2016 Legislative Session: Fifth 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)

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 34, Number 7

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

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

The House met at 1:32 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

C. Trevena: Madame Speaker, I’d like to thank you and those who attended the event that you organized for Equal Voice in the lounge this lunchtime. It was great to have the opportunity to talk about women entering politics. I have to thank Equal Voice Carolyn Jack, who has been very influential over the last few years for Equal Voice in B.C., and also, the amazing singer who came along and sang some very powerful music — Louise Rose.

Madame Speaker, thank you very much. I think that all members who attended found it a very interesting, engaging and stimulating lunch.

Hon. N. Letnick: On behalf of the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and the Premier and myself, it was, indeed, a pleasure just now to meet with two firefighters from our local Kelowna area, Jason Picklyk and Mike Hill. I would just like to say thank you to all firefighters everywhere for all the good work they do. Would the House please make them welcome.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Polak: In this House, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 3, and in the little House, the estimates of the Ministry of International Trade and Minister Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 3 — EMPLOYMENT AND ASSISTANCE
FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2016

(continued)

[R. Lee in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no more speakers, I call the Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation to close the debate.

[1335]

Hon. Michelle Stilwell: It’s very comforting for me to see that we’re at the end of the past few days of debate on Bill 3. We’ve had some great commentary and some commentary that obviously had nothing at all to do with the bill that I brought forward. While it’s encouraging for me to know that the members opposite will be voting in favour of this very positive legislation, I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to ensure that I correct some of the misinformation as we go forward, the misinformation that is still being communicated.

Firstly, I’d like to say that it is true that this bill will immediately affect about 1,000 people with disabilities throughout our province who are applying for disability assistance. We expect that number to continue to grow in coming years. What I want to make clear is: members opposite have talked about 90,000 individuals on income assistance and their concern for those individuals not being included.

I just want to clarify that 90,000 individuals in this province already have the PWD designation, so this change to the bill will not be applying to those individuals. It’s a very simple fact. I don’t know if it was intentional or whether it was something that was overlooked, but I just want to say that those individuals will be exempt from this category because they are already receiving the PWD designations.

I also, for the record, want to acknowledge that PWD earning exemptions were never eliminated by this side of the House. However, under the leadership of the opposition, the income assistance rates were cut, and in ten years’ time, they only raised the rates $10.

One of the other things that came forward during this bill and during this debate was the fact that members were mentioning that many of the doctors or nurse practitioners and other professionals obligated to fill out the forms for PWD were struggling to get those forms filled out, and in some places in the province, they were having difficulties getting the access to the assistance.

I simply want to tell members opposite, if there is ever a situation where this arises, I simply want to know. I want to ensure that people are getting the access to the disability assistance that they deserve, and I want to ensure that the medical practitioners who are obligated to fill out the forms are doing what they are intended to do, plain and simple. So again, please bring those cases to me so that I can ensure that any issues are remedied.

The other thing that came up during this debate on the bill was the comparison to Alberta’s disability assistance rates. I have to, again, say it’s very misleading for us to compare something that is really apples and oranges.

I’d like us to acknowledge, for the record, that here in British Columbia, we actually help, per capita…. Two times as many people are eligible here in British Columbia for PWD. In Alberta, the income supports, the income for the severely handicapped, also known as AISH, have a higher disability payment, but the supports are far different than what we provide here in British Columbia.

I’d like to just point out the actual numbers. For people in British Columbia, we have 94,003 cases of PWD, where
[ Page 11180 ]
in Alberta, there’s about 52,000. Per capita we support 3.1, whereas in Alberta, 1.9, in their support for people with disabilities. Part of that is because B.C.’s eligibility criteria are much more broad than what we see in Alberta. Alberta’s disability programs require that individuals have a permanent and enduring disability, whereas B.C. stipulates that you can have a severe mental or physical impairment with the duration of two years — not forever, not permanent, not enduring.

Alberta also requires that the condition substantially limits a person’s ability to earn a livelihood, whereas B.C.’s disability assistance program also does not refer to employability — only that the condition directly impacts a person’s ability to perform daily living activities.

[1340]

I am glad that I could have the opportunity to put that on the record. There has been a great deal of this debate that has swayed to the recent changes for the PWD increase to the rates along with the bus pass. Unfortunately, the members opposite have taken this opportunity, during the debate, to continue to misrepresent the recently announced $170 million increase to people with disabilities in this province.

Let me take a brief moment to clarify the facts yet again — one more time. Our government is providing a $170 million investment over the next three years to increase the rates for people with disabilities in British Columbia. We are raising the rates, and we’re also bringing fairness to the system and more choice for people with disability assistance.

We will continue to provide the annual bus pass for anyone on disability assistance who chooses it. It is not being cancelled. It is not being removed. It is still offered. People can access transportation in the communities just the same way that they have accessed it before. There is no change.

On top of that, those who have the bus pass will see a $25 rate increase on their monthly cheques. As of September 1, everyone with the disability designation, persons with disabilities on assistance, no matter where they live, will receive an equal amount of funding provided by this government.

That means that 45,000 people in this province who were not receiving any transportation subsidy will now receive extra support. That is stuff that we heard from the disability consultation that we did in prior years, where we heard from individuals who lived in those rural communities who didn’t see how it was fair — and that there was inequity in the system.

Just for the record, I will speak to a few comments that we received from people during that consultation. One comment was: “When I moved to Princeton, my car allowance was cut because I was told the area was not served by B.C. Transit. Therefore, I didn’t have transportation access.”

Another says: “I live in rural areas with no bus service. I don’t receive any assistance for transportation. How does the government expect me to get around? I live 45 minutes away from town.”

Another says: “Why do you think it’s important that we reduce barriers and increase accessibility for persons with disabilities in B.C.? Obviously, accessibility includes transportation options, which are often not available in rural communities and not affordable in cities.”

There are many, many that I could highlight from people who have said that persons with disabilities who don’t live close to rapid transit were not receiving access to transportation needs, although they still had transportation needs.

There is plenty more that I’d like to set straight on the record regarding Bill 3. I look forward to having that opportunity during the committee stage to set the record straight so that we can continue to look at how we are ensuring that we are caring for people with disabilities in this province, that we are providing them with the supports that are necessary.

In conclusion to debate on Bill 3, I once again want to express that this bill is amending the Employment and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Act. It will simplify and improve the application and adjudication process for up to 1,000 people who live in B.C. It means less stress. It means faster access to the disability assistance for those individuals and their families. With these other changes that we have also made in government, it will continue to make life a little bit easier for people with disabilities.

It’s a change that makes sense. It is something I know, and I hope that all members of this House will support it. Again, I look forward to committee stage where I can go more in-depth to the facts and clear up any misinformation that we’ve heard during the debate.

I move second reading of Bill 3.

Motion approved.

Hon. Michelle Stilwell: I move that the bill be referred to the Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting after today.

Bill 3, Employment and Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Amendment Act, 2016, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. Polak: I call second reading debate on Bill 9.

BILL 9 — MOTOR DEALER
AMENDMENT ACT, 2016

Hon. M. Morris: I move that Bill 9 now be read a second time.

[1345]

These amendments will modernize the Motor Dealer Act to ensure that it continues to protect consumers as the motor vehicle sales industry in this province, an in-
[ Page 11181 ]
dustry that currently employs more than 36,000 people and contributes approximately $12 billion to $15 billion annually to the provincial GDP, continues to grow.

Therein lies the purpose of these changes: to better protect consumers and support a responsible and professional industry. One key change to modernize the act is the introduction of a range of progressive administrative enforcement options that align with best practices in other consumer protection legislation in B.C.

The new enforcement tools include the authority to receive undertakings, make compliance orders and impose administrative penalties. These additional tools will enhance the ability of the regulator, the vehicle sales authority, to address contraventions of the act in a more timely and effective manner when compared to the options currently available.

Further changes will enhance administrative fairness and transparency by providing, for example, authority for the registrar of motor dealers to reconsider decisions regarding licensing and enforcement, as well as authority for the board of the compensation fund to reconsider its decisions respecting consumer applications for compensation from motor dealers.

Fairness and transparency are also supported by modernizing the provisions for the services of notices and orders under the act. Additional and contemporary means of service, such as email, have been added, as well as provisions for deeming the receipt of a notice or an order.

Administrative penalties that are imposed are to be paid into a new motor dealer consumer advancement fund. As the name suggests, money in this fund is to be spent for specific purposes, such as promoting education about the act, which will further help protect consumers and support a responsible, professional industry.

A further change is the ability to establish regulations for the licensing of a growing segment of the industry: used vehicle wholesalers and brokers who act on behalf of consumers in the purchase of a vehicle. With this change, we can better ensure that wholesalers and brokers understand licensing requirements under the statute in a manner similar to motor dealers and salespersons. In doing so, we can better ensure that consumers are receiving the information they need to make informed purchases.

Amendments will also enable the transfer of trusteeship of the existing motor dealer customer compensation fund from government to the vehicle sales authority. The transfer of the fund will help reduce administrative costs, red tape, by centralizing all management functions in one place within the authority.

Finally, to further support a responsible and professional motor vehicle sales industry, an additional regulation-making authority is proposed to establish and enforce a code of professional conduct for motor dealers and all licensees under the act.

These amendments will ensure that the vehicle sales authority has the tools it needs to effectively regulate motor vehicle sales in this province, and in doing so, support the continued professionalism of the motor dealer industry in this province.

M. Farnworth: It’s my pleasure to rise today and speak to this particular piece of legislation. It’s an important bill, Bill 9, Motor Dealer Amendment Act, 2016. I can tell the minister responsible that this side of the House will be supporting the bill. There are some questions we have.

I also want to take this opportunity, in my remarks, to hopefully make the case to address what I think is one of the most egregious errors in this province. I will come to that in a moment.

The minister outlined, in his remarks, the importance of the automobile industry to the province of British Columbia. It employs some 36,000 people. That’s a lot of jobs, jobs that are not just in Vancouver or Prince George. They’re in every community in our province.

I know that, myself, I bought my new vehicle at the beginning of last year at Metro Motors in Port Coquitlam, a dealership that has been there since at least 1965. They have been successful because they offer good service. I can tell you that when I bought my vehicle — I don’t want to sound like I’m advertising; I’m not — the experience I had getting a new vehicle was terrific.

[1350]

In part, it’s because there’s strong legislation governing the sales practices, and there’s an understanding, as a consumer, to know what to expect. And it doesn’t hurt — the fact that there is nothing quite like that new car smell when you get a brand-new vehicle.

Interjection.

M. Farnworth: Sorry? That will be in the next vehicle.

But this one’s perfect, particularly since we’ve got a new dog, and it can jump in the back, and there’s lots of room, and you know.

But the point I’m making is that when you purchase a new vehicle, when you purchase a vehicle, not only are you supporting a local business in your community, not only are you supporting the people that work there; you’re supporting the automobile sector in this country, because most of us…. The vehicles made here in this country are jobs that our neighbours help to build in other parts of Canada. It’s a tremendous stimulus to the economy of this province and this country. It adds some $12 billion to $15 billion a year in GDP.

That’s terrific. Think of all the tax revenue that flows to the Ministry of Finance from that. Think of all the revenue that goes into government from that, that’s able to provide health care and education and all the things that we take as a foundation of a society in this province.

We all get that. I know the minister gets that. I know my colleague from upcountry gets that. I know my colleague from Burnaby-Lougheed gets that. I know the
[ Page 11182 ]
Minister of Environment gets it. I know the Minister of Education gets it.

But did you know, Minister and colleagues, there are some members in this chamber who don’t understand the value of a new vehicle, of buying a new car?

Interjection.

M. Farnworth: My colleague from Langley says: “Say it isn’t so.” Unfortunately, it is true, and I am not being partisan when I say this, because while one of these individuals is a government member, there’s also an opposition member who does not understand what happens when you buy a new vehicle — the spinoff you create, the jobs that you encourage, the local businesses that you support, the taxes that go into the Ministry of Finance when those budgetary decisions are made that allow us to provide the social programs we all depend on.

In my remarks, what I hope to do is…. I think one of the goals that the minister is trying to accomplish by bringing in these amendments, which will help to strengthen consumer confidence, which will help to create a stronger sense of certainty for many consumers, is that buying a new car is not only a good thing to do; it is a safe thing to do.

Hopefully, after the passage of this legislation, the Minister of Finance, for example, and the member for Nanaimo, one of whom last bought a new car in 1988 and the other, I think, whom last bought a new vehicle in 1992, might go, “You know what? Now that we’ve this legislation in that strengthens consumer protection….”

Now that we’ve got these new amendments in, that will give them greater confidence that when they go into either Abbotsford or Nanaimo and then they pass one of the dealerships in their community, they might now be tempted to not just drive on by but to go, “Hey, maybe it’s time to come into the 21st century,” and go see the remarkable products that the automotive sector has in this province and in this country.

As the Minister of Environment quite rightly pointed out, why should we be using 20th century technology, technology that was…? There was no Google when the Minister of Finance bought his vehicle. There were no cell phones that anyone would want to admit using today when the member for Nanaimo bought his vehicle.

[1355]

The world and technology have come a long way. You can get a hybrid car. You can get an electric vehicle. You can really show, for example, your commitments, in terms of the government and its carbon reduction print by getting a new vehicle like that.

You can show your commitments to jobs in your local community by saying: “Hey, you know what? I’m going to buy a new car that was built by someone, probably in Ontario, that has been shipped out here on our transport network, out to British Columbia, and that has been detailed by someone working in my local community. I’m creating jobs, and I’m supporting our economy and contributing significant taxes to the Finance Ministry so that they are able to provide the services that we all rely on.”

I think that would be a great thing. I mean, I would love to see the Minister of Finance and the member for Nanaimo….

Interjection.

M. Farnworth: They could go together, as my colleague says. One could see it. I can just picture it now, the two of them. And as I think all of us know, both those members are famous, or infamous, within both our caucuses, I think, for not parting with a dime lightly — being, I don’t want to say tight, but frugal.

You know what? I think the new car dealers of this province would love it if they were able to say: “You know what? As a result of this legislation, we sold two new cars to two members of this House who were a little skeptical about whether or not they should buy a new car.”

To help further convince them in their decision-making, and maybe get them to the point, I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the sections in this bill and exactly what those sections will allow.

For example, the minister mentioned the progressive enforcement tools, the increase in penalties and timely resolution of disputes. I think those are important. Those are important issues that need to be addressed. Those are the kinds of amendments that I think we are looking for and are looking forward to at committee stage into getting more detail on. There’s an opportunity for the minister, in his answers, to help convince our colleagues that a new car should be in their future.

The bill has received a lot of support across the industry. It’s received the support of the registrar. Now, just so that people are aware, it used to be in governments, and now it is self-regulating outside of government, but it does have a strong regulatory framework. These amendments will see further powers transferred to the registrar and the strengthened regulatory framework.

It’s been endorsed by the registrar, the motor dealers industry, the Automotive Retailers Association, the New Car Dealers Association. All have been supportive of the changes that are being proposed in this piece of legislation.

The amendments will strengthen the case for consumers purchasing vehicles from licensed dealers, salespersons and licensed businesses. It builds on what’s already been in place. We have had good legislation in this province for a very long time.

One of the aspects of this bill that’s important was brought in, in 1983, and that is the compensation fund. The customer compensation fund is capped at $20,000. That is there so if there is an issue and a problem, consumers have access to be able to get some of that — as a
[ Page 11183 ]
way to look at a loss, for example, that may not be due to their fault — if it comes under the legislation and if there’s an issue with the dealership and things aren’t quite the way they were supposed to have been.

That will be one of the areas that I will look for the minister to address, because that $20,000 cap doesn’t rise. I’m wondering as to why that would be. I’d like to know, for example: is it because there has not been a significant increase in the need to access that particular fund, or the types of disputes have been such that there has not been an inflationary increase or any significant increase in costs being awarded?

[1400]

I want to make sure that people aren’t losing. The initial fund was brought in for $20,000. That covered the cost of when there was a dispute and a claims settlement. Over time, those things can change. So I’d like some clarification around that at committee stage.

Another section of the act that is important…. This is something that I think many communities have had to deal with. While it doesn’t deal specifically, it does start to expand enforcement tools in some of the areas where we sometimes get complaints in communities — for example, curbers, as they are popularly called. This bill doesn’t fully deal with that, but it does start to take some steps in that area. For example, it creates three new categories of licensees.

One of the critical ones under there are wholesalers who sell used vehicles to dealers, broker agents and broker representatives. Currently wholesalers are not legally obligated to disclose the history of used vehicles to licensed dealers. That, I think, is a significant change, because quite frankly, I think the public does want to know where their vehicle comes from. Certainly, I think that dealers want to know where their vehicle is coming from, particularly as we see the significant change that’s occurred.

It’s very much related to fluctuations in the dollar, with the greater ability to sell a car from Canada down in the United States and a car from the United States up here in Canada. Of course, that’s related to the ebb and flow of the relationship between the Canadian dollar and the U.S. dollar. The bottom line is this: that will be an important change that’s part of this bill and something that we’re looking forward to exploring further in committee stage, as to how that will work.

Some of the other areas where there is expanded administrative enforcement…. This is what I was talking about. It increases the ability to tackle curbers, businesses that sell vehicles without the required licence. Currently the registrars themselves have admitted that they have few tools to be able to deploy against curbers under the current legislation and that what options there are, are either ineffective or impractical.

This legislation will start to change that. They can issue a ticket of $288 under the Offence Act. Fines levied by courts, for example, and other tools are available. This act will help to, I think, deal with some of the impacts around curbers. Again, those are some of the areas that we will want to talk about at committee stage.

In all, what this does is it modernizes the act. By the very fact that we all want to ensure that consumers have stronger legislation, that consumers have legislation that protects their interests, I think that this bill is supported, has broad-based support. It’s a reason why I think all of us in this House can support it. At the end of the day, as I said, hopefully, some members in our respective caucuses will now feel a stronger sense of confidence so that when they decide that their vehicles, as ancient as they are, need to be replaced, they will go and get a new vehicle.

I note that I probably have spoken for about 25 minutes, and I probably have about five minutes. Oh, I have ten minutes left.

Interjection.

M. Farnworth: Oh, oh. Obviously a time of true confessions. The minister has an ’85 Fiero. Well, Minister, hopefully, I’ve been able to make the case to you that this is improved legislation and that you are….

Interjection.

M. Farnworth: Powered by natural gas. This legislation will hopefully convince you, too, that an ’85….

[1405]

We may actually now have members in this House who were not born when you bought that car, Minister. That is saying something. So if we’re talking antiquated technology….

Interjection.

M. Farnworth: Exactly. Exactly.

Hon. Speaker, before….

Deputy Speaker: Order. Order, please.

M. Farnworth: I can see the Speaker probably wanting me to get back to the bill.

I think I’ve made the comments and remarks that I want to on this particular piece of legislation. This is legislation that does strengthen consumer protection. It is good for the province. It has broad-based support. It will be supported by this side of the House.

I look forward to comments from other members of the chamber.

D. Plecas: On behalf of my constituents of Abbotsford South, I’m pleased to speak in support of Bill 9, the Motor Dealer Amendment Act. On a lighter note, I want to begin by thanking the member opposite, of course, for his support and encouragement of people to buy new
[ Page 11184 ]
vehicles and his very sage advice to some members of this House that they should take this to heart and buy new vehicles themselves. But thinking about the people he is referring to, it’s more wishful thinking than anything.

More seriously, the act makes a much-needed change to the automotive sales sector and brings increased trust, transparency and accountability to the motor vehicle marketplace. It addresses important regulatory gaps in the supply chain that will benefit consumers as well as industry professionals.

This is an industry that is an integral part of the economic success of our province. B.C.’s motor vehicle sales sector employs thousands across the province, including many people in my constituency. Individuals, families and businesses expect that dealers will provide a safe product in a fair and transparent manner, and professional salespeople expect that everyone in the industry will play by the same rules. Increasingly, trust, transparency and accountability in the marketplace for motor vehicles will build upon the professionalism that is the key to this sector.

Bill 9 will accomplish this by making a number of important changes to the regulatory regime currently in place. Firstly, the bill will expand and is regulated and licensed under the Motor Dealer Act to include used vehicle wholesalers and broker agents who act on behalf of consumers when purchasing vehicles.

As it stands, vehicle wholesalers are unlicensed so have no legal obligation to disclose the history of vehicles when selling to dealers. Additionally, brokers and representatives also remain unlicensed. This means that there has been nothing in place to prohibit these groups from receiving money from both buyers and sellers, which would, of course, put them in a clear conflict of interest and undermine the integrity of the vehicle marketplace.

Motor dealers invest significant resources into their businesses, and their salespeople put professional reputation on the line when making a sale. Having other groups that are part of the same supply chain but not subject to the same regulation is simply unfair, and it threatens to undermine trust within the sector. Consumers expect all groups to be held accountable and relay accurate information about what they’re selling. Bringing them under the same regulation governing the rest of the sector is going to ensure that they do just that.

Finally, a strict prohibition against the hiring of unlicensed persons to sell vehicles will be implemented. This ensures that all sellers in the marketplace operate under the same set of rules. In addition to bringing these unlicensed groups under regulation, this bill is going to strengthen enforcement measures currently on the books. It will establish new administrative penalties, compliance orders and undertakings to improve the ability of the Motor Vehicle Sales Authority of B.C. to enforce the Motor Dealers Act.

[1410]

These measures are going to help our province’s enforcement bodies increase fairness and accountability in this important marketplace. The funds received from these new administrative penalties will be put into a consumer advancement fund that this bill will establish. The resources of this fund will be used to promote consumer and industry education. This way, all parties in the motor vehicle marketplace understand how the industry works and the regulations in place.

Additionally, the bill will deal with red tape surrounding the fund. By transferring oversight of the consumer compensation fund from government to the Vehicle Sales Authority, government time and taxpayers’ dollars will be saved by cutting inefficiencies and redundancies.

Regulators will also be granted the authority to establish and enforce a code of professional conduct for motor dealers. This will enhance and support the professionalism of the vehicle sales industry.

Finally, to ensure the fairness of regulation administration, Bill 9 will allow the use of electronic communications and paper hearings in the processing of some complaints. This again will reduce costs while increasing the speed and accessibility of adjudicating complaints.

We are making these changes after extensive consultation with stakeholders in the industry across the province. British Columbia’s Vehicle Sales Authority, the registrar of motor dealers, the New Car Dealers Association and the Automotive Retailers Association all agree. They all agree that establishing a regulatory regime that increases protection for consumers and accountability in the marketplace will benefit all parties.

Establishing regulation that will increase trust, transparency and fairness within the motor sales industry will give consumers and their families peace of mind.

D. Bing: On behalf of my constituents of Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows, I’m pleased to rise today to speak on Bill 9, the Motor Dealer Amendment Act.

It is an important decision that people make, the vehicle that they drive. Many people take the time to do research on what they want, looking into the size, the brand, the style, the efficiency, the mileage, the safety rating. When families visit motor dealers, we want to ensure they are not going to be taken advantage of and can buy in confidence.

This act will add more certainty for consumers when purchasing a vehicle. We are increasing protections for motor vehicle buyers both physically and financially. This bill will also build on the professionalism of the sector.

As an unlicensed group, wholesalers have not had a legal obligation to disclose vehicle histories when selling vehicles to dealers. There’s been nothing in place to prohibit broker agents from receiving money from both the buyer and the seller, which puts them in a conflict of interest.

The proposed changes will help ensure consumers are getting what they pay for when they buy a vehicle. Among the proposed changes is the expansion of who is
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regulated and licensed under the act. New groups who will be regulated and licensed include used vehicle wholesalers and broker agents who act on behalf of consumers when purchasing a vehicle.

We have consulted with stakeholders in the industry to draft the proposed changes. These include the New Car Dealers Association, the Automotive Retailers Association, the Recreational Vehicle Dealers Association and the Vehicle Sales Authority.

In addition to expanding who is regulated and licensed under the act, administrative penalties, compliance orders and undertakings will be added to the current administrative enforcement options. This will improve the ability of the Vehicle Sales Authority of B.C. to address contraventions of the Motor Vehicle Act.

This legislation includes the creation of a new consumer advancement fund. This fund will receive payments from the administrative penalties under the Motor Dealer Act. This will be used to promote consumer and industry education.

This bill will provide for the transfer of oversight for the customer compensation fund from government to the Vehicle Sales Authority. This will save government time and expense in managing the fund.

This bill also enhances fairness and transparency by modernizing and clarifying provisions. This is for service notices and orders under the act, the publishing of licensing and enforcement decisions and reconsiderations of enforcement actions by the regulator.

We are also providing regulation-making authority to establish and enforce a code of professional conduct for motor dealers. This further supports a responsible and professional vehicle sales industry.

[1415]

We want to make things easier by allowing the use of electronic communications and paper hearings in addition to oral hearings in the processing of some complaints. This will reduce costs while increasing the speed and accessibility of the adjudication of complaints. This bill is also adding a strict prohibition against the hiring of an unlicensed person to sell vehicles.

All these changes are reducing red tape and making things easier for British Columbians. These changes will help protect British Columbians and their families and also protect an industry that is integral to the economic success of this province.

I’m pleased to see that industry stakeholders have noted their support. For example, Ian Christman, registrar of motor dealers, said:

“Consumers are entitled to protection and to peace of mind when buying a motor vehicle. This includes being able to hold any person who is in the motor vehicle supply chain accountable if they have knowledge about a car’s history and may influence the purchasing decision of a consumer. They should be required to relay truthful and accurate information, act honestly and with proper disclosures, and not take advantage of a consumer’s ignorance or frailties.”

This bill provides those protections to consumers so they can make the right decision for their families. This bill builds on the professionalism of the motor dealer sector and ensures that consumers will not be taken advantage of. Knowing the history of the car you are buying is important. Being fully aware of this type of information will help protect consumers.

This bill will also expand the scope of current protections to previously unlicensed areas and help ensure that the industry is fair, accessible and efficient. We want brokers and wholesalers to be properly regulated and held to the same standards and level of accountability that new car and truck dealers are held to.

I’m pleased to see that this bill will address important regulatory gaps and protect consumers. That is why I support Bill 9, the Motor Dealer Amendment Act.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no more speakers, I call on the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General to close the debate.

Hon. M. Morris: Listening to my critic across the way there earlier, I’m sure we’re going to see some nice new, shiny vehicles, perhaps, in the parking lot in the days to come and some good used vehicles with a verified history available for people out there in consumer land.

I move the second reading of Bill 9, the Motor Dealer Amendment Act.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Morris: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 9, Motor Dealer Amendment Act, 2016, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. Polak: I call second reading debate on Bill 7.

BILL 7 — INDUSTRY TRAINING
AUTHORITY AMENDMENT ACT, 2016

Hon. S. Bond: I’m very pleased to make second reading comments about the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act. I appreciate the opportunity to do that. I know that colleagues on both sides of the House will likely have comments to make as well.

One thing we recognize is that our province’s economy is strong. It is continuing to grow, and we are expecting a wide range of job openings in various occupations over the next decade. More than 78 percent of these job openings will require some form of post-secondary education, and 44 percent of the jobs will be in the skilled trades
[ Page 11186 ]
and technical occupations. Approximately 13 percent of the job openings will be for trade occupations in British Columbia.

We must ensure that British Columbians have the skills they need to be first in line for these jobs as our economy continues to grow. Participating in the industry training and apprenticeship system is one of the best ways that we can help them, help British Columbians, on that pathway. That’s why we launched our British Columbia skills-for-jobs blueprint. We committed, also, to implementing all 29 recommendations outlined in the McDonald report, aimed at strengthening B.C.’s trades-training system.

[1420]

As part of that commitment, we need to strengthen the legislation that puts the Industry Training Authority in a position to more effectively manage the system. That’s what these changes to the current Industry Training Authority Act will do.

The Industry Training Authority Act was enacted in 2003. It has not been reviewed or amended since it was first brought into force. Since that time, the Industry Training Authority has made some incredible achievements. The total number of apprentices has more than doubled. Over 160,000 new apprentices have registered in an apprenticeship program. Over 70,000 journeyperson credentials have been issued. The ITA has now refocused. It has an approach that will be better supportive of industry demands.

Recently 11 sector advisory groups have been established to ensure that we are aligning our trades-training programs with industry needs. There have also been 15 apprentice advisers, hired by the Industry Training Authority, six with an aboriginal focus.

Through our skills-for-jobs blueprint, we are shifting how education and training is funded and aligned in the province, specifically to meet the needs for in-demand jobs. Today our funding investments in priority trades-training programs match those trades occupations most in demand.

We are also increasing the Industry Training Authority’s budget by nearly $8 million, announced by the Finance Minister in our recent budget, to help deliver more youth programs, in particular, over the next three years. We believe that by realigning our funding to the in-demand jobs in our province and also by adding new investment, we will make sure that young people are supported as they try out a trade, as they learn the skills they need to succeed and to go on to trade-related careers.

Now, more than ever, we have a trades-training system that is aligned to meet the needs of industry. After 12 years in operation, it is the right time to update the current legislation and make any changes that are necessary to ensure the ITA has the authority to best manage the system. The current act sets out the Industry Training Authority’s regulatory powers and responsibilities with respect to trades training in B.C. This includes the power to designate trainers, set program standards, and issue or remove credentials.

We heard, through the extensive consultation which informed the McDonald report recommendations, that system stakeholders were confused over the ITA’s roles and responsibilities and, most particularly, that industry wanted a more meaningful part in the planning and decision-making process.

The amendments being proposed today will, we believe, address those concerns. The changes will confirm the ITA’s roles, responsibilities and authorities through the addition of a purpose statement, which is absent in the current legislation. This will provide the Industry Training Authority with the mechanism to engage stakeholders in multi-year strategic planning and in implementation to achieve government’s economic priorities and objectives and, at the same time, hold the ITA accountable to any actions laid out in the strategic plan.

The changes will assure industry members of their valued role and contribution to the trades system, by adding a new requirement that the ITA engage with industry members and make them part of the decision-making and strategic planning process.

Ultimately, these changes will strengthen what already works in B.C.’s trades-training system, a system that is industry-driven and that can respond quickly to regional training needs. By making these changes, we will enhance our province’s ability to train the skilled workers that we need to support and grow our economy even further.

With that and with those initial comments, I look forward to the comments of my colleagues and to further discussion that we will have on the proposed amendments.

S. Simpson: I’m pleased to join in the debate around Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act.

[1425]

As the minister says, what Bill 7 largely does is to flesh out a number of the other recommendations that were put forward by Ms. McDonald in her report that she prepared in 2014. The name of the report — The Industry Training Authority and Trades Training in B.C.: Recalibrating for High Performance. That was an independent review by Ms. McDonald of trades training in the province.

What this piece of legislation will do is set out a purpose for the Industry Training Authority and its role in terms of the trades-training system. What’s quite remarkable is that we are more than a decade into this process and there never has been a purpose statement for the authority, which is pretty remarkable when you consider the important role that it plays.

