative.

G. Heyman: To the minister: if you’re using existing government staff, what other functions that they would normally do will they not be doing?

Hon. C. Oakes: As this is a new ministry and the ministry is Small Business and Red Tape Reduction, this is an initiative that is part of our ministry.

G. Heyman: If that’s the case, perhaps the minister could answer the question as to how much this is going to cost.

Hon. C. Oakes: It will be the third Wednesday in March. We’ll be using existing resources that we have within our ministry to achieve that.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

Title approved.

Hon. C. Oakes: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 2:48 p.m.

The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.

[1450]

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 34 — RED TAPE REDUCTION DAY ACT

Bill 34, Red Tape Reduction Day Act, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed on the following division:

[1455]

Hon. M. de Jong: Second reading on Bill 35.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 35 — WORKERS COMPENSATION
AMENDMENT ACT (No. 2), 2015

Hon. S. Bond: I move that Bill 35 be read a second time now.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2015, two very significant coroners’ inquests were undertaken in the province. The first of the two considered the circumstances surrounding the incredibly tragic deaths of Glenn Roche and Alan Little, who were working at the Lakeland sawmill in Prince George when an explosion occurred. On May 14, 2015, the coroner’s jury issued the formal verdicts respecting the tragedy and provided 33 recommendations aimed at both government and non-government organizations.

The second inquest examined the deaths of Robert Luggi and Carl Charlie, who also tragically died in a separate mill explosion which occurred in Burns Lake at the Babine sawmill. The Babine inquest issued its verdict on July 31, 2015, along with 41 recommendations also aimed at both government and non-government organizations.

[1500]

Of the 74 recommendations flowing from the two inquests, 40 were directed to the provincial government or provincial government agencies such as WorkSafe B.C. As the Minister Responsible for Labour, I have taken the lead role in coordinating the response to the coroner’s office and following up with my colleagues across government to ensure that the recommendations are considered carefully and that the appropriate action is undertaken on them.
[ Page 9633 ]

I want to say that the coroner jury recommendations were very thoughtful, and in fact, they provide us with numerous opportunities to act in ways that will further the safety of workers in this province and help prevent accidents like those that occurred at the Lakeland and Babine mills from happening again. In addition, action on the recommendations creates, as we have said previously, a legacy for families who so tragically lost their loved ones in these two tragedies.

I recently sent a letter to the chief coroner setting out government’s response, to date, related to the Lakeland inquest recommendations that were directed to the provincial government and its associated agencies. That letter is available to the public on the coroner’s website. Shortly I will send a similar response for the Babine inquest recommendations, once government receives the chief coroner’s formal request for our response. We will provide updates to the coroner as further action is undertaken by the government in the future.

With that brief background, I want to speak more specifically to the bill that is before us today.

This bill addresses recommendations to my ministry from both inquests. Among the two sets of coroner jury recommendations, five of those recommendations specifically called for amendments to the Workers Compensation Act. Bill 35 responds with legislative amendments to directly respond to all five of the recommendations.

In response to recommendation 11 issued by the coroner’s jury into the Lakeland tragedy, Bill 35 requires employers to immediately report to WorkSafe B.C. all workplace fires or explosions that have the potential to cause serious injury to a worker. This will be an important contribution to ensuring worker safety through proactive awareness and appropriate follow-up at WorkSafe B.C.

The Lakeland jury heard evidence at the inquest that there were two significant explosions, fires, at the Lakeland mill in January 2012, which were not reported to WorkSafe B.C. or fire officials. The jury rightly determined that near misses should be treated as important opportunities to consider and alleviate risks, and we agree.

In response to recommendation 30 issued by the coroner’s jury into the Babine tragedy, Bill 35 requires disclosure of employer investigation reports to the workplace health and safety committee or worker health and safety representative. This amendment will help ensure that lessons learned in the face of a workplace accident are communicated to health and safety committees.

In response to recommendation 9 from the Lakeland inquest, Bill 35 specifies meaningful participation for worker and employer representatives in employer accident investigations. The amendments lay out specifically that worker and employer representatives may be involved in viewing the accident site, providing advice during the employer investigation.

In response to recommendation 7 from the Lakeland inquest, Bill 35 specifies that workplace health and safety committees should provide advice to the employer on significant proposed equipment and machinery changes that may affect worker health and safety.

Here, the intent is that in the term “significant,” that term will be read in conjunction with the existing requirement that the proposed changes in question are ones which may affect the health and safety of workers. In this context, significant proposed changes to workplace equipment or machinery are changes that would affect health and safety risk factors associated with the work as opposed to changes that are more cosmetic in nature or relate to financial, productivity or technological changes that are not directly connected to the safety of workers.

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Finally, in response to recommendation 29 from the Babine inquest, Bill 35 will allow WorkSafe B.C. to proactively assist health and safety committees in resolving disagreements over health and safety matters.

These proposed amendments are not revolutionary in the sense of drastic changes to the Workers Compensation Act. But they are evolutionary in the sense that they offer meaningful and practical changes that will contribute to worker safety in all workplaces in British Columbia — and not just in sawmills, where these events occurred.

It should be stressed that Bill 35 and the work done by the coroner jury inquests more broadly build on the amendments we made to the Workers Compensation Act through Bill 9 earlier this year. Those amendments implemented recommendations contained in Gord Macatee’s action plan for WorkSafe B.C. to improve worker safety in the province, particularly in B.C. sawmills; to establish a world-class inspection and enforcement regime at WorkSafe B.C.; and to help make workplaces safer, to help prevent accidents like the 2012 sawmill explosions from happening again.

The amendments proposed here in Bill 35 are one more step in ensuring worker safety. They reflect government’s commitment to fully address the coroner jury recommendations made to my ministry.

Finally, in terms of the bill specifically, I should mention that this legislation does include several other amendments which are not related directly to the coroner’s recommendations but which address WorkSafe B.C. administrative practices. It’s always my view that when you are going to make amendments to a bill and there are other things that you can correct at the same time rather than make frequent trips to the Legislature, you should be judicious about that and include those things that you can include at that time.

I made the decision to include a change in the annual due dates for WorkSafe B.C.’s annual report and service plan to move it in line with other publicly accountable enterprises. That’s necessary because in 2012, WorkSafe B.C., like those other agencies, those other enterprises, adopted international financial reporting standards.
[ Page 9634 ]

WorkSafe B.C. has an extremely complex investment portfolio. I have been asked by the critic opposite about this several times: why isn’t WorkSafe actually meeting their target? What I’d rather do is make sure they have a target they can actually meet. Because of the complexity in the returns of the portfolio, we need to adjust the date. This will allow WorkSafe to be in compliance and do the work that they need to do. It also standardizes the approach across other agencies.

The legislation also updates the annual report and service plan provisions to be consistent with other provincial legislation. It requires WorkSafe to deliver the annual report to the minister rather than the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

The legislation also requires that the report be tabled with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly if the Legislature is not in session when the minister receives the report so that it can be made public in a more timely way. There was a requirement that often precluded us from being able to table the report in a timely way, since it has to be tabled in the Legislature. We’re going to make the adjustment so that it can be tabled with the Clerk.

Bill 35 also repeals the requirement that cabinet must approve changes to the superannuation or pension plan. This amendment, again, streamlines a process that consumes considerable government resources without really adding meaningful value to the process. Once again, it brings WorkSafe into line with public agencies, such as ICBC, who manage changes to their pensions without formal cabinet approval. It’s done by many other agencies. In fact, WorkSafe was an outlier, and there’s no need for us to continue that practice.

But the primary purpose of this bill…. There has been a lot of discussion over the last couple of days about the need for us to be here, about running out of agenda items and that there’s no work to be done. I consider this bill and these amendments essential. One of the things that allowed us to do the work that we did as quickly as we could, based on the inquest and the recommendations that were provided, was the ability for us to bring these changes forward quickly.

Families deserve that. Communities deserve that. Most importantly, workers across this province deserve that. This bill is completely intended to implement the recommendations that were made by the jury inquests that requested that legislative changes be made.

[1510]

I am sure that there are ways that we could have looked at making these changes, other ways that did not require legislative amendments. But when I reviewed all of the recommendations and the reasons behind them, it was important that these changes be made and be made permanently and reflect the weight of the law in British Columbia.

So I made the decision to bring these amendments based on the fact that I think it is the least we can do to show families that the inquest had meaning, that government took all of the recommendations seriously, and we continue to work aggressively on the ones that are directed to government directly but also to agencies like WorkSafe.

I urge members to go and look at the letter that I have sent to the chief coroner, which details in very specific detail how each recommendation is being managed. We will continue to update that letter and others as we move forward.

It’s also my hope that there are others who have received recommendations from the inquests. There are the steelworkers, there are employers, and there are others. I am hopeful that those recommendations will be taken as seriously and dealt with as expeditiously as we are attempting to do here today and in other work that’s been done.

Again, I’m going to end my comments by simply saying that while this may seem like very little to offer families who have lost their loved ones, it is also an important step in, I hope, creating a legacy to those families and those workers who lost their lives or were injured.

I hope that, today, it will bring some small measure of comfort knowing that the recommendations of the inquest are not going to gather dust. They are not going to sit on a shelf somewhere. We have taken them seriously, and these amendments, I hope, will speak to the families about the seriousness with which we take the recommendations that were provided by the jury in both circumstances.

Thank you for allowing me to make those opening comments, Mr. Speaker.

S. Simpson: I look forward to being able to participate in the debate on Bill 35, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act, and I would note for you, hon. Speaker, that I am the designated speaker for the purposes of this piece of legislation.

As the minister said, the reason that we’re debating, that Bill 35 is before us now, goes back to the results of the juries of two coroners’ inquests and the recommendations of those juries.

These are juries that made recommendations based on two of the most tragic industrial accidents in the history of this province. They are the coroner’s jury for the Babine explosion in Burns Lake on January 20, 2012 — an explosion that killed Robert Luggi and Carl Charlie and injured many others and devastated that community.

This legislation is a response to the coroner’s jury recommendations from the Lakeland disaster on April 23, 2012, just a couple of short months after Babine, where Glenn Roche and Alan Little were killed. Again, many others were seriously injured and had their lives affected, as the families of those who passed away had their lives affected in ways that they may never truly recover from.

[1515]

When those accidents, those things, occurred, there was shock — a lot of shock when the Babine explosion happened. And we know from that that there were a lot
[ Page 9635 ]
of questions that were raised by Babine in how WorkSafe B.C. did their job, how the company did their job, how the union did their job, how everybody did their job and in where the shortfalls and the holes had been that had allowed this to happen — an explosion that we now know was caused primarily by dust buildup — a fine dust called a flour by some — which largely came from the nature of beetle-kill wood.

That explosion, I think, shook everybody. But in some ways, the Lakeland explosion was even more shocking because it came months later, after Babine. There had not been, it appears…. We’ll talk about this. Arguably, the inquests’ findings themselves suggest that there was not the kind of action that you would expect to be taken by the regulators between Babine and Lakeland and what occurred, not the kind of action that might have helped to ensure that Lakeland didn’t occur. We don’t know that, and we’ll never know that, but there are serious questions to be asked there.

This legislation, Bill 35, deals, as the minister said, primarily with issues that relate to the joint health and safety committee, their powers of investigation, how those investigations will move forward and how they will proceed. They talk to a situation that we now know….

I had the opportunity to sit through a few days of the Lakeland inquest in Prince George and to listen to testimony from some of the workers who survived the Lakeland explosion.

They talked about their challenges and their concerns that they expressed at various times about the dust buildup — whether that dust buildup was a risk to them and their co-workers — and about what appears certainly to be the lack of an effective, functioning joint health and safety committee at the Lakeland mill, a committee that should have been involved in investigations back in January when incidents occurred at Lakeland immediately preceding the explosion at Babine, but a committee that for all intents and purposes appears to have been dysfunctional and not working.

What this legislation, it’s my sense, appears to do is to try to address some of the jury recommendations that were put forward to improve that situation. The jury did a good job. I think there are questions about whether the inquest was the appropriate venue for this discussion. The minister will know, the House will know that we on this side and some others called for an independent inquiry, and the government chose the coroner’s inquest as the appropriate venue to do this investigation.

The juries did a good job. There were challenges around those coroners’ inquests. We’ve spoken about that before — critique from our side around whether the families, in particular, had the kind of representation they should have at those inquests. They didn’t have legal counsel of their own. They were represented…. The government and the minister and the coroner said they were represented by coroner’s counsel and that that was the appropriate venue. It was our view that they should have had counsel of their own to allow them to make determinations about appropriate questions that needed to be asked.

We’ve debated that here. We’ve debated it in estimates. We debated it in Bill 9. We have a different view from the government on what should have occurred, but what happened did happen. The inquest happened. There’s a series of recommendations.

I’ve spoken to a number of the parties who have followed this closely, and those parties would all tell you that the juries worked hard and worked with integrity and that the recommendations that they put forward, if they’re implemented and managed properly and enforced properly, will make for a better situation in these kinds of workplaces.

[1520]

The juries deserve credit for that, and they deserve our thanks for that. I heard enough of the testimony, and I didn’t hear but a bit of what they listened to every day. It was not an easy job. It was a challenging and difficult job and pretty heart-wrenching, at times, to sit through those events.

What is the situation that we face, then, with this bill? We had the two explosions. We had the explosions that created this incident. We know from what we’ve read, from what we see in the coroners’ inquests, that there’s a recognition that there were levels of negligence here. There were things that should have been done by parties to this.

I believe there was negligence on the part of the companies in terms of how they managed their responsibilities around cleanup and around ensuring that those workplaces were appropriately taken care of.

There was negligence, clearly, as it relates to WorkSafe B.C. I know that everybody in this House is aware of that. I know the minister is aware of that. I know the minister and the government…. The action that they took essentially led to the removal of Mr. Anderson, leaving as the president and the CEO, the appointment of Mr. Macatee as an administrator to come in and do quite extensive work, the criticism that came when WorkSafe B.C. was looking to recommend the potential for charges under the act, which the RCMP and the criminal justice branch declined to take forward. They felt that critical evidence, among other things, may have been compromised by the nature of the investigations of WorkSafe, which would not allow them to take that forward as a potential prosecution. That, I think, was really devastating for everybody.

The other frustration there — and we saw this in the coroner’s inquest — was the frustration that the family felt. I think it was probably one of the primary frustrations around the process of the inquest versus, say, an inquiry. Those families and those workers who survived and those workers who saw their co-workers killed in those terrible, terrible accidents wanted to know who was responsible. They wanted somebody to be held accountable, somebody to be held responsible.
[ Page 9636 ]

We all know, and it is the nature of a coroner’s inquest, that that’s not what inquests do. They look to see if they can provide some insight and some recommendation as to how to correct the problems that are identified in any given circumstance.

In this case, there were significant problems, and the coroners and the juries made those recommendations to try to correct those problems. But it left the families…. I know after speaking to the families at Lakeland after that inquest that they continued to feel the frustration about not having the answers to the questions that, for them, were the most fundamental questions.

They may be questions that they will never get a definitive answer to. Certainly, those families have their view of what occurred. They believe that they have a pretty good idea of where the responsibility lies, but that will never be conclusive because of the nature of the inquest process.

With WorkSafe, as I said…. Many of these recommendations, as the minister says…. The legislation, I should say, is focused very much on dealing with four or five key clauses in the Workers Compensation Act. We’ll get to the specifics of those in a minute.

We know that there are fundamental challenges. We saw Bill 9, which the minister referenced in her opening comments to Bill 35. Bill 9 was essentially about trying to address some of the issues related to how investigations work and creating the necessary firewalls to allow investigations to work — some other changes around that.

[1525]

It’s my belief that there are other steps that should have been taken there, including the notion — we know this has been done in the past — of seconding a prosecutor to work closely with WorkSafe. But the decision was made not to go that route, and fair enough. That’s a decision that the government made.

We will see over the coming period of time…. Hopefully, we won’t see a kind of tragedy like this where we have to revisit it again. I believe that the reality is that we will see, in time, whether in fact the changes that Bill 9 created do provide the levels of separation and controls on investigatory practices that will be necessary to ensure that if criminal charges are warranted, the criminal justice branch has confidence that the evidence they need can be gathered in a way that will allow them to advance charges, if that’s what they see fit, and not have that compromised.

To be fair there, the issue, of course, is that the investigation and evidence related to a criminal activity set a higher bar, quite frankly, than an investigation related to a workplace accident. We know that you need to approach these in different ways if you believe that, ultimately, you’re looking at the potential of a criminal charge, a criminal prosecution.

WorkSafe hasn’t done that. They did not do that well. Some of that, I think, is a cultural problem with WorkSafe, a problem that I hope will be corrected. I hope there’s some change in the thinking. WorkSafe has come a long way from, I think, 1917 or whenever it was that the Workers Compensation Board was put in place. It has evolved.

We know that the Workers Compensation Board…. This was a bargain, and it was a deal. It was a deal that said: “We’re going to create this institution that will protect workers by trying to have proper oversight and prevention procedures that make workplaces as safe as they can reasonably be made. We will take care of workers and provide income and rehabilitation and support for workers who are injured on the job.” In return for that, litigation is off the table. There will be no litigation. There will be no suits. And employers will essentially pay for that structure.

The model is a good model. The model is a model that has worked for a long time. The challenge that we’ve seen over the last number of years, I believe, is that WorkSafe has become much more of an insurer. I’ve had people who pay close attention — whether they be legal counsel that take WorkSafe cases and legislation, whether they be others who are active around this — talk about WorkSafe as becoming much like an insurance company that provides that protection and has a concern about premium costs. We should all worry about costs. But their concern is whether those premium costs and how those are handled have swung too far. Is that a detriment to the interests of workers?

This is a bigger discussion than Bill 35. It’s a discussion that needs to be had, and it’s a discussion that we need to proceed as we move forward. Bill 35 — much like Bill 9, much like the work of Mr. Macatee, much like the public debate that happened because of the tragedies of Babine and Lakeland — has stimulated and motivated a great amount of that discussion in a whole lot of places. That is a good thing. It’s very sad that it took tragedies and deaths to generate that discussion, but it clearly has done that. It has generated that discussion. We’re going to pursue that discussion, and we will see, as we move forward, how we engage that.

[1530]

When you look at what happened and at some of the challenges with what happened…. I think about maybe one of the biggest ones. Again, I spoke to the issue of Lakeland in particular, because Babine was a tragic, tragic situation.

What is most difficult is that we saw little, if anything, that suggested that we had learned much from Babine that might have helped to have not had Lakeland occur. When I read the verdict of the coroner’s inquest for Glenn Roche, on page 3…. These are the presiding coroner’s comments, the comments of Ms. Lapointe, the chief coroner, who presided over the Lakeland situation.

She talks about the concerns that were raised there that are reflected, I believe, in the need to have committees that are much more proactive and much more engaged. I’ll look forward to talking more about 174, 175
[ Page 9637 ]
and 176, about whether, in fact, the engagement and the level of investigation that is intended in this legislation actually gets there. We’ll go through those quite specifically in a minute.

As the coroner said in her observations:

“Several workers testified that they had been concerned about increased dust accumulations at the mill in the months prior to the explosion. A number of reasons were offered for this, including the addition of a third shift, the lack of time for regular cleaning, disagreements about cleaning responsibilities and ongoing problems with the baghouse, a device designed to filter sawdust and other particulates from the air. Most significantly, the wood processed at the mill had become significantly drier over the years, as much of it was beetle-kill wood.

“The inquest was told that when the baghouse went down, workers couldn’t breathe or see. The company had built boxes for the paper dust masks that workers would don when the dust became extreme.”

There was a problem here. This was not functioning in a way that a reasonable person should expect one of those mills to function. Yet there was little or no action. The coroner goes on to say:

“During the week of January 16, 2012, there were two explosions and resulting fires at Lakeland Mill — the first on January 17 and the second on January 19. The first was caused by a motor and was quickly extinguished by workers. The second occurred as a result of sparks when a saw contacted metal at the large head-rig. The resulting explosion sent a fireball approximately 30 feet into the air.

“Workers using extinguishers from above and beside the fire eventually put it out, but many testified that they were increasingly afraid of a catastrophic event. Though numerous millworkers testified that they had significant concerns about the cleanliness of the mill and had raised the concerns with managers, these concerns were not reflected in the minutes of the safety committee meetings, nor were they reported to the union.

“Nobody refused work on the grounds that it was unsafe, though Mr. Little” — who died in the explosion — “reacting to concerns by workers, shut the mill down twice for cleaning. While there were concerns about dust accumulation and dust as fuel, the combustibility of wood dust wasn’t well understood amongst workers.”

I would go back and reference that when the coroner talks about those two fires, and the second one on January 19, the fireball 30 feet in the air, that was one day before Babine. The next day, on January 20, the explosion at Babine occurred. Workers were killed; the mill was levelled; people suffered serious, serious injuries; and a community was devastated.

Somehow, neither of these incidents, January 17 or January 19, were deemed important enough for a report and an investigation. WorkSafe says they were never told about them. They were never deemed important enough, and it does come back to the question, certainly, of a functioning committee. But it also comes to the question of what was occurring with WorkSafe B.C.

[1535]

I go on further. About two weeks after that incident, the January 19 incident, that the jury, and I’m again quoting from the coroner’s observations:

“The jury heard that on February 6, 2012, a WorkSafe B.C. occupational safety officer and an occupational hygiene officer had visited Lakeland mill in response to an anonymous call to WorkSafe B.C., expressing concern about large amounts of sawdust at the mill. The call had been received a few days after January 20, 2012, when an explosion and fire had decimated the Babine Forest Products mill in Burns Lake, resulting in the deaths of two workers.

“The occupational safety officer testified that he wasn’t aware of the hazards of combustible dust. He determined that conditions at Lakeland mill on February 6 didn’t warrant a housekeeping order but that the mill was the dirtiest he had ever seen. He testified that Lakeland had previously been a clean mill. He also stated that at the time, he had no reference point with which to assess dust levels. The occupational hygiene officer testified that she did know about combustible dust, but reported that she didn’t observe a violation on the February 6 visit.”

This raises serious questions about what was going on here. I accept what WorkSafe B.C. told me, as the president told me, that WorkSafe was never told about the January 19 explosion — fireball — at Lakeland and that the company should be culpable for that.

As we know, even though WorkSafe recommended charges related to other matters on the mill, they were never going to proceed. But WorkSafe had their people there a little over two weeks later, on the sixth of February, in a situation in which one of them, the occupational safety officer, said that the mill was the dirtiest he had ever seen it. They did not order anything. They did not order cleanup. They did not order housekeeping. They did not say to the company: “You need to act now, and this mill is not operating until you clean it up.” WorkSafe has to be responsible for that. They have to be responsible for that.

We know that there has been no shortage of work done, primarily in the United States over the last number of years, on the issue of combustible dust. There’s been significant work done, and research and science, in the United States over the last number of years on combustible dust. We know that WorkSafe is a sophisticated, large organization, an organization that works closely with their counterparts internationally.

How is it that you get safety officers going out to investigate a situation like that and saying: “I didn’t have knowledge about the potential of combustible dust. I didn’t understand this issue. I’m going out to look at a mill, and I’m going out to look at a mill that I say is the dirtiest I have ever seen it. Somehow, I walk out of that mill, and I don’t do a further review”?

The question I have is for the administration of WorkSafe — the leadership of WorkSafe, which passes policy all the time — which has a regulatory regime that they are responsible for. WorkSafe is a quasi-legislative body in many ways. They get to adopt policy and adopt regulation that never goes for order-in-council, that never comes to this place. They have that authority at WorkSafe. That authority comes with an additional responsibility.

How is it that there is not the responsibility there, in the leadership of WorkSafe, to say to their staff, when they send them out: “When you see problems, it’s not good enough to say, ‘I don’t understand the problem.’ You have to say, ‘I am going to understand the problem, and
[ Page 9638 ]
I’m going to learn about it, and I’m going to correct it, if I learn that it creates a risk’?” That didn’t happen in this situation. It didn’t happen.

[1540]

What’s the consequence of that? You have a situation where the families continue to be frustrated by this process. We know what’s happened to them. We know that they’re not feeling like they’ve had their questions answered. We know just from the interaction that they don’t feel confident that WorkSafe B.C. did everything that they needed to do to provide the safest possible environment for their loved ones to go to work. Clearly, the consequence is one we all know, and we all know today.

My sense from those families is they still are not confident that the actions that have followed subsequent to these two tragedies have created the situation where WorkSafe will, in fact, in the future take the preventative actions that they need to take in order to do their best to ensure that this never occurs again. We know that you can never say never with these situations, but there was more to do, and that’s very clear.

There was a negligence. There were challenges. We know the government understands that, because the government made changes in the leadership of WorkSafe and they made changes in the operation of WorkSafe. It’s all clear from Mr. Anderson’s leaving, Mr. Macatee’s arrival, a new president and CEO, and pieces of legislation that the minister has said she hopes will be incremental steps in the right direction. Today we’re talking about one of those: Bill 35.

WorkSafe has a lack of investigatory powers, it appears, or they’re not conducting them in the way that they should. There are supposed to be committees in place at the worksites — joint health and safety committees — that are critical. They’re in legislation.

The government clearly knows how important these committees are. They legislate the committees. They’re not a whim. They’re not somebody’s idea. They’re not just a good idea. The government legislates these committees as compulsory, as an obligation of doing business.

We all know that you can have all the committees in the world, but if the committees don’t function properly, if the committees don’t have proper authority and if the committees don’t have the ability to whistle-blow when they need to whistle-blow, they’re not going to get the job done. We’ve seen how tragic that can be in the accidents that we’re talking about.

What happened here is a situation where you have legislation that clearly needed to be revamped. Let’s take a look here at what Bill 35 does on its substantive areas. The bill really changes…. In my reading of Bill 35, it affects, in large part, five sections of the act: sections 130, 132, 174, 175 and 176. Those are the sections of the Workers Compensation Act that get directly impacted by this piece of legislation.

Now, when we look at what we’re talking about here…. I want to take some time to just walk through these and make sure that we’re pretty clear about them. Let’s just go through them in the order that they arrive.

Section 130. This is a section that deals with the duties and the functions of the joint committee. Again, this is a committee that is comprised, if we go back to that division…. There’s a whole division of the act that deals specifically with joint committees and worker representatives.

It says: “An employer must establish and maintain a joint health and safety committee (a) in each workplace where 20 or more workers of the employer are regularly employed, and (b) in any other workplace for which a joint committee is required by order.”

[1545]

The membership of the committee. A joint committee of a workplace must be established in accordance with the following: “a) it must have at least 4 members or, if a greater number of members is required by regulation, that greater number; (b) it must consist of worker representatives and employer representatives; (c) at least half the members must be worker representatives; (d) it must have 2 co-chairs, one selected by the worker representatives and the other selected by the employer representatives.”

It says the worker representatives on a joint committee “must be selected from workers at the workplace who do not exercise managerial functions at the workplace, as follows: (a) if the workers are represented by one or more unions, the worker representatives are to be selected according to the procedures established or agreed on by the union or unions.” That would be the case here. It goes on to lay out a number of other details around selection.

The section that will be impacted by this bill is section 130. What 130 says is this:

“A joint committee has the following duties and functions in relation to its workplace:

“(a) to identify situations that may be unhealthy or unsafe for workers and advise on effective systems for responding to those situations;

“(b) to consider and expeditiously deal with complaints relating to the health and safety of workers;

“(c) to consult with workers and the employer on issues related to occupational health and safety and occupational environment;

“(d) to make recommendations to the employer and the workers for the improvement of the occupational health and safety and occupational environment of workers;

“(e) to make recommendations to the employer on educational programs promoting the health and safety of workers and compliance with this Part and the regulations and to monitor their effectiveness;

“(f) to advise the employer on programs and policies required under the regulations for the workplace and to monitor their effectiveness;

“(g) to advise the employer on proposed changes to the workplace or the work processes that may affect the health or safety of workers;

“(h) to ensure that accident investigations and regular inspections are carried out as required by this Part and the regulations;

“(i) to participate in inspections, investigations and inquiries as provided in this Part and the regulations;

“(j) to carry out any other duties and functions prescribed by regulation.”
[ Page 9639 ]

Pretty complete — a pretty complex set of recommendations around what is supposed to occur.

What did the coroner’s jury say? They said, in their recommendation No. 7 in Lakeland, the inquest for Mr. Roche: “Amend section 30 of the Workers Compensation Act to ensure that the joint occupational health and safety committee reviews any changes to equipment, machinery or process to assess impacts on workers’ health and safety.” The coroner’s comment as to why that recommendation is important is that the inquest heard that regular evaluation of process hazards is important to ensure potential risks to workers are identified, particularly when process or equipment is changed.

Now, it’s a recommendation here because, in fact, it certainly appears that this was not occurring. It wasn’t occurring. So it’s an important recommendation. It’s a recommendation, as the minister said in her opening comments, that will make a difference, if we have some ability and control over the situation with changes to equipment and machinery.

I’m glad to see this recommendation. I’m glad to see this clause in the legislation, picking up on the recommendation as put forward by the jury.

It’s a recommendation that I think we’ll see maybe ensuring that when the company makes those kinds of changes around equipment and makes those kind of adjustments, we’ll be able to ensure that there is some oversight.

[1550]

I would note, though, that at the end of the day, the committee has to be a functioning and effective committee in order to make that work and in order to ensure that the committee can make the comments and be able to look at those issues. What happened in this case would not have allowed that to happen, because the committee was essentially not functioning, for all intents and purposes, as a committee.

There were issues around who was on the committees. There were issues around how the committees didn’t meet, didn’t review matters of importance. So we can have section 130 amended, but in order for it to be effective, there’s going to have to be enforcement. That enforcement has to come, and it’s the responsibility of the players to this — the employers, the unions, but ultimately of WorkSafe B.C. It’s their act that this is in. It’s their responsibility to make sure those committees are up and running and functioning.

The next section is section 132. What section 132 in the act says is: “If a joint committee is unable to reach agreement on a matter relating to the health or safety of workers at the workplace, a co-chair of the committee may report this to the Board, which may investigate the matter and attempt to resolve the matter.”

Now, what we have here, of course, is the recommendation of the inquest, of the jury on this matter. The jury, when they were looking at section 132…. It says: “If a joint committee is unable to reach agreement on a matter relating to the health or safety of workers at the workplace, a co-chair of the committee may report this to the Board, which may investigate the matter and attempt to resolve the matter.” That’s the clause as it stands now.

It then adds: “If the Board considers that a joint committee is unable to reach agreement on a matter relating to the health or safety of workers at the workplace, the Board, on its own initiative, may investigate the matter and attempt to resolve the matter.”

Now, that suggests a proactive approach by the board, and I support a proactive approach by the board. I believe that they have the responsibility, the resources and the capacity to be proactive. But they have to have that sense in the culture of the board. They have to have that sense.

I go back and remind the House again of what the coroner said in her observations, where the coroner talks about what happened at Lakeland. I’ll go back and remind, as I said, that on February 6, you had an occupational safety officer and an occupational hygiene officer visit the mill. This was weeks after Babine, when I have to assume the sensitivity of WorkSafe to the potential risk of dust and explosions and risk at mills after Babine should have been very high when they’re looking at other operations like Lakeland. They did not demonstrate that kind of response.

I accept that the workers are out there and that they’re working hard and doing what they’re doing, the people who represent WorkSafe. My problem is that there has to be leadership from the top on the culture of the organization that says: “You’ve got to go that extra step. You have to take that action.”

What this does, potentially…. It certainly says, “You can go to the board if you don’t think you can resolve this” — one of the co-chairs, presumably. I’m betting, in most cases, the worker representative co-chair. “You can go to the board.”

[1555]

But it also says the board needs to be prepared to be proactive in its action. That’s what this change intends. So the challenge will be how that’s going to work.