This also will require the Industry Training Authority to develop and implement a multi-year strategic plan to set its priorities and its targets as per government. While
[ Page 11187 ]
there’s been talk about a business plan and there’s talk about financial plans in the existing legislation, there never has been the discussion about a strategic plan to this. It’s probably a good thing that we’re getting to having a strategic plan. It requires the ITA to engage stakeholders for advice and recommendations on the development of that plan. We’ll get a clarification from the minister. I’m sure we’ll get this when we get to the committee stage.

The legislation talks about ensuring that there is consultation with industry. Now, Ms. McDonald, in her recommendations, is clear that she is of the view that industry should be all-encompassing and include organized labour in that category. So I’ll look forward to the minister clarifying that she sees organized labour as a full partner as part of that industry umbrella and, as such, a full partner in the consultation process. I’m sure the minister will be happy to answer that in the committee stage. Then it provides for some other minor updates.

As I said, the reason for this, the intent, the purpose for this piece of legislation is — I’m not sure that it completes, and we’ll talk about that when we get to committee stage as well — certainly to add some pieces that fall under the recommendations that Ms. McDonald put forward in her report.

I guess that part of what becomes important is: why did we ever get to Ms. McDonald’s report? What was the impetus and the requirement that government felt and others felt in order to put this report in place? What we know is that the road was pretty rocky for the first decade of training in this province after the B.C. Liberals took power.

There had been in place ITAC, which was put in place in 1997, 1998. It was an entity that was, most of us believe, reasonably successful. It was also an entity, it was very clear, that had four partners at the table. It had industry at the table, it had labour at the table, it had educators at the table, and it had government at the table. Together, they moved forward trades training in this province — and with quite a bit of success, I believe. If you go back and you look at the record, you’ll see that training was going quite well.

There was significant investment in training at that time. Probably upwards of 120 people, at its high point, worked for ITAC in regional offices around the province. It had counsellors in place that worked very closely with apprentices. It was a very hands-on approach. As such, it was pretty effective and had industry pretty much engaged, I believe, in that process. But what happened was that in 2004 the government of the day made the decision to scrap ITAC and to create the ITA, in its first incarnation, in 2004.

One of the first things that the ITA did is it became an industry-only body. There was no more labour at the table. There were no more educators at the table. It was industry and government who were at the table. Quite honestly, for the next decade, I believe it failed. It failed right through till about 2013, 2014 — right through till about when Ms. McDonald produced her recommendations and government started to act on those recommendations.

[1430]

It failed because it just was not…. It dropped staff. At one point, it went from that 120 staff down to about a dozen people working for the entity. It then climbed back up to about 50 or so folks — about 25 in admin and about 25 in service delivery. That’s the staffing levels.

It eliminated those counsellors, and it eliminated compulsory trades. Those all disappeared. So there no longer was the compunction on the part of industry to have to have Red Seal plumbers and Red Seal electricians. They could take a standard — I think it was the certificate of qualification — that was a little bit less and, in fact, accept that.

The result was that while we saw a lot of people coming in and starting trades training programs, there wasn’t a very good completion rate — not a very good completion rate at all.

We also saw, in areas like carpentry, where we’d had Red Seal carpenters who were entirely skilled up to do all aspects of carpentry, that those positions started to be replaced by folks like framers. All of a sudden, you were training somebody up to frame a house — not to be a carpenter, but to frame a house — and that was a fundamentally different skill. There is no correlation between the carpenter and the framer. They are different people doing different jobs. There are extremely different skill sets and levels of expertise and skill there, but that’s where things went.

The challenge there was that…. We saw Red Seals being devalued when you started to take compulsory trades out, when you started to see these other skill sets, when you saw this adoption of these other approaches, when you saw no ratios of apprentices to journeypersons on worksites, when that all kind of fell by the wayside.

The result of that is a lot of trouble in the trades training field. The only area that was still showing success were those trades that were driven exclusively by, primarily, the building trades. That’s because they maintained a model that was very similar to what had existed under ITAC, where they still had counsellors in place, where they assured that before they brought apprentices forward through the foundation programs for apprenticeship, they in fact had employment placements for them. That was part of the deal — that their employers had placements.

One of the big challenges, I know — the minister and I have discussed this before — is the challenge for the sector today: the takeup by employers to open up placement opportunities for apprentices to be able to get their full apprenticeships completed. We know that’s a problem.

It wasn’t a problem for the labour-driven trades programs, because one of their principles was that they didn’t accept the apprentice unless they knew the path to com-
[ Page 11188 ]
plete the apprenticeship and had lined up the employer as well. They had a much higher completion rate — upwards of 90 percent completion rate.

On the other hand, from the time of ITAC, when the ITA went into place, in the first four years, the completion rates dropped by 40 percent under the ITA. They climbed back up later, but they dropped. So this was a huge, huge problem.

Of course, the thing we know is that…. This may be one of the things that the Premier’s claims around LNG…. LNG may have, if it has done nothing else, in some ways saved training in the province, because we know that when the major proponents, whether it was the Shells or the Chevrons or those companies, came to British Columbia early on in their exploration, one of the first things they did was sit down with the potential companies and with the unions and with government who would be building their projects.

The conversation they wanted to have was: do you actually have a skilled workforce in British Columbia that can build these projects?

[1435]

What was discovered, of course, is that, yeah, there’s a workforce here that could build one, maybe a little bit more than that, but not entirely…. Certainly, if there had been anything like the kind of extraordinary claims of the government around LNG and around what would be built, that wasn’t going to be built — six, seven, eight, nine, ten projects, however many LNG projects we should have under construction now based on the government’s claims.

Obviously, that would have been an issue. Those companies, the Shells and people like that, said to the government: “You need to fix this, because your training program is a mess, and we can’t get the people that we want.” That led the government to respond, particularly when those companies also said: “We’re pretty comfortable with what the unions do in training and how they train people up at the end of the day, but there aren’t enough of them, and there’s not enough people coming through their system.”

So the government moved. The government moved and restructured. Some people would say they took the training program away from Phil Hochstein and gave it to people who knew what they were doing. Part of that included bringing labour back to the table, because there was a recognition — and Ms. McDonald recognizes this in her report — that labour initiatives around training were extremely effective and that the advantage would be to bring them back in, to bring the educators back in, to frame a structure that looked a lot like 1998 and ITAC in terms of the people who were at the table and part of the conversation.

That’s, in fact, what started to occur, and that system started to shift. We’ve seen that, and we have seen improvements, but we had a lost decade there — a lost decade for training in this province. And there was a scramble to catch up. The training is not just in the trades. There was a heavy trades focus, obviously, when everybody was preoccupied with LNG a couple of years ago. There was a heavy trades focus, because people were looking at the construction, primarily, of pipelines and how that would proceed.

Now we have a situation where we’ve seen some movement, and we’re now seeing a system that makes, certainly, somewhat more sense. It still has a long way to go. It still does have a long way to go, and there still is a fair amount of work to be done. When you look at the blueprint for jobs, when you look at those initiatives, there needs to be a conversation, certainly and absolutely, looking at the purposes here, along with the blueprint for jobs and for training, with real initiatives around diversification.

I think we have, the last time I checked — and the number, I know, changes; it’s a bit of a moving target — about 70-odd trades or so that are approved for the blueprint and for post-secondary institutions, trades in a variety of areas where they can, in fact, invest in seats and be part of the 25 percent of the grant that now is targeted on the blueprint.

This is a case where, for people who wouldn’t understand, you have the grant that comes in to the post-secondary institution. The government has said a significant portion, evolving over time, 25 percent, needs to go to training, primarily, and qualified trades, qualified skills, can fit within that 25 percent. It was very heavily focused on skilled trades, building trades — that we understand —and health care, initially. It’s becoming a little more flexible now, and it should continue to become more flexible as more trades and more skills move into that field.

We see it with some computer sciences now, though there’s a lot of that in schools already, but certainly, we’re seeing it in some of those areas. There needs to be probably be more work done there around the blueprint and what that looks like.

The challenge that we see with this is really going to be to put, I think, some focus on what is in the bill. When we look at the bill itself…. As I said, the first section of the bill talks very specifically about purpose and about the act laying out the purpose. If you look at Bill 7 and you look at the act, it lays out the purposes of the authority. It’s not long, and it’s not an onerous list.

[1440]

There are five purposes laid out in the legislation:

“(a) to manage and support an industry training and apprenticeship system in British Columbia; (b) to ensure that the industry training and apprenticeship system referred to in paragraph (a) meets the Province’s need for skilled workers; (c) to work with the government to achieve the government’s objectives respecting the industry training and apprenticeship system referred to in paragraph (a); (d) to promote industry training programs, including by encouraging employers and individuals to participate in those programs;”
[ Page 11189 ]

And (e), other things as the minister may, from time to time, prescribe.

So that’s the purposes — pretty general, pretty generic, largely, leaves it pretty wide open. The real question here…. I hope we’ll have an opportunity to have some of this discussion when we get to committee stage — an opportunity to think through and talk through some of these matters — about what managing and supporting an industry training and apprenticeship system in British Columbia looks like.

That gets back to the consultation about how broad that’s going to be, about that purpose, about how those organizations are going to be involved, how labour plays a bigger role, how educators play a bigger role, how the conversation goes, where money comes from. The bill also changes some things around money, and we’ll talk about that in a bit. But that’s pretty important. We need to talk about what that looks like longer term — what managing and supporting that system looks like.

Meeting provincial needs for skilled workers. That’s an important conversation, because the conversation then becomes: how do you do that assessment? Is it going to be the ITA’s job to do that assessment? Is it the government who will do it and provide that direction to the ITA as to what the demands are? Will it be coming from industry exclusively? Will other sources be able to contribute to that? Will labour market development agreements be used in order to go out and highlight some areas where there may be some innovative approaches that we can take that might require some skill training, that might require us to do more here?

When we talk about meeting those needs, it’s going to be very interesting to see how the government determines to assess those needs, because we know that everybody will be a little bit different. Everybody will have a bit different list. Some people will be strong advocates for their particular sectors. Other people will maybe take a step back from their interests and look at the bigger picture of British Columbia overall.

There will be significant differences between what happens in urban areas in terms of demand and, potentially, what happens in rural and outlying areas. There will be significant questions about First Nations, training for First Nations, the role of the ITA in providing training for First Nations and how that will occur. That will raise the question, of course, about consultation. It says government is to achieve their objectives. Point (c) is “to work with the government to achieve the government’s objectives respecting the industry training and apprenticeship system.”

There are also stakeholders, clearly, and there will be significant questions about how those stakeholders are engaged. First Nations — if they’re going to play a role in the ITA, it’s going to be a very interesting conversation as to how those training initiatives evolve with First Nations and how First Nations are engaged in that process. There’s lots of work to be done there. We’ll have to see how that evolves out of the purposes. We’ll get a chance, hopefully, to talk about that as we try to dig down a little bit on the purposes of the authority and what it looks to achieve.

Point (d) is “to promote industry training programs, including by encouraging employers and individuals to participate in those programs.” Encouraging employers to participate is probably the biggest single challenge today. It’s getting employers to step up and take apprentices on and know that, when you take an apprentice on every year, they’re going to go back into the classroom for a period of time to do some classroom work. You’re going to have employees who maybe aren’t accomplishing everything you would like in their first couple of years, but they get there, and at the end of it, you get a fully qualified, skilled tradesperson or skilled person who is working for you.

[1445]

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

The challenge is that not enough employers are taking up that opportunity, taking up that challenge. It’s not happening. Employers aren’t doing it in the numbers that are necessary. The incentives that are being offered, at this point, from government are not enough to get employers to step up and to do that.

That becomes a significant problem, because you can’t make the apprenticeship system work if you don’t have those employers who are at the table saying: “I’ll take those apprentices.” This will raise challenges. As we look at how to encourage that involvement, this is going to raise challenges for government to solve this problem.

One of the issues that’s apparent…. In some travel around the province and talking with employers, I’ve heard this on a number of occasions from employers who in fact are engaged in the apprenticeship system, who are taking apprentices in, who are doing their job to prepare people, to mentor, to have the journeymen working with the apprentices and making this work.

The challenge they have is that far too often…. I’ve heard this on numerous occasions. What happens is they get a couple of years down the road of that apprenticeship, and then their competitor down the road — who is not participating in the apprenticeship program and may be a bigger operator, in some cases — scoops that employee and basically poaches that employee away for four or five bucks an hour more. Good for the worker.

The worker says: “Hey, I can pick up another four or five bucks. I can finish this apprenticeship another time, but I need the money.” And they jump, for a few dollars more.

You then have this apprenticeship that’s been stalled mid-term — not good, in terms of wanting to have skilled Red Seal journeymen coming out of the system. You have an employer — who was doing everything they could
[ Page 11190 ]
do to be supportive of the apprenticeship program and working hard to in fact make that work, including engaging apprentices — all of a sudden feeling like they got undermined because some guy down the road poached their employee, and they’re frustrated.

I’ve heard a couple of them say: “I don’t know if I’m going to do this again, because this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work.” They’re right. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Then you’ve got the guy down the road who poached the employee and who’s not playing by the rules. Instead, what they’re doing, frankly, is letting somebody else pay the bill to train their workers, and they’re not playing at all.

When you try to get at this issue around purpose in that, in terms of promoting industry training programs, including encouraging employers and individuals to participate in those programs, it may take a little bit more than just encouragement to make that happen. But it’s an important purpose. We’ll get to see.… I look forward to the minister’s comments in committee stage about how she believes that’s going to work.

What you have is a situation where the purposes are pretty broad. They talk generally to a series of important items. It’s important to put those purposes in place. I think we’re just going to need to try to clarify what they mean, and what the minister’s view is about what they’ll mean, in terms of real and direct application.

The other changes that are interesting are in section 6 as amended, and 6(5) says:

“The authority must, on or before December 31 of each year, submit for approval by the minister a 3 year strategic plan that sets out the following in relation to the authority’s next 3 fiscal years:

“(a) how the authority proposes to advance each of the purposes referred to in section 2.1; (b) the process the authority proposes to use to engage stakeholders to ensure that there are sufficient opportunities for stakeholders to provide to the authority advice and recommendations in relation to the strategic plan and the advancement of each of the purposes referred to in section 2.1; (c) other matters the minister may require.”

[1450]

This strategic plan, as I said, is a step forward. It replaces a business plan. Now, the challenge here is that while it says the authority has got to produce this report by the end of the calendar year for the minister, and it does say that, for the authority, part of the plan has to include some discussion around stakeholder engagement, to provide recommendations and advice.

It will be important to clarify who the stakeholders are. We know it’s industry. As I said, Ms. McDonald, in her report…. When she identified industry, she recommends — it’s a clear recommendation in her report — that industry must include organized labour and workers as well.

If I assume that the minister is going to concur with Ms. McDonald, then it will be: okay, well, what does that mean, and how, in fact, is organized labour, particularly, playing a role in this? How are others getting to play a role in this? How are educators getting to play a role in this?

There may be others. There may be others that make eminent sense. It also may make eminent sense around that plan in terms of implementing the purposes, assuming the strategic plan is the way that some of the questions that I’ve asked will get answered. It’s through the strategic planning process: how that’s going to engage and who’s going to be engaged with this.

The other thing that’s interesting about this, though, is it says that the “authority must submit to the minister, at the times specified by the minister and in a form approved by the minister” the strategic plan and that it needs to consult industry stakeholders and other stakeholders the minister may specify. I’ll be interested to hear who the minister thinks those other stakeholders are that she’s going to specify.

It also does make one change. In the current legislation, I believe it says 90 days — that 90 days after the fiscal year starts, this report has to be released. This legislation makes a change to that. It changes that and, essentially, is more silent on that matter. It assumes the minister will release it, but it’s not entirely clear about what the requirements are — and certainly nothing as specific as the 90 days in the current act. We’ll have to see what the thinking was for, in fact, making those changes.

Another section that is kind of interesting is that if you look at the act itself, in subsection (10), it talks about where money comes from.

Deputy Speaker: Member, are you the designated speaker?

S. Simpson: Yes.

Deputy Speaker: Continue.

S. Simpson: It talks about where dollars will come from. Under the act, it’s quite restrictive about where the training authority, the ITA, can get its money from. This legislation will change that.

It says “money received by the authority from any source may be retained by the authority to be used and dealt with for its purposes.” So it does change where the dollars will come from.

It’s going to be interesting. I’m very curious to know from the minister what her expectations are about what those sources of funds may be that might come, what the value of those sources might be, what the minister believes they would be appropriately used for and whether there are certain items that some money may or may not be appropriately used for and other areas where, in fact, money can be appropriately used.

We have the purpose of the legislation, which is very broad and very generic. It really does open the question…. It’s a good thing that it’s here, and I think there is an argument to keep it fairly broad and fairly generic. I’m not quibbling about that.
[ Page 11191 ]

But somewhere in the conversation, it becomes important to put more meat on those bones and to be more specific, particularly in this place and probably in committee stage. I think that the ITA and certainly the interested stakeholders are going to want to hear from the minister what her thinking is about those broad purposes and objectives and what she believes that means in terms of the work of the ITA moving forward.

[1455]

Then, of course, the three-year strategic plan, which is a new piece as well — what her belief is about the complexity of that detail, what her expectations are about what will and won’t be in the plan and what her expectation is about how that plan will evolve, how it will be processed, who will be involved in that conversation and, possibly, what their involvement will be and what that begins to look like. Those become important issues.

Then there are questions about timing — when we all get to see that strategic plan and when that might be in the yearly cycle — and then questions about money. Questions about money are always important questions by anybody’s standards. We’re always happy to talk about money.

As we move forward on this legislation, as we move forward on the training authority generally, we see some other challenges that are in front of the government to make the ITA successful, to make it more successful than it is. These are challenges that we have seen now in two major initiatives that have been advanced by the government in the last year.

The first one was last year. We adopted legislation in the summer session, where we had the quick summer session, around a project development agreement for Pacific NorthWest LNG. In that, we saw very little, if anything, that talked about issues like apprenticeships, and certainly nothing that talked about ratios, something every other province has. When other provinces put these initiatives forward, almost without exception, they have ratios saying, “If you have X amount of journeymen on a job, you’ll have X amount of apprentices on the job” — formulas that work.

Those are the same formulas that are in collective agreements in British Columbia for the building trades, certainly, and I believe for other unions. They have formulas that say X amount of journeymen, X amount of apprentices — usually in the 20 percent, 25 percent range of apprentices. But there was nothing in that project development agreement, nothing in that agreement at all.

Now, there are those who will argue: “Well, there’s a limit to what the government should impose on the private sector, in terms of those companies and what they do.” There might be some argument for that. But understand you’re giving them what was an extremely good deal — that for a whole range of reasons, which is a different debate, they’re not taking advantage of — to exploit a finite resource that belongs to all British Columbians.

The question about ratios and apprenticeships and other benefits that should come to us from those agreements…. That’s where that plan failed, and that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t vote for that agreement, because of the terrible shortcomings in terms of anything that put British Columbia first.

Now we see again in Site C — the Site C agreement that was signed for the major civil work, the agreement that has been put in place around that work — a very similar situation. There is nothing around jobs, certainly around British Columbians. There’s nothing there around apprenticeship commitments in any meaningful way. There’s certainly, in other matters, nothing around local procurement.

We know the partnership that we always talk about with First Nations. It seems that most of the debate around Site C is in the courts with the First Nations — as they fight it out in court, at this point, or on picket lines and protest lines — not about partnership. Clearly, it’s failed there too.

It raises the question: if you’re going to make the Industry Training Authority work and if you’re going to make the new purposes in that work, then those other pieces of what government does, particularly in the expenditure of government dollars, taxpayer dollars, for major projects, capital projects and other major investments…? When you do that, there’s got to be some carrots and sticks here to make sure that those companies who are successful bidders and those companies who desire to bid are, in fact, going to create those opportunities.

[1500]

Now, there has been some work done on that in the last year by the government. I know that. I know the minister is aware of this issue, but we have to see action. Being aware and seeing substantive action are two different things. We’re going to have to see how that all plays itself out as we move forward.

As this bill comes forward, I think what we need to do — and what we desire to do at this point, really — is say that this is a bill that we will support. It’s a bill that does some things that need to be done. It’s a bill that deals with some fundamental flaws in the ITA, like not having a purpose or a strategic plan. Those things need to occur. This bill does take us steps down the road to accomplishing that.

But it raises just about as many questions as it answers, and we’ll have to see how we proceed with that and how that moves forward. We’ll be looking forward to having more debate about this as we proceed and to having more opportunity, particularly in committee stage, to get the minister to answer a number of these questions.

With that, I’ll take my seat. I look forward to hearing members on the other side as well as our side continue this debate.

L. Throness: Well, it’s a pleasure to speak to Bill 7 today, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act.
[ Page 11192 ]

It’s a pleasure to follow the member for Vancouver-Hastings, who mentioned phrases about the bill like “this element was a good thing” and “that element was a step forward” and “the opposition will support the bill.” I think that shows that we can be collaborative in this House. We don’t always have to be head to head. It’s also a tribute, I think, to the minister and the government for putting forth legislation that can win such high praise from the opposite side.

I’d like to begin by talking a little bit about the ITA, the Industry Training Authority, itself and then highlight some of the great things that are going on in my riding regarding trades and technical training. Then I want to talk about the bill itself and how it followed the analysis of Jessica McDonald in the McDonald report in 2014. She, of course, has moved on to much bigger and better things at B.C. Hydro.

The report was subtitled Recalibrating for High Performance, and I think that’s an appropriate subtitle. What we need from the ITA is high performance. We need better, improved performance, and that’s what this bill is designed to do.

The McDonald report offered 29 recommendations to improve trades training in B.C. The government is acting on them in part through the legislation we have before us today.

About the Industry Training Authority itself. It leads and coordinates B.C.’s skilled-trades program by working with employers, employees, industry, labour, training providers and government — all of the groups that are involved — to issue credentials and manage apprenticeships, set the program standards and increase opportunities in the trades. Indeed, there has been some success there.

The ITA has issued a total of over 65,000 certificates of qualification to journeypersons in B.C. since 2004. There are currently over 10,000 registered employer-sponsors of apprentices in B.C. There are more than 39,000 registered apprentices in the industry training system. The ITA provides more than 100 apprenticeship training programs in B.C., including almost 50 Red Seal trades.

Our government invests more than $94 million a year in industry trades and training through the Industry Training Authority. In the latest budget last week, Budget 2016, we’re increasing that funding by almost $8 million over the next three years for youth. I think that’s great. It shows that we are fully behind the ITA and behind industry and technical training in B.C.

In the background of this report, and overarching this whole discussion, is the demographic reality of our aging workforce in B.C. Over the next six years, 700,000 people are going to retire in B.C. There are only 4.6 million people in B.C., but 700,000 are going to be retiring.

[1505]

When you combine this huge number — which will create a vacuum, created by our retirees — with population growth, it is going to create a demand for new jobs and new workers. And when you think of the economic growth that is going to be accelerated by our B.C. jobs plan — which emphasizes eight different sectors of the economy, including things like agriculture and aquaculture and LNG — as we seek to maximize our intellectual capital as well as development of our natural resources, we’re going to need a lot of new workers.

That’s why we’ve already recalibrated our post-secondary education system to focus 25 percent of our spending on skilled trades and technical training, just to make sure that we’re turning out the kinds of students that are matched with our future workplace needs, students who will be happy and fulfilled with the training they’ve received. They will be ready and first in line to fill those high-paying jobs that are going to come about because of what we’re doing today.

What’s happening in Chilliwack-Hope? A lot is happening in Chilliwack-Hope. I’m sure that everyone knows that the University of the Fraser Valley is firmly ensconced, with many thousands of students, in the Fraser Valley. There’s a large facility there called the Trades and Technology Centre. I’ve toured it a number of times. Last year the minister himself toured it, the Minister of Advanced Education. He was very much impressed with what he saw there.

It’s fully equipped to teach a whole range of trades — in carpentry, heavy mechanics, electrical, plumbing, welding, auto body repair, cooking. I’m sure there are other things I’ve forgotten. It’s a beautiful facility. It’s something for Chilliwack to be proud of, and I think it makes Chilliwack one of the top centres for trades and technical training in the valley, if not in B.C.

Our government has been behind it all the way. Last year our government gave $325,000 to buy new trades-training equipment. That followed the year earlier — $872,000 that would open up 194 new training spaces. I’m sure there will be much more to come in the future in support of trades and technical training in Chilliwack.

There’s more than that. Elsewhere in my riding, because of their success in graduating First Nations students, Seabird College — which is located on Seabird Island reserve near Agassiz, in my riding — has been partnering with UFV to combine the advantages of the cultural affinity, the cultural familiarity, of Seabird with the facilities at UFV. When I went to speak at UFV’s board of governors’ meeting before Christmas last year, the students from Seabird had cooked a meal for them. I tasted it, and it was really delicious. They’re doing a great job.

There’s partnering going on. Our government is behind that too. In February of this year, just a few weeks ago, we announced that students of two programs at Seabird College would see an injection of funding into the training they’re taking, in the form of two project-based training programs, amounting to over $100,000.
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The camp-cook training and basic security training programs are already underway. They will get a $94,000 and a $14,000 boost, respectively, from both federal and provincial coffers.

I’m going to continue doing whatever I can so that we can train the most underutilized and youngest workforce in B.C. That is the First Nations workforce. I have 36 First Nations in my riding, so I’m privileged to be able to support that and to work as hard as I can to get more of that.

But that’s not all. We have trades and technical training going on at the high school level, as well, in my riding. Last fall I had the opportunity to go out to Hope to attend the inauguration of the first welding course at Hope Secondary School, to be offered there in a mobile teaching facility that was loaned to them by Thompson Rivers University.

A dozen eager, young students were there for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. As you can imagine, the ribbon was not a ribbon made of cloth; it was made of steel. It was cut with a blowtorch, which was a fitting way to do it. The last I heard, students were averaging a score of 90 percent on their exams there, so that program has been a great success.

We’re also helping school district 33 with trades and technical training. Last year $30,000 went to the school district for secondary school apprenticeship program support, and we’re going to continue to work on that kind of thing as well.

But to the legislation, to the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act. The McDonald report offered 29 recommendations to change the ITA — that’s the Industry Training Authority — to make it a more effective organization. The ITA has since acted on 14 of those recommendations, and it’s working on the rest.

We in the government are doing our part by making three amendments here in this piece of legislation that respond in three broad ways to the recommendations in the McDonald report. First, there’s no purpose statement in the existing legislation, and so we’re going to fix that. The bill sets out before us the purpose of the ITA. It’s a five-part purpose. It’s a comprehensive purpose statement, and that’s going to confirm and solidify its role in the B.C. trades-training system.

[1510]

Second, the bill is going to require the ITA to develop and implement a multi-year strategic plan to achieve the priorities and the targets that are set for it by government. Thirdly, it’s going to require it to engage with stakeholders to provide advice and recommendations on the development and implementation of the strategic plan.

It’s very logical. It’s broad; it’s general. It will allow the ITA to move forward and to do its very best to implement what the government requires, which is to train our future workforce to make sure that we’re ready for the jobs that are going to flood out in relation to the plans that we have to grow the economy and to make B.C. a better place to live.

N. Macdonald: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act, 2016. As previous speakers have pointed out and as the minister did as well, it’s an amendment act that changes an existing act. Of course, the opposition is, as the previous speaker noted, supporting the changes.

It’s a rather sparse bill. The three sections are consistent with recommendations from a 2014 government review, and they include adding a purpose statement to the existing legislation, which was pointed out — something that lays out the intention of that legislation. It updates some existing administrative components to align with other Crown corporations and government statutes. It requires the ITA to develop a multi-year plan and to engage stakeholders in doing that — so to put together a plan and talk to a number of groups to try to make the organization more effective than it has been.

These are improvements, no doubt. These come from a study that was done in 2014 by Jessica McDonald, who’s now the CEO of B.C. Hydro. It raises the question: why did government do a study in 2014? There is some history here.

The key thing to remember is our economy needs a trained workforce, trained tradespeople, if you are going to function properly. You look at jurisdictions where that is not the case, and regardless of the opportunity, businesses are constrained. They need a trained workforce.

As we speak, our economy is subject in many ways to forces that are completely beyond the control of government. Now, government likes to take credit when things are good but often recognizes, when times are challenging, that it’s beyond their control. While there are elements of our economy that are doing very, very well, there are elements of our economy that are really struggling right now.

There are 16 mines that are closed right now. That is not something that any legislator here wants. That is something that we would not have if we could change it, but we can’t. Worldwide demand for copper and coal is significantly lower than it was. Businesses react logically by closing mines, and there is nothing the government can do about it. It is completely beyond our control. If we were in power, it would be the same for us. We can’t do anything about it. That is simply how businesses work. Government doesn’t control that.

Liquefied natural gas. I have been highly critical of the hype on liquefied natural gas, but if it were economically feasible, I think that for many, many communities, it would be a good thing. But, again, government is faced with a reality that they are unable to control. There is a pricing structure that a jurisdiction of our size cannot change.

[1515]

What can government actually do? What are the things that, as legislators, we need to focus on? What we control are these things. We control a tax structure, and it needs to be predictable for businesses. It needs to be fair. We are
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responsible for certainty on the land base as legislators. Government, of course, bears the greatest responsibility for that. We’re responsible for infrastructure. Relevant to this bill is the importance of a trained workforce.

Tradespeople are essential for many elements of our economy. The biggest part of our economy is real estate. That’s 25 percent of the economy. You need tradespeople. Where I come from, it’s the resource industries. The resource industries are critical to our communities, and for that to work, you need tradespeople.

Now, it is only one factor, to be sure, but it is one factor that government controls. Trades programs are often hands on, of course, so we have apprenticeships as a way to give that hands-on, practical experience.

Why did government have a study of trades training in 2014, and why has it been so much of the focus of this minister? Well, for reasons…. The minister was handed some problems and has used the work of Jessica McDonald and her own ministry to try to solve some of those problems.

In 2002, we find the genesis of many of those problems. In 2002, the B.C. Liberal government dramatically changed the existing system, which had heavy union participation. It had heavy union participation — in my view, a good thing. But for many of the people that supported the B.C. Liberals, it was something to be taken out of the apprenticeship system and the trades system as far as possible.

Government changed that existing system with union participation in 2002, and they did a very poor job of it. That was what workers made clear immediately. When the changes were proposed, workers and their representatives spelled out exactly what was going to happen and, as it turned out, did happen.

Everyone brings something to the table. There’s no question that business, education leaders and government have something to contribute — but so do the workers, so do the people that are actually in charge of large elements of the training. They said that the 2002 changes very clearly were a problem, and they spoke about the problems that were created repeatedly over the years. If the people doing the work are ignored by government, then you have a predictable problem. But it wasn’t just workers that were recognizing that there was a problem.