The other thing that will be an issue here, and we’ll talk about this a little in the committee stage — and to clarify, I’m confident that this is the case, but we’ll get the minister to clarify it when we get to committee — is that this should not imply that the joint health and safety committee cannot be going to the board for other assistance and other supports and that somehow, by adding this very specific area, all of a sudden that will limit the potential for interaction.

I don’t believe that will be the case, but we’ll clarify that when we get there — that the board will still be very available to members of the joint health and safety committee and to other representatives of workers to act in an investigatory way when they have to.

If we’ve learned something from what’s occurred here, we’ve learned that when somebody says, “There’s a risk here, and I don’t feel safe, and I don’t know how to deal
[ Page 9640 ]
with this,” somebody has to intervene, and the people who need to intervene are WorkSafe. That is their responsibility, and they have the authority. They need to intervene and take action and do the assessments necessary and, if they find failures, correct those failures or require and oblige the owners to correct those failures.

The question that gets raised is whether this puts limits in other areas, but we’ll get to that conversation when we get to the appropriate discussion in committee stage.

The third piece, the next piece that gets adjusted here in this, actually, is section 172. This is a change to this section, and what it says is:

“(1) An employer must immediately notify the Board of the occurrence of any accident that (a) resulted in serious injury to or the death of a worker, (b) involved a major structural failure or collapse of a building, bridge, tower, crane, hoist…(c) involved the major release of a hazardous substance, or (d) was an incident required by regulation to be reported.

“(2) Except as otherwise directed by an officer of the Board or a peace officer, a person must not disturb the scene of an accident that is reportable under subsection (1) except so far as is necessary to (a) attend to persons injured or killed, (b) prevent further injuries or death, or (c) protect property that is endangered as a result of the accident.”

What the change will do here is make an adjustment at the end of paragraph (c), which is “involved the major release of a hazardous substance, or (c.1) involved a fire or explosion that had a potential for causing serious injury to a worker….” That’s what that section does.

What the jury said when they made this recommendation…. Their recommendation was to review section 172 of the Workers Compensation Act “to ensure that an employer must immediately notify the board of any fire or explosion that causes a business interruption.” The coroner’s comment was:

“The inquest heard that there were two significant explosions/fires at Lakeland Mill in January 2012, neither of which was reported to WorkSafeB.C. or fire officials. Evidence indicated that near misses should have been treated as important opportunities to consider and alleviate risks.”

Those are those two explosions, the 30-foot fireball — the two explosions that were talked about, the second one the day before Babine.

[1600]

This is a very important section. This is a section that will not allow the company to choose the discretion to not talk about this, to choose the discretion to remain silent, to choose the discretion to just say: “I’m not going to tell people that this happened.” It’s possible, and we will never know.

[R. Lee in the chair.]

But if there had been a significant investigation of the January 17 and January 19 accidents, fires, at Lakeland, who knows what actions might have been taken by WorkSafe at that time that might have been directed to the company that may have proved to have protected those workers from what occurred in April.

Section 174 is the next section that is amended by this act. What section 174 is about is the investigation process. So the pieces that we’ve talked about up to now talked about needs for reports, talked about committee composition, the activity of the committee. There still has to be the will to make sure that those committees function, and there are lots of people responsible for that. But when you get to the investigation process, this is particularly important.

It’s important because, among other things, you have the workers here who, in the case of the January 19 incident at Lakeland, were not part of the discussion and the investigation, and they reported that they did not participate.

They should be full participants in this. They reported that they did not participate. They were not consulted in any formal way. And the committee did not report on it.

What 174 says today is:

“(1) An investigation required under this Division must be carried out by persons knowledgeable about the type of work involved and, if they are reasonably available, with the participation of the employer or a representative of the employer and a worker representative….

“(3) The employer must make every reasonable effort to have available for interview by a person conducting the investigation, or by an officer” — and an officer, in this case, is somebody from WorkSafe — “all witnesses to the incident and any other persons whose presence might be necessary for a proper investigation of the incident.

“(4) The employer must record names, addresses and telephone numbers of persons referred to in subsection (3)” — those who may have been interviewed in subsection (3).”

What this change does in this case is that it amends a new subsection. The subsection will read as follows: “An investigation required under this Division must be carried out by persons knowledgeable about the type of work involved and, if they are reasonably available, with the participation of the employer or a representative of the employer and the worker representative.”

It then goes on to say:

“(1.1) For the purposes of subsection (1), the participation of the employer or a representative of the employer and a worker representative includes, but is not limited to, the following activities: (a) viewing the scene of the incident with the persons carrying out the investigation; (b) providing advice to the persons carrying out the investigation respecting the methods used to carry out the investigation, the scope of the investigation, or any other aspect of the investigation; (c) other activities, as prescribed by the Board.”

Now, there are questions around this, and the questions come as it relates to this. Let me just tell you what the jury said in their findings. They said: “Clarify the meaning of the term ‘participation’ in section 174 of the Workers Compensation Act to ensure full and meaningful participation in the investigative process by both the employer and the worker representative.”

The coroner’s comment to the jury recommendation was: “The inquest heard that access to the Lakeland mill site by the employer’s representative and a worker representative was denied or limited, hampering the employ-
[ Page 9641 ]
er’s ability to comply with section 175 of the Workers Compensation Act.”

[1605]

They were denied the right to do this. What the jury has said is that there should be greater participation in the investigative process by both the employer and worker representatives and that that participation needs to be guaranteed. This change is to make that law.

There is concern about this section, though. The concern is that the language that’s used in this section talks very specifically about viewing the scenes of the incident with persons carrying out the investigation, providing advice to persons carrying out the investigation. That seems to be the talk. It is talk of what seems to be more of a consultative and an observer’s role, an advisory role, rather than a role, as the jury said, of”meaningful participation in the investigative process.”

The debate is: does that constitute meaningful participation in the investigatory process? There is some concern that it may, in some cases, potentially dilute worker participation, make it more of an observer role. It could work at cross purposes, also, with the intent of section 130, which talks to the workers’ roles in investigation.

When you look at section 130, it says: “A joint committee has the following duties and functions…to participate in inspections, investigations and inquiries as provided in this Part and the regulations.” The concern is: are you going to limit in some way? Again, I don’t believe that the minister wants to limit that participation, but there are issues around the language here.

I would hope that the minister and her staff would take a look at that and talk to some of the people who are raising these concerns. I know her senior staff are fully aware and have engaged in these discussions with some, particularly the union representatives, who have flagged these issues.

I would hope that there will be some serious consideration about whether there may be very minor amendments to this legislation that begin to satisfy those questions — to ensure that what’s happening with this amendment, as the act puts it forward, in fact is enhancing and revitalizing the role of these committees and the role of the people who are involved, whether they represent the workers or the employer, in the investigatory process.

That ensures the people who both know what is happening on a day-to-day basis in a given workplace and who know full well how the system works, in fact, are full and complete players in those investigations and have the ability to speak their mind, to be heard, to have their views recorded and to be able to take subsequent and further action if they feel they’re not being listened to in a reasonable way. That action, of course, is to go to the board and ask the board to investigate further.

There is a challenge here around 174. I’m hopeful that it’s a challenge that the minister will be able to explain more fully, the response of government to those questions that have been raised, when we get to committee stage, and that the minister will, I would hope, consider whether there are some minor amendments here. I don’t think it takes a lot to satisfy this, to leave everybody feeling comfortable that this is doing what, I believe, we should all be wanting to accomplish here.

The next section is section 175. What section 175 says is: “Preliminary investigation, report and follow-up action.” It says: “An employer must, immediately after the occurrence of an incident described in section 173, undertake a preliminary investigation to, as far as possible, (a) identify any unsafe conditions, acts or procedures that significantly contributed to the incident, and (b) if unsafe conditions, acts or procedures are identified under paragraph (a) of this subsection, determine the corrective action necessary to prevent, during a full investigation under section 176, the recurrence of similar incidents.”

[1610]

It goes on and talks about this preliminary investigation. It needs to be: “(a) prepared in accordance with the policies of the board of directors, (b) completed within 48 hours of the occurrence of the incident, and (c) provided to the Board on request of the Board.” Following the preliminary investigation, the employer must, without delay, undertake corrective action determined to be necessary under subsection (1). And it goes on.

It talks about that. It says: “(4) If the employer takes corrective action under subsection (3), the employer, as soon as practicable, must (a) prepare a report of the action taken, and (b) either provide the report to the joint committee….” That’s what that says.

The coroner’s jury said to review sections 175 and 176. We’ll talk about 176 in a minute, which is the full investigation. You have two tiers of investigation here. The preliminary investigation happens within 48 hours. The full investigation is a more complete and more extensive investigation, and we’ll talk a little bit about that in a second.

In this case, with the review of sections 175 and 176 of the Workers Compensation Act to determine whether employer investigations are required — under what terms — the coroner’s comment was: “The inquest heard that the employer did not prepare an incident investigation report as required by the Workers Compensation Act.” That goes back to these incidents in January.

The problem we have here is that there is no requirement here for providing the joint committee with the preliminary investigation report that’s being introduced under section 175. That’s where our concern is being raised — around that. The issue, of course, is that if you’re going to do that preliminary report, you have to ask yourself why that report shouldn’t be given to a joint health and safety committee. That was a debate that was…. I think we debated this issue as it relates to Bill 9, since some of the changes here reflect back to there.

What you’re hearing from worker representatives is that this immediate report, which is done in 48 hours….
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It, presumably, will involve worker representatives in some fashion, whether it’s that they’re being interviewed to determine the report or they’re providing specific detail to the report that will be produced in two days. That is an important report to decide if immediate action needs to be taken to ensure that if there are glaring safety problems, they’re addressed immediately. But the joint health and safety committee, which is obliged to stay on top of these issues, to be the eyes and the ears in that workplace for worker health and safety…. There’s no obligation for them to receive this report immediately.

I’m not certain why that is. I’m not certain why it is that this committee, which may well have insights that would be helpful in dealing with any problems, doesn’t get to see that. They get to see the full report; they don’t get to see this report. There are concerns being raised about why that is.

I look forward, when we get to the committee stage, to having this discussion with the minister and to understanding why there isn’t an explicit requirement in this bill that the joint health and safety committee should be privy to any reports or documents that relate to health and safety matters within a given workplace — why the committee, if they have an obligation under the law, under the act, to deal with certain matters, is not, as a matter of course, privy to that information and privy to what occurs there.

Section 176. This is the last of the substantive sections. The minister talked earlier about some changes around reports and service plans, and that’s all for other reasons. But we would all agree, I think, that these are the core sections.

[1615]

What section 176 is, is the requirement under the act for full investigations, reports and follow-up action. What it says is:

“(1) An employer must, immediately after completing a preliminary investigation under section 175, undertake a full investigation to, as far as possible, (a) determine the cause or causes of the incident investigated under section 175, (b) identify any unsafe conditions, acts or procedures that significantly contributed to the incident, and (c) if unsafe conditions, acts or procedures are identified under paragraph (b) of this subsection, determine the corrective action necessary to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.

“(2) The employer must ensure that a report of the full investigation is (a) prepared in accordance with the policies of the board of directors, and (b) submitted to the Board within 30 days of the occurrence of the incident.”

It then goes on to say that the board may extend time periods, if they consider it appropriate.

“Following the full investigation, the employer must, without undue delay, undertake any corrective action determined to be necessary” under the section. If the employer takes action, the employer, as practicable, must “(a) prepare a report of the action taken, and (b) either (i) provide the report to the joint committee or worker health and safety representative, as applicable, or (ii) if there is no joint committee or worker health and safety representative, post the report at the workplace.”

The issue here with this is the change that would occur. The change would say…. It goes on. The employer must ensure the report of the full investigation is prepared in accordance with the policies of the board and submitted to the board within 30 days. Within 30 days of the occurrence of the incident, either “(i) provided to the joint committee or worker health and safety representative, as applicable, or (ii) if there is no joint committee or worker health and safety representative, posted at the workplace.” Other amendments are a bit of housekeeping.

It says that within the 30 days, that report, that full investigation, has to be posted. The incident here is that…. You have to ask yourself: if that’s what you’re going to do — and it’s a good thing that the committee is going to get that — then why isn’t that preliminary report that we talked about in 175 being provided?

At the end of the day, what we saw around all these recommendations is that the jurors in both Babine and Lakeland made a series of recommendations around empowering workers and giving them a greater say and influence on health- and safety-related issues, using the joint health and safety committee as the vehicle to do that. Ensuring they have access to relevant information and findings in a timely fashion, including the preliminary investigation report, needs to become part of that if they’re going to do the job that the jurors say needs to be done. That, I believe, the minister agrees with.

Those are the sections of the report. We have a couple of challenges here with this and these five sections. They’re challenges that we’ll talk about in committee. There are challenges around whether there are limits being put on the role of workers in the investigation by the nature of this change. I’m hoping that clarification will resolve that that’s not the intention and that the full participation within the context of the committee is, in fact, going to be encouraged by legislation for workers.

The second is the provision of full information to the committee to ensure that it can do its work. The piece that is standing outside of that at this point is the preliminary reports, which are done in 48 hours.

What hasn’t happened here? What have we not seen in this legislation?

[1620]

The minister spoke. When she spoke about the legislation in her introductory comments, she made the reference…. I believe her reference was that some people may see these as small changes. But she spoke and said that it was her hope and her belief that, in fact, these changes would make a meaningful difference. I hope they will. I think they are small changes, but I also would concur that nothing excludes small changes from being meaningful. I think there are things that need to be effected here, but I think they could make those changes.

What has happened, though, as we look at what’s not here — I’ll make this comment one time, because we have certainly had this discussion enough times — is
[ Page 9643 ]
that I don’t think it excludes the appropriateness of an independent inquiry. I don’t think it excludes the need for a further review, over and above Mr. Macatee’s work, of what has occurred at WorkSafe B.C. over the past decade or two — where there’s been a cultural shift, I think, in the thinking there.

I want to believe that the new leadership at WorkSafe wants to correct that, and time will tell, but there has been a shift there. We have seen, I believe, the erosion of some of the fundamental things that WorkSafe was intended to do and that need to be brought back. I think we’ve seen conflicts in the relationship of WorkSafe with some of its stakeholder groups.

I think one of those conflicts…. What we’ve seen, in my view, is the growing imbalance at the board level at WorkSafe B.C., the body that makes those decisions and moves forward. When you go back into previous iterations of WorkSafe, it was balanced — worker representatives, employer representatives. Pretty much a balanced situation. Today there is a workers representative on the board, and the rest of the board is made up largely, not entirely, of those who would be viewed by any reasonable person as employer representatives, including the new chair. Good people, not a question of them, of what they do, but they come to this job with a perspective.

Part of the success of WorkSafe in the past, I think, has been ensuring the balance at the governance level between the representatives of workers and the representatives of employers, with appropriate independent third-party thinking, public interest thinking, in the discussion and in the commentary. I think that balance has been lost. It’s not there today, and workers do not feel that they have a fair share of representation on the board of WorkSafe. They do not feel that their concerns are viewed with the same level of concern as employer representatives.

They do look at things like premium holidays that have occurred, around payments, which may or may not be appropriate. But when they see the challenges that workers are having in getting their needs met, and the complexity of claims and the process of claims, they are cynical about this process and about how it works. I think that’s the challenge here for the government.

The challenge is really to take the work that’s been done in the last year or two that I think was aimed at correcting some specific failings of the board around investigatory practices, around some other conduct, and say: “Those are good things. We’re making modest changes, whether it’s Bill 9 or Bill 35, to the act in order to ensure that we’re correcting those things that, by anybody’s standards, were just failing so badly that they needed to be addressed.” I think there’s some work that’s been done to do that.

[1625]

But there are the broader issues that are more fundamental to the operation of the entity of WorkSafe B.C. itself, and the government needs to get its head around that and make those changes.

You know, one of the areas that was most compelling here, and I think drove much of this, was the call for charges to be contemplated. Criminal negligence was the view — that in these explosions, there was clear evidence of criminal negligence. That’s the belief of many people and, certainly, of people who suffered very directly, whether they lost loved ones or they had their own lives turned upside down and devastated. There was some inclination about that from the board itself in terms of how it proceeded.

Now, we’ll go back, and you’ll know that that issue is particularly important in tragic situations like this. That potential has to be real, and if the Crown prosecutors believe that charges are appropriate, then charges need to go forward.

A law was passed — commonly called the Westray law — with changes to the Criminal Code of Canada. That was passed after a violent explosion in May of 1992 in the community of Plymouth in Nova Scotia — an explosion that killed 26 miners, at that time, in a coal mine at Westray.

There was a public inquiry. There was an independent inquiry held of that. That inquiry motivated, I believe, the creation of the Westray law and established that. It was an inquiry that talked about the need for accountability.

The challenge with the Westray law is that you are hard-pressed to find the use of this law in the country. There wouldn’t be very many incidences where you’d want to see it used, but it needs to be used when it’s appropriate. Certainly, WorkSafe seemed to be of the view that it should be contemplated in this incident. But because of what was the mishandling of the investigation in terms of the criminal justice branch’s view, they did not allow a prosecution to be contemplated, to proceed.

We need to fix that. It’s not good enough for a company to face a fine. There were fines at Lakeland. There were fines at Babine. Most of them were costs. There was a modest amount of actual fine penalty. Most of what they paid was cost.

For some, that can be the cost of doing business. When you contemplate the notion that the chief executive officer of a company where there is deemed to be criminal negligence…. Where they ignored things they know better than to ignore, and it results in the death or serious injury of workers, and the consequence may be a criminal charge and may be incarceration, then I think those folks at the top start to view things differently. I am of the view that it certainly wouldn’t take many of those kinds of actions or a conviction of that sort to get a lot of people’s attention.

Now, we know for the vast majority of companies, safety is an important element. I was having a discussion the other day with folks from Shell. I know that safety, for them, is a huge issue, and they talked very explicitly about the safety actions that they take at every turn. But there are companies where that is not the case, there are companies where that’s not true, and there are things that happen.
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So you had Westray. Justice Peter Richard did the Westray inquiry. It was an independent inquiry. It was an inquiry as we asked for in the case of Lakeland and Babine — an independent inquiry that would have independent findings, an inquiry that was declined by the government. But in November of 1997, Justice Peter Richard wrote his report for the Westray public inquiry.

[1630]

I’d like to read you the final paragraph of the executive summary and Justice Richard’s comments.

“The tale that unfolds in the ensuing narrative is the Westray story. It is a story of incompetence, of mismanagement, of bureaucratic bungling, of deceit, of ruthlessness, of cover-up, of apathy, of expediency and of cynical indifference. It is a tragic story with the inevitable moments of pathos and heroism. The Westray story concerns an event that, in all good common sense, ought not to have occurred. It did occur, and that is our unfortunate legacy.”

Bill 35 deals with the Lakeland and Babine explosions, with four deaths, with over 40 serious injuries. We are taking some corrective action here, but what we will never know, because of the nature of how this has proceeded using the vehicle of the inquest, is whether those comments of Justice Richard about what occurred at Westray — about incompetence, about mismanagement, about bungling, about deceit — may be applicable in these incidents. We will never know, and we should know. And more important than us knowing, the families should know.

This bill has a lot of pieces to it that need to be adopted. It has some pieces that need some more thinking. I hope the minister will do that in the coming days. I look forward to the continued debate on this bill. I know there are many members on the opposition side who want to speak to this issue. I’m hopeful that there are significant numbers of members on the government side who also feel it’s important to express their views around Bill 35 and around the reason and occurrence for Bill 35.

I think this is, as the minister said…. We certainly have had some legislation before us in the last few weeks that was questionable at best as to the value and the merit of the legislation. But I would agree with the minister that this is a substantive piece of legislation. This is a piece of legislation that requires serious debate. It relates to very, very serious issues in the history of this province.

I look forward to hearing from members on both sides as this debate comes forward, and I look forward to committee stage, where we will get the opportunity to talk to the minister in much more depth about what her intentions were and to, hopefully, draw out either explanation or defence or changes that will improve this legislation, which, as the minister said, is modest, but it is important.

It will, hopefully, improve the legislation, make it better and make it easier for all of us to support and embrace this as a step in the right direction as we move forward to try to answer the questions that are still outstanding about the tragedies of Babine and Lakeland.

G. Kyllo: Bill 35 has special significance to me as a business owner in the Shuswap, and I’m pleased to voice my support for the Workers Compensation Amendment Act. The bill is important to me because I consider my employees my friends. I have close relationships with many of them. They’re my family, friends and my neighbours. I’ve literally employed thousands of people over the last 20 years.

I think it’s very important that we recognize that workers across B.C. also play a significant part in our families and in our lives within our communities. They are respected coaches and volunteers in our communities, and workers also are those who actually generously volunteer their time and energies to a wide variety of local organizations.

The tragedies at Lakeland and Babine sawmills have a profound effect on all of us here. As an employer, I cannot imagine one of my employees not returning home to his or her family at the end of the workday, especially if it is due to a workplace accident.

[1635]

The legislation set out in Bill 35 is being introduced in response to the recommendations from the Lakeland and Babine inquests and to keep up the work that is needed to ensure that British Columbians have safe places so they can come home to their families at the end of each shift. The legislation strengthens the act by implementing five changes to the Workers Compensation Act that the coroners’ juries recommended in the Lakeland and Babine inquests. The amendments are part of an ongoing coordinated effort our government has undertaken to make workplaces safer.

Gord Macatee made 43 recommendations in the WorkSafe B.C. review and the action plan report, and we’ve accepted all 43 of these recommendations. We’re implementing a new investigative model that preserves the ability to conduct both cause investigations and prosecution investigations. We’re implementing the sustained compliance plan for sawmills, as outlined in the report. We’re shortening the timelines — shortening them significantly — for applying administrative penalties and to develop a new set of enforcement tools.

The Workers Compensation Amendment Act builds on the legislative changes made under Bill 9 earlier this year that strengthened WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to promote and enforce occupational health and safety compliance in B.C. workplaces. In choosing changes to legislation over changes to policy, we believe legislation is the best way to bring meaningful and effective change. Creating legislation for these changes emphasizes our seriousness about ensuring British Columbia workers are safe in their workplaces and is a legacy for the families who lost loved ones and those who have been injured.

These amendments set out in Bill 35 will require employers to immediately report to WorkSafe B.C. all workplace fires or explosions that had the potential to cause
[ Page 9645 ]
serious injury to workers; require employer investigation reports be provided to the workplace health and safety committee or health and safety representative or be posted in the worksite, as well as specifying far-reaching participation for worker and employer representatives in employer accident investigations; specifying a role for workplace health and safety committees to provide advice to the employer on significant proposed equipment and machinery changes that may affect worker health and safety; and allowing WorkSafe B.C. to assist the workplace health and safety committees in resolving disagreements over health and safety matters.

At the same time, these amendments will not obstruct industry’s ability to make timely business decisions. The bill achieves an effective balance to keep workers safe while allowing industry to make necessary business decisions.

We want to do everything we can to make sure that what happened at Babine Forest Products and Lakeland Mills never happens again. I can’t stress enough the importance of Bill 35.

B. Routley: You know the old saying: the more things change, the more they look the same. This, I fear, is watching history repeat itself.

I would like to say that it is with a heavy heart that I look at this legislation and that I see the consequences of all the changes that have been made that have been negative to the workers compensation legislation we once had in British Columbia. It’s a heavy heart because when I started in the safety business back in the 1970s as a young man…. I was a young man when I first went on my safety committee. Do you know that we’re talking about reintroducing safety committees all these years later?

There used to be a mandate to have safety committees. In a mill with more than 50 workers, like I worked in…. We had 550 workers. There were seven committee members from the union side, and there were seven from the employer side — seven from each side.

Today we’re talking about putting back legislation. I think it was right that the minister referred to this as some small changes. While this bill has some small positive changes, the need for these changes really points to a lot of the issues and the changes that have taken place at the WCB.

[1640]

I had to look back at all of the history. I think it’s worthwhile taking a moment to reflect on how this has changed. It’s dramatic when you hear some of the facts that you’re going to hear shortly.

The changes that have taken place historically are now really dramatically pointed out as a result of these recommendations and even this legislation. The need for Bill 35 comes about because, at one point, the government decided it was red tape and cut thousands, hundreds, of regulations, including thousands of regulations from the WCB handbook. I used to carry it around like it was my Bible, that WCB handbook that I memorized and had dog-eared as a young man back in the 1970s.

Some of the context that I want you to hear is that as far back as 1917, B.C. workers in British Columbia essentially gave up their rights to sue employers, and that was through legislative change. In exchange, the employers had agreed to pay for a system that provides compensation for injured workers, medical assistance and even lost-wages income. This was known as the historic compromise. That historic compromise has been significantly damaged over what has happened and the changes that have taken place.

When the Liberal government came to power 14 years ago, big business was lobbying to get major cost-reduction changes. And that influence has totally reshaped workers compensation. They even went so far as to change the name from Workers Compensation to an insulting employer-type command. Work safe. Work safe, young man. That’s the idea. Work safe.

I’m sorry, but I just find it so insulting that after all these years, our workers compensation plan has been so damaged. They had 14 years to make changes, and they started right away. As a result of the changes at WCB, all of those changes have really only benefited one group. And guess what group that is. Would it be workers? No. It’s big business.

Sadly, many people now call the WCB the “employers compensation board.” Why do I say that? Because all you have to do is look at some of the statistics starting after the board was changed.

Do you know that starting in 2005, the Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia reported a surplus at the end of the year as a result of these damaging changes that impacted injured workers? A $474 million surplus was announced in 2005.

But guess what. It gets worse. By the year 2006, it had grown to almost $1 billion. The surplus was now $987 million. And how did that happen? That was taken right out of the pockets of the working — the people that were injured, the people that were hurt, their families, people that could no longer retire with any kind of dignity after they had been damaged on the job because this government chose to pick their pockets clean.

And let’s talk about since 2001, the beginning of the massive changes at WCB shortly after their election. They actually decided to do two core reviews. Again, this could have been under the guise of some kind of red tape reduction. It’s interesting that we just went through a discussion about red tape reduction.

There is real red tape, and then there’s regulation that’s absolutely necessary for the protection of workers and their families and particularly workers on the job. And that’s what we’re talking about here.

[1645]

This Alan Winter reviewed the benefits and appeals process, and his report was used as the basis for sweeping changes. Bill 49 introduced changes to the Workers
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Compensation Act that reduced the injured workers wage replacement benefits. They also reduced the CPI benefit. They eliminated the lifetime pension provision. Again, that’s important.

So a worker had this original compromise that he couldn’t sue the employer. He couldn’t sue them for millions of dollars if he was damaged due to their negligence in any way, shape or form. He could only count on this process taking care of him. Well, good luck today. Good luck.

I’ve had a stream of injured workers come into my office — and I’m sure it’s true of every MLA in the province of British Columbia — who tell me that it’s not working for them anymore. There are more stories about people being declined, declined, declined — sent back to the end of the line over and over and over again. Why? Because it pockets the money.

At the end of the day, this is about cost reduction. It sure isn’t about safety and taking care of workers and their families. And it’s a shame, when I think about it.

Also, as a result of this, not only did they eliminate the lifetime pension provision…. Think about this. Again, you’re injured for life. For the rest of your life, you’re injured, but now they say: “Oh. Well, you’re going to have to get in line for a federal program. Oh, it’s not our….” The good people of B.C. and the employers of B.C. shouldn’t have to pay for you after you reach this magic age, even though you were damaged on the job. “Oh no. We can abandon you now, and we can say: ‘Oh, it’s the federal government’s program. Go get in their line for your pension.’”

They eliminated the lifetime pension payments from WCB. Think about that. Again, that’s a total abandonment of the original principle that they were going to take care of workers. They also drastically eliminated the loss-of-earnings pensions. They clawed back the CPP disability benefit. Now if you’re injured, they even claw that back. They want you to go and apply for it. Again, along with their history of clawing back and giving money back to the big boss and taking it right out of the pockets of the working man — stuffing it in the bank and giving it back to the employer — at the end of the day, the Liberal employer-focused Bill 63 completely overhauled the appeal function as well. These are just some of the changes.

The bill eliminated the appeal division. The review board. The medical review panel. They created an internal review division and the external Workers Compensation Appeal Tribunal, familiar to most as WCAT. They created new rules on reopening claims. Oh boy, did they ever. And do you think those rules helped workers?

Well, I defy any MLA in here to bring me a worker that says things are better for them now. No, they’re not better for them now. They are a lot worse. It’s painful. It’s sad. It’s tragic.

You know, my staff came to me and told me they talked to security at the WCB. You know what the security said? “We now have bulletproof glass at the WCB office. We’ve put in concrete barriers and steel posts so somebody can’t drive through the door, like they’ve tried to do.” Why would that be happening in British Columbia, if it wasn’t for the frustration?

I’ve had to talk people down that have come in my office so angry that they’ve been pounding the table, saying: “What are you going to do about my situation?” Not only are they hurt and injured, but oftentimes their families are ripped apart as a result of the tragic action of this government in cutting — cut after cut — WCB.

[1650]

They shortened the policy and tightly controlled timelines for appeals. Downsizing was chosen over improved service, even though they brought in a U.S. expert, Allan Hunt, who did a core review on service delivery. While the Winter report was used as a blueprint for change, the Hunt report…. The Liberal government completely ignored the Hunt finding.

In his March 2002 report, Hunt looked at recent studies comparing systems in Ontario, B.C. and 45 U.S. states. Guess what his conclusion was? Those studies found that B.C. was the most efficient workers compensation in North America by a considerable margin, after accounting for the difference in benefits, the incidents of claims, the coverage of issues, the underlying injury rate, union density and other factors.

What was the government’s response to the service review? Well, they should have said: “Things are good; let’s not mess with it.” No, no. They brought in their red tape reduction folks, and they eliminated or contracted out 500 good, union-paying, family-supporting jobs at the WCB. They closed the Williams Lake WCB offices, the Vernon and Campbell River offices. There may be many more — a long list of other offices that were closed.

They even closed the world-renowned rehabilitation clinic. They contracted out those services to a network of private, for-profit clinics. They closed the safety materials print shop. They used to provide education and training — two key, fundamental issues. If you’re really interested in preventing deaths and injuries, one of the places I can point to that you need to start with is basic education. And to think they closed the safety materials print shop so that workers and employers must now purchase any safety materials or purchase forms.

They closed the switchboard and replaced the system with an automated system. They contracted out the electrical scanning and indexing and disclosure services. They contracted out medical transcription to the private sector. They eliminated the first aid officer position and contracted out first aid training. We’re not even going to be involved in first aid training.

So I wonder why there’s a problem. I just wonder why, when the government has abandoned training, they decided that it’s best to just contract it out, turn their back, fire somebody who is the first-aid training officer. Then they closed the WCB laboratory. They contracted out the services needed by prevention officers.
[ Page 9647 ]

I want to camp there for a minute. When I was the safety chairman, I remember the argument with the company. I said: “We want to have half the time on company time. So if the shift ends at 4:30, we want to start the safety meeting at 3:30. And we want you to pay somebody to come in overtime so all of us committee members don’t have to stay here till midnight working on safety issues.”

We used to spend two, three hours every time we had a safety meeting once a month. We spent hours going over issues that were…. I mean, imagine. We had an A mill, a B mill and a veneer plant. We had a lot of safety issues, believe me, to talk about, and they were important. Thank goodness we did have management that cared about safety. They actually did.

Sure, we used to have to fight with them sometimes, because they didn’t want to do things that cost a lot of money. But they actually were involved and listened. They even encouraged us to have a double form where we would write out our safety issue. We’d keep a copy for the committee member and submit one to the appropriate superintendent or manager for action so that we’d get it done that day if possible. If there was a guard off of a chain, you don’t want to wait until somebody gets dragged into the machine. You want it fixed now. To have that kind of action, you have to have commitment on both sides.

You can imagine, after being so engaged back in the 1970s, to be standing here in the Legislature of British Columbia talking about reintroducing safety committees…. Really? Oh, my goodness, how far down the pole has this government slipped?