B.C.’s Auditor General is an independent officer of the Legislature. He is not controlled by government. Or she is not controlled by government. He or she is not controlled by the opposition. He has a skilled workforce with him, and they look at issues and independently put facts in front of both government and opposition so that we can have a reasoned debate based upon an indisputable set of facts.

The Auditor General was pretty clear. It was an extensive examination of the system, looking at the B.C. Liberal plan after seven years. I think it was six or seven years of operation. I could look to the critics for any guidance. I think it was after six or seven years that the Auditor General looked at the system, so it had a fair chance to work, if it was going to.

He came up with a 60-page report. Many members have read it. Clearly, the minister will know it very, very well. I don’t think it’s unfair to characterize what this 60-page report said. It comes straight to the point. The ITA, the B.C. Liberal plan for apprenticeship training, was a mistake. It was poorly conceived. It deliberately ignored union and worker experience to the detriment of apprenticeship programs as a whole.

[1520]

The initiative from the B.C. Liberals was totally driven from an extremely narrow perspective. We all know the history. We know the individuals, who are still around, who drove that perspective. We also know that it failed. That’s what we’re here doing. We’re fixing some of the problems that were created in 2002. What did we see? What did the Auditor General say was evident when he looked at it seven years after the changes made in 2002? Well, he said this: immediately, the number of apprentices that actually completed their apprenticeship fell — fell dramatically. He also said that it cost government significantly more. So it was less successful, and it cost more.

The standards of training fell so that tradespeople often were trained in a way that they were unable to move to other jurisdictions. Without Red Seal, their credentials weren’t acceptable in other parts of Canada — like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba. A poorly thought-through initiative that we are here fixing with this legislation. Fewer completions. More costly. Lower standards.

Now, government, as I’ve said…. I fully concede that government cannot control commodity prices. In so many ways, as a small jurisdiction, we are at the whim of whatever else goes on in other parts of the world. I mean, when you look at China and you see how many people and how vast the economy is, we are, by any measure, going to be impacted by the decisions they make. We can’t control that. But we can control and get the pieces that we do control right.

Now, I see that the minister is asking to make an introduction, I assume. Whenever the minister wants to do that, I’ll yield the floor to him. So whenever he wants to make the introduction, just let me know. I’ll yield the floor for an introduction.

Hon. A. Virk: I seek permission to make an introduction, please.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. A. Virk: I have the pleasure of introducing two classes that are here today. In fact, they were just in my office a few moments ago. I thought I would surprise them and come in here and make an introduction. We have
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a number of students, who are waving up there, from the Pacific Academy, up in the northeast part of Surrey. They are here learning about democracy. They are touring these wonderful precincts and learning about the history and about what goes on in their elected House here.

Would the House please make the class from Pacific Academy very welcome.

Debate Continued

N. Macdonald: First, welcome.

I think that people will have a difficult time following what I say now, so I’m going to start again, if you’d like.

Interjections.

N. Macdonald: Or not. Okay. Maybe you’ll follow.

Anyway, having a trained workforce is something that we can control and should. In the 1990s, the apprentice completion rates were over 80 percent for apprentice programs. After the B.C. Liberal changes in 2002, with the system radically changed, the apprentice completion rates were down to almost 40 percent. Prior to 2002, unions were at the table, as they should be. So was business, as it should be. So were the educational institutions, as they should be, and so was government.

After 2002, the unions were out. The unions still participated in training on union sites, where collective agreements were used to build a skilled workforce, as far as unions could control. On union sites, completion for apprentices was above 90 percent. There are some predictable reasons for that. It’s because the workers that are doing the training and control the site want to have highly skilled colleagues. These are sisters and brothers that share pride in the work.

[1525]

The unions also invested in these apprenticeship programs in a way that government used to. There were counsellors to support apprentices, and they insisted in their contracts that there be spaces for apprentices. To work on a union site means to work on a site that usually has the ability to guarantee safe conditions. In fact, one of my colleagues here began his political career as a safety officer in the IWA.

Union activism is tied in with a safe work environment and family-supporting wages. That’s why people stayed for the three to four years in an apprenticeship. It’s because the worksite is not only supportive as you learn, but you’re safe, and you’re well paid. These are things that unions bring to the table.

The Auditor General said: “Fix the ITA.” That’s what we’re doing, partially, here with this bill. W.A.C. Bennett built a lot of things, and in my area, the area that I represent, we see them. Now, it was his son that built the Revelstoke dam. But he built Mica — these huge projects — and Revelstoke for decades was filled with workers.

Those programs, the publicly paid programs, trained a generation of workers, because the deal that W.A.C. Bennett made — either at the insistence of unions or with unions — was that people would be trained, that people would be well paid and that the worksite would be safe. So we had a generation. That’s a right-wing politician who recognizes that more and diverse experiences at the table is a good thing.

The changes to the apprenticeship program in 2002, therefore, were poorly conceived. Especially with publicly funded infrastructure programs, we should be using it to build a skilled workforce.

You saw that with B.C. Hydro for decades and decades. I just have to look in Revelstoke, and the examples are there. The people that I meet have skills that they have applied all throughout their working life, built because of how we managed our apprenticeship programs back in previous decades, prior to these changes. You saw it with Columbia Power, and all of the dams that have built a wonderful workforce. You see it with the Island Highway.

There is a way to do these things properly, and I’m pleased to see that we’re moving in a direction to fix what went so terribly wrong in 2002. I hope that part of what we do going forward is to recognize those mistakes, those ideological moves so poorly thought through, which for a decade have done damage to the economy. So kudos for fixing it. “Don’t break it in the first place” would be what I would say. Don’t break it in the first place.

If I had a wish and I could encourage a government in the future to do something, I would say that the Trans-Canada Highway…. I can imagine the Trans-Canada Highway, with a union workforce, taking the six or seven years and just going full out to properly build that highway. Divided, four-laned, it would be a magnificent engineering feat. It could build, again, a generation of workers that would go on to do things all over this place — hopefully with natural gas, hopefully with mining, hopefully with forestry — built with the participation of unions and working people.

We are supporting this bill. As I say, with the Trans-Canada, unions would insist upon apprenticeships, of course. We’re supporting the bill, because I think we see improvements here. I look forward to future improvements. As always, I thank the House for the opportunity to speak.

S. Hamilton: It’s a pleasure to rise in the House today and speak to Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act. It’s well known that there is a skills shortage here in Canada, but put simply, the retirement rate of highly skilled trade workers is exceeding the number of young people that are needed to replace them.

[1530]

However, this shortage of skilled-trades workers is not evenly spread throughout the country. For example, we know that only four provinces in Canada are expected to expand their economies in 2016. Only Nova Scotia,
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Manitoba, Ontario and British Columbia are expected to grow their economies by more than 2 percent this year. It’s in these provinces where the shortage of skilled trades is felt the most, because labour is in higher demand.

As a matter of fact, the Conference Board of Canada predicts that British Columbia will lead the way of economic growth in Canada in 2016. It’s good news. The board also expects a strong wave of migration from other provinces that are hardest hit by the drop in commodity prices, especially in the oil industry.

People from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador are coming to British Columbia because they know where the jobs are. The Minister of Finance noted this in his last budget speech. “In the third quarter of 2015, B.C. saw the highest…level of interprovincial migration since 1995.”

I’m sorry, but I can’t resist the temptation to point out that, fortunately, this time the migration is flowing to British Columbia, as opposed to 1995, when there were people fleeing B.C. to seek opportunities in other provinces. We had a net inflow of more than 6,300 people from other regions of Canada, and more than one-third of them are from Alberta.

Looking into the future, the Conference Board of Canada is forecasting that another 20,000 people will be arriving from all parts of the country in 2016. British Columbia will certainly benefit from the influx of skilled workers in the short term, but we still face a shortage of young people choosing the trades as a career.

It is primarily the reason why government is taking the issue seriously. It’s the reason why we commissioned an independent review of the Industry Training Authority. The ITA leads and coordinates B.C.’s skilled-trades system by working with employers, employees, industry, labour, training providers and government to issue credentials, manage apprenticeships, set program standards and increase opportunities in the trades.

Since 2004, the ITA has issued a total of over 6,500 certificates of qualification to journeypersons in British Columbia, but we need to do more. The government has a core goal of positioning young people in British Columbia for the jobs of tomorrow.

To succeed in this goal, British Columbia has to ensure an optimized training system that capitalizes on the province’s full potential in planning and responding to labour needs. This was the conclusion of the final report by Jessica McDonald in 2014, and the current bill that we have before us, Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act, 2016, is addressing these concerns.

Since 2014, the ITA has completed a total of 14 McDonald report recommendations and has made significant progress on the rest of the recommendations, but the work isn’t over. The provincial government and the ITA will continue to consult with stakeholders and industry partners to implement the remaining recommendations in the McDonald report.

We must remain vigilant, because over the next 20 years, skilled trades are going to account for many of the jobs that are going to be created in the resource sector. Site C is a perfect example. It will create 10,000 construction jobs over the life of the project. This is not something that is far off in the future. Construction of the Site C clean energy project has been underway for several months now.

Construction crews have been working at the dam site, building access roads to the dam site, upgrading public roads and preparing the site for construction, and up to 1,600 people are moving into that site in a worker camp. There are currently more than 160 workers on site, and this number will continue to increase over the coming months and years. We expect $3.2 billion to be added to the provincial economy from the purchase of goods and services during the construction, including $130 million to the regional economy.

When this act becomes law, it will set out the purpose of the ITA and confirm its role in the B.C. trades-training system, it will require the ITA to develop and implement a multi-year strategic plan to achieve priorities and targets set by government, and it will require the ITA to engage with stakeholders to provide advice and recommendations on the development and implementation of the strategic plan.

I’d be interested to know if the members opposite plan to vote against the bill. But, encouragingly, from the conversations I’ve heard in the last little while since I’ve been sitting in the chamber, I’m glad to hear that many, if not all, of the members opposite plan on supporting the legislation.

[1535]

It’s important that we not discourage young people from entering the trades and planning for a great future. I can assure you of one thing. Members on this side of the House plan on supporting this bill because it supports the young people of this province, it will help to provide a solid framework going forward, and it will help us build for the future, a bright future that holds endless opportunities.

L. Krog: I’m delighted to follow the member who has now discovered the importance of young people in education and its value to British Columbia, because, after all, this is the government that blew up the existing system we had that had worked so well for a number of years and has now come back in the form of what I will call a less than full apology for the mess that they made in the first place.

But, of course, we can never quite admit we’re fully wrong and accept all of the recommendations that Jessica McDonald made. You know, I’m very conscious of the fact…. And I mean no criticism when I say this of Jessica McDonald’s abilities, because those are well known, but she is regarded on this side of the House and by some
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members of the public as being a somewhat partisan figure, given her previous positions working for the Liberal government.

Notwithstanding that, she essentially recommended that organized labour should actually have a greater involvement in this whole process. Now, I know that for the government benches, the concept that legislation would actually have some, I don’t know, positive aspect to it around organized labour is almost anathema. I mean, they can’t possibly accept that.

The reality is that many years ago much of the world looked to Germany, for instance, as a sterling example of how to manage an economy. Candidly, Germany doesn’t have the natural resources of Canada, for example. It’s still got coal in the Ruhr and things like that and a great education system, but essentially the Germans figured out a long time ago that real cooperation between government and organized labour and industry was, in fact, the way to build a real economy. So this opportunity that was presented as a result of Ms. McDonald’s recommendations with her ITA review — that labour should have a greater involvement — seems to have just slipped by the government.

Now, we are all praising the value of well-trained and skilled workers in our province, and that’s very important. I say with no small amount of pride, my brother — who’s now happily retired and quite well off, brother Lanny — many years ago attended vocational school in Nanaimo, the precursor to what is now Vancouver Island University.

He took his early training and went off to apprentice as a mechanic at Bowell McLean, when Jimmy Pattison had just bought it and was establishing his wonderful reputation for being a ruthless and effective business manager by firing the lowest-selling salesman every month off the car floor. Thank God, he didn’t take that attitude towards the apprentice mechanics.

My brother, after due course in four years, obtained his journeyman status as an auto mechanic, and it served him well in an interesting and varied career. I guess what I’m trying to indicate is that if we really want to make the economy work, we have to respect the things that people do. Even the Bible says that labour is worthy of his hire. And “hire,” just for those members who don’t appreciate what I’m saying, is really talking about his wages — or her wages, because, after all, it’s International Women’s Day.

This bill that we are amending, the Industry Training Authority Act, was assented to back on May 29, 2003. It was part of that great wave of what the B.C. Liberals regarded as reform, and what many people in British Columbia — particularly in organized labour in this province and the New Democratic Party — regarded as an assault on working people and the blowing up of a system that was designed to ensure that we would not go through periods in this province where we didn’t have people with the real skills needed to work in a modern economy.

[1540]

This legislation clearly wasn’t established to build bridges with organized labour. It wasn’t established to build bridges with any community. It was established because some folks, I suspect — particularly the independent contractors of this province’s association and some of its spokespersons, who are notoriously opposed to the rights of workers to organize — wanted a system that was, I would argue, top-heavy, and they believed ideologically suited to their way of thinking and would presumably provide greater profits.

Well, what did we discover? Through the mid part of the last decade, we saw the results of the destruction of that system: people getting work for which they were not qualified, projects being erected in a slipshod fashion, problems with various major construction projects, for example. All reflective of a system that had been…. Maybe I’ll just say damaged, not entirely destroyed.

When you look at the legislation, you can see where the roots of some of this may lie. The bill, as it exists now, says in section 3: “The minister may appoint a board of directors to consist of up to 9 directors and may appoint one of the directors as the chair.” Now, what does that tell you? That says: “Oh, we’re not going to even give a signal to anyone that we might listen to anyone other than ourselves as government. And of course, we listen to our masters.” Who are the masters? Well, they are the people who contribute to the B.C. Liberals.

We saw pretty clearly in legislation that they responded very quickly to the wishes and desires and hopes of their contributors. Of course, it’s one of the reasons we never see even a hint that they’ll consider banning corporate and union donations to political parties. But that’s a story for another day.

My point is this. The legislation doesn’t say: “The minister may appoint a board of directors and shall appoint or shall consider appointing from various sectors of the economy that may have an interest in industry training.” It doesn’t say that. Going to Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act, again, and I come back to my point, even Ms. McDonald — who, I emphasize, is not seen as a non-partisan appointment — recommended that labour should have greater involvement.

Where does the government think these people are going to get their training, and who’s going to be there side by side to train them? Do they think they’re going to get all of the training in a program at an institution? Does the government not understand that much of what we really learn in life is out in actual practice?

I’m sure the Minister of Advanced Education would probably remind everyone that he didn’t learn to be a fine lawyer by just going to law school. He learned by actually getting out there in the nitty-gritty of practice.

What do you learn in practice? First, you learn to sink or swim, as in any position or job or occupation or calling. But you also learn from those experienced persons around you. That grey-haired person, male or female, be-
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side you, who may have some experience, who may have faced this problem before, actually can provide a benefit. In a formalized system, we call those people teachers. In civilized societies and progressive societies — even pretty much in every society, uncivilized as well — you respect teachers.

Here was this wonderful opportunity for the government to recognize the value of organized worksites, recognize that a jobsite that requires a certain number of apprentices is a better jobsite than one that doesn’t. Firstly, they’ll learn the real basics of any worksite, which is around safety. Safety is important.

You could have shown the respect for organized labour in this bill by simply saying, “The minister shall appoint two members” — oh heck, even one member — “from the B.C. Federation of Labour, the building trades council” — any member of any major union that represents people who are on the worksite a great deal, who are actually out there building British Columbia. The government could have done that. Instead, it chose not to.

[1545]

Now, I can hear the minister. She’ll get a chance to respond to my remarks. I’m sure that something hopeful and positive will come of that, and she’ll say that she’s committed to a policy of appointing a third of the membership of the nine possible directors from organized labour. Maybe she’ll say that.

I’m not convinced. When I look through the bill, the amendments are fairly basic. Now, it does say that the purposes of the authority are now the following, and it’s added a further section. It adds that section because, right now, section 2 simply says: “The Industry Training Authority is established as a corporation consisting of a board of directors appointed under section 3.”

The B.C. Liberals like that. Appoint it as a corporation, and then you pretend it’s this innocent waif out there, much like B.C. Ferries, over which the government has no control or no interest or relationship.

Sub (2): “The authority has the power and capacity of a natural person of full capacity”, which for those who are interested in the law, basically means that, like any corporate body, you have all the power and capacity of an individual. And sub (3): “The authority is an agent of the government.” Ah, a bit of an admission there. An agent of the government.

Now, what are the purposes of the authority? They’re now, under the legislation:

“(a) to manage and support an industry training and apprenticeship system in British Columbia” — well, thank goodness we finally recognized that; “(b) to ensure that the industry training and apprenticeship system referred to in paragraph (a) meets the Province’s need for skilled workers” — that horse is well out of the barn; “(c) to work with the government to achieve the government’s objectives respecting the industry training and apprenticeship system referred to in paragraph (a); (d) to promote industry training programs, including by encouraging employers and individuals to participate in those programs; (e) other purposes the minister may prescribe.”

Now, the proposed section 2.1(d) could have said: “to promote industry training programs, including by encouraging employers” — comma — “organizations representing workers, trade unions, skilled trades organizations.”

It could have said a multitude of things, instead of just saying “employers and individuals” to participate in those programs. That’s because, I suspect, we’re really not interested in doing that. This is a government, one of whose members some time ago, who is no longer a member of this Legislative Assembly, said, when this government tore up the contract for the Hospital Employees Union workers — what was the phrase? — “They were nothing but a bunch of toilet cleaners.”

I think that was the phrase. I’m sure some of the members might remember that phrase. “They were nothing but a bunch of toilet cleaners.”

Now, hon. Speaker, I’ve got to tell you. As someone who cleans the toilets to our house, I say, with no small amount of pride, that’s respectable work. You know, it’s kind of important work. But to suggest for a moment that that’s all that the members of the Hospital Employees Union did for their occupation day in, day out, ensuring cleanliness and all the other things that go with good health care in a hospital setting?

To suggest that that was pretty much it speaks volumes as to why we’re not making the progress in British Columbia that we could if this government was actually committed to working in partnership and in concert with the very organizations that, historically, ensured that workers got training, ensured that there could be generations of people who were qualified carpenters, electricians, labourers, mechanics and ensured that there were people available so that, in fairness, worksites would be safer, productivity would be higher and the results for whoever was paying the bill at the end of the day — whether it be a business or a government; provincial, federal or municipal — was in fact getting good value for their dollar and projects finished and worked.

[1550]

You know, I know the members opposite love to pretend that nothing happened in the 1990s. But as someone who saw the commencement, construction and completion of the inland Island highway on time, under budget, with a significant program that involved bringing into the workforce for the first time indigenous peoples and women in record numbers and saw many of those people go on to long and successful careers in the construction industry, I must say there’s a really good example of what you can do when you use the power of government in an intelligent way and in a way that is designed to support workers, to support — to use the favourite phrase of the government benches — taxpayers, who will then be in position to pay revenue to government, to make a better British Columbia for all of us. That’s what you can actually do when you show respect for workers.
[ Page 11199 ]

When we look at this bill and I consider how other countries around the world, particularly European democracies with some history, whose time goes back and includes the history of the guilds…. You see what can be achieved.

I suppose my regret today is that as much as the opposition will support this bill — that’s pretty obvious — it just could have been better, and it could have done a better job. Yet somehow the government can’t bring itself, even in the three short pages of this bill — in three short pages — to admit that it made a mistake, to acknowledge that mistake, to move forward by bringing labour into the tent instead of constantly excluding them, instead of disrespecting them.

If there was a massive press announcement, as I said earlier, that it was the minister’s intention to involve organized labour in a direct way, I would have been so excited. Or if we had seen the Premier’s guarantee of jobs, the building of Site C, if we saw some real evidence that there was a sincere desire to ensure that people who get decent wages and decent benefits would actually be involved in the spending of what is often their own money, the money they’ve paid by way of taxes or their families have paid by way of taxes, if we saw some sincere desire or indication that that was a wish of government, we’d all be so much more excited.

Now we settle for this. Yes, it’s a step forward. I’m not going to deny that. It requires the ITA to engage with stakeholders, provide advice and recommendations around a strategic plan. It requires them to develop a multi-year strategic plan. I love strategic plans. They are all the vogue now, you know.

I mean, for a long time there, we never wanted to talk about plans, because everybody was thinking Joe Stalin. But now we’re all in favour of strategic plans. And planning is good. Successful businesses can only move forward if they have real strategic plans.

One would hope successful governments…. Unfortunately, governments’ plans usually revolve around a four-year electoral cycle, which is pretty grim. In the United States, it’s even worse, with the two-year congressional electoral cycle. But that’s a story for another day as well.

As we move forward ever so very slowly with trying to recognize that we’re all in this together, that trade unions are not going to disappear in a democratic society; as we move forward and try and hopefully live in a world that recognizes that a high-wage economy is better than a low-wage economy, where work is respected and tradespeople who have skills are respected, where a notary in Germany gets no more respect in the community than the machinist — as we try and strive for that kind of equality and recognition of the value and importance of labour and people with skills, that should be the objective of government. I just don’t see it here today. I just don’t see it. If I did, I’d be quite thrilled.

In fairness, I do compliment the government from time to time. I know the members opposite have heard a few over the years — not a lot, but a few. I try not to go overboard. It’s very un-English to be too effusive about things, as the member for Skeena well knows. The English don’t like to be too effusive in either compliments or criticism. It’s just not done. So I don’t want to be too effusive.

If cabinet ministers are happy to go around and be seen — and Premiers, for that matter…. I think the Premier likes a good photo op once in a while. If cabinet ministers and Premiers are happy to go around the province being seen photographed in front of technical schools or at BCIT or a construction site or the opening of a public facility with all the happy construction crew around them….

[1555]

If Premiers and cabinet ministers so enjoy this work and love having that happen, then why is it so difficult for them to recognize and value the skills and training that enabled those workers to complete these projects; or enables a worker to ensure that the car you drive gets you here safely; or to ensure, in terms of training, that the person who’s operating the MRI machine at the hospital actually knows what they’re doing? Why is it so difficult, arguably, for government to recognize this and just say thank you?

I mean, we all acknowledge…. I say this with great respect to all my many friends who have one and all those young people pursuing it: it’s wonderful to have a political science degree. I believe in the value of education at any level and for any purpose, if for nothing else than just improving your mind and your outlook. But we have to recognize that a good portion of our society is not going to be working as assistants to politicians or moving into government.

They’re actually going to be out there working and building things and making things work. Generating computer systems that might actually be functional so that government won’t waste hundreds of millions of dollars on programs that don’t work, so that social workers won’t be tearing their hair out or going off on stress leave because they can’t get the computer system to work. We need people with real skills.

When you respect people with real skills and you fund the institutions that provide the training for that and you recognize that there are aspects of our society where there are unions in place and training programs and you value those, you will ultimately get a better society, a safer society, a wealthier society, a healthier society.

What I just don’t understand about all of this is why the government…. After you’ve been 15 years in power, you think you’d have the confidence to be able to reach across to the hand of the people you see as your political enemies and shake it and recognize that maybe now you should be satisfied about yourself.
[ Page 11200 ]

I can’t see why, if I were a B.C. Liberal, but I’m sure they must be self-satisfied, because that’s pretty much the substance of all the speeches I ever hear from the other side. They’re very self-satisfied. My goodness, they’ve taken what they’ve portrayed as a complete train wreck and turned it into some kind of thing that would make Japan look happy to speed between, you know, Kyoto and Tokyo.

If it’s so difficult for them to do that, so hard, do they really expect that things are going to improve? When you almost, it appears, purposely exclude from the table one of the most important components of any worksite, the people who actually do it….

I know we’re management crazy in the 21st century. There are so many organizations that are top-heavy with either upper management or middle management. But somebody who actually wields the hammer or clicks the mouse or grabs the wrench or whatever — those people actually still have value. I know that as we move into an age of robotics, that’s important. But you know what? Somebody has to build the robots too. Somebody has to actually be able to assemble things from time to time. It can’t be all done by robotics.

Let me just say that as much as I will support the bill, I really would have thought that after 15 years in power and having made the mess they did, we might have heard some mature and reflective apology from the government for having created the mess and now going back and trying fixing it. Would it have been so difficult?

A little humility is actually a very, very good thing. I realize that the government is not modest, not modest at all about what it regards as its achievements. But every once in a while, in order to celebrate your achievements, if you believe they’re achievements, you should reflect on your failures.

What has happened, particularly with training in this province, is nothing for the government to brag about, nothing whatsoever for it to brag about.

[1600]

Today, as we support Bill 7, we’re really just acknowledging that the government didn’t do such a very good job and that we need to move things forward and improve it. As I say, when even your own appointed favoured ones, the people most associated with your government…. In fairness with the former Premier, that must be a difficult thing for some folks to swallow. Someone so associated with the former Premier has made a recommendation. I would have thought that it would be possible for the government to just take that little extra step, hold out the…. What is it? It’s not the fig leaf; it’s the…

Interjection.

L. Krog: …olive branch. Yes, the olive branch. That’s right. It’s not the fig leaf for trying to cover up the big mistake here. It’s the olive branch. That’s right. How could I confuse my metaphors?

Interjection.

L. Krog: Ah, the Minister of Agriculture speaks up. What can I say? We’ll be growing figs and sipping our wine, I’m sure, at harvest time. But in the meantime, I suggest a few more olive branches for the government.

[R. Lee in the chair.]

It’s 15 months to the next provincial election. One would have thought that one would want to try and expand the tent, broaden their political universe and say to labour, “After 15 years, we’ve matured. Here in the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act, we’ve actually recognized the value of you, included you as a group” — in the purposes only.

I’m not even asking for an amendment to the existing section 3 that would require the minister to appoint certain people as, in fairness, a multitude of other statutes do — where they say that you’ll have so many members of this profession and so many members of this group and so many people just appointed by the minister. Lots of statutes include that.

That’s not in this bill. But you know what? I’ll accept that. Even if they had simply included in 2(1)(d) that it would be promoting industry training programs, including by encouraging employers, organized labour, trade organizations, whatever, to participate.

Wouldn’t that have been a good thing? Not a hard thing to do, but as we have learned, apologizing is not the forte of this government. Respecting labour, labourers or people who work of any stripe in any occupation is not something this government respects.

So I guess we’re going to settle for Bill 7. We don’t really have any other choice. Better a tiny step forward than no step at all. But ultimately, at some point, labour and people who work will get their day. They will get their day. That day, I hope, comes soon.

D. Plecas: I’m pleased today to rise in the House to speak to Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act, 2016. The ITA leads and coordinates British Columbia’s skilled-trades system. They work with employers, employees, industry, labour, training providers and government to issue credentials, manage apprenticeships, set program standards and increase opportunity in the trades.

The amendments introduced in this bill fulfil our commitment to refocus the purpose of the ITA and confirm its role in B.C.’s trades-training system. No purpose statement currently exists within the legislation. It also implements recommendations in the McDonald report, the independent review of the ITA in 2014. The three proposed amendments in this legislation support 18 recommendations from the McDonald report.

This act requires the ITA to develop and implement a multi-year strategic plan to achieve priorities and set
[ Page 11201 ]
targets set by government. It will require the ITA to engage with stakeholders to provide advice and recommendations on the development and implementation of the strategic plan. As well, it will update several administrative components of the existing act, consistent with other Crown corporations and government statutes.

[1605]

The purpose of the McDonald report was to make sure that we have an optimized training system in place to respond to the labour needs of this province. B.C. expects growth across the province in many sectors, and thousands of jobs will be available. Labour market demand is growing, with the rate of retirements exceeding the rate of new entrants.

Since 2014 the ITA has completed a total of 14 recommendations of the McDonald report and has made significant progress on the rest of the recommendations. Our government, along with ITA, continues to consult with the stakeholders and industry partners to implement the remaining recommendations.

I want to highlight some of the information about ITA. We invest more than $94 million annually in industry trades training through the ITA. Since 2004, the ITA has issued more than 65,000 certificates of qualification to journeypersons in B.C. There are more than 10,000 registered employer sponsorships of apprenticeships in the province.

The ITA provides more than 100 apprenticeship training programs in B.C., including almost 50 Red Seal trades. There are currently more than 39,000 registered apprentices in the industry training program, which is more than double the apprentices registered when the ITA was created in 2004.

If I could take a minute to mention trades training in my own riding that the ITA has supported. Last fall the Abbotsford school district received $40,000 from Industry Training Authority for the secondary school apprenticeship program for the current school year.

The secondary school apprenticeship training program provides skill development through practical hands-on work experience. These funds will support the Abbotsford school district in placing students in grade 10, 11 and 12 who are part of the secondary school apprenticeship program with employers so that they can gain practical experience.

Students will “earn while they learn” and gain credit towards their high school diploma and the apprenticeship portion of their trades training. Students enrolled in this program go to work and attend high school at the same time. This program is a great way for students to gain the practical experience and make those connections with their employer. This sets students up for employment once they’re finished school.

Employers in Abbotsford continue to step up and provide spaces for our youth to work and learn the skills of the trade they are pursuing. Having the opportunity for a mentorship at the local business level is a huge advantage for students and also the employer. Students are able to grow their skills while employers get to train students to fit their unique workplace conditions and then hire the students once they are finished their program. The employers also benefit from claiming tax benefits for taking on students.

The University of the Fraser Valley, if I may mention that, provides a number of trades training programs. A year ago, UFV received $325,000 to buy new trades training equipment. The new equipment includes a steam cleaner, HVAC recovery program and drill presses for heavy-duty mechanic trades students. It also includes a saw for carpentry students and a power-threading machine for plumbing students.

As well, this funding includes new technology welding machines for welding students. When we supply funding for equipment like this, we engage in consultations with the school and with the Industry Training Authority.

Since today is International Women’s Day, it’s a good time to highlight and celebrate the success of women in trades. We work closely with organizations like ITA to support programs like women-in-trades training.

[1610]

In B.C., there are more than one million women working, which is nearly half the provincial workforce. There are currently almost 4,000 female apprentices in 72 different trades throughout B.C., and that number is growing. The doors are open for women who want to pursue careers as plumbers, electricians, sheet metal workers, carpenters or heavy-duty-equipment operators.

B.C.’s skills-for-jobs blueprint was launched in April 2014 to target training programs for jobs in demand. We want British Columbians to find their fit in our diverse, strong economy. The Industry Training Authority is an important part of that plan, as they develop world-class apprenticeship programs for British Columbians.

B. Routley: Listening to the debate, I hearken back to my first experience running into tradesmen back in the 1970s. In the day, tradesmen included…. We had a blacksmith. We also had the machinists and the electricians and the millwrights and the heavy-duty mechanics and the gas mechanics. I could go on and on about all of the trades that were there. It was something that….

As a production worker, I learned to grow huge respect for the tradesmen on the job in that manufacturing plant. That Youbou mill that I used to work in — when I first started, there were almost 600 employees. It eventually got down to 200, but when I first started, there were 550 to 600 employees. There was an A-mill, a B-mill, a veneer plant, a No. 1 and a No. 2 planer mill. We had all kinds of equipment and miles and miles of conveyors.