[1655]

All of this — it’s just unbelievable. They eliminated the WHMIS coordinators. They significantly reduced occupational audiologists and ergonomics and prevention educators. This means that some programs and services were cut completely or severely curtailed.

Prevention officers. This is the report: “Prevention officers have less support in their field activities and increased workloads.” Well, guess what that results in? This bill amending the legislation, bringing back committees, when it really needs to be looked at in the context of the history of what’s happened…. It really does. It is absolutely necessary. It’s key that the government reduced the number of prevention officers inspecting workplaces to the lowest levels in a decade. This is a report that is a few years old, and they’re saying that they reduced the number inspecting workplaces to the lowest levels in a decade.

Well, again, what’s going to happen? What do you think is going to happen if you cut the people that are required to inspect a workplace?

When I was chairman of those three different mills, I actually had the honour of being called up by the WCB inspector who did a surprise visit. He ordered the company to bring me along for a tour on the afternoon shift to do an inspection of the mill.

I remember doing that. We worked eight hours that night and eight hours the next day. We walked through all of those three mills together. We talked about the issues that needed to be done. My point is that there was real focus. Today, with this bill, we’re now talking about getting committees back. Think about where we’re at.

Deputy Speaker: Member.

B. Routley: There are a few modest changes…

Deputy Speaker: Member.

B. Routley: …recommended by the coroner’s…

Deputy Speaker: Member.

B. Routley: Pardon me?

Deputy Speaker: Member, I ask you to be relevant to the second reading of this bill.

B. Routley: This is Bill 35, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act. It’s totally relevant to talk about how we got here from the period of time where the changes started with the WCB. Now we’re talking about implementing these amendments to the act. We’re amending the legislation as it now exists — historical facts that outline what has happened to workplace inspections and the number of orders that have changed.

Just look at the statistics about the number of fatalities, the number of young worker fatalities, the permanent injuries, the reports that we hear of reduction in support for front-line services and compensation, the reduced level of team assistance, transfer of administrative functions to adjudicative and rehabilitative services. You know? On and on it goes.

We want more focus on Bill 35. Let’s roll up our sleeves and talk about that. To reiterate, Bill 35, as I have said, does make some small positive changes. I have a heavy heart that we’re doing this all over again — talking about getting back to where we should have been all of these years.

An urgent need. There’s an urgent need for transparency — an urgent need for sharing of information with workers. Do you know that the workers’ representatives had to go to the minister to talk to the minister about getting help so that they could do a safety inspection of the Babine mill?

They arrived at the Babine mill with their suitcases — checking into the mill — when they got the call. And it took the minister’s involvement, by the way, to even get them in the mill. What? Workers can’t have their representatives in a mill? That’s just bizarre to me.

But finally they arrived, and they got a phone call: “Look, there’s now been an explosion at the Lakeland mill.” They never even got to unpack their bags.

[1700]

We need, under Bill 35, some of the things that are clearly missing. The WCB has always been challenged, and challenged workers to information. It has been a subject of several reviews and two royal commissions to look at changes and issues with the compensation over the years.

The Steelworkers did a private prosecution, and they had to go to court because the WCB withheld information, claiming it was because of privacy rules. Now, the court finally ordered the production of documents. However — likewise in the Babine and Lakeland disasters — the WCB denied Steelworkers representatives access to the site, stating that they were doing their investigation and that the RCMP had control. This is the workers’ representative. It took this meeting with the Labour Minister to clear up the WCB’s misunderstanding.

As I’ve said, the Steelworkers dispatched a couple of inspectors. They didn’t even get started, because they arrived, and the Lakeland fire…. Also, in the inquest into these tragedies that have now brought about the need for these amendments of Bill 35, the WCB testified that they were aware of dust explosions and that regulation 5.81 specifically addresses explosive dust. In testimony, several inspectors were concerned about explosive dust. They researched and found a video that was produced by the Chemical Safety Board in the United States.

Now, I’m aware of chemical fires. I’m also aware of fires in granaries. There’s a long history of that. On the coast of British Columbia — I think I’ve said it in this House before — we used to have spark watchers who used a firehose to wet down an area before a welder did any work. Why? It was because there was dust in the area. Everybody knew the dangers of dust.

We even had an electrician open an electrical panel box. It blew up. The fine dust blew up in his face and glued his eyelashes together. It wasn’t until his eyelashes grew out that he discovered that he wasn’t blind, that it was just his eyelashes. But he was obviously very fearful. The dangers of dust have been around. Why isn’t there an education bank about all of these things?

I’ve heard people talk about silos within ministries. There are also silos within the industry, often because they’re competitors. For safety reasons, that’s why it’s critical to not only have functioning safety committees, but we were lucky enough…. Back in those days in the 1970s, we actually had a full-time safety director in the local union, whose job it was to be involved in safety education, to help the safety committee workers side be involved and engaged and to empower them.

I want to say that while this legislation is making positive changes, without the help of people that are from the outside…. Just think about it: if you’re there, going to work every day with your lunch pail, you know that if you make a fuss about a safety issue, it could result in costs to the employer. The industry is already in tough shape, and it could be impacted as a result of this. So you look at it and say: “My goodness. How could this happen?”

In 2010, the WCB hosted a course — this came out in the coroner’s inquest that led to this legislation — and they looked, at the Richmond headquarters, about explosive dust, all the way back in 2010. Sadly, even though there was a WCB attending from the hygiene office of Prince George, the materials were made available to officers but none was ever made accessible to the workers. Nor was this information forwarded to the Steelworkers safety officer in Richmond or in Burnaby. Nor were there any safety alerts of any kind given by the WCB to help the workers in that situation.

[1705]

There are so many questions. In 2011, there were three wood dust explosions in the Prince George area that resulted in substantial damage to wood processing plants and at least two serious injuries. This was in 2011. Again, there should have been immediate action, remedial action. There should have been an officer go out to the mills, make sure they trained up safety committees, had meetings with safety committees.

Again, in the old days, there would have been a real attempt to do more communication. But how could that occur when you’ve cut all of the bodies that used to be there to deal with safety, prevention? You’ve significantly reduced the number of safety investigators or safety people that turned up at our mills to look at what’s going on.

There was nothing reported to the WCB. Actually, what’s really scary is that there was some investigation by the company, but they didn’t actually share that with the workers or their union. When it was asked about on the witness stand, the WCB officer said that even though he had seen some dust, he didn’t think it was a dangerous occurrence and there was nothing to report.

However, the following day the Babine Lake mill exploded. Just before that, as one of the other MLAs here has already said, there was actually a 30- to 50-foot fireball at the Lakeland mill. Again, had there been what there used to be, as I understand it….

I remember the day when if we had a fatality or a near miss, as it was called, there would be an alert go out to other operations, at least within the same company if not cross-company. It was definitely a requirement to make sure that near misses or those kinds of incidents should be communicated. Without that, we only need to look at the results to know where we’re headed.

I want to kind of wrap things up shortly. I know I’ve got some more time.

From the onset of the proceedings at WorkSafe, WorkSafe had three separate counsel. I want to emphasize that the Steelworkers…. Part of the reason they walked out, they tell me, is because they see that without a public inquiry, we’re not going to get to the bottom of all of the multiple factors that led to these tragic deaths and all of these injuries. How do we know that? Because
[ Page 9649 ]
there was no attempt to have the workers represented by legal counsel. WorkSafe had three separate counsel. It’s a tragedy that with more action and prevention could have been prevented.

D. Barnett: I consider it a privilege and a duty to speak today in support of Bill 35, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act. The riding I am proud to represent, Cariboo-Chilcotin, is heavily dependent on the forest industry. Sawmills and wood processing plants are the lifeblood of communities in the region from Williams Lake and Anahim Lake to 100 Mile House.

These sawmills are not unlike those in Burns Lake, Prince George and every other forest-based community in British Columbia, so it is understandable that the tragedies at Babine Forest Products and Lakeland Mills had a profound impact on families throughout the Cariboo and Chilcotin.

There is a kind of kinship among workers in the forest industry, and the loss of those workers in Burns Lake and Prince George and the injuries suffered by their co-workers hit people in my riding especially hard. As their representative in Victoria, I am committed to do everything possible to ensure tragedies like these don’t happen again.

With the introduction of Bill 35, our government has taken firm action to address the Lakeland and Babine coroner’s inquest recommendation. The bill demonstrates to the workers, their families and all British Columbians that the province is taking the necessary steps to make all workplaces safer.

[1710]

We have accepted all 43 of the recommendations made by Mr. Macatee in the WorkSafeBC Review and Action Plan report, to ensure world-class inspection and investigation systems at WorkSafe B.C.

Bill 35 also builds on the legislative changes made under Bill 9 earlier this year that strengthened WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to promote and enforce occupational health and safety compliance in B.C. workplaces. The changes mean employers are required to immediately report to WorkSafe B.C. all workplace fires or explosions that have the potential to cause serious injury to a worker. Employer investigation reports must be provided to the workplace health and safety committee or a worker health and safety representative or be posted at the worksite.

The bill specifies that meaningful participation for worker and employer representatives in employer accident investigations must take place. The changes also specify a role for workplace health and safety committees to provide advice to the employer on significant proposed equipment and machinery changes that may affect worker health and safety. They also allow WorkSafe B.C. to assist workplace health and safety committees in resolving disagreements over health and safety matters.

These amendments to the Workers Compensation Act are part of the ongoing, coordinated work our government has undertaken to make workplaces safer. These proposed legislative changes are an indication of how seriously we take the Babine and Lakeland inquest recommendations and represent a lasting legacy and some degree of closure for the families of the workers who lost their lives or were injured. It is our goal to see every worker in British Columbia come home safe at the end of their workday, and I am convinced these amendments go a long way to ensuring that.

G. Heyman: This is an important issue to speak to. It’s an important bill to speak to. I wish, as I’ll point out in my statements, that I could see a lot more in this bill of worth to speak to. But it is important to talk about some of the measures that this bill addresses as well as some of the measures that it doesn’t address.

Let me begin by referencing some statements of the minister. The minister said in her remarks that the provisions in this bill — in response to the inquest, in response to the tragedies that befell the workers at Babine and Lakeland and their families — are the least we can do and seem like very little. Nothing that anyone could do in this Legislature or anywhere else could return the individuals who lost their lives to their families or return to those individuals the life that was taken from them.

It saddens me that in many ways, in fact, this bill is the least we can do in a very real sense. There’s much more that could have been done. There’s much more that should have been done and, frankly, much more that should not have been done many years ago that set the stage for the kind of workplace culture, the kind of lack of a meaningful safety culture in so many workplaces around British Columbia, that could lead to the kinds of conditions where employers cut corners, where they took chances, where they hoped that they could get away without taking the strongest precautionary measures they could take.

There’s also — and I say this from experience — a culture that develops in regulatory agencies. If the message is to go easy on regulation, that’s exactly what will happen. That message will become entrenched, and that habit will become entrenched. Over time, there’ll be a proclivity to do less rather than more. That is the message that people are getting from their superiors. That is, in fact, the culture that was built up over time at the Workers Compensation Board beginning very shortly after the election of this Liberal government in 2001.

[1715]

I don’t doubt that members opposite believe that every worker should return home safely. I’ve never talked, personally, to a worker for whom it wasn’t critically important — as critically important as the fact that they could go to work and bring a paycheque home to put food on the table for their families and themselves. It was also critically important to them that they could return home safe, that they could return home healthy, so they could enjoy life with
[ Page 9650 ]
their families and their families could enjoy life with them.

Too often much of the work that we do — particularly in the resource industries, although not only in the resource industries — is inherently dangerous work. There are aspects of the work around which particular care must be taken to prevent workplace injury, lifelong debilitating injury, as well as death.

Yet there is some irony. In fact, there is considerable irony that we’re debating this bill this afternoon after spending considerable time debating a very short 13- or 14- or 15-word bill called the Red Tape Reduction Day Act. Red-tape reduction was a signal position of this Liberal government when first elected in 2001.

There was a promise to cut red tape by one-third. It wasn’t a focus on cutting unnecessary red tape or forms or streamlining or redundant or unnecessary regulation. It became, under the minister responsible for deregulation, Kevin Falcon: “How can we meet that goal? How can we remove anything that any employer says gets in the way of them doing business and making a profit?”

A singular focus of this Liberal government in the period following 2001 were the workplace safety and health regulations. It wasn’t just the regulations themselves. It wasn’t just changing a focus from regulations that had been carefully crafted in response to real risks in the workplace that had resulted in real injuries and real deaths of very many individuals.

Regulations had resulted from research that showed where the greatest risk to workers existed, whether it was falling practices, whether it was practices in mills, whether it was lockout procedures, whether it was fall protection. Regulations weren’t crafted simply because somebody living in an ivory tower or in a vacuum decided they wanted to make it as difficult as possible for employers to do business.

No, that isn’t how they were crafted. In many cases — in fact, in most cases — they were a result of a protracted, comprehensive regulation review process that included industry experts, occupational hygiene and health experts, representatives of employers, representatives of workers. Having been part of that process for a number of years, I know that, during that period of time, there were some pretty fierce arguments about what was appropriate and some compromises made.

In the end, the strongest regulations that were possible in that circumstance, in that time, were agreed upon in order to protect workers, and they had been for decades prior as well. They were there for a reason, and they were there because the best employers…. It’s the employers who understood that a safe workplace was a productive workplace over the long term, that it made no sense in terms of either retaining skilled workers or attracting new ones or not being liable for lifelong pensions — which, of course, no longer exist, thanks to this government — and that it was better not to have accidents happen if they could be prevented.

That was at the root of safety programs. That was at the root of accident investigations. That was at the root of regulations that were put in place to protect workers and to educate workers and employers and supervisors around safe work practices.

[1720]

After this government was elected…. I say this because this bill, in significant part, is a response to the coroner’s inquest, which specifically identified some failures of the Workers Compensation Board. I say “Workers Compensation Board” because that is and continues to be the legal name of the organization. The Workers Compensation Board’s ability for compliance investigations, worksite visits and enforcement procedures underwent a 45 percent reduction in inspections and a 49 percent decrease in written orders. Employer penalties were down by 36 percent. Those are figures from 2005, in the four-year period.

Having been at the board as a member of the panel of administrators, having participated in developing workplace regulation, I know something about the dynamics that happen there. I know that at the board level and with senior executive members of the compensation board, when we talked about developing and promulgating a workplace culture of safety in order to protect workers, bring down the accident rate and prevent fatalities so that they could return home safe and so that employers would not be paying ever-increasing premiums to cover lost work time, lifetime pensions or, in the worst-case scenario, death benefit payments to families, it took an understanding of all parties that the primary goal was to keep the workplace and workers safe.

That also entailed a workplace culture at the WCB where people understood — as inspectors, as compliance and enforcement officers and as occupational hygiene officers — that yes, part of their job was to educate employers and people in the workplace about how to make it safer. But that was not to be a substitute for firm measures, for firm enforcement, for acting very rapidly and quickly on observed deficiencies.

When I was at the board, people who were responsible for setting the culture and setting the tone spoke very openly that you spend a number of years developing and reinforcing a culture among the people who work at the board on a day-to-day level — the ground troops, if you will. What they were to do was to limit orders, limit penalties and limit enforcement and simply try to encourage employers to do a better job — to turn a blind eye, in some cases, to violations and give people a second chance. You couldn’t turn that ship around in a day. You couldn’t turn that ship around in a week. You couldn’t even turn it around in a month or a year, because what you’ve done is effectively trained people in a way to do their job, and they grow to understand that that’s what’s expected of them.

That can and does have tragic results, whether it’s training a cadre of adjudicators to look for any reason whatso-
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ever to turn down a claim or limit the duration of a claim or deem somebody suitable for a job that doesn’t exist so that they can be paid off with a much-reduced amount of money to cover lost earnings for the rest of their lives, or whether it’s taking workplace inspectors and saying: “Let the employer know that you’re coming before you come. Meet with them in the back room without worker representatives present and try to cajole and encourage them into doing a better job.” That has an impact. That creates a culture.

The minister can say whatever she wants about this bill and the intent of it and what the result of it might be as a response to the Lakeland and Babine explosions and the deaths.

[1725]

The truth is that she was a cabinet member in 2001, when this government set a radically different tone for the Workers Compensation Board, a radically different tone for the acceptance of claims, a radically different tone for the payment of pensions and a radically different tone for worksite inspections, for involvement of workers, for compliance orders, for enforcement, for regulations that were prescriptive, in the case of conditions in the worksite that led to serious injury and death and, instead, set a tone that said: “We will not stand in the way of what the people in the business community say to us are obstacles or things they cannot work with, and we’ll hope for the best.”

That’s what happened in 2001. That’s what happened for a number of years. And until there were some extremely tragic clusters of death in the forest industry…. It wasn’t until then, after 2005, that this government replaced some of the regulations it had stripped out of the occupational health and safety regulation body in British Columbia, because it was clear that it wasn’t working, that there would be tragic results and that they had to do something. That is exactly what’s happening today with this bill.

That is not to say that there aren’t clauses in this bill worthy of support. But let’s be honest about how we got to where we were, and let’s also be honest about what is missing from this bill.

According to people in the construction trades, lost time, accidents and fatalities in general construction, heavy construction and road construction jumped from 7,000 in 2001 to 20,700 in 2006 — a 300 percent increase over a period of time when the workforce grew 60 percent, from 100,000 people to 160,000 people. That is one of many examples of the result of actions that were taken by the Liberal government shortly after taking office, which took an already less-than-adequate regime of compensation and workplace protection and made it worse — made it dangerously worse.

Everybody’s attention was caught by the tragic explosions at Lakeland and Babine and by the deaths. The families wanted a public inquiry. What they got was a coroner’s inquest. What we have today is some limited responses to the coroner’s inquest.

But if we were really serious in this place about doing the best we could in every circumstance to protect workers who are at risk of serious injury or death, we would have a public inquiry. We would have called a public inquiry. We would have looked at what happened at Lakeland and Babine. We would have looked at inadequacies in the Workers Compensation Board inspection regime. We would have looked at those warning signs that were ignored by both the mill owners and people at the Workers Compensation Board. We would have looked at observations by workers about hazardous conditions that weren’t acted upon.

But we also would have looked further back, I hope. I hope we would have looked carefully at a history that led up to the culture at the Workers Compensation Board of failing to act quickly and decisively on significant evidence that there was a risk — a serious risk that ultimately led to a tragic circumstance of explosion that destroyed people’s lives, destroyed their families’ lives, gutted their friends, gutted the communities and left a tragic legacy.

The minister said that this is the least we can do, and she’s right. It is the least we can do. We could do much better. We could have done much better in the days following the explosions. We should have done much better.

Let me turn to some examples.

[1730]

The minister would like me to address the bill. I would simply point out to the minister that when she introduces an act to amend the Workers Compensation Act and says that this is the least we can do for the families, she has opened the door to comment on every action by this government, every action by the Workers Compensation Board, every failure to regulate, every failure to inspect and every failure to enforce that has led to today, that led to the events at Lakeland and Babine.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Let us turn to Lakeland and Babine and what this bill purports to do to address the issues that were raised. The Premier, when she visited Burns Lake after the blast, said: “It may be a task, but we’re going to be there. We’re going to step up.” She said from Prince George: “We will be there to support you.”

Incident investigation reports into the mill blasts concluded that the explosions, which were obviously fuelled by dust, were preventable. They noted that in the weeks and months prior to both explosions, WorkSafe B.C. did not enforce the combustible dust provision of the occupational safety and health regulation.

I repeat my comments earlier. There was a culture developed at the Workers Compensation Board in direct response to actions taken by this government to deregulate workplace safety and health that led to a culture that
[ Page 9652 ]
went easy on inspection, went easy on enforcement and, in this case, just went terribly, terribly wrong.

In 2014, the criminal justice branch, the Crown, declined to lay charges against either company. They stated that the Workers Compensation Board improperly collected evidence and failed to sufficiently flag wood dust as a risk prior to the blast, which helped the company’s reasonable due diligence defence.

The Premier steadfastly refused to convene a public inquiry, saying that a coroner’s inquest is the appropriate forum to provide closure and some accountability to the families. It has not provided closure. It has not provided accountability. Instead, we have a few minor amendments to the Workers Compensation Act.

Why did the Workers Compensation Board fail to fulfil its fiduciary duty to protect workers by not taking prompt action against wood dust? The United Steelworkers have released an issues management briefing note from inside the board that was prepared during the period between the Babine and Lakeland explosions, from February 27, 2012. The note reveals hesitation on the part of the agency to enforce the existing combustible dust provision of the occupational health and safety regulation in the wake of the Burns Lake explosion because it feared industry backlash.

The incident investigation report into Lakeland seems to reflect this. It notes that the combustible dust provision was not enforced prior to the April 22, 2012, explosion.

When an organization with the resources, the mandate and the responsibility of the Workers Compensation Board fails to take action on something as fundamentally important to protecting lives and safety and communities as the combustible dust provision, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in a context, and in this case, the context was over ten years of a culture created by this government that downplayed workers’ safety regulations and downplayed putting enforcement and inspection officers in the field and giving them a mandate to do their job.

This government considers that red tape. This government considers that an impediment on business and profit instead of the necessary actions that employers must take to prevent British Columbians — workers — from injury and death.

[1735]

Much was heard by the jurors in the inquest about actions that should have been taken and weren’t taken. Much was heard about actions that have been taken in other jurisdictions that recognize combustible dust as a significant hazard and acted on it.

For example, American regulatory authorities had recognized the dangers of combustible dust before the B.C. explosions. In 2005, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board issued a report on the dangers of combustible dust, and in 2007, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration developed a combustible dust national emphasis program in the U.S.

From the Lakeland inquest report: “Expert evidence from chemical engineers, as well as the U.S. Chemical Safety Board combustible dust video, provided information about the combustibility of dust.” It was noted that the danger of dust explosions and fires is well known in the U.S.A.

But even after the inquest, the Macatee review and the Dyble review, there remains no clear explanation about why the government agency in charge of keeping millworkers safe in B.C. did not respond with haste, did not respond using the precautionary principle, did not respond to growing workers’ concerns that were raised around the increased levels of dust from beetle-killed wood or about taking steps to educate and call on employers through directives, through orders, to implement best practices and research about combustible dust.

There are things in this bill that will help. But there are things not in this bill that would help more, and I wish that we were talking about them. I wish we were praising the minister for finally recognizing that some things need to change, that the culture of the Workers Compensation Board needs to change, that there needs to be a priority and emphasis on the precautionary principle, that there needs to be a culture of no tolerance for risk to workers’ lives — period, full stop — and that it won’t change overnight. It will take extra actions.

My experience is over many, many years of working with worker representatives and occupational health and safety committees and of training them, of training health and safety activists in the labour movement about understanding their rights — their right to participate, which is a right that was hard won in Canada. The right to participate means that there should be joint occupational safety and health committees — not as an option or as something to be downplayed, as was done by the Liberals in 2001, until the tragic deaths in the logging industry when they were reintroduced a few years later.

The right to participate also means that when there is an incident — or as it’s called often on the worksite, a near miss — or an accident, it needs to be investigated. It needs to be investigated by people knowledgeable about the work, knowledgeable about the workers who are doing the work and knowledgeable about the workplace. On that issue, the role of workers’ representatives must be on an equal footing with employers’ representatives. That’s how workers will have confidence. That’s, frankly, how prevention officers and occupational safety and health officers at the Workers Compensation Board will know if the issue is being addressed or if it’s being swept under the rug.

The inquest recommended that steps be taken to clarify the meaning of the term “participation” in section 174 of the Workers Compensation Act to ensure full and meaningful participation in the investigative process by both the employer and the worker representative.

As my colleague from Vancouver-Hastings has said, we need to clarify that that is exactly the minister’s in-
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tent in the amendments that are brought forth. There has been concern expressed by the labour movement that the wording of section 7 actually runs counter to the intent of the recommendation that was made by the coroner’s inquest — that it could limit and circumscribe a worker’s participation in accident investigations.

[1740]

It may have been that the intent was to expedite the process, but it should not be done, and there must be nothing in this bill that could be interpreted, if passed, to circumscribe the rights of worker representatives to participate fully in accident investigations and incident investigations. To do so would turn the clock back on workers’ health and safety rights decades in this province — decades. We will want to make sure that that is not the case.

Let me summarize my comments. Much more needs to be done to reverse the trend that was started by this government in 2001. If this government is serious about embracing workers’ health and safety, protecting workers and ensuring that we are never dealing with the consequences of a tragic incident such as happened at Lakeland and Babine ever again, they need to look back over their full 14 years in office and see what can be done to reintroduce measures that were in place for decades to protect workers’ health and safety and to build a healthy, vibrant, knowledgable and committed body of workplace safety inspectors and an enforcement team.

That’s at the crux of it. They have to change the culture of the board.

They have to also look very carefully at these amendments and ensure that nothing is contained in them that further circumscribes the right of workers to know about the risks to which they may be exposed and to participate fully in every level of addressing risk on an ongoing basis in workplaces to ensure that workers never again face the risk of serious injury or death in circumstances which were known and which could’ve been addressed before the tragic incidents happened.

With that, I’ll take my seat.

J. Thornthwaite: I rise to support Bill 35, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act (No. 2). This bill is acting on inquest recommendations and creates a legacy for the families. It’s an important step, and we hope that the families will have some small measure of comfort that the recommendations have been taken seriously.

Those who were injured or lost loved ones in the Lakeland and Babine sawmill tragedies showed grace and dignity during the inquest and through difficult times. Our government does appreciate the thoughtful and important recommendations put forth by both inquest juries, and we take them very seriously. We are introducing this legislation in response to the inquest recommendations and to keep up the work needed to ensure that British Columbians have safe workplaces so they can come home to their families each and every day.

The legislation implements the five changes to the Workers Compensation Act that the coroners’ juries recommended in the Lakeland and the Babine mill explosions inquests. The amendments are part of ongoing, coordinated work our government has undertaken to make workplaces safer. We’ve accepted all 43 of the recommendations made by Gord Macatee in the WorkSafeBC Review and Action Plan report.

These changes include that WorkSafe B.C. implement a new investigation model that preserves the ability to conduct both cause investigations and prosecute investigations, that WorkSafe B.C. implement the sustained compliance plan for sawmills as outlined in the report and that WorkSafe B.C. significantly shorten the timelines for issuing administrative penalties and to develop a hierarchy of enforcement tools.

[1745]

The Workers Compensation Amendment Act builds on the legislative changes made under Bill 9 earlier this year that strengthen WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to promote and enforce occupational health and safety compliance in B.C. workplaces. We want to do everything that we can to make sure that what happened in the Babine and Lakeland sawmill explosions never happens again.

The amendments will require employers to immediately report to WorkSafe B.C. all workplace fires or explosions that have the potential to cause serious injuries to a worker; require employer investigation reports be provided to the workplace health and safety committee or worker health and safety representative or be posted at the worksite; specify meaningful participation for worker and employer representatives in employer accident investigations; specify a role for workplace health and safety committees to provide advice to the employer on significant proposed equipment and machinery changes that may affect worker health and safety and to allow WorkSafe B.C. to proactively assist workplace health and safety committees in resolving disagreements over health and safety matters.

Bill 35 reflects government’s commitment to workers’ safety, and we truly hope that it can create a legacy for the families affected by these horrible tragedies.

H. Bains: It is always an honour and a privilege to stand here and speak on issues that affect so many people out there. I say that this is a privilege. Very few of us get to be here and to talk about issues that affect so many people that we represent — all of us, collectively.

Today we are talking about Bill 35, officially called the Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2015. I must say that I’m saddened. I’m disappointed, and I’m angry that we are making these changes after four deaths and over 40 people seriously injured in two mill explosions — one at Burns Lake and another one at Lakeland.

I never understand. Why is it that it always takes a tragedy for people in authority to make changes? You
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could stand here and speak until you’re blue in the face, but people in authority don’t pay attention because they don’t think anything is going to happen.

This case, these two explosions — there were warnings. There were signs brought on by the workers, and the management knew. There were explosions before the big explosion. And what happened? Nothing happened, and no changes were made. WCB knew, but again, they failed to act, which is contrary to their mandate, contrary to their goals as they are laid out on their website even today. And I’ll get into that in a minute.

The real issue here is after those four families losing their loved ones — Robert Luggi, Carl Charlie, Glenn Roche and Alan Little — that here we are sitting making changes that came out of the inquests of those deaths.

I’m glad that we’re doing this. That’s fine. But can you imagine families sitting through and listening to all of this? It will not return their loved ones — the people that have left permanent scars, mentally and physically, of all those people who were injured in those explosions. It’s not going to help them to bring any closure.

[1750]

I think it still is good that we are making changes for the future. But if we are really serious about protecting the health and safety of working people, then we must look at the overall mandate of WorkSafe B.C. and, actually, how they are complying with that mandate. Let me give you what their mandate is. They say:

“The origin and fundamental value of workers compensation rests on the principle of mutual protection arising from the historic compromise” — I’ll speak about that in a minute — “in which workers relinquished their right to sue their employer, and employers agreed to fund a no-fault insurance system. The British Columbia Workers Compensation Act enshrines the historic compromise and creates WorkSafe B.C. WorkSafe B.C. is an independent agency governed by a board of directors appointed by government. The mandate of WorkSafe B.C., in concert with workers and employers, is to promote the prevention of workplace injury, illness and disease.”

That’s their mandate. Did they actually succeed in their mandate? Were they actually fulfilling their mandate when those two explosions took place? Many other people have died, been killed and injured at workplaces in addition to those two explosions. They failed. We as legislators have a responsibility to those workers who go to work in the morning — that they go home in the same shape that they came in. That’s our responsibility, through WorkSafe B.C, and it’s the government’s and the minister’s responsibility that that mandate is carried through.

But it seems to me, it’s all words — empty words. They failed when they were told that the explosion is occurring. They failed to go and intervene so that that explosion does not occur. They in fact knew years ahead, when they brought in some consultants from the United States who gave them a presentation on the dangers of sawdust in sawmills, but they sat on it and did nothing. So they failed on their first mandate — the prevention of workplace injuries, illness and disease.

Then every day…. I’m sure every member of this House gets all those workers who are injured at a workplace — they come to your offices — and the frustration that they go through in dealing with their injuries with WorkSafe B.C. These are some of the most difficult cases that I come across. With some of the people, you sit there and you feel like crying with them because they are so frustrated. The families are frustrated at how they’re treated by WorkSafe B.C. They are failing on the second part of their mandate, which is to “rehabilitate those who are injured and to provide timely return to work.”

Somehow the historic compromise is lost. All they care about, ever since this Liberal government came to power in 2001, is to somehow run WorkSafe B.C. on a business model. Now as we all know, businesses are there to make a profit and more profit and have a better return for their shareholders. WorkSafe B.C., through that historic compromise, was to provide relief to the employer so that workers would not sue them when they’re injured at the workplace and potentially bankrupt them, if there’s a decision by the court, or seriously hurt their existence. That’s the protection that the employer got.

They continue to have that protection. There’s no problem there on their side. But the workers, on the other side, when they relinquished their right to sue their employer, were given a promise that they will be looked after in the event that they are injured at a workplace.

[1755]

The first thing this government did is they reduced their benefits. That’s their third part of the mandate. On the first part, the prevention, they failed miserably. The second part was to rehab those who are injured and provide them, timely, back to work. They fail their workers on a daily basis out there. Then the other mandate is to provide fair compensation to replace workers’ loss of wages while recovering from injury. This is the clicker.

They fail on the first two, and this third one — what does this government do? You will see minister after minister and member after member of the Liberal side of the government stand up — how they care about the health and the safety of the working people. The first thing they did when they changed the act to bring WorkSafe B.C…. They changed the name, and they changed the benefits.