We had one of the longest craneways in the history of British Columbia. It was almost a quarter of a mile long, with a huge bridge crane. In fact, that crane would be as
[ Page 11202 ]
wide as this Legislature is, 80 feet in the air. You can imagine going up and down what was like a railway track that would move lumber from one place to another. We had craneway mechanics as well.

One of the things I’m getting to, in learning how the tradesmen became such an important role in manufacturing…. I hope this isn’t a newsflash for anybody. I mean this in the sincerest of ways. When I read this language, I’m somewhat disappointed and taken aback.

You know, it’s not industry. Industry doesn’t train tradesmen. It’s not employers who train tradesmen. It certainly isn’t stakeholders who train tradesmen. It’s tradesmen who train tradesmen. That’s a very basic concept. Again, I’m saddened when I look at this document and see that the tradesmen….

One of the most critical components of trades training are the tradesmen themselves. Oh, they can be a stakeholder, I guess. Stakeholder — I guess that’s what you can call them. They’re a stakeholder somehow. Well, that’s not the way it used to be. People understood that a tradesman…. If you were lucky enough to get an apprenticeship, you, as an apprentice, paid attention. It used to be that they started off, as an apprentice, basically carrying the tools around for the tradesmen. Whether it was a welder or a millwright or whatever, you got to carry their tools around.

I know guys. I remember my friend Brent Hamilton, who became a millwright apprentice. He had not only great respect for the trades but got to know those tools, carrying them around and watching them, in the first place. You used them in situations where it was important, where it was critical.

I listen to this debate — like this is some kind of top-down thing. “Oh, all we’ve got to do is have some kind of system where we’re going to have industry training.” Wow. How wonderful. Trying to take the tradesmen right out of tradesmen training — Red Seal tradesmen.

[1615]

That’s what we went through in this province of British Columbia. We went through a time when the government listened to wrong voices, instead of listening to good, unionized tradesmen — who helped build this province, I might add.

In fact, when you get up in a plane and go home, take a look down, out of the window. I defy anybody not to realize and look at the magnificent structures you will see all over British Columbia.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I caution you to use parliamentary language.

B. Routley: Oh, parliamentary language — absolutely. We’re going to get right to the parliamentary language, hon. Speaker, the parliamentary language that I’m working on. Isn’t that something about jiggery-pokery?

At the end of the day, the reality is…. Do I get worked up? Sometimes, yes. But imagine, apprenticeship training. We took the tradesmen out of the picture altogether. I’m sorry, but I fail to…. That really is bad taste, to call it an industry training program. That would be kind of like….

Let’s use the analogy that you’re going to learn how to drive a car. Let’s consult the people who build cars. Maybe we should talk to the tire folks and see what their stakeholders…. How about the bumpers? Let’s talk to the people that know a lot about bumpers. We don’t want to talk to the tradesmen who were actually involved in building the vehicle. We want to talk to these other people, the other stakeholders. Oh, the salesmen. They’re going to teach you how to drive a car. You think so? No.

I think you’ve got to go to the root cause of where training take place. Again, unless you’ve experienced it…. Do I get excited? Yeah. I’ve got wonderful memories of wonderful tradesmen.

I think about that one European fellow who had a grade 5 education in his country, but he learned on the shop floor in some of the biggest manufacturing plants in Europe. He came over to our country, and he got hired as an uncertified millwright, okay? We had a management that understood, “Maybe we should listen to this guy,” because he worked magic everywhere he went.

He devised a new way to get the edger in the A-mill. They were going to cut a hole through the roof to put a crane, hang this crane and hang the new edger components. It was going to be a great expense, huge time. They went to Gus — as I’ll call him — and Gus basically said: “Well, look. There’s a way to reverse the rolls on the head-rig, on the edger, on all of the outfeed rollers.”

He reversed this machine right back into place in just a few hours, and saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses on what they were thinking of doing. They were going to tear it all apart, reconstruct it and drop it through the roof — all this stuff. They used a real tradesman, in every sense of the word.

Thankfully, in the last part of his career, I got to see management not only give him a bonus for some of his ideas that increased productivity in the place, but they said to him one day: “You know what? We’ve got to pay you the certified rate. We’re going to pay you as a certified tradesman.”

The first place you want to go is to the tradesman when you want to learn about trades training. I’ve spoken with tradesmen and talked about trades training. Some of them are very willing to train; there are some not so…. They don’t love the idea of being a trainer because it takes up a lot of time, right? But I would say better than 80 percent of tradesmen like to train. If you’ve got a good guy that knows how to train, they’re worth their weight in gold.

[1620]

We need to be working together on this. It’s not just the industry, not the so-called stakeholders. I’m horrified by what they did to the trades training. They tried to compartmentalize trades training. They said: “Oh,
[ Page 11203 ]
you’re a carpenter. We don’t need a Red Seal carpenter. We can have a framer. Let’s just get a guy that knows how to knock together a few 2-by-4s. We’ll call him a framer.”

With the construction contractors, it was all about busting up trade and trying to put it into components. Why? To save money. You don’t suppose, do you? You don’t suppose they were trying to line their pockets by getting a bargain basement tradesman?

Now it’s generally accepted all over the world, and certainly accepted here in British Columbia. If you want the job done, find yourself a Red Seal tradesman — somebody that’s got the experience in the industry, somebody that’s got the wealth of knowledge that comes from packing that tradesman’s tools around and then learning bit by bit and being mentored in a way that is meaningful.

I think I’ve told this story in the House before, but it’s worth repeating. I actually had a company — MacMillan Bloedel —with the foresight to come to me and say: “Bill, we’d like to pay the tradesmen $1.04 more an hour just so that we can have Bob work with Norm, or whoever.”

Interjection.

B. Routley: Not this Norm. I am not naming names. Another Norm. It could be any Norm. There are Norms everywhere when you look. It could be any Tom, Dick or Harry; let’s put it that way. The point is that they took the time to take the millwrights and put them together with the saw filers. They put the saw filers with the electricians, and they spent weeks working together. They got to know each other.

Even I questioned the value. We’re talking trades training here. I hope the other side is listening to something that is real life experience that you can learn from — if you listen to the people on the ground, the people that know and have actually experienced getting their hands dirty.

Those tradesmen, at the end of the day, by working together…. The company said that at the end of a year…. Do you know what the benefit for them was? It was a 10 percent reduction in the downtime of the whole mill. That was huge. It was so much money. It was way more. It was ten times the money that they had paid to get those tradesmen to know each other.

Why did they do that? Because they understood. Management, the industry, the stakeholders, realized: “Hey, if these guys mentor each other….” If Bob gets to know Norm, and he learns that, hey, Norm’s got a problem here in the filing room…. As a millwright, the millwright could look at the problem and say: “Hey, I know exactly what to do to make that easier. I can make your saw change a few split seconds quicker by doing this and that and the other thing.”

That’s exactly what goes on. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve seen tradesmen invent amazing ways to do things that some people would never think of. Again, in the good old days, management used to say thank you. They used to come down and give awards. They used to take the crew for a special dinner when they did something magnificent.

I remember when I was on the bargaining committee. I had management say to me: “Well, what if the tradesmen decide to go home on Sunday night and down tools before…? Like, if they’re mad at us, we’ve got to have language in here to force them to work overtime if we need it.” I said: “You know, you don’t need that.”

I have never met a tradesman who is going to walk away from his plant. He knows he works with all those guys down on the production line that are counting on him. Again, they all play on the same baseball teams. They go to the fire department together. They’re on ambulance or first-aid training together. They know each other. They’ve got the modicum of respect to build on that relationship, to work together and to make it work.

[1625]

I never ever heard of tradesmen walking away from a job if you’ve got the head rig all torn apart or an edger or something. They worked till the job was done, even if that meant working 16 hours of overtime. Whatever it took, they were there. And on Monday morning or Monday at midnight, when it was time to start up the production shift, it started up, because those guys cared.

We’re talking about an apprenticeship training model that talks about getting back to our grass roots, talks about getting back to what Red Seal tradesmen are all about. You know, I listen to the minister and others, and I want to compliment them on moving in the right direction. I think they’re sincere. I think there are people that are sincere over there that are realizing: “Wait a minute. Something’s wrong here when we’re losing apprentices.”

When you watch the numbers, they speak for themselves. When you go from 90 percent completion rates — or 80 percent in the general industry, 90 in unionized sites — and you see that dropping like a rock, you know you’ve got to change directions and make improvements. I just want to emphasize that it’s the relationships that you have too. It’s a team. Tradesmen are a team, and that includes their apprentice. It’s not just an apprentice. Like, it’s not just some…. They’re not going to mould some clay and say — presto chango — this guy is going to be trained.

I look at the law enforcement people over there. They know what I am talking about. When they started out as a green person, I’m sure that they rode around with somebody else that knew what they were doing, and they learned from them. Over time, they honed those skills and learned how to be the kind of…. Whether it’s a police officer or a tradesman, it is critical that we somehow support that mentorship and that training.

I have seen experience in this worldwide. Why can’t we learn from Sweden? I got to go to Sweden, and they actually…. I’m not sure that I’m ready to go as far as the Swedes were. They literally stream kids after grade 9, I think it is. Kids will go off to a trade school, or they’ll go
[ Page 11204 ]
off to post-secondary training. But it works for them. I know in countries like Germany, again, they have modernized their skills training.

I think we can do a lot more. I think that by truly sitting down…. I really hope that people are listening to the need to have those skilled unionized tradesmen that are there to be able to get the experience, the wealth of experience that comes with that.

I want to give a quick example, too, of the difference between union and non-union. I would have never imagined that I would experience this, but I had a fellow who belonged to a group that are non-union. He fell, on the job, as a contractor in Alberta. He used to make six figures. When he ended up with his back injury and came out of the hospital….

Again, I may have spoken about this guy in the House. He got out of the house and found that they had broken into the camper he was living in and stolen his shaving kit that had his teeth in it. So he’s already…. To add insult to injury, he’s got a broken back; now his teeth are gone. He didn’t have a union to fight for him. I did my best, but the WCB was going to be resistant to accepting anything to do with this non-union guy. He really ended up on disability pension. That’s where he sits today. He didn’t have a union. He didn’t have any benefits negotiated on his behalf.

So do I have a bias about unions? You bet your life I do. Do I understand the value? Is it worth the premium that you pay for good people who want to do an honest day’s work? Again, I want to emphasize that I’ve never met anybody — whether they become a tradesman or whatever their profession — that doesn’t believe in trying to give their best for their jobs. Certainly, that’s the case here.

[1630]

I look at the retirement rate, and I remember warning the industry way back when. Of course, then, we had 35,000 more forest workers than we have today, so we’ve lost lots. I talked to guys who were here, like heavy-duty mechanics and mechanics in logging operations. What are they doing now? They are working on construction crews on highways. They’re working and building malls, and they’re heavy-duty mechanics.

I ran into one the other day and said: “Would you ever go back to the forest industry? Your father and your grandfather were mechanics. Why wouldn’t you go back to the forest industry where you came from historically?” They said: “Never again. No, I’m happy.” It’s not just about pay sometimes. Sometimes it’s just about the dignity and respect of the job, of being treated with the dignity and respect that anybody doing 100 percent, giving their best to their job, gets.

We’ve got a bill that’s going to talk about supporting industry training as if somehow that’s got…. There are no people, no tradesmen, involved. It’s an industry training and apprenticeship system. Apprentices learn nothing, I have to say again, from the industry. It’s like you might as well go to the car salesman to get trained.

I wish you’d put in the trades and give them the due respect that they so rightfully deserve, when you look throughout British Columbia and see all that they’ve built in this country. We should have a tradesmen day, like we have all these other days. We should be celebrating our journeymen, tradesmen and Red Seal guys. There should be a parade through town, when I think about the honourable things that they’ve built throughout British Columbia, the communities that they’ve helped support.

We have lots of recognition for other industries and other folks that are all very worthwhile. Again, unless you’ve met a tradesman…. Maybe you should hug a tradesman, and then you’ll know what I mean. I don’t know; I’m getting silly now. I’m a hugger, even my tradesmen friends at Christmas. I’m happy to hug a tradesman. I think the world of those tradesmen, because they do a dynamic job for the people of British Columbia.

I think about the fact, and I didn’t touch on it…. We know that as people quit, die and retire, particularly when they’re four years away from retiring…. I used to say to the industry: “Well, surely, you’re going to start training an apprentice.” If you know somebody who has said, “I’m going to retire in four years,” you should start an apprentice. Well, do you think you could get the industry to agree to that? No way.

They were always about cost-cutting and trying to pinch the pennies. Sure, that’s important, but often what they found out is that they get those extra tradesmen on the job and things get fixed. It reduces downtime and improves the overall structure of the whole business. They become more profitable and more productive, something that we need to take into account when we think about this bill. Is it moving in the right direction? Yes.

Here’s one for the minister to contemplate. I got a call from an old friend. I do want to mention my friend Carmen Rocco. I had the privilege of working with him from 1990 all the way through till 2009. He’s now retired. I haven’t had the good sense yet. He does.

Carmen — the reason I mention him — has got multiple skills. He’s certainly a mechanic in his own right, but he was a logger and a respected workmate on the site, working in the logging side of the industry. He came out of the Caycuse logging camp. I was the mill guy. He and I worked side by side, with me being the president of a 3,000-local operation, and he was the logging guy.

[1635]

He and I were chums and worked together everywhere, so I have great respect for him and his talent. Some of that rubbed off on one of his sons, who, unfortunately, couldn’t find trades training here in British Columbia. He went to Alberta during the heady days. Even three years ago, times were better. He got hired as an apprentice pipefitter. He completed his first and second years of apprenticeship. As the minister will know, and others, it requires testing after your first year of apprenticeship. You take a test. You move on to the second year and more
[ Page 11205 ]
testing. The situation was that he got laid off from his job as a third-year apprentice.

He was working towards being a journeyman pipefitter, and he was all scheduled, just recently, to go back to Alberta to complete six weeks of training. His dad, my friend Carmen, phoned me and said: “I don’t know what you can do about this.” I have tried to get through to the training agency, but maybe the minister will know the answer to this question.

His question is: why is it that with trades, once you become a Red Seal tradesman, you’re interchangeable from one province to another? A journeyman pipefitter can come from Alberta and get hired in British Columbia and vice versa — same thing with a tradesman — yet his son had to take six weeks of training back in Alberta.

He said: “Look, the university right here on Vancouver Island, Vancouver Island University, has a similar kind of course. Why can’t he take that course here?” Maybe that’s something that’s going to get addressed by this process. I really hope so. I think the one thing that everybody in this House can agree on is that the goal should be to try to break down barriers.

Wherever there are barriers to successful training, especially training that we need and that is critical and absolutely necessary…. It makes no sense to me to hear this dad saying: “Well, why would my pipefitter son have to go back to Alberta to take a six-week course that I’d like him to take right here in British Columbia?”

He actually phoned the apprenticeship folks, I guess, in Alberta, and they’re saying: “Well, you’ve got to talk to them in British Columbia.” There’s no reciprocal agreement. That’s what it would take — a reciprocal agreement that works things out so that you get these barriers out of the way.

Why wouldn’t we ensure that not just trades are interchangeable? Certainly, if you’re an apprentice and you’ve gone and worked your heart out and you’re now a third-year journeyman and you just need to complete the testing, that’s problematic.

Again, I don’t know. Maybe I should go and speak to the minister off line, if she knows of anything we can do about this. It is one of those things. I’m told that it is a barrier. Hopefully, it’s something that we can agree to work on while we’re talking with the other stakeholders involved.

I thank you, hon. Speaker, for the opportunity. I hope that I have referred back to as much parliamentary language as possible. I’m still working on it after all these years. I guess I can be forgiven for wandering off the path. After all, I’m an old sawmill worker at heart who had quite a few years of amazing experiences working with real Red Seal tradesmen, who are the salt of the earth. They’d do anything for you.

My good friend who I mentioned earlier, Hamilton. I ran into him. When he retired, he moved to Saltspring Island. I said: “How is that going over on the island?” He said: “Well, as soon as they found out I’m a retired millwright, I got more work than I know what to do with.” He doesn’t have to leave the island to find work opportunities because it’s there in the neighbourhood.

[1640]

Anyway, thank you for the opportunity to speak about this important matter. I do hope and wish for much success in actually moving forward with this process. I hope we can agree that a team approach that gives those tradesmen the recognition and respect they deserve is definitely the way to go, at the end of the day.

Hon. M. Morris: I’ve been listening to the members opposite. It appears that they’re supporting this bill, but they appear to be under the misconception that there are only tradesmen within organized labour.

There are tradesmen all across this great province of ours that not only work in organized labour but work throughout the province for a number of various companies that do an outstanding job in contributing to the overall infrastructure in the province and keeping our mills and mines and oil and gas industry flourishing across the province here.

I’ve got close relatives, close family members, who are tradesmen and aren’t with any recognized organized labour, who are fully qualified to teach their trade. They’re journeymen. They have taught apprentices over many, many years in the trades, and they do an outstanding job. In fact, a lot of their apprentices have come back and have thanked them years later for the outstanding job that they’ve done in preparing them for the future.

Like the member opposite has stated, the same thing happens in policing, where you get a seasoned veteran to assist you through all the hurdles in learning the trade, and eventually you get into that position yourself and start training people. The ITA is not restricted to…. They seem to think that industry reflects some ghost.

Industry is made up of Red Seal tradespeople right across this province that are going to be participating in the process to make sure that our young men and women have the necessary training in order to move this province forward and meet the expectations that we see coming down the road with LNG and with all the other industry and industrial opportunities that we have.

The ITA will be focused on, once this bill is passed…. It will develop a purpose statement. I think I might have said this in House before, but no organization has the right to exist just because you’re an organization. You have to have a mission. You have to have a purpose. I think that this is going to clarify exactly what that purpose is. Once that purpose is developed, then you need a strategic plan in order to get there. You need to synthesize your vision. You need to align all your resources in order to achieve the purposes that are set out for you and the priorities that we see are necessary in order to meet the demand across the province with trades.
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That’s exactly what this bill is going to do. It’s going to engage the stakeholders right across the province to make sure that we get input from all levels — not only organized labour but the Red Seal tradespeople themselves, schools, business, industry. Everybody is going to have an opportunity to provide input into that.

The ITA. I’m just going to talk a little bit about my riding in Prince George–Mackenzie. Back in April of 2015, we announced more trades seats for the College of New Caledonia in Prince George. Along with that, we announced that we’re going to spend $330,000-plus for 64 critical trades positions up there to reduce the wait times that a lot of the students had for some of the in-demand trade professions that we had — electrical, millwright, power engineering, which are significantly in demand across this great province of ours.

We developed that, and that was part of a $6 million initiative that we had right across the province to fund over 1,400 additional seats this year and to address our public post-secondary institutions throughout the province and support our B.C. skills-for-jobs blueprint.

[1645]

In addition to that, I want to talk a little bit about the programs that we have for secondary school apprenticeships. I think that’s an outstanding program. I ran into a young man on the plane a year ago who had just completed his apprenticeship training and was a fully certified journeyperson. I think he was in his early 20s. He had started his trades program when he was still in high school. He got full credit for that program, and he went on to finish it in college through trades training.

He was a full journeyman millwright working in heavy industry north of Prince George and was just flying home from a vacation that he had down in the sunny south somewhere. He was just beaming — that those opportunities were available to him. We’re expanding that. We’re supporting that right through the province here.

School district 57 received $30,000 from the ITA for secondary school apprenticeship programs to support the 2015-16 school year. Again, in March of this year, the accelerated credit program, the ACE IT program component for high school training, is also receiving a lot of attention from the provincial government. It’s not only in Prince George. It’s in other communities across the province here to make sure that we do have qualified people to meet the demands that are coming down from LNG, that are going to surface with respect to some of the other infrastructure projects.

We’ve got $12 billion we’re going to put into infrastructure projects across this great province of ours — in schools, hospitals, road construction and bridges. We’re going to need those Red Seal workers. We’re going to need the apprenticeship programs to support those kinds of programs that keep B.C. moving forward and to make sure that we still maintain our position as one of the main economic drivers for this great country of ours — for Canada.

I support this bill. I support the things that it’s going to provide for us down the road, the great strategic plan that they’re going to come up with and the vision and the purpose statement that they all have. Everybody in this House and everybody in British Columbia will understand exactly what the ITA is, that it’s not restricted to organized labour but is focusing on the trades training to make sure we’ve got qualified people out there right across this great province.

K. Conroy: I’m pleased to rise to speak to Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act, 2016. I will concur with some of my colleagues who have spoken. I hope that the issues in this bill will be corrected, issues that seemed to go off the rail in 2002-2004 — that this bill will address those issues.

People have already spoken, and they’ve raised issues around friends and family. I, too, have a family history in the trades. In fact, my father, who’s going to be 88 this year, emigrated from Denmark as a machinist and then got a job at the pulp mill in Castlegar and went to night school to become a fully qualified journeyperson as a millwright.

Our young son is also a millwright. He went to school in Nelson in 2002, where he worked on equipment that was from the Soviet era.

I will give the government kudos when kudos are due —that finally there’s going to be some money put into the trades program in Nelson. They are going to actually get equipment that’s going to be updated. It’ll be great for the kids that are going to that school. Ben got out of school, and he was working on equipment that he didn’t know how to work on, because it was ancient equipment.

He graduated from Nelson, and there was no work in B.C. He had to leave B.C. to go and find work. He went to Alberta. Not only did he work in Alberta; he got all of his trades training in Alberta, through SAIT. He ended up working across Alberta right up into the oil sands.

He recently got a promotion. He’s still working for the same company, and he’s working down in New Orleans. He wants to come back to B.C. His goal is to move back to B.C. His goal is to live in B.C., be a tradesperson in B.C. He’s bought land in B.C., but there’s no work right now in B.C. for him, so he is working out of the province.

My brother is a plumber. He’s a plumber-pipefitter. For the last four years, he’s had to leave B.C.

[1650]

I just want to make sure that I clarify these family members…. The member for Delta North spoke about all the people that had left the province before and how they’re all coming back.

Well, they’re not coming back. My brother, for two years, worked in Saskatchewan, and now he’s working in Alberta. He leaves, comes home for a week, leaves for two weeks. There’s another family member, another tradesperson, that can’t find work — and he’s an excellent tradesperson — in B.C.
[ Page 11207 ]

My two nephews. They had to go to Alberta. They got training in Alberta. They got some training in B.C., too, but now they’re back in Alberta working because there’s no work here. They’re actually both working up in the oil sands, and they will be working up there for a while.

My son-in-law is a journeyman carpenter, doing quite well, but worked for a while up in Alberta. He actually did come back to B.C., worked in Kitimat for a while and really enjoyed working in B.C., but that work ended. There’s no work in B.C. So what’s he doing now? He’s going back to Alberta.

Those are just five people in my family. That’s a message that’s getting across the entire…. That’s not just my family. I talk to people everywhere — tradespeople who want to work in the province, who want to come back and work here. I hope some things are going to happen so that those people can come back and work here.

As well, when I’m reading this bill, I’m looking at it, and I’m thinking that…. I’m reading that the bill is actually going to set out purpose for the ITA. It’s going to set out a multi-year strategic plan to achieve priorities and targets set by the government, and I think this is wonderful. But ITA has been in existence since 2004. It’s taken over a decade to decide that ITA needed a strategic plan?

I mean, the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General just said that every organization needs a strategic plan, that every agency needs to set priorities and targets. For some reason, it’s taken over a decade to get to this. So we’re going support this bill because, finally, we’re going to have some strategic direction, some purpose, a purpose statement for this organization. This is wonderful.

One thing I’m really hoping this bill will address is diversification in the trades — that the strategic plan will actually show guidelines that ensure we have programs in place, that ensure employment equity, that ensure we have trades training opportunity for women, for aboriginal people, visible minorities and persons with disabilities.

One reason I’m quite passionate about this is that I saw what happened with the Columbia Basin Trust and the Columbia Power Corp. A discussion paper was put out on how they could ensure that employment equity was part of the projects that were happening as part of the Columbia Basin Trust and Columbia Power Corp. They had three projects. They had the Arrow Lakes project, Brilliant project and Waneta project.

All of those projects had equity mandate. They had local hire, and they also had a trades training program. All of those programs had apprentices that went through the projects. They all had…. I can’t remember the exact number now — I’ll have to look that up — but it was a significant number of young women who came into these projects, completed and came out of those projects as journeypersons. It was really exciting to see that. They worked with the Columbia Power Corp. and the trust to ensure that they were actually journeypersons after this work.

I think this is really important. They were also great projects in that they had significant equity with aboriginal persons in the region. A number of them came in and became journeypersons: carpenters, millwrights and a number of different trades.

It’s really important that this is happening. I think these are guidelines that all businesses, all corporations, all industries can take on if they are in fact regulation that comes from the ITA. Not all corporations and industries are as thoughtful and reasoned as the Columbia Basin Trust was, for instance, in bringing in these equity mandates.

One of the other equity mandates was, as I said, that they hired locally. They hired within a 100-mile radius, so it ensured local hire for those projects in the region and for people. Like, we have a wealth of tradespeople in our region who have worked on dam projects over the years.

[1655]

I mean, we’re the most dammed area in the entire province. We’re on the Columbia River. There are a lot of people in our area that have excellent skills. So these people were able to go back to work and work at home instead of having to leave the area and go out and work.

The other interesting thing, one last thing I want to point out, in addition to the entire agreement around these three projects, was the Allied Hydro agreement. All of these projects were built under the Allied Hydro agreement, so they were all built in cooperation with skilled labour, through the building trades. There was a local hire. There was no labour strife.

There was a commitment from the building trades, as well as a commitment with the Columbia Power Corp. and the other partners, to ensure that these projects would be built on time, on budget, which they were, and that if there were any labour issues, it would be negotiated and worked on as part of the project. It’s an excellent example of what can happen in the province.

I’m hoping that the province is going to put these guidelines into the ITA to show what we can do to train apprentices. We can make sure that they’re trained on jobs in B.C., that there’s local hire, that they get the training and the education and that it’s going to be women, persons with disabilities and First Nations people who are going to get the opportunity to get the training they so deserve.

I think it’s so great, the number of people that came out of these projects that are fully qualified journeypersons now and are going off and looking for other work. I’m hoping, for their sake, that Elko is the next project as part of this so their work will carry on.

I often encourage young people to get into the trades. In fact, for a number of years now, I’ve given out a bursary to all of my high schools. It’s dependent not on your grades or your need; it’s dependent on going into the trades. I actually encourage young women to go into the trades, because I think it’s really important that people
[ Page 11208 ]
recognize that these are opportunities. I’m hoping that these new guidelines and the new regulations, the priorities and targets that are going to be set in ITA, will actually ensure that we look at ensuring more young women get into the trades.

I’ve noticed the new program at the high schools where they are having the trades training at the high school so that they can start their training early. I’ve talked to a lot of young fellows who are doing that, who in grade 10 or 11 are starting to say: “I want to go and become a tradesperson.” They go and get the training through the program that’s in the high school. But not as many young women are doing it.

I think it’s really important that we encourage young women to get involved in the trades — and encourage young men too. I think it’s really important.

I think one of the people in the province who probably has the greatest depth of knowledge on the whole issue of trades training and diversity and what needs to go into the whole issue around the ITA is a woman named Dr. Marcia Braundy.

Marcia lives in the Kootenays. She’s well known across Canada for her vision of trades training and the work that she’s been doing. She’s done work since the ’80s on trades training. She recently wrote a book all about trades training. It’s called Men and Women and Tools: Bridging the Divide. She talks about the barriers to women getting into training.

Marcia is also a journeywoman carpenter, one of the first journeywoman carpenters in this province, so she’s been through the system. She understands how it works. She talked about the barriers. She said that not only in her days was it a barrier for her to enter into this very male-dominated industry — so the men were a barrier — she said there were regulations that were a barrier.

I related to her as a person who was actually one of the first female power engineers in the province. I worked in the pulp mill in Castlegar, where I was the first female to ever work in the pulp mill.

Today it was mentioned that when the Speaker was first elected to the Legislature, there was only one washroom for women in the entire Legislature. Well, when I worked in the pulp mill, there were no washrooms for women.

[1700]

Anybody that’s worked in industry would recognize the term “tag out.” I actually had to tag out washrooms when I was going to use the washroom in the pulp mill. I had to tag out the showers when I wanted to have a shower after work, because there were no facilities for women in the mill that I worked in. I was recently at that mill last year, plant-gating. I was talking to the young women who work in the mill now. They came and thanked me because, they said, they have a beautiful shower facility. They have beautiful washroom facilities.

The mill is very female-friendly now. It wasn’t in those days. In fact, my father worked there. They had a bet on me to see if I could actually survive working in the steam plant. My father won the bet, because he knew my determination. I was really annoyed with him because he didn’t get me in on that. I’ll just point that out to my dad.

In those days — I mean, that was in the ’70s — women weren’t as welcome in male-dominated industries. I think it’s really important that we see now that more and more people recognize that women as well as men work well together in the trades.

I look at a recent project up in Nakusp, where they built a couple of ferries and now they’re going to be building more ferries. They hired significant numbers of welders. Some of the best welders they hired were a couple of journeywomen welders. They were not only excellent welders, but they were small enough to get into the tight spots that some of their fellow welders could not get into. I know those women are excited about the opportunity to continue working. We will have people working in Nakusp, which is amazing and great.

When I look at the legislation, I want to make sure…. I’m hoping that this comes out in committee stage, where we’ll actually drill down to see that some of these priorities will set priorities and set targets to ensure that there are regulations and language that support women to get into the trades.

Marcia, when she started…. She started back in the ’80s with her work ensuring that women got into the trades. She developed and instructed a course called “Women in Trades and Technology.” Now, some of the members have referred to it as still happening today.

Marcia was the person who developed that course. She took it to the different colleges. She started the course in Selkirk College in 1983, the College of New Caledonia in ’86 and, actually, up in Yukon in 2006. She authored curriculum on ensuring that women were supported in the trades and how to ensure that women were working in the trades.

She worked with a woman named Sally Mackenzie, who is also from the Kootenays, and Valerie Ward. They developed and delivered over 40 one-day sessions called “The Workplace in Transition: Integrating Women Effectively.” It was a seminar for trade instructors, job stewards, apprenticeship counsellors and supervisors to assist them, to help them deal more successfully with women training and ensuring that the workforce was getting the support they needed to make sure that women actually did get into the trades.

She also was part of the equity group. I know that some of the members have mentioned the Island Highway project. She was one of the people…. She was a founding member of the equity integration committee for the Island Highway, which ensured that women were actually working on that project on Vancouver Island in the ’90s.