It used to be 75 percent of their gross pay. If you’re injured, you will get 75 percent of your gross pay, because that’s roughly what your take-home pay is after taxes. So you are almost made whole — and up to a maximum. It’s not if you are making so much money that you will continue to get the 75 percent. There was a limit. There was a cap. This government came in, and they said 90 percent of the take-home pay. How is that providing them fair compensation? That is one of their mandates. They’re failing on that side as well.

Then there’s another one: ensure sound financial management for a viable workers compensation system. I think that all of the energy on the mandate is spent on
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the last one. This is where they spend most of their time, most of their resources: ensure sound financial management for a viable workers compensation system. Again, like I said, they turned it into a business.

They treat it as a business, and who suffers as a result of that? The workers. Their health and safety is not protected at a workplace, they are not provided proper rehabilitation if they’re injured, and they are not provided fair compensation.

They are the ones who pay the price for that historic compromise. They are not getting their part of the bargain. The government side, or the workers compensation side, is not living up to the part of the agreement that they made with the workers. That’s the problem, and I’ll get into all of that in more detail.

I just want to go back — how I personally felt all those changes. In my real work life, I worked in a sawmill. Eburne sawmills is no longer there. I served on a safety committee. I served on a plant committee. It was mostly in the 1980s, and it was frustration after frustration even at that time. The old Social Credit government was also working on a business model, more to worry about the employer’s side and not to look after the workers and their health and safety at the workplace.

Then I represented workers in the logging side, the manufacturing side. As a result, I know what goes on and the frustration that the safety committees go through. As good as this is, to make changes to the WorkSafe B.C. and this act, I want everyone to understand.

They talk about workers and workers’ health and safety committees. You know what? Now 80 percent of the workplaces don’t have health and safety committee — 80 percent plus. You know why? Because there’s a limit. If you have so many workers, then you’re required to have a health and safety committee. So none of this matters to 80 percent of the workplaces. There’s no voice on behalf of the workers at those places.

[1800]

Where we have health and safety committees, this government, through this type of legislation and through the WCB, ties their hands. They’re not able to work the way they should, the way they want to, to protect their fellow workers and their health and safety.

The issue here is that we can put all those changes in place. Like I said, I’m so saddened that we have to do this after those four deaths. As tragic as it is for those families…. And my heart goes out to them. I say that even today, and I say that those families — my heart, our sympathies, are with them always. But I think they need more than that from us. They need some real changes.

When they asked for a public inquiry, this government again denied them that right so that they could find out exactly what happened, who was in charge. Who was at fault? Who failed? Who failed to protect the members of their family? This government had no interest in that. That just shows that they’re not serious about protecting workers’ health and safety, because they’re more worried about protecting the skin of the employer and those who were responsible, who failed to protect these workers.

The Minister of Labour…. I know that, genuinely, she tries, and I’ve said this in this House before. But the system that she works within — it doesn’t get done. Otherwise, why would you say no to the public inquiry?

That’s the question. The minister must ask herself why they said no to the public inquiry when the Premier went and met with those families and those communities and said: “I will be watching your back. You will have full support. We will get to the bottom of it.” Then why stop? Why did you not fulfil that promise? That’s the question I have of the minister. Why couldn’t you stand up to the Premier and say: “Look, we need to go through with the promise that you made to those families”?

It takes leadership. In a situation like this, it may take risks because you may not be the minister after you challenge the Premier, but that’s the price, sometimes, you pay to bring real change. You will be known and you will be remembered, if you are able to deliver on that, for a long time. Not now. No, you’re simply pulling the lines from the Premier. That’s basically what’s happening.

How could a Premier of the province go to the families and say, “I will provide you the full support. We’ll get to the bottom of it,” and then not fulfil that? There’s clear evidence here that the coroner will not get to the bottom. There are clearly limitations to what the coroner can do compared to the public inquiry. I think that is a real disappointment, and I think nothing is going to change until the attitudes have changed of the people in power.

If they decide that we will take the health and safety of the workers seriously, we will bring changes so that…. Those who are responsible for workers’ health and safety failed, and due to their negligence, workers were killed or seriously injured at the workplace. They can be charged, and they will go to jail.

Until that happens, it’s not going to change anything, and that is the real sad story of the day. That is a real, I would say, display of irresponsibility by this Liberal government towards the working people.

[1805]

They had an opportunity. I presented a private member’s bill in this House after those explosions, and I thought that the government would listen, because it makes sense.

The law is there. In Ottawa, the Criminal Code was changed. Bill C-45 was brought in after the Westray mine explosion in 1992, and then C-45 was passed — unanimously I might say — in the Parliament of Canada to make it a criminal offence that if someone whose responsibility it is to protect the health and safety of workers fails, they can be charged under that section.

I may give you that Bill C-45 and what it actually does. What happened under Bill C-45…. It changed the Criminal Code, and the section 217.1 was included in the Criminal Code, and this is what it says. “Every
[ Page 9656 ]
one who undertakes, or has the authority, to direct how another person does work or performs a task is under a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to that person, or any other person, arising from that work or task.”

Criminal negligence then is described under 219.1: “Every one is criminally negligent who (a) in doing anything, or (b) in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do, shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons.” That’s the law.

Since 2004, when this law was passed, over 1,000 workers are killed every year in Canada — over 1,000 workers. You would think that if there is a will and desire on the government side to implement and exercise the use of this Criminal Code, that there would be one charge. There would be at least one conviction.

Zero. None. That just shows the willingness on the government side, who have failed to live up to the intent of this law and failed to enforce the law that emanated from Bill C-45.

Then we have…. Just to come back to B.C. When this government came to power, they made changes to WorkSafe B.C., and Mr. Speaker, you would remember that in the forest industry we had a record number of deaths in one year. I believe that it was over 45 — the highest ever in history.

Why? It wasn’t that the forest industry had become more dangerous that particular year or the year after. It was the way they brought changes to WorkSafe B.C. and how they shifted responsibility of protecting the health and safety of the workers from the employer down to the person himself.

So the person at the bottom, who is a single-person contractor, is responsible for his or her health and safety. And if that person who is getting work through a contract from people higher up, from other contractors.… If they complain, you know what would happen. They would not have that job anymore.

It’s as a result — that’s a direct result, I would say — of the changes that were brought by this government that we have so many deaths in the forest industry. You know what? I might give them credit. But again, why, after having allowed 45 deaths in the forest industry…? Then you’re forced to make changes.

You were warned ahead of time: don’t make those changes. But then they brought some changes, and guess what? The deaths in the forest industry were reduced in the following years. So there’s the clear evidence, clear correlation, of their policy and those deaths in the forest industry.

[1810]

Sometimes I wonder how we as legislators, especially…. I mean, I feel responsible because they elected me to send me here to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they don’t make those crazy laws that are not good for the health and safety of the working people. How could I not stop them?

But responsibility lies with the minister and the government, because they are the ones who could change. They are the ones who bring policies. So how do you go home and sleep? You were trying to bring in a business model. That resulted in so many deaths. You weren’t thinking. You were simply listening to one side. That was to protect the employer, who could make more money, as they promised this government. They are their backers, right? They are their big backers so they do everything that they are told by their funders. And the working people and their families end up paying for all of that.

The bill that I brought to this House was promoted by the B.C. Federation of Labour. It was clearly an extension of C-45 and how we could actually implement in practice…. The government wouldn’t even look at it, wouldn’t even bring it here for debate. That is a real, real shame.

Mr. Speaker, the components of that bill were this. You tell me if that doesn’t make any sense. Even Macatee, who was the commissioner appointed at the board, recommended some of those changes that I recommended in this House.

Here, No. 1, we said: “Be it resolved that this House urge the Government to pursue prosecutions of corporate executives and directors responsible for workers’ health and safety in cases of negligence causing workplace death or serious injury.” One, dedicate a Crown prosecutor to deal with workplace fatality and serious injuries. This prosecutor will become an expert in reviewing these investigations against section 217.1 of the Criminal Code and therefore more accurately determining the likelihood of conviction.

It makes sense, and that’s what is recommended, actually, by the board commissioner that was appointed by this government.

Then two, train police services on section 217.1 to ensure that the police understand the law and know what to look for in workplace fatality and serious injury cases in order to collect the best evidence to support the Crown counsel’s decision-making.

That is also one of the recommendations that came out of the coroner’s report. Why wait? You know what it takes. We brought it here to your attention that these changes were needed and they are helpful, but the government wouldn’t go with it.

Three, make mandatory police investigations of all workplace fatalities and serious injuries. Tell me. I don’t know. What is it that they don’t understand on that side? If you’re driving a car on the road and, due to your negligence, you kill someone on the road, guess what happens. You get charged, criminally. You could go to jail.

So why is it that if someone’s negligent and a worker is killed at a workplace, nothing happens to that person who has a legal responsibility, under the law, to protect the health and safety of the worker that works under them? If they fail to protect them and they are killed or injured seriously, why does something never happen to that person?
[ Page 9657 ]

Why are there two standards? Why is a worker’s life considered to be less valuable than somebody who is killed on the road? These are family members. These are our brothers and our sisters, and these are our neighbours. These are not just numbers.

I hope that the government side will consider it seriously, because there are so many changes that are needed at WorkSafe, and that the government will consider bringing changes to that. How do you prevent injuries at workplaces? That’s what we need.

[1815]

All those people who are injured at workplaces and the pain and suffering that they go through every day, the stories that they bring to us in our offices — it is very, very troubling that this government does not listen or learn how to give them respect and dignity when they are injured at a workplace.

How do you pay them fair compensation? How do you provide real rehabilitation to go to work? Why do you cut off their benefits? Why do they have to fight tooth and nail with WorkSafe B.C. in order to get what’s theirs in the first place? It’s not them that caused the injury. It’s somebody’s negligence, especially.

Then why do those workers have to suffer because of somebody else’s fault and somebody else’s negligence? And why isn’t that person, because of whose negligence that worker is injured at a workplace, held accountable?

That’s this government’s responsibility. That’s everyone’s responsibility, because these are the people who create wealth for this province. These are the people that pay taxes. They obey the law. These are the people that pay the bills to run this government.

These are the people who, when they are injured, are not respected. Their dignity is questioned. Their honesty is questioned. That’s something this government has to learn, and we bring this to their attention time and again. Those workers bring this to their attention time and again. If only the government would listen.

It’s not good enough for government simply to make some superficial changes and say that our work is done, leave it up to WorkSafe B.C. and somehow say, “It’s not our responsibility,” as minister. Those workers should be protected in the workplace and should be looked after when they are injured. That’s what we need.

J. Martin: On behalf of my constituents in Chilliwack, I’m happy to rise today to speak to Bill 35, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act (No. 2). With this bill, our government is taking further action on workplace safety. We want to ensure that all British Columbians have a safe workplace so they can come home to their families at the end of the day.

This bill builds on legislative changes made earlier this year under Bill 9. These changes strengthen WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to promote and enforce occupational health and safety compliance in B.C. workplaces.

Tragedy struck the communities of Burns Lake and Prince George in 2012. It has been such a difficult time for those who were injured, those who lost loved ones in the Lakeland and Babine sawmill tragedies. They’ve shown grace and they have shown dignity throughout the inquest.

Jury recommendations from the Lakeland mill inquest were received on May 14 this year, while jury recommendations from the Babine Forest Products inquest were received on July 31, 2015. This government takes the inquest jury recommendations seriously. We appreciate the thoughtful and the important recommendations put forth by both inquest juries.

In 2014, Gord Macatee was asked to develop the WorkSafe B.C. action plan to improve worker safety in the province following the two sawmill tragedies. We have accepted all 43 of the recommendations made in the report. We are introducing this legislation in response to the inquest recommendations. This means that we are keeping up with the work required to ensure that British Columbians have a safe workplace.

This legislation implements the five changes to the Workers Compensation Act that were recommended in the Lakeland and Babine mill explosion inquests. These amendments are part of the ongoing, coordinated work our government has undertaken to make workplaces safer.

We are all working to ensure that B.C. has a world-class inspection and investigation regime at WorkSafe B.C. WorkSafe B.C. will implement a new investigation model. This will preserve the ability to conduct both cause investigations and prosecution investigations. WorkSafe B.C. will implement the sustained compliance plan for sawmills as outlined in the Macatee report. WorkSafe B.C. will also significantly shorten the timelines for issuing administrative penalties and develop a hierarchy of enforcement tools.

These changes build on the legislative changes made earlier this year with Bill 9, and they strengthen WorkSafe B.C.’s ability to promote and to enforce occupational health and safety compliance in B.C. workplaces.

[1820]

This government believes that the legislation before us is the right approach. Enshrining these changes in legislation shows just how serious we are about keeping British Columbians safe in their workplaces. This legislation is also a legacy for the families who lost loved ones and for those who were injured.

We want to do everything we possibly can to make sure that what happened in the Babine and Lakeland sawmill explosions never, ever happens again. This government is committed to ensuring all British Columbians have a safe workplace.

Thank you so much for this opportunity, hon. Speaker.

N. Macdonald: I take my opportunity to speak to Bill 35, the Workers Compensation Amendment Act (No. 2). This is something that I think many of us have been
[ Page 9658 ]
touched by. I was the critic for Forestry at the time of these tragedies. I think all of us…. The previous speaker on our side was the critic for Labour at the time. You look back, and you wonder what you could have done differently and if we did enough in this House to hold the government to account.

The bill comes, in my view, as part of the government’s belated and meagre response to the tragedies at Burns Lake, with the explosion at Babine that killed two workers and injured scores more, as well as the second explosion — and this is what was so inexcusable — in Prince George at Lakeland that again killed two workers and injured many, many more, I think 22.

The dangers of wood dust are well known. Anybody who has worked in a sawmill or anybody who has any relatives that work in sawmills…. People know that wood dust is a danger, that if it builds up, it can create explosions. That is well known. If sawmills do not manage dust, there’s danger of explosion.

Dust management, let’s be clear, is a cost to business, and it has an impact on production. Companies have to be required to manage this predictable danger by regulatory agencies that have their legislative responsibilities set by this Legislature, and there has to be a minister who is responsible for making sure that legislation is enforced and is responsible for the proper running of the agencies that oversee these businesses, these sawmills.

In B.C.’s case, right now it’s WorkSafe B.C., which is the agency set up to supposedly ensure worker safety. Now, this government has the responsibility, ultimately, to ensure that sawmills do not explode. That should be a fairly straightforward process. WorkSafe should inspect mills and use powers given to it to ensure that businesses comply. That didn’t happen. It did not happen in Burns Lake. But inexcusably it was allowed to happen, mere months later, again in Prince George.

Now, when I was a principal at a school here in British Columbia, we had responsibilities. The principal was responsible for safety — for running the safety committee but ultimately responsible for the safety of children and the safety of staff. The mindset that was drilled into us by administration was that there were no accidents. There are rather failures of practices or failures of execution. Clearly, with the explosions of mills, there is a dramatic failure here of both. There’s a failure. It’s not an accident; it is a failure.

There are sawmills in all parts of the world, and I think this is why we need a public inquiry rather than simply tinkering here. There are deeper issues at stake. There is the culture, the culture within not only this organization but within those responsible for environmental oversight, for mining oversight. There is a culture that is dictated to it by this government that makes certain things not inevitable but predictable.

[1825]

Do sawmills that exist in all parts of the world explode? Were there two explosions in a close time period that happened in Russia? Did it happen in China? Did it happen in the Congo or the United States or Venezuela? No, it happened here in British Columbia. They exploded here in B.C., from a well-known danger: accumulation of sawdust.

Who was held responsible for that failure? Who was held responsible? Are there legal repercussions? No. Are there are there political repercussions? No. The culture at WorkSafe B.C., in my experience, is to look after businesses’ interests, to the detriment of workers. When that is done, as I said, there are predictable consequences. There is a deliberate culture established in this oversight agency, as there is in all government agencies established by this government.

Let’s be clear on this. This is partially because…. As the critic, I listened to some of what the government said on these things, about it being unpredictable. And I’ve found, once again, that anytime I give the government the…. You know, if I have faith in what they say, I’m disappointed. And it’s true again here.

Let’s be clear on this. There was a B.C. Liberal fundraiser. It was last night or the night before, in Vancouver, for mining and forestry companies. The B.C. Liberals operate using corporate donations, and a whole host of political decisions flow from the fact that the B.C. Liberals are funded by corporate donations — millions. It speaks to the culture in WorkSafe. It speaks to the bill. Millions. It is why corporate donations, in my view, should be banned.

I think it’s clear. Any thinking person would understand that the B.C. Liberals…. Sometimes they call it red tape, but it is responsible regulation to protect British Columbians at their worksite that is being removed — not needless interference. It is safety for workers that is compromised. The trade-off on that comes with political donations and support. Everybody knows that.

It suits the corporate agenda to have weak safety legislation, to have weak oversight and weak enforcement.

Deputy Speaker: Member, just keep the relevance to the bill, please.

N. Macdonald: It is an agenda B.C. Liberals enable and profit from, and the consequences are predictable. They are predictable in what we saw at Burns Lake and what we saw at Lakeland.

When I started as an MLA, I worked with families of those who lost their lives at the Sullivan mine in Kimberly — four lives lost on Teck property, in a shed that had no oxygen. The minesite didn’t follow rules for registering when entering a closed minesite. The minesite did not follow rules for monitoring workers working alone. All four died in a shed that was built with no due diligence. The oxygen-depleted atmosphere in the shed that the government insisted…. This was government communications. They insisted it was so surprising and unprecedented.
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But it wasn’t surprising, and it wasn’t unprecedented at all. There were no fines. There were no legal implications at all, and there were no political consequences. We even needed to fight to get any sort of an inquest, and when we did, the recommendations were that the government should actually enforce the rules that were in place. Now Teck has donated over $1 million to the B.C. Liberals. They hosted last evening’s B.C. Liberal fundraiser.

Where does worker safety fit in? What is the broader public interest that is compromised when there are decisions like this made? And the bigger question is: has anything changed?

It is oversight on every agency where you see this consistently. You see it with Mount Polley, a massive failure of B.C. Liberal oversight — a massive failure that was, again, predictable. Again, no one was held responsible, legally or politically.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

N. Macdonald: So here we are with some tinkering of WorkSafe B.C. It is a political fix so that government can say it followed the recommendations of the coroner recommendations. It is tinkering.

Deputy Speaker: Member, keep it related to the bill, please.

N. Macdonald: After the Burns Lake explosion, we know that WorkSafe was worried about irritating mill operators by enforcing dust management, and predictably, we had another explosion.

[1830]

We know that WorkSafe knew about the dust management issues and was concerned that any attempt to put in place a strategy to deal with the issue would irritate workers. What does that say about the culture of WorkSafe? That is the larger issue here. It is not an exercise that tinkering will fix. It is a broader culture within that organization that puts business ahead of workers, when what is needed is a balance.

You know, if governments want safe operations, then I think it should be obvious to even the casual observer that failures are investigated in a way so that it doesn’t happen again.

I mean, we can all see that when a commercial aircraft crashes, it’s taken seriously. Swissair off the Nova Scotia coast. The plane was brought from the bottom of the ocean in pieces and put back together. No expense was spared. No expense was spared to make sure that there was a rigorous investigation. There was no suggestion that there was an agenda to protect liability if mistakes were made, and there were consequences for the failure.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

All of those things take place, and when people look at an investigation, it is clear to them that there is a serious attempt to make sure that it does not happen again. Is that what’s going on here? Are we making a serious attempt to make sure it does not happen again?

Why do these accidents always happen in B.C.? Why does Mount Polley happen here? Why do these explosions of mills happen here? If we don’t want them to happen, then there has to be a dramatically different culture within the organizations that are there to protect the public good.

You know, in my mind, only a full public inquiry would do that. Not one of the phony investigations that…. There’s a plethora of them now with the B.C. Liberals going on. I can’t even keep track of all the investigations that are going on. But they are phony for the most part, with no real attempt to understand the degree of failure that allowed two catastrophic….

Madame Speaker: Member. Columbia River–Revelstoke, there has been extreme latitude allowed. Please draw your remarks back to the bill.

N. Macdonald: Bill 35 talks about and tries to correct some of the lack of oversight that this government has had that allowed the catastrophic explosions at Burns Lake and at Prince George. A real attempt to understand the degree of failure that allowed these explosions from a well-known cause, dust….

WorkSafe B.C., which is what the Workers Compensation Board is called here in B.C. under the B.C. Liberals, just so people understand…. Workers compensation acts in Canadian provinces date back a century, and they are a compromise intended to protect both workers and business. Workers lost the right to sue, but workers were supposed to be looked after, and they are not.

The B.C. Liberals made changes. I’ll just give you one example.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Excuse me, Columbia River–Revelstoke.

Members. Remarks are directed through the Chair.

N. Macdonald: I’ll give you one example that ministers opposite voted for. It just gives you an example of the culture in WorkSafe B.C. It used to be that we had an organization for 100 years. The deal was that workers were looked after, and businesses couldn’t be sued. But as soon as this government came in, changes were made that inevitably led to favouritism for business interests to the detriment of workers.

The B.C. Liberals made changes that have cost workers…. It was almost $1 billion from 2002 to 2006. It
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saved industry money by allowing them to keep workers’ money, with workers unable to resort to the courts.

I cannot be the only MLA, and it can’t just be opposition MLAs, that get workers dealing with WorkSafe B.C. in their offices, telling them how skewed the system is and how much it is there for the favour of big business.

WorkSafe B.C., as it is now called, is supposed to be even-handed. But in this case, they denied the workers’ union their legal rights to visit the site of the Babine explosion. Why?

[1835]

We know WorkSafe B.C. knew about the dangers of dust explosions. Of course they knew. It’s there in internal documents. They were talking about it.

We know that they talked about the danger — specifically, the danger with the pine beetle wood. They were having discussions. Did the workers they were supposed to protect know about those discussions? Were they alerted of the danger?

In 2010, WorkSafe B.C. hosted a course on the dangers of dust explosions in sawmills. They had a course. And still, when the first explosion took place at Burns Lake, it was a surprise. Unprecedented. “We have no idea how that happened.” That was the government line.

What is the cost to not dealing with it properly in the first place? First, a failure caused Burns Lake. Second, to allow mere months later for it to happen again — what does that speak to? It speaks to a culture. Something far more needs to be done rather than simply tinkering. That may upset ministers and bother them, but the fact is if there’s going to be meaningful change and this is not going to happen again, there has to be a public inquiry. There have to be consequences for what took place.

WorkSafe B.C. knew dust was a problem. WorkSafe B.C. had courses that showed that they were worried about dust. In the years leading up to the tragedy at Burns Lake, there were at least three wood dust explosions in the Prince George area. There was damage to facilities. There were injuries, but there is absolutely no evidence that government alerted anyone. There were no hazard alerts sent out. There were no requirements to do things differently. There were no increased inspections. No evidence of fines. It just allowed it to happen. Allowed it to happen again and again — three times.

A day prior to the Burns Lake tragedy there was a fireball at Lakeland mill. There was an explosion. Was that reported? Did WorkSafe go to every site and have emergency inspections or alerts to any of these companies? None of that was done. Isn’t that the most obvious thing that you would do if your priority, as an organization, was to actually ensure worker safety? But this government has made it clear to WorkSafe B.C. that that is not the priority. That is not the priority. And the evidence is there. The evidence is there.

No other jurisdiction has mills blowing up. It does not happen. It is there. The cause was known, and months after it happened, you have another explosion.

The minister has tried to tell me that that is acceptable, that somebody shouldn’t be held accountable for that because nobody has been. Nobody has been held accountable. It led to no…. The fireball at Lakeland. What if somebody had actually taken that seriously? What if there had been action?

It is the next day that the Babine mill in Burns Lake explodes, killing two and at least 20 seriously injured. And that is somehow acceptable. That’s okay? There’s no consequences for that?

Let’s go further. A month after the Burns Lake explosion, WorkSafe B.C. produces a report that identifies wood dust as the cause of the Burns Lake Babine mill explosion. Now, we weren’t told that in the House. That information wasn’t shared with us. In fact, it wasn’t shared broadly with industry either. But WorkSafe B.C. knew and produced a report that said that wood dust was the cause of that Burns Lake explosion, which I think most people had presumed. But they knew it.

They know the cause. Wouldn’t you think that there would be a flurry of activity, an energetic response, given the fact that lives were at stake? But such is — and such was — the culture at WorkSafe B.C. that instead of looking after the safety of workers whose lives depend on them, they did nothing.

[1840]

This is the telling part. They expressed concern about irritating the owners of the mills, right? That is the concern they expressed.

The B.C. Liberals — I have no qualms about saying it — are responsible for the culture at WorkSafe B.C., as they are responsible for the lax enforcement and oversight in one regulatory body after another in this province. These are bodies that are supposed to protect workers, bodies that are supposed to protect our resources, bodies and agencies that are supposed to protect the environment, but all compromised, and done purposefully and done with predictable results.

Just months after this report is completed, Lakeland mill explodes again, this time far more violently. It kills two workers and injuries 22 others. So three explosions in and around Prince George: an explosion at Lakeland; the massive, fatal explosion at Burns Lake. Wood dust was identified as the cause by WorkSafe B.C. and still no action to protect workers at sawmills across this province. That is unbelievable.

Interjection.

N. Macdonald: But there is more. WorkSafe B.C. is called…. Minister, you know this. WorkSafe B.C. is called…

Madame Speaker: Member, through the Chair.
[ Page 9661 ]

N. Macdonald: …by a worker at Lakeland, and he tells WorkSafe B.C. that wood dust buildup is so bad at Lakeland that he fears that there will be another explosion, like at Burns Lake. That’s there. That is on the record.

WorkSafe B.C. is phoned by a worker at Lakeland, and they are told that the wood dust buildup is so bad at Lakeland that he fears there will be another explosion, like at Burns Lake. What’s the response from WorkSafe B.C.? I see no evidence of it at all. A full three days later WorkSafe B.C. does show up at Lakeland. They do note the sawdust buildup, but they don’t talk to workers, and they don’t order a cleanup. They don’t enforce regulations that are there. I mean, 5.81 in the regulation deals with measures to protect sawdust buildup in mills, but nothing’s done.

It’s at this point that Lakeland mill explodes. Now, years later, we have this legislation, and a minor improvement at most, but workers deserve better. Workers deserve better than this. The families deserve better.

It has been tremendously frustrating when I think of my role as the critic. I think that somehow I failed, that I was not diligent enough in taking the government at its word when they said that they were on top of this, that they didn’t know what the cause was. Then you find out later that they were discussing it, that their concerns were more about irritating the owners of mills rather than diligently going after something that had just happened.

It was a real threat. Burns Lake had blown up. It should never have. That was predictable. The problems were well known. WorkSafe B.C. was supposed to be looking out for these things. They had talked about it as an issue. They had talked about pine beetle. All of that was internally discussed, but the culture of that organization is such that they did nothing. They did not want to bother their political bosses. They got unlucky, and a tragedy happened.

But the sheer, mind-numbing incompetence of allowing it to happen twice, to know that the cause of the explosion at Burns Lake was identified and talked about…. Nothing was said in this House. Nothing was said in this Legislature. Nothing was said to other businesses. No orders went out. And predictably, we have another tragedy.

The Premier can say all the words she wants about caring and about how they feel for the families. Well, the families don’t want words of sympathy. They want something that they have been very clear about. They want a public inquiry. They don’t want Wally Oppal or somebody. They want somebody who is neutral, somebody who will look at this issue and put it in front of the people of this province, and they will look at it….

Interjection.

[1845]

N. Macdonald: Now the member who represents that area talks about the coroner. We all know the problems with that coroner’s inquest. They are well documented, and we talked about it here in this House. We know the limitations of a coroner’s inquest. Steelworkers, who represent the millworkers there, know the weakness of the coroner’s inquest, and the families do.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members.

Columbia River–Revelstoke, please wait a moment.

Surrey-Newton, if you’re joining the debate, you do so from your own seat.

N. Macdonald: The families know. Let the families judge. Let people in B.C. judge. Do a public inquiry. Do this properly. We have a massive failure, and if you take massive failures and you allow them to stand, then you have to understand that you are complicit in the results that follow.

Now, we have seen this again and again. The members weren’t happy when I talked about Mount Polley or talked about other failures, but they are the same problem. They are a problem about a government that has no balance, that looks after those that donate to them before they look after the people of the broader public of British Columbia. There are problems with that. What is needed is, clearly, a public inquiry. Workers demand it. Families want it. Families deserve it.

With that, I’ll wrap up my comments. As always, I thank members for the opportunity to speak. As I say, I look for some justice for the family and for an opportunity to make the real changes that are needed — not the tinkering, not the minor changes. Enough of the platitudes about how much people care. Do something real. Do something that families are asking for. Do something that people want to see, which is something that is real.

Now I know the minister is bothered by this, and I know the minister has feelings. I’m not aiming this at the minister. I know that the minister has been put in a place where she has to deal with the mess that’s been handed to her.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Members will come to order.

N. Macdonald: But the fact of the matter is that there are real consequences to decisions that the B.C. Liberals have participated in.

With that, I thank members for the opportunity to speak about this.

Hon. P. Fassbender: I rise to enter into the debate on Bill 35. I have always been a strong supporter of the democratic process and the right for members of this House to express their opinions. I think that’s something we all value. But I am disturbed by some of the comments
[ Page 9662 ]
that I’ve heard from members opposite, when they use words like “phony,” “disingenuous,” “lies” — words that really do not respect the issue that we are debating here.

Those families who were affected by these tragedies have clearly stated what their pain is, and I know from seeing my colleague, the minister responsible….

Point of Order

Madame Speaker: The member for North Island rises on what matter?

C. Trevena: On a point of order. The minister used very unparliamentary language a few minutes ago, and I would hope that he’d withdraw that.

Hon. P. Fassbender: Madame Speaker, you can rule on that.

Madame Speaker, I did not accuse the members opposite of lying. I said they used words like “lies” and “misinformation.” I did say that.

Madame Speaker: I would caution all members on the use of parliamentary language.

Please continue.

Debate Continued

Hon. P. Fassbender: Thank you, Madame Speaker.

[1850]

What really concerns me here is that I know how much the tragedies, the injuries, the loss of life affected every single person in this House. We clearly recognized that changes needed to be made. This bill clearly takes the steps that are necessary as the result of two inquests and recommendations that came out of that, coupled with the other recommendations that came out by the Gord Macatee report.

I clearly know, as a member of this House, that we learn from every situation that we face. The unfortunate thing is, when lives are affected, families are affected. That touches the very heart of our responsibility as members of this Legislature and as members of government.

I know that the minister responsible has taken this to heart every single day since those tragedies happened. That’s why we’re bringing in legislative amendments that will ensure that the appropriate regulatory framework is there to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

But the important thing in all of this is the changes that are included in the previous reports. It’s that WorkSafe B.C. does implement new procedures, new investigation models that ensure that there is the opportunity for deeper investigations and, yes, even prosecutions when those are identified as being appropriate.

But our hope on this side of the House — and I’m sure it is on the other side of the House — is that we never face these kinds of situations again. That is why this legislation is here. That is why the changes that are being proposed in the legislation are being done to ensure that the appropriate steps are there to make sure it doesn’t happen.

We clearly know that this legislation is the right approach, that it is going to deal with the reality of those situations. Enshrining the changes in legislation will ensure that the families clearly understand that the government is responding to their pain and their loss by making the changes that we are.

At the heart of the government’s agenda, and the minister’s agenda as the minister responsible, is to make sure that every single British Columbian is safe in their workplace, no matter where that is in the province. That is a key element in terms of the changes that are before us.

We want to do everything we can to make sure what happened at Babine and Lakeland never happen again. I know that the amendments that are before us will require the regimen with employers to report to WorkSafe B.C. on any fires or explosions that have the potential to cause any potential injury to any worker. The investigation protocols that are included in that are rigorous, and they will ensure that those things are dealt with expeditiously.

Noting the hour, I reserve my right in this debate, and I ask that we now adjourn debate.

Hon. P. Fassbender moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. P. Fassbender moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:54 p.m.

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