She was part of the women’s ad hoc committee. She worked with the Columbia Basin Trust to ensure that there was a gender analysis not only for the impact of the
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projects on women as they rolled out but also to make sure that women got jobs. The equity mandate was developed with her participation.

I think it’s really important, a woman like this who has a vast amount of knowledge. I would hope that the government would reach out and say: “What worked? What things worked, as part of this woman’s career?” Certainly, the “Women in Trades and Technology” has worked.

I’m hoping that might be something that the ITA would look at supporting and actually putting more financial support, more support so that…. I’ve talked to women who have thought about going and taking the course. It’s not in their community. They can’t afford it. There’s not very much support to ensure that women can go and take those initial courses.

[1705]

One of the great things about “Women in Trades and Technology” is that it gives women an opportunity to try a bunch of different trades. It’s a course where you go and you can…. Women might not know what trades are out there or what they entail. You can go and try being a plumber or being a welder or being a carpenter. In all the different trades, they actually get to experience a couple of weeks of each, if not more.

I know my daughter took the course when it was available. She loved it and was very interested in carrying on and looked into being a welder, but motherhood got in the way. Someday she thinks that she still will be a welder. That’s her goal someday, now that she’s finished having children — either that or a nurse, one or the other.

It’s an excellent program, and it’s given a lot of young women in the province the opportunity to go and try these different trades out and then say: “Okay, this is the one I want to focus on. This is the one I want to go to school for. This is the one I want to try to get a job in.” I’m hoping that the ITA — that part of their strategic plan will be to work with different industries, different corporations and different unions.

It’s interesting. I know that there is significant buy-in from unions in this province, where unions are training people. I know Operating Engineers and I know a lot of the building trades are training. They are training tradespersons. They are taking them and helping them to get the work they need but then also bringing them back and getting the education they need to ensure that they get their journeyperson like become a Red Seal carpenter, for instance, and a fully Red Seal carpenter — not, as the member for Cowichan Valley was talking about, a carpenter that only knows how to frame or an electrician that only knows how to do the wire pulling in a residential building but a fully Red Seal–trained carpenter, a fully Red Seal–trained electrician.

It’s interesting that Marcia started a company herself and trained women to be qualified journey-level carpenters. She travelled all over the world, actually, helping other countries to develop this training. A country as small as…. She went to Grenada to ensure that their country would benefit by training women, and they trained a number of them. She’s done amazing work. I would hope, as part of their thinking through their strategic plan, that they’ve talked to people like Marcia, to say to them: “You know, these are ideas that we’ve had.”

When you look at it, I would recommend the minister and others who are interested in women in trade and technology to actually read Marcia’s book. She’s got numerous awards. I think it’s important that we look at that and we say: “You know, these are people that can come and help the ITA with the work they’re going to do.”

I think it’s interesting. Again, I’m somewhat surprised that it’s taken this long. The ITA has been around since 2004, and it’s only in the last couple of years that it’s been recommended that it needs a purpose statement, that it needs a multi-year strategic plan. How would an organization function if it didn’t have priorities and targets?

It then makes one question. Now, when we know that so many people have to leave the province to ensure they get the training, we can understand that the ITA had no guidelines, no strategic plan. It didn’t say: “We need to ensure we graduate this many. We train this many. We ensure we have this many women, this many First Nations, this many persons with disabilities, this many journeyman Red Seal carpenters in the province.” If they don’t have those guidelines, what were their goals? What were they doing? I guess that’s a debate for another bill, not this one, but I question that.

I also question where…. I think it’s really important. There was some discussion around organized labour from the previous speaker. I think it’s really important to recognize that the majority of large projects in this province….

[1710]

That speaker also mentioned mines, sawmills, pulp mills. The majority of those industries are unionized. The members within those…. The unions support those members to get their training. The unions support those members to ensure that they get their Red Seal status and that they can work in the industry that they’re in. I think it’s interesting that, for some reason, that seemed to be a discussion that wasn’t appropriate or was dismissed.

I don’t know where the member is coming from, but organized labour is very involved in training people in this province. It is very involved in ensuring that their members and people that they bring on as members are getting the training that they need — and appropriate training. They take it very seriously. They have very serious safety training programs to ensure that people are properly trained and that they’re going to go out and do the work they need to do.

I think it’s important that organized labour is at the table. I don’t see it in this bill. Hopefully, in committee stage, we’ll be able to see that. We need to ensure that organized labour has the membership there, that it has a voice at the table. They have really important…. They
[ Page 11210 ]
could be developing these strategic plans. They could be ensuring that the administrative components of the existing act are actually going to work for the people working in the province. That’s what this bill should be all about.

Sure, it’s about making sure ITA finally has a purpose statement. But it’s about ensuring that the people of this province — the people of B.C., young people, people that are maybe not so young but are still working — actually get the trades training they need, actually get the work they need.

People want to stay in B.C. As I said before, I don’t know any of the people I talk to that have had to leave the province to get work that are really happy about it. They want to be back home. They want to come home and spend time with their families. They want to be home at night, and working, or home during the day, and working — whenever they work. A lot of them work shift work.

I think it’s really important that, when we look at the final draft on what we’re going to see in this bill, it ensures that it’s about tradespeople in B.C. It’s about ensuring that young people in this province as well as, as I said, the equity mandate — that there’s work for people in this province…. I’m hoping that at committee stage, we will see that — that we will see that this bill does, in fact, deal with the issues that need to have been addressed, that have needed to be addressed since ITA was brought in, in 2004. We now need these things addressed.

This is an opportunity. This is an opportunity for the government to be bold, for the government to say yes. You know, things didn’t work out so well, so let’s make it work better.

I really hope that this is the opportunity now — that the government is going to take this on and ensure that we are getting a bill that’s going to make sure that we get training for young people in this province; that there are going to be opportunities for work for people in this province; and that the bottom line is that British Columbians are going to get the training that they need and they deserve.

G. Kyllo: The Industry Training Authority is an agency of the provincial government that is responsible for apprenticeships and industry training programs in B.C. The ITA supports existing apprenticeship options and works to identify new training opportunities and approaches. This is leading to a training system that expands opportunities for British Columbians and better meets the needs of industry in the labour market.

Just one example of the ITA’s good work. It is involved with the Ministry of Education and the ministry’s skills training grant access program, which helps students from grade 6 to grade 12 who have an interest in pursuing any of the skilled trades, now including the information and communications technology sector. Just last week the ministry announced the second year of the skills training access grants that are being provided to 30 public school districts and nine independent schools around the province. To date, almost 560 students have benefited from these grants.

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School districts also reported improvements to skills training, stronger relationships with post-secondary and training providers and strengthened relationships with employers because students are more work-ready.

This bill fulfils our government’s commitments to refocus the ITA, as outlined in the B.C. skills-for-jobs blueprint, and implement the recommendations in Jessica McDonald’s independent review of the ITA in 2014. The three proposed amendments support 18 recommendations from the McDonald report.

When the act becomes law, it will set out the purpose of the ITA and confirm its role in B.C.’s trades-training system; require the ITA to develop and implement a multi-year strategic plan to achieve priorities and targets set by government; and require the ITA to engage with stakeholders to provide advice and recommendations on development and implementation of the strategic plan — as well as updating several administrative components of the existing act, consistent with other Crown corporations and government statues.

With B.C. expecting economic growth across the province in many sectors, thousands of jobs will be available. Labour market demand is growing, with the rate of retirements exceeding the rate of new entrants. Our government wants British Columbians to seize these new job opportunities. Therefore, we must ensure an enhanced training system to respond to the labour needs of the province.

Since 2014, the ITA has completed a total of 14 of the McDonald report recommendations. It has made significant progress on the rest of the recommendations. Our government and the ITA continue to consult with stakeholders and industry partners to implement the remaining recommendations in the McDonald review.

Our government invests more than $94 million annually in industry trades training through the ITA. As announced in Budget 2016, the province is increasing ITA funding by nearly $8 million over the next three years to further support ITA’s youth programs. There are currently more than 39,000 registered apprentices in the industry training system, more than double the number of apprentices who were registered when the ITA was created in 2004.

It’s appropriate today, International Women’s Day, to celebrate the success of women in non-traditional and in-demand industries such as trades and technology. If we want a strong and vibrant economic future, then it is imperative that strong and vibrant women help to drive it. A great opportunity for women to help drive the economy is through careers in the skilled-trades or technology sectors.

B.C. has more than one million women working today, nearly half of the current provincial labour force. With
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the addition of nearly one million job openings expected in the province by 2024, women will play an increasingly important role in keeping B.C.’s economy diverse, strong and growing.

Though not traditionally thought of as a career path for women, the skilled trades offer the possibility of rich, rewarding careers. In fact, growing numbers of women are taking up the challenge of the trades and the benefits that they bring: job satisfaction and great pay. To help women get their skills, our government is working closely with organizations like the Industry Training Authority to support programs like women-in-trades training.

The ITA leads and coordinates B.C.’s skilled-trades system by working with employees, employers, industry labour, training providers and the government to issue credentials, manage apprenticeships, set program standards and increase opportunities in the trades. We’re committed to making it even stronger and more responsive to the needs of British Columbians, industry, the labour market and our growing economy.

The most important factor, I think, for the apprenticeship trades-training programs to be successful is that there are jobs for the apprentices to actually entertain. In British Columbia, we have a growing economy. We’re increasing the job opportunities across the province, and with that, we’ll be there to help support the apprentice trades-training program.

R. Austin: I’m very pleased to rise and take my place in second reading for Bill 7, the Industry Training Authority Amendment Act.

I’d like to begin by just going back and speaking to a few of the comments made by the hon. Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General. I’d like to just sort of add a little bit of history to what he was saying.

I think he was a little bit suspect as to whether we on this side of the House were supporting this bill. In his mind, he heard a negativity yet also people saying: “Yes, we’re going to support this.” Just to put him at ease, and to others on the other side, the reality is that we are supportive of this. We see this bill and the amendments that are being made to the Industry Training Authority as a positive step.

[1720]

But the hon. minister wasn’t here. He hasn’t been here for too long, being elected in 2013. I think, like many people in British Columbia, they’re not aware of the history around trades training that has taken place under this government throughout its tenure. It’s a little bit of a sad one.

When governments change, governments have to decide those things that they want to do differently from the previous government. In some cases, they decide that they’re going to carry on things that the previous government had started, because they believe that there’s a benefit to it.

I’ll give an example of that. At the end of the 1990s, the NDP brought into place a regime of incentives and tax benefits that enabled what was originally a nascent oil and gas industry to then have, really, what became a gigantic boom when the new government took over. There’s an example of something that the government recognized was a benefit — getting more and more oil and gas companies to do exploration in northeastern B.C.

Lo and behold, some of the biggest finds of natural gas in the world were discovered as a result of policies that were put in place, ironically, by this government. There’s an example of a government recognizing that, you know, this is a good idea. Let’s keep with it. Look what’s happened as a result.

Other times, governments, sometimes just for ideological reasons, just decide to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Never mind whether it makes good sense or not. Unfortunately, what we have, in terms of the history of the training for trades, is exactly that. We had a government that came in and decided that they were going to listen to certain people and they were going to destroy a system that had been proven to work very, very well.

In fact, the system that was here prior to the ITA was, of course, called ITAC. Now, ITAC had this benefit: it was a four-pillar partnership. It included industry, labour, education and government. I think anybody who looks at public policy would go: “Those are probably pretty good stakeholders to have when you’re trying to design an apprenticeship trades program, because you’ve got all the players in the room working together.”

In fact, it was very, very successful. We had very, very high completion rates. But unfortunately, ideology trumped good sense in this case. As a result of that, ITAC was dismantled. Labour was left on the outside looking in. A new program, the ITA, was started. It was a private program that was really largely led by industry.

One of the unfortunate changes as a result of that was, of course, that instead of having a lot of Red Seal programs that were in place, where people who were going and being trained, say, to be a carpenter would actually get the kind of training needed to do everything that is within the scope of carpentry…. One of the things that came about under the ITA was, instead of having people trained in a Red Seal program for a number of years with skilled tradespeople working side by side and having a support system….

Another important part of the old ITAC system was a recognition that young people, when they first go into trades training, may have some difficulties. When people go into post-secondary education, some people have some challenges. It may be that they’re very good in one aspect of it, but they, for example, might be weak in math.

The great thing about the original ITAC system was that there were coordinators and people to support those who were in a trades-training program. When they had difficulty, they could then go get the extra supports for
[ Page 11212 ]
that piece of the puzzle that they were having challenges with. Under the new system, all of those people were set aside. They were considered to be not an important part of the trades-training program.

What happened as a result of that? Well, the first thing that happened is that our completion rates started to go down relative to other provinces because there wasn’t that kind of support necessary to help a young person — 18, 19 years old — to recognize that when you’re going forward for new training, there are always going to be challenges. You have to figure out how to overcome those challenges.

[1725]

The other big change that was made was that — I’m going to go back to my example of carpentry — instead of the full gamut of having a Red Seal program, the ITA allowed a program like carpentry to be chopped up into little segments. Now you had a person who knew how to install windows, you had somebody who knew how to put up drywall, or you knew somebody who would build a stick frame, but they didn’t have the overall skills to do all that was required in construction.

What was the reason for doing that? Well, what it did was basically take away labour skills from our labour force, because instead of having the full gamut and the full Red Seal, all of a sudden you had people who only knew a piece of the job.

Of course, it meant that they couldn’t get the kind of wages required for someone who was a fully skilled tradesperson. Instead, they would be paid 12 bucks an hour instead of 25 bucks an hour as a fully skilled tradesperson. Of course, what it did was reduce the cost of labour, which was something that, in particular, the construction industry had lobbied heavily to do.

There’s an example of why the changes that were made to the industrial training system were not good ones. In fairness, it’s not just those of us on the opposition side who are saying this. The reality is that this bill has come about and the changes have come about to a large extent from some consultation and a report written by Jessica McDonald.

Ironically, Jessica McDonald, of course, was linked with former Premier Gordon Campbell, who made these changes. She has had the good sense to look at the ITA after a number of years of its operating and come up with some….

Interjection.

R. Austin: Yes, the minister says she was asked to.

She has looked at the ITA and come up with some recommendations as to how to improve it. I’m happy to say that we don’t only support those changes; in fact, quite a few of the things that Jessica McDonald has noted are the things that we have criticized for a number of years in this House. She has noted that we need to have a more inclusive model that brings back some of the important players to try and improve trades training.

When I first got elected in 2005, it was a period in the northwest that was going through extreme challenges. The forestry industry had shut down its pulp mills locally, its sawmills locally, there was huge unemployment, and a number of people — large numbers of people — actually left the northwest to go to Alberta to find work.

Yes, I know that’s hard to imagine when the government tells us that people only left in the 1990s. But actually, in the 2000s, people in northwest B.C. left in droves. In fact, in Prince Rupert, Terrace, Kitimat and Smithers at that time, over a period of years, people left to go find work in Alberta.

This is prior to some of the big projects that came in to our neck of the woods which helped to sustain and bring the economic engine back. I’m talking about the transmission line, the northwest transmission line, but, probably most importantly, the new smelter build that happened with Rio Tinto in Kitimat.

I remember, in 2006, getting up and standing here and saying: “Look, we know these big projects are coming. Rio Tinto has been speaking about it for a number of years. We know that B.C. Hydro was thinking about extending the power transmission line further north.” Yet we did not have a good system in place to train local people.

I stood up here and spoke passionately about the lack of training for local people, particularly — this has become something that we speak about a lot in this House now — young First Nations men in my riding. I am fortunate to represent seven different First Nations communities in my riding — four villages in the Nass Valley; two communities that are adjacent to Terrace: Kitsumkalum and Kitselas; and then one further down towards Kitimat, on the other side from Kitimat, the Haisla village.

[1730]

This whole issue of trades training is very interesting, because there were huge differences in how the First Nations dealt with this lack of appropriate trades training in the early 2000s. In Kitimat, the Haisla were very, very fortunate in the sense that they had a relationship or were building a relationship with what, at that time, was called Alcan. It later became known as Rio Tinto Alcan and is now, I believe, just Rio Tinto. The Haisla community were able to form a partnership with Rio Tinto and set up, essentially, a private training institute, funded in large part by Rio Tinto.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Now, this had two benefits. It helped the First Nations community of the Haisla to recognize that they had lots of young members who did not have the skills to go and work on what would become one of the largest projects in B.C. history.
[ Page 11213 ]

It also, of course, meant that Rio Tinto could access local people. Part of their mandate in looking towards building a new smelter was to ensure that, as much as possible, benefits stayed in the north — in the northwest, first and foremost, then in the north, then in British Columbia as a whole — before they went to look for workers outside.

What they did in setting up the Kitimat Valley Institute was to take over an old school that was closed as a result of a population decrease in Kitimat that was very dramatic in the mid-2000s. In fact, we went from five elementary schools to just two elementary schools at that time.

What they did was they took over a school and set up a private training institute, largely funded by Rio Tinto with help from the Haisla. They set about training people locally in things like steamfitting, so that these people could eventually work on the Rio Tinto build and get the skills to enable them to go anywhere in British Columbia and work.

As a result of that, there was a huge difference between the levels of employment within the Haisla community and, say, Kitsumkalum and Kitselas, or even further afield — those north of Terrace who live in the Nass Valley. I found, over those number of years, that the Haisla community ended up, in the end, with almost every young person who wanted to work being able to work. But it was only because they were able to get the kind of training necessary. That is so vital.

We always speak about giving opportunities to people. Those of us who live in rural B.C. don’t just want to have a large project that brings outsiders in to work on a weekly basis or a biweekly basis. We want to see as much employment take place amongst the citizens who live up there and then have people fly in to work once everybody is working.

If you looked at the unemployment rate, for example, in the Nass Valley, where they did not have the advantage of the Kitimat Valley Institute and there was no large project locally and you had a new system, the ITA, which was not really inclusive and not going, at that time, setting up to try and help First Nations get access to training, you still had massive unemployment. In fact, still to this day, the difference in employment levels between the four Nass community villages and the Haisla is very, very dramatic. We still have huge, huge unemployment in the Nass Valley.

I think that some of these changes that are happening here with this bill will help. First of all, we recognize, and the government recognizes, that the ITA has not fulfilled its mandate. In fact, it didn’t even really have a mandate. No one knew what it was supposed to do.

One of the sections of this bill is to actually detail with a purpose statement what the heck it is that this organization is supposed to do, as everyone has spoken in this House. Any time you have an organization that’s set up by government and given a mandate, it should know, at the outset, what it is it’s trying to do.

The object here is to try and encourage and support young people to recognize that, when you’re in school, you don’t simply have to look at an academic career afterwards. Instead, if you don’t happen to want to go into academia or some of the older professions, in fact, you can make a very, very good living by going into the trades.

[1735]

That is part of the mandate of the ITA — to go into the school system and start to take kids who are in grades 9, 10, 11, and get them to appreciate the benefits of learning a trade.

That takes me to something else that I would like to talk about here. I mentioned already that, in Kitimat, we had a very good success story of a school that had been closed and then taken over by a private institute, along with the Haisla and Rio Tinto. The same thing happened just a year and a half ago in Terrace, where we had Thornhill Junior Secondary School, which had been closed for a couple of years — again, due to a low population in the Terrace Thornhill area. That junior high was closed down, and all the kids were amalgamated into Skeena Junior Secondary, and then they would go on to Cal.

This building was empty — well, certainly, for a couple of years anyway. Eventually, there was a cooperation, an agreement, made with school district 82 and a private institute, the UA Piping Industry College of B.C., to set up and run a trades-training program. They decided that what they would do was they would run classes and courses aimed at preparing participants for the early stages of careers in plumbing, sprinkler fitting, steamfitting and welding.

Now, we all know the topics that I’ve just mentioned are trades that are really high in demand — if not today, they’re certainly trades that are going to be high in demand over the next five to ten years, if nothing else because so many people who do those trades are retiring. They’re in their mid- to late 50s now. We have a cohort of tradespeople who are simply going to be leaving their trade and going into retirement.

Here again, we have a success story where a school that was shut down is being put to good use to help the ITA do their work. I happened to be there last year for the grand opening. In fact, the head of the ITA came to attend that to witness it and to speak about some of the challenges that the ITA has had in the past.

Actually, I think he also acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the early years of the ITA and that they hadn’t been doing the job and the role that government wanted of them, which was to go out there, encourage more youngsters to go into the trades, help them get into training programs and then, also, most importantly, help them get apprenticeships.

You often hear members on the other side talk about: “Well, you know, the great thing is we’re training people in the trades.” That’s because there are going to be so many jobs in this so-called booming economy. The reality is
[ Page 11214 ]
that before you go from having your trades training to getting a job, if you’re fortunate enough to get a job, the first thing you do is you have to have apprenticeships. I think that, again, is a huge challenge.

I have folks now who come into my office, young men and women who have been attending trades training at Northwest Community College. Their complaint is…. They’re very happy to have gone and got some training at Northwest Community College. Some of them kind of think that they never had what it takes to go into post-secondary, mainly because they didn’t like many of the academic subjects. So they’ve all been very delighted to find out that, in fact, there’s a future for them by going and learning a trade.

But here’s the challenge. The challenge is to get apprenticeships to make sure that, once they learn the skills in the classroom, they can actually go out into the real world and have the time — training with machines and on machines, depending on what it is they’re doing — to actually get the qualifications to complete their training.

What I’d like to see is that the government, as they move forward to make further changes to the ITA and in their own policies, recognize that when they’re signing deals — like large project agreements, for example — not to just talk about the tax revenue, not to just talk about the greenhouse gas emissions. Recognize that any of these projects have to have built into them the kinds of levels of apprenticeship training that enable everybody who is going into trade school to actually go and get the apprenticeship and then finally get their Red Seal and then, hopefully, go and get a job.

[1740]

What helps, I think, in the success of some of these trades programs that I’ve been talking about, is that they are set up locally. They hire local people who know the environment they’re working in.

Two of the coordinators who have been used by the UA Piping Industry College of B.C. go by the names of Carolyn Barkman and Randy Chalifoux. I’m just going to speak about one of them. When I first moved to Terrace 21 years ago, Randy was a chef for the local Denny’s restaurant.

Now, I don’t want to cast any aspersions as to the quality of food at Denny’s, but I would say this: Randy had skills that were far ahead of anything required to prepare food at Denny’s. What he did is he went on and became a teacher at Northwest Community College, teaching youngsters how to become cooks — level 1 and level 2 cooks. As a result of that, he spent many, many years teaching literally hundreds of kids over those years on some of the skills. Many of those young people ended up working in the camps north of Terrace, in the mining camps, and in the camps down in Rio Tinto once they got going.

There’s an example of a local person who understands the needs, who has skills, working with youngsters, teenagers and young adults in helping to nurture them through the challenges of a trades-training program. It’s excellent to see that we are now having these kinds of joint ventures that are using public facilities, former schools, bringing in local talent and understanding that we have to train people for the local job market.

In addition, at this school, aside from the things I’ve mentioned — plumbing, sprinkler fitting, steam fitting and welding — they also decided to put into place a trades-training program for hairdressers, hairstylists. In fact, when I went to visit the school, they had their first cohort of 18 people who were training to be hairstylists.

You might think that that’s an awful lot of hairstylists for a small town like Terrace, but I can tell you, having tried to get a haircut just a few weeks ago, that there is a shortage of barber shops and hairstylists in the Terrace area.

So at the end of this year, we’re going to have….

Interjection.

R. Austin: The Minister of Health says he can lend me some clippers. Well, that’s very generous of him.

We’re going to have a cohort of 18 new hairstylists setting up businesses, going to work for some of the shops that are already in operation but also setting up their own businesses in the Terrace area.

What we are seeing is an ability to jig for the local community, to find out what is needed locally and then go and train people. That is, I think, a critical thing of any trades-training program.

The other thing that this bill desires to do is to recognize that it’s always a challenge figuring out what kind of trades are needed and when to do that. I know the Minister of Labour has described in this House a lot of good work that has been done in terms of trying to….

I don’t know whether it’s for the first time, but certainly I hadn’t heard of it before, where the government and industry sit down and look at the long-term labour trends in this province to try and identify — so that you don’t have people going to school to study something for which there will never be a job but to understand that they can go to school and get a trade for something that at least has the prospect of a job in the near future.

I think bringing in a multi-year strategic plan is an essential thing, because there is no point in encouraging kids to go to school and to learn something that they think they may have an interest in only to find out later on that they’re disillusioned because they can’t find any work, either in their area or, in fact, even within the province.

I know that many people in the trades, especially those who are in the construction trades, are used to travelling far and wide to find work. It’s not an unusual thing, but wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of simply having constantly to go into a camp to work, people can live and work in their own communities?

[1745]

It is kind of essential for smaller rural communities, such as those that I represent, to have people trained in tasks where they can find work locally, because the vibrancy of a community is made up of people living in that community and working in that community. It’s not made up, with all respect, of people who fly in for a week or two weeks at a time from some other community — to come in and live in a camp, do their work and not spend money locally, because they’re very well taken care of by the local camp. They don’t eat out. They obviously sleep there.

The vibrancy of a local community and the benefit of having a well-run trades system is where you can train people all over British Columbia, including rural B.C., to ensure that they have the skills to do work that is in their neighbourhood, in their neck of the woods. When people get to live at home in these small communities, they then get to raise their families, and they then get to volunteer for all the things that people volunteer for that make a community a real community.

It is very important, as we move forward and pass this bill, that the ITA be accountable, that it has a strategic plan, that it has priorities and targets and that it meets those targets. We want to see, on this side of the House and that side of the House, an uptick in the quality of life for a lot of small towns in rural B.C., which, historically, always go through these ups and downs — which, again, we speak about a lot here.

I’ll just give an anecdote of my little area. When Rio Tinto was building their smelter, the whole area was booming. The airport was booming. The planes were full. Now we’re in a lull, waiting for, hopefully, an FID to come out of Kitimat, maybe later this year. Maybe the planes will get back to full again.

What we experience in small towns is that when a project ends, then there’s a lull and people are waiting. Definitely, people are waiting to have a project come to the local area. In fact, there are, currently, three hotels being built in Terrace — three new hotels going up simultaneously. But right now all three are on hold, waiting for, hopefully, a decision to come out from maybe Shell — who knows? — later this year.

Interjection.

R. Austin: The minister’s suggesting I don’t support an LNG plant in Kitimat. Let me put it on the public record once again. I was in favour of LNG before this Premier even knew what LNG was — absolutely. Let me put that on the public record.

I hope that with this bill, we will see a new ITA that makes up for the mistakes that were made by this government in scrapping ITAC and that they recognize — not just from Jessica McDonald, but that the whole crew over there recognizes what a disaster it has been for those ten years.

Moving forward, we hope to see high-quality trades training in British Columbia that recognizes the needs of young people, that recognizes the kinds of jobs they can go and get, that recognizes that they have to have apprenticeships built into that training. That, then, would make a bright future for all the young people who live in my neck of the woods who are still unemployed to this day, waiting for the kind of training that they need.

M. Hunt: I rise to speak to Bill 7, the Industrial Training Authority Amendment Act. I want to thank the member for Skeena for the wonderful reports of what’s happening in his riding, particularly in Kitimat and Terrace and the great work that’s going on in their school board, working with industry and labour. I think that is a real thing to celebrate, and I’m really pleased that he was able to share with us those stories, because that’s what I want to talk about.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to describe the high level of economic activity that’s happening in my city, the city of Surrey. I mentioned that Surrey is the fastest-growing city in B.C., if not in Canada, pointing out the fact that between 1,000 and 1,200 people are moving into Surrey each and every month.

I also described how Surrey almost set another record for building permits in 2015, which represents $1.4 billion of construction activity. That includes industrial and commercial activity, but the vast majority of that construction, of course, is in residential permits. While we can celebrate the fact that all of this construction activity is generating employment, it also exposes the fact that we are suffering from a lack of skilled tradespeople.

[1750]

That leads to the purpose of our discussion today: Bill 7. It comes as a result of an independent review of the Industry Training Authority. The ITA leads and coordinates B.C.’s skilled-trades system by working with employers, employees, industry, labour, training providers and government to issue credentials to manage apprenticeships, set program standards and increase opportunities in the trades.

Since 2004, the ITA has issued a total of over 65,000 certificates of qualification to journeypersons in B.C., and we need to do more. We need to celebrate the 65,000, but we recognize we need to do more. The government has a core goal of positioning young people in B.C. for the jobs of tomorrow. Although, yes, my focus is on Surrey, I appreciate hearing what’s elsewhere in the province, because all of us need to be working together on this.

To succeed in this goal, obviously British Columbia has to ensure an optimized training system that capitalizes on the province’s full potential for planning and responding to labour needs. This was the conclusion of the final report from Jessica McDonald in 2014, and the current bill that we have before us, Bill 7, is addressing these concerns.
[ Page 11216 ]

Since 2014, the ITA has completed a total of 15 of the McDonald report recommendations and has made significant progress on the rest of the recommendations. But the work is not over, and the provincial government and the ITA will continue to consult with stakeholders, industry partners, to implement the remaining recommendations of the McDonald review. We must remain vigilant because over the next 20 years, skilled trades are going to account for many of the jobs that are going to be created in the resource sector.

When this act becomes law, it will set the purpose for the ITA and confirm its role in B.C.’s trades-training system. It will require that the ITA develop and implement a multi-year strategic plan to achieve priorities and targets set by the government and require the ITA to engage with stakeholders to provide advice and recommendations on the continued development and implementation of that strategic plan.

All of this is good news because, as I mentioned earlier this week, nearly one-third of the population of Surrey is comprised of young people under the age of 19. One of the challenges for our young people, of course, is to train them in the trades and make sure that they then get to the places in British Columbia where those jobs are. That means young families with children will continue to move into Surrey, and we want these kids to have choices when they grow up. They deserve to be first in line for the jobs of tomorrow. That’s why I plan on supporting this bill.

D. Routley: As other colleagues of mine on the opposition benches have indicated, we will be supporting this bill. But as noted in the frustration of some of the ministers and the members opposite, we are highly critical of the government’s record when it comes to trades training generally.

Several members have told stories about how important trades training is to them, their families and their communities. I would have to add a story to that. My daughter Madeline is currently studying to be a chef at Vancouver Island University. She, unlike many kids — this old kid included — had a very good idea of what she wanted to do from a very young age. When she was eight years old, her birthday wish was that I would take her to the cooking show at B.C. Place Stadium so she could meet all the celebrity chefs.

She’s always been determined to be a chef. Now she’s fulfilling her dream. She works very, very hard. We all have frustrations with our kids, particularly when they are teenagers, but it’s really reassuring when they show perseverance in what they choose to do, and Madeline has done that. She’s currently travelling a 130-kilometre round trip to attend VIU in Nanaimo, and then, on many days, she turns around after that and does a 90-kilometre trip in the other direction to the restaurant that she works in, in Brentwood Bay, at the Brentwood Bay inn.

[1755]

She’s really doing what I think we all hope young people will do, and that’s asserting themselves and self-determining what they will do and then following through. I’m very proud of her.

My own history with trades is that my stepfather was a carpenter — a natural genius, I would call him, a person who had tricks and methods that he passed on to me when we were building houses. I still marvel at his intuitiveness and what a long career in trades gave to him, in terms of competency and reliability.

The problem that we see with this bill is more what isn’t in the bill and more why this is only happening now. I think it’s important for us to go back and have a look at what the history has been in this province. We had a successful trades-training program in the ’90s under the NDP, which was dismantled by the current government in 2004, when they implemented the Industry Training Authority, the ITA.

There were definitely problems with ITAC, its predecessor, but problems that could have been fixed without blowing the program up. That’s indeed what happened. The government clearly had no plan. This bill underlines that fact, in that one of its few elements is for the ITA to develop a purpose statement. No purpose statement currently exists in the legislation. It requires the ITA to develop a multi-year strategic plan, a business plan, if you will, to achieve priorities and targets set by government.

Now, I think it’s really important to think about that. This is a system that’s been in place for a dozen years, and only now does it have the means to determine a purpose. It seems impossible to believe. Imagine a business operating with no business plan, and failure is a highly likely outcome of that. It’s hard to imagine a public project being built without a business plan, but then we need to consider the Massey Tunnel replacement, where there’s no business plan but a determination to spend billions in public funds.

It’s not completely unusual that this government would undertake large projects without an adequate plan or a strategy in place. But it is a head-shakingly difficult thing to comprehend that a system so important to the future of our province and the future of our economy, something as important as the trades-training system, would be so haphazardly put together.

If we go back through the early days of the ITA, I think we can see where the seeds of this failure were planted. The government has been listening to the wrong voices. The government was persuaded — by Phil Hochstein, primarily — to invest in a new system of trades training that would facilitate what was called compartmentalized training.

In a compartmentalized training mode, the students are able to take different components of the training at different times as it suits their own schedules and the schedules of their employers. Now, that sounds good on the outset, but what it has resulted in is a very large per-
[ Page 11217 ]
centage of workers being trained only for the minimal scope of training required by their employer at the time in order to facilitate the work they’re doing. There are so many people now in the province who are framers, rather than carpenters. These are partial-skills packages that have been picked up.

They took this model from New Zealand. In 2002-2003, they studied the New Zealand model. In fact, they went for a trip to New Zealand to examine the model, and they learned some things there, which, unfortunately, they failed to implement when they brought the system to Canada.

[1800]

They were told very clearly that a compartmentalized system and shifting to it would cost at least 30 percent more than we had currently been investing in trades training — to facilitate the cost of change and the new structures that would have to be put in place in public and private institutions in order to achieve the goal of a compartmentalized system.

Instead, the government came back and made significant cuts to trades training, even in recent budgets. I believe that two budgets before this current budget, the government made one nominal cut. There were restrictions and cuts in services because of a lack of funding in health care and education, but the one nominal number cut was to trades training, which seems impossible to believe given that the province was promoting the idea there would be one million jobs and that we had not nearly enough people to fill those vacancies. I think the estimation of the jobs they would create was as inflated as their estimation of the LNG industry that they would have delivered by now. Nonetheless, we do see current industries stricken by a skills shortage that is threatening their viability.

When the government came back from that trip to New Zealand and studying that system, they tore up the ITAC program that had preceded theirs. This was a complex system that had many components that were set in order to ensure the maximum number of people who registered for an apprenticeship would complete that apprenticeship. That was torn up, and a single sheet of paper describing the new system was brought into this Legislature.

Rather than investing 30 percent more, as was the recommendation in New Zealand, they cut. Rather than replacing a complex system with an adequate system, they replaced it with a one-page notion. Now we’re seeing the result. Twelve years into their exercise, they’re finally providing the means to develop a strategic plan. It just seems unbelievable to me.

Another thing that the government was advised when they visited New Zealand was that all parties involved must be at the table, particularly organized labour. That was a very clear statement that was communicated from the people that were visited in New Zealand as well as those in Australia imposing a similar program and commenting on the imposition of the ITA here in British Columbia. That was: involve labour. Keep labour at the table. Labour, in fact, facilitates the transmission of this kind of knowledge. As the member for Cowichan Valley said, it’s tradespeople who train tradespeople. If they aren’t at the table, if they’re cut out, that valuable perspective and involvement is diminished and ultimately lost.

What did this government do? They cut out labour. Specifically, they removed any involvement for organized labour in the new ITA and guaranteed conflict and failure. What we saw has been widely described as ten lost years in the trades-training sector of this province. We saw completion rates of trades training fall to below 35 percent in this province.

We saw other steps taken to diminish the role of trades in the economy. Those included the loss of compulsory trades. Other provinces in this country have far greater numbers of compulsory trades. Those are trades where a Red Seal or a certain qualification level is required in order to do the work. It could be elevator repair. Many different sectors of our economy where the B.C. Liberal government removed the compulsory nature of trades.

[1805]

We also saw registration issues. One of the first things the government did with the new ITA model was, instead of having trainees registered for only six months, if they didn’t progress in their training, if they didn’t continue their training after six months, they were removed from the registration number.

There was a very good idea before that time of just how many people were actually training, just how many people had given up their training and just how many people were waiting to be registered. They changed it from six months to 18 months. Many people who registered did not complete their training. The government was blind to this because they had changed the registration period from six months to 18 months.

This gave the government the opportunity to brag about huge increases in the number of people registered because, of course, they weren’t falling off the back of the registration train. They may not have been training any more. In fact, many thousands weren’t. Many thousands had given up their training or had stopped midway. The government had no idea how many of these people were included.

Another thing they did with registration was…. It’s a laudable ambition to have high schools involved in the apprenticeship programs and to accelerate the training of young people, expose them to the trades that they’re considering entering — and then capturing the work and training they do in high school to contribute to their ultimate Red Seal qualification. That is something that we support.

The problem with registering was that all the high school students who became involved in these programs also became listed as registered apprentices. A great many
[ Page 11218 ]
of those kids, having been exposed to the training, decided not to follow those paths once they graduated from high school. Again, with an 18-month registration period, the government had no idea how many of these students were continuing. Not only is that a difficulty for institutions planning to deliver training, but it also had a terribly bad impact on people who might have continued their training because of the next issue that I’m going to bring up.

The government, by registering all the high school students who were involved in any way in trades training as registered apprentices, was able to again brag about huge increases in the number of registered apprentices. At the same time, our completion rates were falling like a rock, to the point where completion rates in other provinces were at 50, 60 or higher percent completion. This province, thanks to this government’s poor planning, saw the completion rates fall to below 35 percent here in B.C. At the same time, they were bragging about massive increases in the registration of apprentices.

The next piece of work that the B.C. Liberal government brought to trades training and the ITA program that was another devastation to the effectiveness of training in the province was to get rid of trades-training counsellors. Before they did that, counsellors were employed by government. When students were falling out of their training, when they weren’t being released from the company they were working for in order to go back and complete their trades training, there were counsellors there to talk to them about why this was happening, to go to their employer and to work out a compromise in their work schedules to allow them to complete their training.

This had a very devastating effect on trades-training completions generally but specifically with students at risk and First Nations students who were registered in training programs, who felt the loss of the counsellors even more acutely than the system generally.

[1810]

We do face skills shortages, even as some industries decline. If the loss of trade skills is greater and faster than the general decline of that industry, they’re in a skills shortage. Even while we saw the loss of, currently, 32,000 fewer people working in the forest industry, they are experiencing a skills shortage because of a lack of trained tradespeople, particularly in the mills — the pulp mills and sawmills, the manufacturing side of the business.

As those losses occurred, there became a perception of forestry as what people would call a sunset industry, even though forestry is our one renewable natural resource industry and the backbone of our economy — $12.5 billion of trade in forest products versus less than a billion in natural gas in this past year.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

So even though it is completely renewable and the backbone of our economy, because of policies that the government has brought in, 32,000 fewer people are working in the industry now.

Those of us who come from forest-dependent communities know that the average age of truck drivers, the average age of loggers, the average age in the forest industry is going up and up because of this perception of it as a sunset industry, which is tragic to our economy, to our society and also to young people who might be choosing a career and not recognizing the value of getting a trade that could be applied to the forest industry.

We are in this skills shortage that is being made so much worse by the fact that we had such a decline in completion rates for this ten-year period. Since the time of the Industry Training Authority to today, we have lost the ability to judge and measure our success, our efficiency in training young people or training people in these trades, because of the lack of information created by the loss of registration information.

We have lost the role of counsellors, who are important in communicating to government what issues needed to be addressed in the system. Industry has been shortchanged in the delivery of skilled workers, which is the primary role of government when it comes to managing the labour force. This has been an abandonment of the government’s responsibility.

We’ll be supporting Bill 7 because we see it takes a few small steps towards addressing these issues. But as you can also see by reviewing the history of this government when it comes to trades training, it is a day late and a dollar short. There’s so much more that should be done to support trades training in this province.

One of the things that the government would like to do is simply turn the page and forget about those ten years. Everything they do we are to celebrate with fireworks and congratulations — that there has been a modicum, a baby step taken towards the issues that need to be addressed.

What they did do recently was appoint the former deputy to former Premier Gordon Campbell, Jessica McDonald, to do a review of trades training in the province. Her recommendations show that she mostly agreed with the criticisms that the opposition has been making for the past 12 years.

Many of her recommendations have been implemented, but even this bill falls short on one of the most important recommendations, going all the way back to that trip to New Zealand, where the government was told, “We must absolutely not cut organized labour out of its role in trades training,” which is exactly what the B.C. Liberal government did.

[1815]

Now, after this review by Ms. McDonald, one of her recommendations was that labour be involved and a seat at the table in trades training be made for organized labour. This bill talks about stakeholders, but it does not specifically address that recommendation, and it does not specifically address the role of labour in trades training.
[ Page 11219 ]

It’s not simply the lobbying of the union movement, which is obviously effective. If you look at the record, if you look at the trades schools run by unions, by organized labour, like the floorlayers and several different examples, they have more than double the completion rates of the government-sponsored programs generally — some of them in the 90 percent range.

Obviously, they know a thing or two about training people. Obviously, they’ve got a history that has come out of early systems of training that saw a kind of a monopoly placed on the role of training and on the role of workers in different fields. That evolved into the journeyman system, where the phrase “journeyman” means that you have skills that you can travel with. You have skills that you can journey with and take your labour where it’s needed.

The steps that the B.C. Liberal government took to compartmentalize training without taking steps to support completion of training and registering — mass registration changes that eliminated the possibility of making an adequate and reasoned judgment of the effectiveness — all contributed to a loss of productivity and competitiveness in the B.C. economy.

We now face a situation where a skills shortage is not simply just a problem of finding people, but it’s a problem of economic consequence in a very general and macro sense that our economy is less competitive and less effective and less efficient than it should be, given these lost years.

So it’s important to have a memory in politics. As one of the speakers previously pointed out, many of the members in the House, particularly on the government side, were elected in the 2013 election and don’t, perhaps, have as direct an experience with this story of trades training that has played out over the past 12 years.

So it’s important to have a memory in politics. It’s important to remind ourselves of what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong, but it’s also important…. Memory is an important aspect of the trades-training system — that master craftspeople pass their skills to new trainees. So many tradespeople have retired and have left their fields of work without their knowledge being adequately harnessed and captured by the next generation of workers or to the benefit of our economy and our labour force and its competitiveness and its productivity.

That’s a serious economic consequence that this province will pay for, for years to come, because this isn’t simply a system where you can turn the light switch on and turn the light switch off. Decisions that are made that negatively impact the trades-training system of the province have long consequence. These are long programs to begin with — four years, in most cases, of training.

We don’t simply let it fall to disorganized chaos and then just flick the switch back on and see the output of workers. We have lost so much of the trades memory of this province. There are several small but important steps that are being taken here, but there are other more important, bigger steps that needed to be taken.

[1820]

What was needed was that labour would have a specified role at the table, that there would be minimum trades, Red Seal percentages, on public projects to guarantee that we would be training enough people for the future. There should be more compulsory trades in this province so that we can ensure the quality of the work in this province and the continuation of trades quality in this province.

There needs to be more support for public institutions. Public institutions in the province delivering trades training have had to reduce the scope of their training and reduce the investments they’ve made in training in order to compete with privately delivered training that is being delivered at a lower level of quality, in many cases.

We have to stop the dumbing-down effect of compartmentalization. Compartmentalization in trades training does facilitate a more flexible approach to training, but without adequate supports to ensure that students are able to complete their training, it amounts to a dumbing down of the trades, with limited-scope trainees, not Red Seal approved, out there in the workforce without the skills to transport to other jobs but also without the flexibility and resiliency that trades training brings to the economy.

If you have a full-scope trained carpenter, they can easily migrate from residential construction to commercial construction. The same can be said of electrical trades and welding trades. The compartmentalization was a dumbing down. The government was listening to the wrong voices. The government failed to hear from the people that they needed to hear from.

I think this bill goes a small step to completing a few of the steps that need to be taken, but not nearly enough.

With that, I’d like to cede the floor to my colleague.

S. Gibson: As someone who has taught at the university level and encouraged students to have passion, this is a topic that particularly interests me. I realize it’ll probably be condensed, given the hour, so I’ll begin, and then perhaps I’ll be able to address it subsequently.

Seeing the hour, I will hold the House in suspense until next time. I move adjournment and reserve the right to speak subsequently.

S. Gibson moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. T. Lake moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.
[ Page 11220 ]

Madame Speaker: This House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 6:23 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
INTERNATIONAL TRADE

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

The committee met at 1:36 p.m.

On Vote 30: ministry operations, $50,291,000.

The Chair: Minister, if you want to make introductions or opening comments, please.

Hon. T. Wat: It is my honour to present the 2016-17 spending estimate for the Minister of International Trade and Minister Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism.

Before I begin, I would like to introduce, on my right-hand side, my deputy minister, Shannon Baskerville. At the back is Clark Roberts, ADM of our international business development division. At the back here is James Hammond, ADM of our international strategy and competitiveness division, and Dean Sekyer, executive lead on corporate initiatives and multiculturalism. Tracy Campbell, on my left-hand side, is the acting ADM for the management services division.

The 2016-17 budget for my ministry is about $50.3 million, an increase of close to $2 million from 2015-16. The ministry budget supports our two primary areas of focus: to promote trade and attract investment to the province and to champion the benefits of B.C.’s diversity and foster participation of all British Columbians in our multicultural society.

I’m inspired by the work that the staff is in our ministry does on a daily basis. Each year I look forward to the opportunity to answer questions about my portfolio and the excellent work the Ministry of International Trade is doing to grow and diversify B.C.’s economy, to create well-paying jobs for British Columbians and to help B.C. businesses reach new priority markets overseas.

As British Columbians, we can be proud that B.C. is a welcoming place for people to live, to work and to raise their families. Together we are building a stronger and more inclusive British Columbia, a province that reflects our shared values of respect and openness.

I’m now happy to answer any questions from the member opposite.

B. Ralston: Welcome to the minister and the supporting staff. I’m looking forward to a perhaps somewhat abbreviated but lively debate. I think I’ve provided the minister’s office with some sense of the order in which I propose to tackle the topics that the ministry deals with. I want to begin, first, with trade offices.

In the Vote 30 — because I know the Chair will be keenly interested that I keep my remarks strictly to the vote — under international business development, the proposed appropriation for international business development is $19.678 million. I’m taking that that’s the heading under which the international trade offices are paid.

Obviously, there’s been some change. There have been some additions to international trade offices. Can the minister explain, basically, in a programmatic way, the purpose of the trade offices, and, roughly, how many people are employed, in total, by all the different trade offices?

[1340]

I know, for example, in Beijing, I heard, I think last time, that there were some 25 staff in the Beijing office. I believe Mr. Stewart was inserted at the top of the organizational chart to oversee those 25 people.

Can the minister, perhaps, begin with the China offices, of which there’s been a recent expansion, just setting out the number of people that are employed and whether they’re Canadians or local hires? Then we’ll go from there.

Hon. T. Wat: To answer the question posed by the member opposite, our trade and investment representatives in our priority markets help international businesses discover the benefits of B.C. as a destination for investment, as a partner for trade and innovation and also as a source of quality goods, services and resources around the world. These trade and investment representatives also help B.C. businesses contact potential buyers, investors and other key partners in global markets.

[1345]

We have about 59 in total for our trade and investment representatives over our priority markets. Twenty-five of them are Chinese, and most of them are locally hired. For those that the member opposite posed the question about — the China office — we have three Canadian citizens. The rest are mostly Chinese.

B. Ralston: The minister has expressed a view about the benefits of these offices. Can the minister tell the House how many reports have the trade offices produced for government, and are these reports available publicly?

[1350]

Hon. T. Wat: Between our B.C. ministry staff and also our local trade and investment representative, there’s a
[ Page 11221 ]
regular dialogue to talk about the work they do, the kinds of opportunities they identify. Those TIR staff also provide regular updates on all the work and the meetings that they have, and all this is recorded in our performance measure software, Salesforce.

I just want the member opposite to know that since April 1, 2015, our ministry has assisted B.C. companies in closing close to 173 trade deals, valued at $1.32 billion; facilitated the attraction of over $1.37 billion in foreign investment into the province; assisted in the delivery of over 140 outbound missions and executive visits from B.C. to Asia and over 110 inbound missions and executive visits to B.C. from Asia; and also helped B.C. organizations realize 23 research and innovation agreements with partners in Asia.

All these achievements are actually done by our TIR offices in our priority markets.

B. Ralston: Well, the minister didn’t answer my question.

As the minister knows, we were in, on the opposition, a prolonged 2½-year battle with the ministry, requiring the intervention of the freedom-of-information commissioner to get details of some of the contracts with some of these offices in the network. But, for example, back on January 7, 2015, we received a “no records” response from our December 23, 2014, request for any briefing material produced for the minister by or from the trade offices. So “no responsive records” — that was the response.

It begs the question: what are the trade offices producing for government, in the sense that if there are no briefings to the minister and there are no briefings to staff, what is being produced? Is it simply a wish to avoid email and simply to report orally? Is that the policy of the nature of the reportings? It is very striking that that request was made and there’s simply no response.

I wonder if the minister can explain, then…. I appreciate that some of the material would, of necessity, be confidential. It might be proprietary, relating to company secrets or trade advantage over other jurisdictions. But surely, given the dollar amount that’s being spent on these offices, there would be some reports of some kind, maybe not email. I know the Minister of Finance tells us that he likes to receive reports on paper.

Leaving aside those individual variations, I wonder if the minister can explain what reporting mechanisms are undertaken to the minister, the ministry, on progress. After all, this is public money that’s being spent on these offices.

[1355]

Hon. T. Wat: To answer the member opposite — the question of whether there’s any report provided by our trading investment representatives to the minister — I just want the member opposite to understand that the TIR staff do not report directly to me. They have regular dialogue with my staff in the Ministry of International Trade, and the briefing notes provided to me are all prepared by the local staff in British Columbia. And that’s why when you asked for a request, there’s no report for you.

As for the performance measure of our TIR staff, I already listed clearly, in my earlier answer to you, that they have delivered significant achievements.

B. Ralston: Just so that we’re clear then…. The minister is doing a little bit of a sidestep there, if I might say. The staff in the B.C. overseas trade offices do prepare reports in writing —and she can correct me if I’m wrong — and those are sent to officials, public servants in the ministry and, I presume, head office in either Victoria or Vancouver. Is that what’s being said? Perhaps the minister can just confirm that on the record.

If that is so, can the minister tell us whether there is a standard format for these reports and at what frequency these reports are filed? Typically, under some of these contracts, it looks like there’s a monthly reporting requirement.

[1400]

If we’re dealing with, for example, the Beijing office, are they supplying a monthly report in writing to the ministry office in Vancouver? That’s what I’m interested in finding. I don’t ask these questions for no reason.

So $19 million in this particular section. I don’t know…. There are individual contracts that are, obviously, not the full value of that $19 million. They’re being paid for by British Columbians and, strictly speaking…. The Chair is a member of the Public Accounts Committee, and he will know this, that financial accountability is an important principle of public administration in British Columbia.

What these companies do, on behalf of British Columbia, for dollars that are generated here in general revenue…. What they do for that I think is a legitimate subject of public debate, so that’s why I’m asking.

Hon. T. Wat: Our trade and investment representatives’ staff report all the results of what they have done into the client management software called Salesforce. Generally, we perform this Salesforce on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis for our offices in British Columbia.

I just want to clarify a figure that the member opposite used. Actually, we invest $10.2 million into our trade and investment offices in all our priority markets.

[1405]

This investment is really money well spent, because our return value, for every dollar we spend, is that we generate $318 in revenue.

B. Ralston: It’s almost as good as donations to the B.C. Liberal Party.

Anyway, let me continue. Other than entering data into Salesforce, does the office, certainly at the senior level, prepare any analytical reports? That is, beyond simply
[ Page 11222 ]
contacting people and entering their personal details into Salesforce, which is a well-known software program, are there any analytical reports?

For example, what might be the opportunities? What are the trends? Public officials that the office comes into contact with — what are they saying? What are the recommendations for future growth? Are there other cities in a big place like China?

I know the minister’s mandate letter says that she’s been asked or tasked by the Premier to develop a strategy for dealing with Chinese cities. Presumably, given that $10.2 million is being spent on these offices, one would look, at some point, to these offices for that kind of analysis beyond simply entering contacts by rote into Salesforce.

Can minister expand upon that, please?

Hon. T. Wat: I’d like to draw the attention of the member opposite that TIR…. The information that they generate in Salesforce, is one element of the overall strategy that Ministry of International Trade staff in British Columbia develop. They provide us the information, and the staff here will develop those strategic reports, those assessments.

For example, you asked about the Premier’s mandate for me to assess the mid-size cities in China. We have asked our TIR staff to come up with the information — for example, which are the potential mid-size cities that our local companies would have a lot of opportunities to trade with?

[1410]

They come up with that kind of information, and in turn, my staff here in the Ministry of International Trade will come up with a strategic report for the minister.

B. Ralston: Is the minister then saying, just so we’re clear, that the offices provide data or raw material, as it were, but do not provide any, even at the executive level in these offices…? In the Beijing office, I know we have Mr. Stewart. But aside from Mr. Stewart, the leader of that group of people does not provide any analytical reports — in other words, long-term view, trends, reports on relationships with government, maybe shifting government policy.

Given their vantage point in Beijing, they may be subject to contact with local officials at the government level and at the party level and find out what directions are emerging in a new five-year plan, for example. I know the planning mechanism at that level is fairly important for guiding government decisions.

I’m wondering what the public of British Columbia are paying for. Are they paying for simply people who go out and knock on doors and make contacts, or are they getting some additional value in analytical reports, country reports or region reports of future goals and directions? It seems to me that the point of having these offices is that those people, in theory, given their facility in local languages, are better placed to make those decisions than people back in the head office in Vancouver, however well-read or travelled they may be.

I just want to be clear because what the minister seems to be saying is that they don’t produce these kinds of reports. If that’s the minister’s position, I’d like her to state that clearly, on the record — that they do not produce those reports.

[1415]

Hon. T. Wat: The trade and investment representatives do provide reports on all the opposition members have said. MIT staff will use that report, the on-the-ground intelligence report provided by our TIR staff, as well as other sources, to develop our in-market priorities.

What do we get from our TIR representative, as the member opposite asked? I already provided the significant performance measure that they have achieved. TIR supports our B.C. businesses on trade deals. They attract investment into B.C. I have quite a number of success stories that I can cite to the member opposite, but I’ll just cite a few, given the time.

In 2015-16, a B.C. company, North Delta Seafood, exported five containers of spot prawns to China, with a multi-million-dollar value. The B.C. trade and investment office in Beijing made this deal possible by supporting meetings between North Delta Seafood and their Chinese partner.

Another B.C. company, Canada Berries Enterprises, distributed three containers of B.C. blueberry wine to Beijing. Again, this signing was an outcome of the work done by our trade and investment representatives in China and is an outcome of the Premier’s 2015 mission to China.

Another B.C. company, Super Harvest Trading, sold millions’ worth of cherries to Guangzhou — Wing Fong fruits company. Again, this is the work of our B.C. trade and investment office in Guangzhou. They introduced Super Harvest to Chinese companies.

I have many, many more success stories. If the member would like to know, we can provide him with a list as well.

B. Ralston: Once again, unfortunately, the minister has not answered a direct question.

If what I understood her to be saying is that these offices are providing reports to the head office, is she willing to provide reports from the four offices? There are four in China, including Hong Kong.

Would she be willing to provide reports from those four offices for the last four months — that is, from March 1, 2016, back to, say, November 1, 2015 — and provide them later this afternoon or tomorrow when we resume proceedings, when I think we’re scheduled to proceed, so that the public, through this process, might get some sense of what these offices are reporting to head office in Vancouver?

[1420-1425]

Hon. T. Wat: We will be pleased to provide performance reports in April, as we are now closing up on our fiscal year, and we are also currently validating the data. We will also be pleased to provide the examples of the on-the-ground intelligence reports, such as the mid-size cities, together with this report, to the member opposite.

B. Ralston: Thank you to the minister for that response. I just want to confirm on the record that you’re referring to April 2016 and that those reports would be provided by April 30, 2016. Is that what the minister is saying?

Hon. T. Wat: Yes, April 2016.

B. Ralston: The ministry is planning, and there was an announcement…. I believe there was a photo op for the Minister of Technology. I think he was the one that was there to open a trade office in the Philippines. Can the minister explain what the projected budget for this office is? How many staff will be hired?

Hon. T. Wat: The total budget for the Manila office is $426,000, with a total of four TIR staff.

B. Ralston: Half a million dollars for four staff seems a bit on the high side. Can the minister provide a detailed budget that has been approved in order to open this office? And can the minister confirm whether the office is now open or, prospectively, when it will open?

Hon. T. Wat: We are now in the process of finalizing the contract for our Philippines office, and we expect it will be open in spring so that we can support our B.C. businesses in the Philippines.

[D. Plecas in the chair.]

The Chair: Member.

B. Ralston: Thank you, and welcome to the chair.

That’s answered half the question. Will the minister provide the contract that’s apparently been negotiated or provide a copy of a contract subject to the process that we went through with FOI? I would hope that it wouldn’t take 2½ years to have the contract released.

Will the minister commit here, today, on the public record, to release the contract — which the ministry has signed and is paying public dollars — with the agent or the company that’s going to run the new Philippines office?

[1430]

Hon. T. Wat: Once we have finalized the contract, we will release the contract in accordance with FOI policies and procedures.

B. Ralston: Well I hope that won’t take 2½ years, as a number of the contracts did when we tried to get them several years ago.

I know that the Premier famously said once that in her heart, she was a Filipina. That may be the reason why this office is opening, but if that’s not the reason, was there a cost-benefit analysis, a report or some kind of calculation done as to why the B.C. government would open a trade office in the Philippines?

Hon. T. Wat: The expansion of B.C.’s trade presence into the ASEAN region is part of our province’s new Asia trade strategy, Raising Our Game in Asia. A presence in ASEAN will support B.C.’s companies to access a market that’s valued at $2.4 trillion and has an annual growth forecast of about 5 percent for the next five years.

The Asian Development Bank forecasts GDP growth of 6.3 percent in the Philippines in 2016, this year, up from 6 percent last year, in 2015. A trade presence in the Philippines will help B.C. companies identify and capitalize on new trade and investment opportunities in a market that is experiencing significant economic growth itself.

Since the launch of the B.C. jobs plan in 2011, exports to the Philippines have grown 25 percent. B.C. exports to the Philippines were valued at $190 million in 2015. Overall, B.C. exports to Southeast Asia have increased 55 percent since 2011, and B.C. exports to the region were valued at $781 million in 2015.

B. Ralston: Just to return to the previous answer, where the minister said that the contract signed between the provider — no name was provided — that is going to run the Philippines office at nearly half a million a year…. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner suggested, in a ruling resulting from our protracted efforts to get disclosure of some of the contracts, that trade office contracts should be released immediately after they are signed.

[1435]

Is that what the minister meant by saying that she would follow FOI guidelines — that she would follow the suggestion of the independent office of information and protection of privacy?

Hon. T. Wat: I’m pleased to advise the member opposite that with all new agreements that we sign with trade and investment representatives, we will now require them to consent to the disclosure of the agreements so that this delay will no longer occur, which the member opposite experienced before. As I said earlier, once the contract with our Philippines proponent is finalized, we will release it in accordance with FOI policy and procedures.

B. Ralston: I’m going to take that as a yes, that it will be released when it’s signed, as the OIPC office, the Office
[ Page 11224 ]
of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, suggested. I thank the minister for that.

In the contracts that were released, a number of them had what are called performance bonuses. They’re certain measures of putative success — number of clients signed, deals signed. There are a number of, a variety of different measures.

Can the minister explain — since the B.C. public service, for the most part, does not pay performance bonuses — why it’s felt necessary in these types of contracts to pay performance bonuses?

Hon. T. Wat: I just want to clarify that we do not use performance bonuses. Now we use holdbacks, subject to their performance. This is similar to public service executives.

B. Ralston: Ordinarily, the definition of a performance bonus would be an additional payment upon reaching certain previously agreed to contractual terms.

[1440]

A holdback would seem to me to be a variant of the same thing. In other words, there are previously agreed to targets that have to be reached, and until you reach them, the full value of the contract is not paid.

Could the minister explain the difference? It seems to be a nuance. I hope she’s not hiding behind that as a substantive difference between the two practices.

Hon. T. Wat: Just to clarify once again, we never pay more than the value of the contract. We hold back a percentage, subject to TIR achieving trade and investment targets. It’s the same as our senior executives and the minister as well. We hold back a portion of our salary until we balance the budget.

B. Ralston: Well, it seems to me that that’s performance pay in everything but name. Clearly, the minister disagrees with that. These holdbacks — do they apply to the contract as a whole, or do they apply to individual employees? Or is that left to the discretion of the person who holds the contract and is running the contract?

Hon. T. Wat: The holdbacks apply to both the managing director, who actually holds the contract, and the subcontractors, who are the staff of the managing director. So the province assesses the performance, not the contractor.

B. Ralston: Can the minister point me to a document that would tell me and the public how many times the potential holdback has actually been held back and the organization has failed to achieve its targets? Is there any instance of this happening?

[1445]

Hon. T. Wat: Yes, there are examples of full holdbacks not being realized due to the fact that the trade and investment target is not being realized.

B. Ralston: Would the minister agree, here on the record, to release the performance measures for each individual office, all the offices in the network, the occasions on which performance targets have not been achieved and what those specifically missed targets were? Would the minister commit to do that here by, I would suggest, April 30, 2016?

Hon. T. Wat: I have already committed that we would provide the performance reports, which list the results. We can provide the performance target from their contract, as well, by the end of April 2016.

B. Ralston: The minister, in some news reports, was said to be considering the opening of an office in Indonesia. Could the minister advise whether that is indeed the case? And what is the business case for opening such an office?

[1450]

Hon. T. Wat: We are in the process of planning for an office in Indonesia. The member opposite might remember that I visited Indonesia in spring 2015. Indonesia has a population of about 250 million, and they also have a rapidly expanding middle class. That is the largest market in ASEAN, and Indonesia provides tremendous opportunity for expanding British Columbia exports and attracting investment.

My visit to Jakarta provided me with a great and very valuable opportunity to hear firsthand from successful Canadian companies, such as B.C.’s Hatfield Consultants, who celebrated the 25th-year anniversary of their business in Indonesia — the advantage of having an on-the-ground presence in Indonesia.

We have corporate causes with leading Indonesian conglomerates, including Sinar Mas, Salim Group and Baramulti, encouraging them to look at the new opportunity for investment in British Columbia. A direct success story came from my visit to Indonesia. I presented B.C.’s strengths and the potential for providing firefighting services when I met senior executives from Sinar Mas at their facility in Jakarta.

Staff in MIT worked with a B.C. company — TREK Wildland Services — to help them successfully secure a contract with Sinar Mas forests to provide the services in December 2015. There is also the potential for further export of B.C. goods and services to support this critical effort.

B. Ralston: In the mandate letter that was given to the Minister of International Trade, that’s the federal minister, the direction of the Canadian Prime Minister to her — as your, I suppose, counterpart federally — is the following:
[ Page 11225 ]

“Develop a new Canadian trade and export strategy to support Canadian businesses exporting to international markets and help Canadian jurisdictions attract direct foreign investment. This strategy will include actively partnering with business to help firms grow, as all our major partners and competitors do.

“This strategy will include creating a strengthened investment in Canada office, headed by a chief executive officer, to work seamlessly with provincial, territorial and municipal governments and provide concierge services to promote business investment in Canada so that potential investors will have a one-window shop to make investing in Canada simpler and more attractive.”

[1455]

Now, given that strategy…. Many commentators on Canada’s trade strategy do notice and comment on the proliferation of entities that show up in foreign markets, whether it’s individual provinces, whether it’s the trade strategies pursued by individual cities in Canada and, also, sometimes by individual companies.

The argument, I think, that is being advanced here by the federal Prime Minister and your counterpart, the federal minister, is to unite effort and to use the Canadian brand and benefit all of Canada, not simply one jurisdiction or one smaller jurisdiction. I understand that the focus of the B.C. government has to be the welfare, primarily, of the B.C. economy and B.C. citizens. But what opportunities are there, given this direction? I don’t think it’s really new. What opportunities are there for the B.C. government to cooperate with the federal government?

For example, in Jakarta, there is a Canadian embassy, just as there’s a Canadian embassy and a trade commissioner in Beijing. In many of the markets that the British Columbia government has entered into, there’s a Canadian presence there already. I know, for example, in Chandigarh, in the Punjab, the B.C. office is shared with the Canadian consulate, which seems to be a useful marrying of common interests.

I’m just wondering what thought the minister and her officials have given to this new opportunity to work with the new government and head in a direction that’ll benefit all Canadians.

Hon. T. Wat: As a matter of fact, our trade and investment officers and our local staff in British Columbia work closely with our federal counterparts in our priority markets.

[1500]

Actually, in my meeting with Minister Freeland, when I talked to her about the kinds of activities and the kind of presence we have in Asia, she was so pleased to hear that we have done so much. She really wants to work with British Columbia, of course, to promote the Canadian brand.

Because I’m the minister for British Columbia, obviously all our citizens in British Columbia would like us to focus on promoting trade and trade investment for British Columbia. That’s why our presence in our priority markets is extremely important, because the federal trade commission and consul general will promote Canada in a broad-brush, Canadian brand. But in order to attract investment into the Asia-Pacific gateway of Canada, we need to do our own pitch to the Asian investors and also the Asian importers. That’s why our presence there is extremely important.

Having said that, we will definitely work with the new federal government. Minister Freeland’s portfolio also more or less coincides with mine, so we will work together to promote British Columbia for sure. I’d like to add that even the industry really endorses our approach of having our own trade presence in our priority markets in Asia.

B. Ralston: I thank the minister for that.

The minister has mentioned advice to investors. Can the minister advise what instructions are given to trade offices when it comes to real estate investment, particularly in the Lower Mainland? Obviously, that is a subject of some political debate at the moment. Can the minister advise: what is the role of her offices in guiding potential investors, particularly those outside the country, to invest in Vancouver or Lower Mainland or British Columbia real estate generally?

Hon. T. Wat: Our direction to our trade and investment representative offices in Asia is that we are asking them to focus on our priority job sectors — meaning mining, natural resources, forestry, technology, international education, aerospace industry, etc. That’s the focus they are working on.

B. Ralston: I remember last year, in defence of Mr. Stewart, the minister proudly advised that he had facilitated a purchase by a Chinese investor of Park ’N Fly, which is the service out at the airport that parks cars and which seems to be a long way from the priorities that the minister has set out. Is the minister then saying that it’s simply a focus, or is she saying that no advice is provided on potential real estate investment in British Columbia to any prospective investors?

Given international trends, given overseas connections, given the facility of communication between here and other parts of the world, obviously there’s a keen interest in B.C. real estate. It’s reported widely — globally. So I find it difficult to accept that there wouldn’t be interest in B.C. real estate and that the offices wouldn’t be called upon, or at least asked, for advice in this area. Given that likely demand — I would think almost certain demand — what are the instructions to those offices in terms of dealing with it?

[1505]

Hon. T. Wat: I just want to clarify. The member opposite referred to the park-and-play. Actually, that one is not really a commercial estate. It’s really a commercial busi-
[ Page 11226 ]
ness operation. This is operating a parking business operation. We do provide advice on commercial opportunity.

I just want to cite one example — Qinhuangdao. There’s a company incorporated in Qinhuangdao that bought a piece of industrial land in Terrace, in the north. They are going to develop it into an industrial zone to help the industrial development in Terrace and the nearby areas. This is another example that you might see as investing in real estate, but actually they are buying industrial land, yet they are developing it for an industrial purpose. How are you going to differentiate between the two? Sometimes it’s not that easy.

B. Ralston: Well, I don’t think that really grapples with the main issue I raised in my question. I am familiar with the land in Terrace. I’ve actually had a look at it. It’s very close to the airport. The local MLA, the member for Skeena, took me to visit it. So far, unfortunately, I don’t think there’s been any activity on that land, given economic conditions. But maybe there are plans respectively to do something.

[1510]

I think I’ve given the minister an opportunity to answer that question. She’s not going to answer it, and I think people will be able to judge and speculate on the reasons why she’s not answering that question.

Given the strength of the Taiwanese diaspora community and business here in British Columbia, what consideration is given to opening a trade office in Taipei?

Hon. T. Wat: B.C. and Taiwan have had years of strong economic and cultural ties, as the member opposite definitely realizes, and we wish to continue to build on this long, proud tradition. British Columbia is Canada’s leader in trade with Taiwan. In 2014, B.C. exports accounted for more than 40 percent of all Canadian exports to Taiwan, followed by Ontario, which is only 16 percent. Alberta is only 15.5 percent, and Quebec only 12.6 percent.

In Vancouver, our ministry staff engage frequently with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office as well as the Taiwan External Trade Development Council. Our ministry staff meet regularly with TECO and also the Taiwan External Trade Development Council staff to coordinate inbound executive visits from Taiwan and to coordinate trade delegations from B.C. heading to Taiwan to participate in important trade shows.

In January this year, ministry staff collaborated with the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to host a virtual trade mission in functional foods. Our ministry staff is also planning a two-week Canada food promotion event in collaboration with the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at city’super grocery store locations across Taiwan to showcase B.C. agrifood products this coming March.

We will continue to work with our local Taiwanese trade representative here in Vancouver and also in Taipei to further advance the robust trade and investment relationship between Taiwan and British Columbia.

B. Ralston: Well, I commend those efforts. But just as there is…. The minister is proposing or considering opening an office in Indonesia, in Jakarta. There is an Indonesian consulate here, a fully staffed Indonesian consulate with a consul general and trade officials — a fairly active organization. There are expatriate business organizations relating to Indonesia, yet the decision is being made to consider opening an office in Jakarta.

Given the strength of the connection between British Columbia, in particular, and Taiwan, why is there no consideration being given, given the omission in the answer that was just given, to opening a trade office in Taipei?

Hon. T. Wat: For the member opposite, the selection of location for B.C. TIR offices is based on a number of factors, including market growth potential, market size and alignment with the province’s priority sectors as outlined in the B.C. jobs plan.

In the case of Taiwan, it was determined that at this time, the market can be covered effectively through close collaboration with the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver, with support from ministry headquarters and B.C.’s existing trade and investment network in greater China.

[1515]

Our ministry continues to review and evaluate the placement of its offices and how we can support and enhance economic ties with Taiwan, including attracting more Taiwanese investors to the province and more buyers for our B.C. products.

B. Ralston: It strikes me as curious that considering the Philippines…. There’s a consul general here, a very active office with trade officers. There’s a Canadian embassy in the Philippines, in Manila. There are lots of business contacts back and forth, yet the decision is being made to open an office in the Philippines.

Similarly, with Indonesia, there is a consul general — not an honorary consul but a consul general’s office here with trade officials. I’ve met some of them. I’m sure the minister has met some of them as well. There’s a Canadian embassy in Jakarta. All the same considerations would seem to apply, yet the decision is being made to (1) open an office in the Philippines and (2) consider opening one in Jakarta.

I don’t understand the logic. Perhaps there’s something else going on that the minister would care to divulge that may be bearing upon this decision.

Hon. T. Wat: I know that the member also has a lot of friends in the Taiwan community. So do I. My former boss is from Taiwan, so obviously, I have a lot of interest in Taiwan. But the minister cannot exercise her own in-
[ Page 11227 ]
dividual preference for the location of any office in Asia or in Europe or in the United States.

We’ve done a scientific study. We got an independent company to do a study of all the potential priority markets where we are going to locate our TIR offices, and Taiwan has come out almost the last one.

[1520]

My staff do not have the chart here, but we are more than willing to provide you with that chart so that you can see why we have not decided to locate our office in Taiwan.

Just remember that the selection of locations for our B.C. TI office is based on a number of factors — as I said earlier, and I want to repeat once again — including market growth potential, market size and the alignment with the province’s priority sector as outlined in the B.C. jobs plan, and because we have limited resources. We cannot spend the taxpayers’ money unnecessarily. We will get questions from the opposite side. So we have to spend our money that we think is worthwhile spending. That’s why we have come up with the decision that we need to locate offices in the ASEAN market, because ASEAN will be the sixth-largest market in the world.

B. Ralston: The minister made reference to what she called a scientific study. I’m quoting her exactly there. Will the minister table that?

Hon. T. Wat: We will provide you with that information, together with the information we’ll provide to you by the end of April this year.

B. Ralston: The minister has made reference to information. What she said two questions ago was “a scientific study.” My question is: is she prepared to release the scientific study in its entirety? That’s what I’m asking for. I’d appreciate a yes or a no answer from the minister.

Hon. T. Wat: Yes. We’ll provide the market research report that we have done to come up with our decision on what offices we are going to locate.

B. Ralston: Can I expect that by tomorrow afternoon? That is March 10 — tomorrow afternoon.

Hon. T. Wat: I think I told the member…. We said that we’ll provide that information, together with the rest of the information that we promised to provide you, by the end of April this year.

B. Ralston: I think that’s unsatisfactory, but the minister controls these things, so people will be the judge of that. If the study is completed, it’s been used, and a decision has been made upon it, why can’t it be released immediately? There may be some politics involved in that. I don’t know. I’m only speculating because the delay seems unnecessary, inordinate and, frankly, obstructionist. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be released.

The minister can comment on that later if she chooses. She’ll probably ignore it, given the way things are going today.

I’m going to move on to the next topic of trade missions. I know the minister has engaged in a number of trade missions in Asia. I’m particularly interested in the last. I think it was a fairly recent one. Perhaps she can confirm the dates. She toured a number of cities in China, and she also went to, I think, Hanoi in Vietnam. I’m interested in the date on which she visited Hanoi. First of all, perhaps she can confirm that she did, the date on which she visited Hanoi, and I’ll ask some other follow-up questions about that.

[1525]

Hon. T. Wat: The days that I went to Vietnam were November 9 to 10, 2015. Just to clarify, I did not go to Hanoi. I went to Ho Chi Minh City.

This particular mission advanced B.C. economic ties in the rapidly growing market of Vietnam, in Southeast Asia. Vietnam is one of the four Southeast Asian countries that concluded the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Once ratified, the Trans-Pacific Partnership will further increase B.C.’s competitive position in Vietnam as tariffs on goods and services will be either eliminated or reduced. Just to let the member opposite know, I’m the first Canadian trade minister to visit Vietnam after the TPP was concluded. That’s why I was given a really warm welcome. They realized how much value we place on the Vietnamese market.

During the mission, I met with a range of prospective investment companies interested in doing business in British Columbia. I have a delegation of B.C. agrifood companies to participate in the annual Canadian Food Festival in Vietnam, near Ho Chi Minh City, and was pleased to promote our food and beverage sector to hundreds of local buyers and media.

Our B.C. jobs plan sector focus includes agrifoods, international education, natural resources and head office attraction. In addition, a letter of intent was signed between my ministry and the Ho Chi Minh City department of industry and trade. The agreement is certainly a positive first step to increase economic cooperation between B.C. and this dynamic region.

B. Ralston: Interesting to hear about the minister’s trip to Saigon.

Would the minister agree to table the agreement that she referred to between the civic administration in Saigon, its department of industry, and the B.C. government?

Hon. T. Wat: Yes, we will provide the MOU that I signed.
[ Page 11228 ]

For the record and to the member opposite, it’s Ho Chi Minh City.

B. Ralston: Many former citizens of Vietnam in Canada who are now Canadian citizens still refer to it as Saigon, and that’s probably why I do so as well.

Can the minister set out the names and the titles of the officials that she met with during her apparently two-day visit to Vietnam?

[D. Ashton in the chair.]

Hon. T. Wat: I will provide a list of all the meetings that I had in Ho Chi Minh City in the two days that I visited Vietnam.

[1530]

Just to give some example of what I did during the two days, I met with members of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam to hear firsthand their experience in this growing market and also query the specific opportunities that exist for B.C. companies.

As I said earlier, I also led a delegation of B.C. agrifood businesses to attend a Canadian food festival in Ho Chi Minh City. At the festival, I had the opportunity to promote these companies to an audience of 200 Vietnamese buyers and media representatives.

In addition, I had the opportunity to raise the profile of the B.C. company Scentuals Body Care from Nature, which held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its first-ever store in Vietnam.

I also had the opportunity to meet with another successful B.C. immigrant entrepreneur, Mr. Dan On, who owns Richmond-based Dan On packaged foods. Dan On operates a packaging factory in Vietnam where ingredients from British Columbia, including blueberries and cranberries, are used in various products they produce there.

International education is another sector of opportunity in Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City, I witnessed the signing of an MOU that will benefit students in Vietnam and British Columbia.

As I said earlier, my ministry signed a letter of intent with the Ho Chi Minh City department of industry and trade to advance our economic ties.

There are a few other meetings that we will provide the list for, and a summary, to the member opposite.

B. Ralston: As the minister or her staff, or both, will likely know, there is a staffed Vietnamese consulate in Vancouver. What support did the Vietnamese consul general and his staff provide to this trip and to the minister’s delegation? And were there any advance meetings to prepare for this visit?

Hon. T. Wat: With regard to the consul general here…. Actually, I have built up an excellent working relationship with the local consul general. I remember I met the, at that time, outgoing consul general at Viking Air when he was there witnessing the graduation of the Vietnamese pilots for our Viking Air aircraft. I was there starting to get to know him, and we maintained our dialogue since then.

When I led the delegation to Vietnam, actually, he was leaving B.C. Time really flies. He was going back to Vietnam after his three-year term in British Columbia.

[1535]

Then he went to Vietnam earlier than my trade mission, helping to make all the arrangements for all the important meetings for me when I was in Ho Chi Minh City. That kind of help is really important. That shows that myself and my staff have a very good working relationship with the consul general here.

As to the advance party, MIT staff did go to Ho Chi Minh City before I actually arrived there to work with the federal government and the local chamber of commerce to make arrangements for the meetings that I would have in Ho Chi Minh City.

B. Ralston: Prior to travelling to Saigon, did the minister meet with any local community groups of Vietnamese expatriates, now Canadians?

Hon. T. Wat: As I said earlier, I met with the consul general on a number of occasions. Every year the Vietnamese consul general holds an independence day celebration. I was present at every single independence day celebration, and I make it a point to talk to the Vietnamese business representatives at the reception. It takes place in September every year.

My staff also engaged with Vietnamese government officials as well as business representatives to make preparations for my mission to Ho Chi Minh City.

B. Ralston: At any point in the minister’s many meetings with the Vietnamese consul general in Vancouver, did she ever raise the issue of human rights violations in Vietnam?

[1540]

Hon. T. Wat: As the Minister of International Trade, my focus is always on business and the economy. That’s my focus.

B. Ralston: Just so we’re clear, that’s no, then, is it?

Hon. T. Wat: As I said, as the Minister of International Trade, my focus is on promoting our exports to Vietnam — we are talking about Vietnam now — and on trying to attract investment into British Columbia.

The whole outcome of my mission is to try to promote our exports to Vietnam and to attract more investment into British Columbia. Having said that, when I was in Ho Chi Minh City, the Canadian Ambassador gave me
[ Page 11229 ]
a briefing about the political situation in Vietnam. The issue of human rights was never brought up during my two-day mission in Ho Chi Minh City.

B. Ralston: Just to confirm for the record. The minister can disagree with this if she chooses, but it doesn’t sound like she’s going to. At no time during her many meetings with the Vietnamese consul general in Vancouver did she ever raise the issue of human rights violations in Vietnam; nor did she raise it during her two days in Saigon last year.

Now I’m going to move on to another topic. In the mandate letter of June 10, 2014, the mandate charged the minister with developing a governmentwide trade mission plan by August 2014 for the upcoming fiscal year. In the subsequent mandate letter of July 30, 2015, that direction appears to have disappeared. The same direction to “coordinate trade missions across all ministries to ensure maximum coverage and minimal duplication as ministries execute B.C. jobs plan strategies” is the same in 2014 as it is in 2015.

Is the minister no longer doing that, or was it felt unnecessary? What is the plan for trade missions on behalf of the government of British Columbia in the upcoming fiscal year?

Hon. T. Wat: Trade mission planning is an ongoing activity in my ministry. Trade missions are really a critical part of British Columbia’s strategy to diversify our international trade partners and to secure new investment, propelling economic activity and job creation throughout the province.

In 2014, in response to the mandate letter directives, MIT developed a strategic approach to mission management across government that included the development of an annual mission plan. The annual mission plan is coordinated by the Minister of International Trade with input from all ministries and aligning Crown agencies.

[1545]

This annual planning cycle builds on identifying government priorities to ensure missions are outcome-based, coordinated and adequately resourced. For the 2016-17 annual mission planning, the process across all ministries is currently underway.

B. Ralston: Well, in Vote 30, public money is being allocated for a plan for trade missions for the coming fiscal year beginning April 1, 2016, and continuing for a year, till March 31, 2017. Can the minister tell me what the budget for those missions is, and what are the destinations that have been chosen for that one-year cycle?

Given the advance timing and planning that’s necessary, I would think the plan for the coming year was well developed. I’m sure the minister will feel obliged to share that in detail with the committee here and ultimately with the public.

Hon. T. Wat: Our ministry has allocated $500,000 for missions, which is the same level of allocation provided last fiscal year. This budget allocation funds both the Premier’s and the Minister of International Trade’s trade missions. Other ministries have also set aside their own funding for their respective missions.

As I said earlier, mission planning for 2016-17 is still under development for this new fiscal year. Information will be made public once plans are finalized. However, I do expect both the Premier and I will travel to our priority markets in 2016 and ’17 as we continue to advance B.C. trade and investment objectives.

B. Ralston: Well, $500,000 seems a rather low number. Is the minister saying that, then, money for trade missions would be taken from other individual departmental budgets? Because $500,000, I think, would barely pay for a single mission to China. I believe the Premier’s last one was in that neighbourhood — I’m quoting from memory here — given the first-class travel, five-star hotels and the entourage that usually accompanies a Premier on her various trips.

Is that the entire budget, or am I right in thinking that other ministries will be chipping in, and the total budget allocated for trade missions would be several million rather than $500,000?

[1550]

Hon. T. Wat: I just want to once again reiterate to the member opposite that I already said in my earlier answer that the ministry has allocated $500,000 for the mission, which is the same level of allocation provided the last fiscal year. This $500,000 is to cover the mission undertaken by both the Premier and the Minister of International Trade. That means myself. If other ministers are undertaking a trade mission, their ministry would be responsible for the expenses of their trade mission.

Just once again to clarify, as I said earlier, last year we also allocated $500,000. For both the Premier’s and my mission, the expenses fall within the allocated $500,000. It’s not the millions that the member opposite referenced earlier.

B. Ralston: I appreciate that there are other trade missions. For example, I know that the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources travels regularly — typically to Japan, Korea and China — in pursuit of trade opportunities for B.C. logs and, on occasion, B.C. timber as well. That expenditure would come out of that ministry’s budget.

But there are occasions in which the Premier travels with ministers other than the Minister of International Trade. I’m wondering. When there is such a combined effort, does that budget…? Is it then rolled up into one expenditure for the entire trip but contributed by a different ministry? That’s my question.

[1555]

Hon. T. Wat: Just to let the member opposite know, there will be proactive release of the Premier’s trade mission and my trade mission costs for 2015-16 this spring. There will be a proactive release that will be available to the member opposite.

As for your questions regarding the Premier’s travel, that question should be directed to the Premier’s office.

B. Ralston: Very well. I’m sure we’ll have great success in getting what parts of the agenda haven’t been triple-deleted. In any event, thank you for that response.

The minister refers to a spring trip. My sense would be that spring officially begins in a couple of weeks. Is the minister not prepared to reveal the itinerary at this stage? I find it hard to believe that, given the number of contacts that have to be made for a complicated trip, it’s not in the later stages of development, if not finally agreed upon. I’m not quite sure why the minister is being so coy.

This is estimates. This is Vote 30. That expenditure would take place under Vote 30. It’s an answer, a question, that falls squarely within Vote 30, and it’s a voted appropriation. That’s what the minister is asking the assembly to approve, so I can’t understand why she’s not prepared to say what she’s going to be spending it on.

Hon. T. Wat: I just want the member opposite to know that I never said that I’m going on a spring trade mission. I want you to know that. Actually, I’m not planning for a spring trade mission. All I told you earlier in my answer is that both the Premier and I expect to take a trade mission within this fiscal year.

B. Ralston: When we have a break, I’ll have a look at the Blues. Maybe I misheard, but it seemed to me that there was an indication of a specific time that was more specific than “next fiscal year.” I sense that the minister doesn’t want to tell the public what she’s planning in any detail other than that she’s taking a trip sometime in the next 12 months. I don’t think that’s a satisfactory answer, but that’s what the minister has chosen to do, and the public can judge that as they wish, as I’m sure they will.

Moving on, then, to my next topic. In the minister’s mandate letter, there’s a reference to working with “the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association to further export opportunities for B.C. business that were identified by your ministry last year.” I personally work with Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and have attended a number of their events — whether they’re on-site visits to manufacturing operations here in the Lower Mainland and elsewhere or, more recently, an event attended by several hundred people and a number of officials, although, I think, only one MLA and no ministers.

[1600]

They’re an important organization in British Columbia. Manufacturing comprises 8 percent of GDP in the province. It’s a growing sector, notwithstanding some of the myths about manufacturing — certainly, advanced manufacturing. I would agree with the minister that it’s an area worthy of the minister’s attention, and export opportunities for smaller companies are certainly one of the focuses of the organization itself.

So can the minister agree to release the report that was prepared last year and explain what progress has been made in assisting this important and vital economic sector to bring further growth and prosperity to British Columbia?

Hon. T. Wat: It’s quite a lengthy question. It’s a good question, but I think it’s time for all of us to take a ten-minute break before I answer the question, if it’s okay with you, Mr. Chair, and okay with the member opposite.

B. Ralston: If the minister wishes a break, that’s fine with me. I think it’s technically called a recess.

The Chair: A ten-minute recess? Thank you. We’ll have a ten-minute recess. We’ll come back at ten after four.

The committee recessed from 4:01 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

[D. Ashton in the chair.]

Hon. T. Wat: A review of opportunities was completed by the end of 2014. This report, called A Sectoral Analysis of Export Opportunities, assessed the potential for our various sectors to export their manufactured goods to our priority markets. This analysis has since informed how we prioritize activities in these markets, including in our market strategies as well as which international trade shows to focus on for B.C. companies.

As well, we have used the analysis to inform how we prioritize the sector focus of our overseas mission. For instance, the Premier and I visited China last fall. Significant effort went into marketing B.C.’s clean technologies during this trip.

We are more than happy to share this analysis as part of the package of other information that we are providing to the member opposite.

B. Ralston: Moving to a different topic, the topic of head offices. Last year we discussed the new organization, HQ B.C., Headquarters B.C. Yuen Pao Woo was hired to run that. The ministry puts a certain amount of money into that. I think there’s money from the B.C. Business Council as well.

I know that the minister held a recent news conference, a Chinese-language news conference, which spoke of five Chinese companies. I don’t think the news conference was conducted in English. I understand that there’s some news on that front.

[1620]

Perhaps the minister could explain. In Vote 30, how much money is being contributed this year by the ministry to HQ B.C.? Secondly, what was the news conference? I have about five…. I think they’re Chinese-based companies — and by China, I mean the People’s Republic of China. I’ll have some follow-up questions.

Hon. T. Wat: HQ Vancouver is actually a perfect example of a private-public partnership to attract major Asian corporations to set up their head offices for their North American operation in British Columbia. Both the federal government and the B.C. Business Council have contributed cash and also in-kind to this project.

For the provincial government, this year we are contributing $625,000. This will be matched by the federal government and the B.C. Business Council this year.

As to the member’s reference to my Chinese-language-media-only news conference, I want to set the record straight. The report that you read in the media — actually, that day was a Sunday. As the MLA, I hosted my Chinese New Year celebration event in Richmond. Obviously, being the Minister of International Trade, the media will also cover the event. It happened that a Sing-Tao reporter was there.

A couple of days ago, Aikang, a medical technology company, announced at a luncheon that they are going to set up a head office in British Columbia. That particular reporter did not attend that event, so she asked me about what was happening. She also asked me to give her background on the HQ Vancouver progress. That’s why, of course, I had to give her all the information, and that’s why there was the media report. I never, never have a news conference just catering to the Chinese language media.

B. Ralston: I’m glad the minister clarified that, because I did have a report from the Sing-Tao Daily which was translated for me by one of our staff, and there was no corresponding release or mention in any other media that we were able to discover. So if the minister can point me to that, that would be helpful.

Five companies were mentioned. The minister said, according to this report, that…. Frankly, I’m surprised that there wasn’t something in the English language media because if this is accurate, it seems to be a fairly big deal.

[1625]

I think the Aikang group — it’s called a love and health group. This is maybe the one that the minister is referring to. They’re setting up their North American headquarters in Vancouver. It’s not clear from the report what exactly their business is, other than that description as being involved in love and health, which are all good things, of course.

The other question I had was about China Fiber Optic. This was an announcement that was made in 2015. I think it was made out in Surrey. The company asked the Surrey Board of Trade last week to follow up on what happened there. There was a factory in Surrey promised, but so far I haven’t heard back from Anita Huberman, the CEO, although she seems to be trying to track the information down.

Can the minister advise what’s the status…? This was one of the five successes that the minister touted. Can the minister advise of the current status of the China Fiber Optic project? I haven’t been able to unearth any detail beyond the announcement now almost a year ago.

Hon. T. Wat: Well, first of all, I think, being a bilingual individual, I can understand that sometimes the media summary might not be translated in the most perfect way. When the member opposite mentioned love and health…. In Chinese — “aikang” — “ai” means love and “kang” means health. That’s why you have the characters “love” and “health.” So I just want to….

Interjection.

Hon. T. Wat: Yeah, but then you say you don’t know what this company is about.

Actually, you also referred to the absence of a report in the English language media. There was a news release being issued on all of the HQ Vancouver projects that we have arrived at, but it’s really up to the media whether they report it or not.

For that particular announcement on the Aikang medical technology company, all of the media were invited to cover it. If I remember correctly, the Vancouver Sun did write a story on this Aikang investment, so maybe you can go back to a media summary and look for it.

[1630]

Aikang capital is a subsidiary of Beijing’s Aikang Group. They opened a head office in Vancouver in February 2016. Its focus is on medical technology and hospital and health management investment opportunities in British Columbia.

Aikang Group is leasing office space at 1117 West Hastings. They currently have five direct staff, but they expect to increase the staff level as their projects develop. This is the Aikang capital that you asked about.

China Fiber Optic Network is the first company that decided to set up a head office in British Columbia. They have shown a lot of confidence in B.C. and are making significant investments through a subsidiary, F-Pacific Optical Communication.

This company also created an investment company, called Steel Magnolia, to leverage Chinese investment opportunity in British Columbia and, in turn, to establish a manufacturing plant in the Lower Mainland. We look forward to working with China Fiber Optic as it moves forward with its plans to bring investment and jobs to our province.

As for the manufacturing plant in Surrey, this is really a private business decision. As minister, it’s not appropri-
[ Page 11232 ]
ate to dive into details about a private business decision.

I can say that my ministry is continuing to engage with this company, and China Fiber Optic has informed us that it is continuing its plans for a production facility in the Lower Mainland.

B. Ralston: I appreciate the minister clarifying at least those two groups. I take it from the minister’s answer that, notwithstanding the news conference a year ago, there’s been no firm decision to proceed with the factory in Surrey.

Perhaps the minister can help me with this. I appreciate that, ordinarily, there would be some analysis of companies that the minister attaches her name to.

[S. Sullivan in the chair.]

China Fiber Optic seems to have attracted a report from a company called Emerson Analytics which is very negative. I won’t go into a lot of detail. Apparently, the parent company is listed, I think, on the Hong Kong exchange. It may be a ploy by a company that’s trying to drive the stock price down, or they’re short-sellers and, therefore, are hoping to reap a profit that way. But it does say some very negative things about the financial stability of this company. In fact, it suggests that it’s a house built upon sand, if I could put it in a more low-key metaphor.

What efforts at scrutiny or quality assurance or just a general review of the company’s financial status is undertaken before the minister attaches her very prestigious name and the name of the government of British Columbia to these kinds of opportunities? Certainly, in the report in the Sing Tao, this was something that the minister was talking about as having been established, not the company itself.

I appreciate it’s open to a company to do whatever they choose to do by way of news releases. But when the minister attaches her name to a company, I’m just wondering what precautions are taken to avoid…. I’m not sure whether this is accurate or not. I have no way of verifying the report that’s been given to me — it’s a very detailed financial analysis of China Fiber Optic — and no way of knowing whether it’s true or false or just a sheerly malicious report designed to drive the stock price down for profit or for other reasons.

It does raise that question, at least in my mind. So can the minister tell me what process is gone through before the minister attaches the very prestigious name of the Minister of International Trade of British Columbia to any particular project?

[1635]

Hon. T. Wat: With respect to Emerson Analytics that the member opposite referred to, according to our trade and investment representative from our Hong Kong office…. They told us that these claims against China Fiber Optic are spurious. Emerson Analytics does not have a Hong Kong office, nor are they licensed with the Securities and Futures Commission to publish research on Hong Kong public stocks, and thus are deemed as an anonymous blogger.

With respect to what MIT does to vet all these corporations, we take this very seriously. We have our in-market representatives to do the assessments of the companies. We have business intelligence tools, such as Hoover’s and fDi Markets, and we have business professional networks to do all of this kind of vetting.

B. Ralston: I want to move now to a separate topic, trade agreements, beginning first with the softwood lumber agreement.

Yesterday I asked a number of questions, not with a lot of answers from the minister responsible for forests who is…. According to his mandate commitment, he leads the softwood lumber agreement discussions with the federal government and ensures that the federal government position is consistent with that of the province. We had a very full debate there yesterday.

[1640]

Can the minister explain what subsidiary role she plays in relation to that particular negotiation? Is there any role for her ministry at all, or is it all carried by the Ministry of Forests?

Hon. T. Wat: The member opposite is correct that the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations leads the province’s SLA negotiation and works with my ministry to manage the softwood lumber agreement in cooperation with the federal Global Affairs Canada. MIT provides trade dispute expertise and ensures that trade practices in other areas do not disadvantage B.C.’s position in the SLA.

B. Ralston: Then — I’m looking here in Vote 30 — where would this appropriation fall? Secondly, are there staff dedicated to this particular agreement that are resident in the Ministry of International Trade? I know that the Minister of Forests — FLNRO; I forget the full detail of the acronym — has hired Dana Hayden, who’s a former Deputy Minister of Forests and deputy of a number of other things, to, essentially, run the file on behalf of that ministry.

Are there other people or dedicated staff in the ministry that are following the softwood lumber agreement? My sense, from speaking to the minister, and certainly from his mandate letter…. Given that he was the leader of this…. Although he didn’t get invited to Ottawa to meet with the ministers, despite that this was the Premier’s number one priority — at least on that particular day, because she has a lot of number one priorities….

That question I think is important, just so that we can be clear who is leading the negotiations and what sup-
[ Page 11233 ]
port, if any, of this ministry is subject to these estimates Vote 30 is providing.

[1645]

Hon. T. Wat: The general trade support, such as for the softwood lumber agreement file, falls within our international strategy and competitiveness subvote. We don’t have any dedicated budget specific to SLA. This falls within the Ministry of Forests vote.

B. Ralston: I want to turn now to the TPP. I know the minister has made a number of statements on the TPP. The minister will know that the full text of the agreement was only released on November 5, 2015. Yet well in advance, for at least a year, the minister was making a number of statements in support of the TPP while completely in the dark as to what the text of the agreement might be.

I want to confirm that, because of the process of negotiation. This was negotiated at the federal level. The minister and the ministry had no access to or no knowledge of the details of the text of the agreement prior to its public release on November 5. So would the minister please confirm that?

[1650]

Hon. T. Wat: We were never given the entire, complete draft text until it was posted by New Zealand, but we were consulted by the federal government on positions that impacted B.C.’s interest.

B. Ralston: Can the minister, then, describe that? I’ve heard information to the contrary. Can the minister describe what areas the British Columbia government was consulted on?

As the minister will know, this is a very lengthy and complicated agreement. The full text is voluminous. It deals with a number of areas. Although they may not affect British Columbia’s interest or appear to be affecting British Columbia’s interest directly and immediately, certainly the provisions on intellectual property, for example, have huge implications for not only British Columbia but the country as a whole and the future of whole sectors of the economy.

I’m interested in the process that the minister went through, because she has supported this well in advance of reviewing any text. Simply, I guess, because it’s called a trade deal, the minister reflexively supported it without knowing the details, evaluating it, and knowing whether the deal was good or not, bad for some sectors or good for Canada overall.

I will, at a later point, set out what I think should be the process for evaluating trade deals fairly. Certainly, I’d appreciate the minister clarifying what role the federal government played in informing her. My sense would be that if she was simply informed of the removal of some tariff barriers on some agricultural produce in certain parts of Asia, that’s one thing. But that’s far from a comprehensive view of what is a very, very sweeping agreement.

[1655]

Hon. T. Wat: British Columbia always advocated for priority markets. Under this TPP, B.C. was able to gain new market access to our key Pacific Rim countries. The greatest opportunities for B.C. goods are in sectors such as fish and seafood, agriculture, forestry and technology. Manufactured goods with high tariffs will be reduced or eliminated.

Also, B.C. services provided in areas such as engineering, environment, aerospace and IT will benefit from the increased access to TPP countries through commitments such as eliminating local presence requirements and prohibiting measures that discriminate against foreign service providers.

We’re able to maintain B.C. log export controls and the liquor distribution policy. We are able to preserve the supply management system, including B.C.’s agricultural marketing boards, and exclude B.C. Crown corporations from new obligations for state-owned enterprises.

As part of our due diligence, our ministry hired independent consultants Ciuriak Consulting to conduct an economic impact analysis of the TPP for B.C. in early 2014. The study showed that B.C. goods exports are expected to increase about $320 million annually, once the TPP is implemented. B.C. GDP is expected to increase by about $325 million annually, once the TPP is implemented. B.C. is expected to gain about 2,500 full-time jobs once the TPP is implemented. The province’s GDP would decrease about $200 million annually if the TPP were to go ahead without Canada.

B. Ralston: Well, that study was done in advance. First of all, would the minister be prepared to release that study? I’m not familiar with it. I’m didn’t quite catch the name of the company that did it. Secondly, the minister seems to have…. I know there was a motion filed in the minister’s name, in advance of the release of the full text, in the House, supporting the TPP.

I’m just wondering about the intellectual process that the minister and her ministry went through to support an agreement, a very complicated agreement, which is now the subject of some considerable debate, based on the text.

The federal Minister of International Trade has deferred discussion until there is a lengthy consultation — probably until the American election is concluded, because there are some very strong views on the trade deal itself in the United States.

I’m just wondering what process the ministry went through in order to support a deal when you hadn’t even seen it. You hadn’t even seen the text of the deal, yet you were out supporting it when you didn’t know what was in the deal.

[1700]

Hon. T. Wat: Just to clarify, as I stated earlier, B.C. was provided with draft provisions that impacted B.C., and our ministry staff reviewed those provisions, which included consulting with our key stakeholders. We’d be more than happy to provide the study to the member opposite.

I just want to emphasize that our government’s priority for international trade agreements has always been a fair and open marketplace where British Columbia businesses can compete on an equal footing with any other businesses in the world.

This TPP deal ensures that B.C. businesses can compete on an equal footing with any other business in the 12-country membership of the TPP. As Canada’s Pacific Gateway, British Columbia will benefit from increased bilateral trade between North America and other TPP markets, spurring economic growth and job creation here at home.

B. Ralston: One of the important things in evaluating a trade agreement is, I think, to enunciate some principles. One of the principles that I think it’s important to enunciate in evaluating a trade deal is: does the potential trading partner or partners respect democratic principles and acceptable standards of human, labour and environmental rights? If not, has the partner demonstrated a positive trajectory of improvement in these areas?

Secondly, is the trading partner of significant and strategic economic importance to Canadian and British Columbian importers and exporters? Three, what are the terms of the trade deal? Do they protect key Canadian and British Columbian public and economic interests? Fourthly, is the agreement, when analyzed comprehensively, of net benefit to Canada and to British Columbia?

Those principles, I think, are important in evaluating. I see, in what the minister has done, a rush to judgment before the text of the agreement was released, based on some consultation in a couple of sectors. Frankly, I don’t think that’s good enough.

Now that the full text has been released and there is a full national debate, has the minister commissioned a study of the agreement to assess its economic impact on the British Columbia economy?

[1705]

Certainly, when the NAFTA agreement was signed, the then federal government commissioned a major economic impact study. Obviously disputed — but at least there was some intellectual basis for the decision to support the agreement. The minister’s position and that of the Premier appears to be: “If it’s got a trade deal label on it, let’s support it. It doesn’t matter what the details are. Why waste time?”

I don’t think that’s in the long-term interest of Canadians and British Columbians. I’m wondering if the minister has instructed her staff, her deputy, to engage in that kind of study and is prepared to share it with the public of British Columbia and Canada.

[1710]

Hon. T. Wat: I already told the member opposite that we will provide the 2014 Ciuriak study that analyzed the economic impact of TPP on B.C. Actually, this study, even though it was undertaken in 2014, we have already updated. The updated version is largely consistent with our initial findings. Our ministry is currently meeting with affected sectors for their input as well. This will be provided as the consultation process to the federal government.

In general, I can say that B.C.’s key sector stakeholders are very supportive of the TPP.

B. Ralston: Jim Balsillie, who was the former co-CEO of Research in Motion — the BlackBerry device that many of us still use — wrote a very lengthy and a very strong opinion piece in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, January 30. I’m going to quote a little bit from it, because he’s a person who obviously has some considerable experience in technology and regards the agreement as a disaster for the development of Canadian technology in the future.

Clearly, what the TPP is, given its concentration on intellectual property, is basically a charter of rights for some very important American industries — the entertainment industry and its technology industries.

He quotes in the article:

“The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative bills TPP as ‘made in America’ and ‘the first agreement that addresses the global digital economy.’ That’s why TPP provides great benefits to national economies oriented to capturing wealth from high value-added goods and services. Canada is not one of those countries. Because of decades of failed innovation policies, our economy is still structured for 19th-century commodities and 20th-century manufacturing rather than for a 21st-century innovation economy.”

He goes on to talk about the TPP.

“TPP raises the minimum global IP standards agreed by the World Trade Organization by extending and enforcing the U.S. IP regime and interests to all TPP countries. Make no mistake about it…TPP clearly demarks the shift in global value creation from tangible to intangible goods by providing unprecedented advantages to current large holders and producers of IP.

“Canada does not have the arsenal of valuable IP to benefit financially from such provisions. The Intellectual Property Owners Association’s most recent ranking of top 300 organizations granted U.S. patents lists BlackBerry as the only Canadian entry. In their top 100 worldwide universities granted U.S. utility patents, the University of British Columbia was the only Canadian university, listed at 78th with 29 patents granted, compared with the University of California’s 453.”

This is a lengthy article, a very serious consideration. He does not support it from his vantage point as a technology CEO. I don’t detect anything in the shibboleths that the minister has uttered, which are unchanged from before the release of the text to now that displays any consideration of the huge implications of this agreement for intellectual property regime here in Canada and the prospect of a 21st-century innovation economy.

That’s the concern he is raising; that’s the concern that many others are raising. There are other issues. The be-
[ Page 11235 ]
nign view that the minister takes of the agricultural subsidies, particularly in the dairy and poultry markets, I don’t think is supported universally in British Columbia.

I want to focus for the moment upon intellectual property. What study has the minister done? What advice have her officials offered? How is she participating in this important national debate? Certainly, that’s a debate that’s going on.

[1715]

Hon. T. Wat: Thank you to the member opposite for bringing up Jim Balsillie’s viewpoint, but this is just one view. His view is more on Canada’s innovation policy, not actually on TPP.

There are other views as well. Intellectual property lawyer Richard Owens said, in his Macdonald-Laurier Institute report entitled Debunking Alarmism Over the TPP and IP: Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Good Deal for Canadian Innovators — that’s the name of the report — that Canada’s intellectual property laws already match TPP standards almost entirely. The intellectual property provisions of the agreement are not, therefore, particularly new or unique.

He goes on to say that Canadian innovators will benefit from the TPP’s intellectual property rules because they require other trading partners, such as Vietnam, to adopt standards of protection similar to Canada’s and other developed country parties in the agreement.

This means every member country will be operating with the same universal rules, which forces a sense of security and predictability among trading partners.

B. Ralston: My question was, at least, what…. I appreciate the offer of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. They’re typically cited by conservative politicians. I’m familiar with their CEO, who offers public opinion regularly. That’s certainly one point of view.

[1720]

I don’t think that particular person has the same experience as Mr. Balsillie. These are not views that are isolated to simply one person. These are mainstream views that are, I think, really important in considering the deal itself.

For example, I’m looking here…. This is an editorial by that well-known socialist journal, the Globe and Mail. I’m quoting from an editorial of November 12, after the text was released:

“The TPP, it must be admitted by all parties, is more than just a free trade deal. It contains many requirements on sovereign governments to change their laws in order to make them uniform with those of the other countries in the deal. This is not just about eliminating tariffs anymore.

“One of the biggest examples of that is the requirement for all signatories to keep copyrighted material out of the public domain for 70 years after the death of the author. In Canada, the protected period is 50 years. What will the implication be if Canadian companies suddenly have to pay royalties on works for an additional 20 years? Some have argued it will cost our economy hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The TPP contains similar language in many areas, including the Internet, the environment and the protection of trade secrets. Canada would be obliged to change its laws, including the Criminal Code, or adopt new ones in order to benefit from lower or eliminated tariffs on its exports.

“Is it worth the trade-off? Agreements that liberalize trade are good for Canada’s economy. For the most part, the TPP does just that.

“But if Ms. Freeland and her party” — that’s the federal Minister of Trade — “are serious about making sure Canadians understand its implications, they will have to give parliamentary committees the time and resources to go over it section by section and hear testimony from neutral experts. Parliament will have to report back to Canadians in plain language about what they are getting and what they are giving up. And then the government will have to make an argument for ratification or demand further negotiations to protect Canada’s interests.

“There is no rush. This deal needs to be ratified by partisan, electioneering Congress, and Mr. Obama is facing an uphill battle on that front. That’s part of the reason why he is appealing directly to the American people to read the TPP, in the hope they will see its appeal and pressure their representatives to ratify it.

“It doesn’t have to work that way in Canada. The defeat of the Harper government — a government that reduced Parliament to a rubber stamp — is solid evidence that Canadians want their representatives to do the job they were elected to do — that is, to protect Canadians’ interests in an informed, non-partisan way. The TPP debate is the place to start.”

In that spirit of “informed and non-partisan,” I’m wondering: will the minister commit to a public debate informed by studies from her ministry by neutral experts that will assess the benefit of this, rather than resorting to the rhetoric that she resorted to prior to the text being released and wanting to rubber-stamp a deal that, clearly, the minister and the ministry, with the greatest respect, don’t appear to fully understand?

[1725]

[G. Kyllo in the chair.]

Hon. T. Wat: The federal consultation process includes British Columbia as well. It’s important to remember that the federal government is a signatory to the TPP, and it is appropriate that they should lead that process. We are consulting with our stakeholders and encourage them to engage in the federal government’s consultation process. We are confident that through this process, Canadians, including British Columbians, will come to the same conclusion as our government — that the TPP is good for British Columbia.

B. Ralston: I would suggest that that answer is cold comfort and a failure to really engage with the real issues that are at stake here.

Let me just read a little bit more from Mr. Balsillie’s piece:

“Technology is no longer the sole purview of high-tech entrepreneurs. It permeates all industries and is the only wealth driver in the 21st century economy. IP rights are the global currency for innovators in all markets to capture and extract value.

“That is why companies in traditional sectors are also building IP arsenals. When Canadian farmers buy a tractor from John
[ Page 11236 ]
Deere or when consumers buy a car from General Motors, they acquire a restricted licence to use proprietary technology. These new business models strengthen corporate control over their customers. Broader and stronger IP ownership laws create a neo-feudal economic structure where large IP owners will have ever more unassailable profit-making positions.

“A recent report published by the World Economic Forum states that in…30 years, possession of intellectual property will be the only competitive advantage for nations and businesses.

[1730]

“The TPP is an agreement that perfectly reflects this shift in capturing value and allows IP to be used as an asset in its dispute settlement mechanism. A Canadian company has never won an investor-state dispute settlement…under NAFTA. Under TPP, our government has an additional disadvantage of broader IP lawsuits from foreign corporations where tribunal decisions will now be made outside of Canada.

“While Canada failed to build capacity in IP, other countries such as China, Israel and South Korea came from behind to steadily build theirs. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, China is now the world’s biggest patent filer, with the Chinese filing more than 700,000 patents in 2014 alone, outpacing Canada 150-fold. With this aggressive strategy, China will soon have enough IP to drive its own prosperity by exporting higher value-added goods and transforming into a higher-wage economy.”

These are significant issues which, regrettably, the minister seems unwilling to engage in. I do want to ask a couple of more specific questions about the agreement.

The minister has spoken of the admittedly modest job gains, according to the study, that would take place were TPP to be adopted and come into force in British Columbia. Can the minister first set out where, in what sectors, job losses would take place?

Secondly, the concern has been expressed by those analyzing the agreement that, given the number of countries and the number of companies that would be involved in this, it will lead to an increased use of intra — that is, inside the company — transfer of workers, in particular to Canada. So an increase in temporary foreign workers through the use of those provisions in the agreement.

Two questions, then. Job losses — what sectors will there be job losses in? Surely there will be some in some sectors. Secondly, what is the minister’s position upon mandating further use through intracompany transfers of temporary foreign workers here in British Columbia?

[1735]

Hon. T. Wat: For the member opposite, with respect to your first question, the economic impact analysis that we completed for B.C. shows that there will be a net job gain. So where there are impacts, the federal government has committed to compensate those sectors, such as supply management.

As we got to your second question, about temporary entry provisions of the TPP, temporary entry commitments are an important part of all of Canada’s free trade agreements. Temporary entry provisions accomplish this by removing barriers such as economic needs tests for business visitors, investors, intracompany transferees and highly skilled professionals and technicians.

Temporary entry commitments do not change existing immigration or visa policy and do not supersede the rights of regulators to regulate the purchase of professionals and technicians supplying services.

B. Ralston: First of all, to deal with the minister’s answer on job losses. So the number is a net gain. There will be losses. She appears to be attributing any job losses to the supply managed sectors only, such as dairy and poultry. Is that what she intended to say, or are there other sectors?

Certainly, that’s not what some of the sectors…. There’s a study that is cited federally that suggests 60,000 job losses across the country. I’m interested in what distribution might occur here in British Columbia.

[1740]

Hon. T. Wat: As a minister of British Columbia, I cannot speak to numbers in other provinces. All I can say is that we are confident that the numbers for B.C. show that the TPP will result in a net gain of jobs for our province. This is because our key sectors will see increased economic activities because of the TPP. We will see increased exports for priority sectors such as fish and seafood, agriculture, forestry and technology. And manufactured goods with high tariffs — as high as up to 40 percent — will be reduced or eliminated.

B. Ralston: Well, if there is a net gain, that implies that there are some gains and there are some losses. My question was: what are the losses going to be? The minister, despite being given the opportunity several times to answer that, obviously isn’t prepared to answer that.

I don’t think that really assists the public — to have a discussion where the minister only talks about the gains and doesn’t talk about the losses. That’s not the kind of discussion — the non-partisan informative discussion — that the Globe and Mail editorial, for goodness’ sake, was talking about. The minister doesn’t appear to want to engage in that, and that’s regrettable. But I’ll move on. I have some more questions.

One of the provisions of the TPP will forbid or basically disable national governments from cutting off data flows — for example, laws that require local storage of data.

That’s an issue that’s been debated in British Columbia since Maximus took over the administration of some of the health records of the province, including the MSP premiums. Certainly, there was an issue. It’s gone before the Privacy Commissioner about whether that data, that important private health data of British Columbians, based on the medical system here, would be stored in Canada or be stored in the United States and therefore subject to the U.S. PATRIOT law, which would override privacy provisions and many other laws of the country of Canada. The assurance was given that that would take place.
[ Page 11237 ]

This provision of this agreement will forbid that protection to be afforded to the private health data of British Columbians and Canadians. Does the minister support that?

[1745]

Hon. T. Wat: I can confirm to the member opposite that the B.C. FOIPPA legislation requiring data services to be located in Canada will not be impacted by the TPP.

B. Ralston: Can the minister point to the specific provision in the numerous chapters, I believe, at least 19 chapters, and cite that, rather than simply giving a general assurance?

Hon. T. Wat: This is in the electronic commerce chapter, which is publically available, but we are pleased to provide it to the member opposite.

B. Ralston: I don’t have it here. It’s very lengthy, but I will have a look at it.

Another provision of the agreement is lengthening patent protection for pharmaceuticals — in particular, cell-based biologics. Has the minister evaluated those sections and determined what the impact of the likely increased cost of pharmaceuticals will be on the PharmaCare and the health care costs of future governments of British Columbia?

Hon. T. Wat: The TPP will not change existing Canadian intellectual property rights legislation for pharmaceuticals, including biologics. In Canada, we do have legislation in place for eight years of data exclusivity for all drugs, including biologics, which is what TPP countries agreed to. The TPP IP chapter’s provisions on pharmaceuticals are in line with what Canada negotiated in the Canada-EU CETA agreement.

[1750]

B. Ralston: The minister claims that she was consulted, and this is a sector that is certainly of interest to public health care systems across the country.

Did the minister advocate for a shorter period? Certainly, if it’s opened to lengthen or maintain a patent protection for a certain period…. Some countries advocated a five-year patent protection, which would bring generics onto the market sooner. Did the minister advocate for that?

Hon. T. Wat: I just want to remind the member opposite that Canada is a signatory and also a negotiator of the TPP agreement. It ensures that the TPP is consistent with other international obligations, such as CETA.

We advocated for eight years, which is in line with CETA and the Canadian legislation.

B. Ralston: It seems like the minister wants to have it all ways. If you are consulted, you don’t always have to agree. I think the possibility exists — I hope, at least, but it doesn’t appear to be accepted — that it might be possible to offer some changes that would result in lower health care costs in the long run for British Columbia and Canada. But that doesn’t appear to have been on the table.

The minister mentioned CETA. That’s the Canada-European trade deal, the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. Last year in estimates, we discussed the investor-state provisions, which I suggested were not going to be supported in Europe. The minister, I think, took no position on that.

Would the minister agree that recent negotiations in Europe show that there are some changes to the investor state, given the European Parliament and a number of member states of the European Parliament very opposed to a NAFTA style of tribunal that was proposed for the CETA agreement — that, in fact, there has been renegotiation since the initial signing and that, similarly, given that precedent, it would be possible in the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP?

In other words, the negotiation is not over simply because some authoritative parties say it. There is an opportunity, through a political debate at the national and provincial level, to advocate for changes to the agreement. Does the minister agree with that?

[1755]

Hon. T. Wat: The investor-state dispute settlement system in CETA provides certainty for investors and businesses while at the same time providing important safeguards to ensure that frivolous claims are discouraged or dismissed. As to the member opposite’s question about the recent changes to the CETA ISDS provision, the final CETA text was modified to clarify the mechanism and procedures used to resolve disputes between investors and states, addressing the earlier concern by the EU.

Recent changes to the investment chapter reaffirm a government’s right to regulate a legitimate policy objective — for example, for the protection of health or the environment. These changes include detailed commitments on ethics for members of tribunals, a revised process for the selection of tribunal members, and they introduce an appellate mechanism.

B. Ralston: Well, I agree with the minister to the extent that there were changes. I’m looking at an article by Jerry Dias, who’s the national president of Unifor. The minister may recall him. He was here during the truckers dispute and, I believe, met with the Premier, and there was the usual kind of photo op at that point. So he’s familiar to members of the government. But what he does say in this particular article…. I’ll just quote.

“Increasingly, the public is becoming uneasy with the power trade deals give to corporations to decide the kinds of policies
[ Page 11238 ]
their countries can pursue. In Europe, with CETA, Europeans found themselves in the midst of a major political backlash, thanks to the ISDS.”

That’s the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.

“Because of that, after little more than two years, the deal was tweaked. That’s good. That shows that with enough political and public opposition, we can fix what’s wrong with a deal. And not just with CETA. There are similar ISDS concerns with Canada’s deal with China and with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Freeland signed recently and intends to bring before parliament for ratification.”

And he talks about…. I’ll continue.

“Again, let’s not rush into anything. In light of the changes announced Monday, we need to question why Canada would agree to a strong investor-state dispute system in one deal, the TPP, but not in another deal, CETA. How can Freeland say there’s no more room to negotiate in TPP when we just renegotiated a done deal in CETA?”

Does the minister agree with that statement by Mr. Dias?

[1800]

Hon. T. Wat: Both the CETA and the TPP include rules to protect investors. These rules include investor-state dispute settlement procedures that provide for independent access to an impartial and timely conflict resolution process. Investor-state dispute settlement rules have been a standard feature of Canada’s comprehensive free trade agreements since NAFTA.

The ISDS rules are designed to assure Canadian investors that their investments will be protected from discriminatory or arbitrary government actions in foreign markets. Nothing in the CETA or the TPP prevents government from regulating in the public interest. Nothing allows foreign companies to force a government to change its laws or regulations.

Foreign investors are subject to the same laws and regulations as Canadian investors, including those aimed at protecting health and safety standards. As well, CETA and TPP will not impair the federal or provincial government’s ability to enact legislation necessary to achieve legitimate public policy objectives, such as protection of health and/or the environment.

I would also like to note that ISDS, the investor-state dispute system provision, has been in force in NAFTA for over two decades.

B. Ralston: Yes, indeed, they have been in force in NAFTA for over two decades, and Canada has yet to win a decision before the NAFTA tribunal. In fact, in some cases, that’s precisely the problem that people refer to. To take that benign approach to the NAFTA tribunal, I don’t think is necessarily in the interests of Canadians. It’s been used as a mechanism to sue provincial governments quite regularly.

Contrary to what the minister says about not restricting the ambit of provincial governments to govern…. I don’t have access to a list of decisions, but there are a number of decisions that demonstrate the inaccuracy of the minister’s statement. If she takes comfort in the fact that NAFTA has a tribunal, I think it goes to prove Mr. Dias’s point. I’m sorry that the minister has rejected what Mr. Dias appears to have said. “The public is becoming uneasy with the power trade deals give to corporations to decide the kinds of policies their countries can pursue.”

[1805]

That’s what he said, but the minister clearly disagrees with him. That’s fair enough. I’m sure Mr. Dias will be interested to hear that, notwithstanding a photo op with the Premier, the government disagrees with him on a fundamental issue about Canada’s future. I think he’ll make his own judgments about that.

I note the hour. Clearly, the debate about the TPP will continue. The minister has filed a motion in the House. That will come forward. I expect we’ll hear some of the more reflexive and unconsidered rhetoric that we’ve heard here today, and we’ll pursue it there.

I would invite the minister and her staff to rethink their position and to engage in a genuine debate and a genuine inquiry about the benefits and the negative aspects of this agreement for the future of British Columbia and for Canada. Certainly, that’s what the federal minister of foreign trade is considering, and certainly, that’s the tone of the debate in the national parliament. British Columbia seems to be out of sync with that — simply a predetermined decision before the text was even released. But that seems to be the way this government operates.

That’s, I think, a reasonable discussion of the TPP. I think I’ve made my position clear as to why, at this stage, it should be opposed, and we’ll have that debate in the House, perhaps, later on.

I do want to turn to other topics. I note the hour. I’m going to just refer to a fairly short issue. I don’t know. The minister may not be…. It’s not on my list. I will deal with the Immigrant Investor Fund and the Renaissance Fund in the time that we have tomorrow, because we are not concluding today.

At the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters dinner — I think the Chair was there; I think I remember him giving some remarks at this dinner — I was approached, and perhaps he was as well, by the British Columbia Printing and Imaging Association. They are concerned about a decision by the U.S. Commerce Department and its potential implications for their industry in British Columbia. It’s probably easier just to read what they’ve said rather paraphrase it.

“Are the British Columbia government and the federal government aware of the U.S. Commerce Department’s announcement on January 11, 2016, regarding anti-dumping duties on imports of uncoated paper sheets from Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia and Portugal determining that these products were sold at less than fair value? The action followed a nearly year-long investigation into the pricing of imported uncoated sheets for copy paper, envelopes, book papers, utility bills and other uses.”

The leaflet here goes on to say:

“What can the government of British Columbia do to assist? As Vancouver represents a non-tariff port of entry, these products
[ Page 11239 ]
are routinely sold into British Columbia well below fair market values. With the recent announcement by the U.S. Commerce Department, imports may increase at even higher levels into Canada, resulting in unsustainable market conditions.”

That’s something put forward by the industry — the executive director, Jennifer Timer. They approached me and, likely, the Chair, the member for Shuswap, at the dinner that we both attended not so long ago.

Would the minister be able to provide some comment on the request of this industry in British Columbia, the B.C. printing industry, and their concerns about the impact of the U.S. Commerce decision upon their industry here in British Columbia?

[1810]

Hon. T. Wat: Thank you to the member opposite for bringing this concern to us. We were made aware of this issue and of their concern, and staff have been meeting with interested parties to better understand the potential implications for B.C.-based companies.

We take the concern regarding unfair trading practices seriously. If local companies are being impacted as a result of a recent decision in the United States, we’ll work with companies and ensure the appropriate steps are taken to protect B.C.’s interests.

Those steps might include supporting the sector to initiate action with the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, which is Canada’s trade remedy system. They will, along with Canada Border Services Agency, ensure Canadian companies and consumers are protected from unfair trade practices. We will work with our federal counterparts to ensure appropriate actions are being pursued.

B. Ralston: Since the minister does have the printed document…. It’s appropriate that, given the industry, it’s a printed document. They do say — and I wonder whether this is something that the minister would want to comment on: “In recent years, the government of British Columbia has slashed its own printing budgets. The BCPIA challenged it to evaluate the success of its current communications against years past when printed communications were more available for citizens. Are the government’s messages reaching and resonating with their target recipients?”

Given that the minister is going to be meeting with these stakeholders, or at least ministry officials are going to be meeting, would she be willing to include that concern of this group as part of the meeting agenda that will be drafted, I would assume, fairly soon.

[1815]

Hon. T. Wat: Just to let the member opposite know, my ministry is not responsible for government printing, and they have only asked to discuss the anti-dumping duties on imports of uncoated papers. When our staff meet with them, if they raise the issue, we will connect them with the appropriate contacts in the government.

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

B. Ralston: Before we take the vote, there was an additional staff member who had joined the minister. I don’t believe she was introduced and was assisting the minister throughout the afternoon. Perhaps, just as a matter of courtesy, she could put that name on the record.

Hon. T. Wat: My apology for not introducing my other staff. There are three supporting executive directors. They are Paul Irwin, Hayden Lansdell and also Sohee Ahn.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:18 p.m.

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